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Cream of Celery Soup

A creamy celery soup made with celery, onion, spices, milk, and flour, served hot with croutons.

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

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Wash and scrape the celery, then cut it into small pieces, including the leaves.

  2. Boil the celery with salt, pepper, cloves, and bay leaves in water until tender.

  3. Strain the boiled celery mixture.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the milk.

  2. Stir the celery stock into the heated milk.

  3. Make a thin sauce by mixing flour and butter with cold milk.

  4. Stir the sauce into the soup.

  5. Bring the soup to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with croutons.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 body of the soup, with its leaves adding aroma.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel in the sauce.
Flour
Its starch thickens the sauce once it is heated in the soup.
Skim milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its body and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter sauce into the soup. Flour starch thickens only when heated in liquid and can clump if added all at once. Stir the sauce in gradually and bring the soup to a boil so the starch cooks fully and the raw flour taste disappears.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper, clove, butter, flour, milk. 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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