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Cream of Celery Soup

A creamy soup made from celery, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream of Celery Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Cook the celery, cut into small pieces, in boiling water until tender.

  2. Let the water boil away toward the end of cooking.

Make and finish the soup

  1. Make a white sauce by melting the butter, adding the flour, and then slowly adding the milk.

  2. Combine the white sauce with the cooked celery, passing it through a vegetable strainer.

  3. Add the seasonings and serve at once.

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

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving the soup its body and creamy character.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that gives the soup body.
Butter
Carries the flour in the white sauce and adds richness.
Celery
Provides the main flavour and, once softened and strained, the soup's texture.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the roux. Adding the milk slowly while stirring lets the flour starch disperse evenly, so the white sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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