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Cream of Celery Soup

A creamy soup made from celery, milk, onion, mace, butter, flour, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream of Celery Soup

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery and break the stalks into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Boil the celery in a small amount of water until pulpy.

  3. Mash the cooked celery in the water it was boiled in and strain through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk with the onion and mace.

  2. Once the milk boils, add it to the mashed celery.

  3. Cream together the butter and flour, then add to the soup.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Add the cream just before serving to enhance the flavor.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main flavor and, once mashed, the body of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup and adds richness.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the flour cook into a smooth thickener.
Flour
Thickens the soup so it becomes smooth and velvety rather than watery.
Cream
Adds fat and richness to the finished soup for a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Add the flour and butter mixture smoothly. Flour must be fully blended with butter before it goes into hot liquid, otherwise it clumps instead of thickening the soup evenly. Cooking it briefly also removes raw starch taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, milk, onion, butter, flour, pepper, cream):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, milk, onion, butter, flour, pepper, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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