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Delicate Celery Soup

A light soup made with celery, onion, milk, butter, flour, salt, pepper, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Delicate Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Break the celery stalks into pieces and pound the celery pieces in a wooden bowl.

  2. Add the pounded celery to the onion and milk in a double boiler and cook for 20 minutes.

Make the roux and finish

  1. Melt the butter in a separate pan and cook the flour and seasonings in the melted butter.

  2. Add the cream and stir until it thickens and boils.

  3. Stir the thickened mixture into the celery and milk.

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. 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 aroma of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the celery flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps form the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in butter and stirred in.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir the thickened mixture into the celery and milk. Flour thickens only when starch granules swell in hot liquid, so the roux should be smooth and stirred in gently while the soup is hot to avoid lumps and a pasty texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, milk, 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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