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Cream of Celery

A creamy soup made with milk, onion, mace, celery, flour, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cream of Celery

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup base

  1. Boil the milk, sliced onion, and mace together.

  2. In a separate pot, boil the chopped celery in water for 30 minutes.

  3. Press the cooked celery through a colander and mix it with the milk mixture.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a small bowl, mix the flour with cold milk, then add to the soup and cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in the butter, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the cream just before serving.

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. Onion + celerytop 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 flavour and bulk, and becomes smooth when pressed through a colander.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture when added at the end.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounder, smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour mixed with cold milk first disperses evenly, so it thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps when added to hot soup.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, onion, celery, flour, butter, 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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