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Celery or White Soup

A creamy soup made with celery, barley, and mutton broth, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and celery work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 571 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Celery or White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine the liquor from the boiled leg of mutton and barley.

  2. Add the tied bunch of celery and bring to a simmer.

  3. Stir in the cream and flour until well combined.

  4. Season with salt to taste.

  5. For variation, substitute tomatoes for celery and omit the barley.

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.

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. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mutton + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Thickens the broth as it cooks and gives the soup body and a soft, starchy texture.
Celery
Flavours the broth as it simmers, adding its aroma to the liquor.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup and helps the cream blend in without separating.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream and flour into the simmering soup. Flour needs heat and stirring to hydrate evenly; adding it lumpy or too quickly leaves clumps. Cream can curdle or split if it boils hard, so keep the soup at a gentle simmer once it is added.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, barley, cream, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, barley, cream, flour. 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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