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Soup

Cream of Celery

A creamy celery soup made with boiled celery, milk, butter, flour, egg yolks, and served with fried stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 celery

  1. Wash and clean the celery, removing all green parts, and cut it into small pieces. Place the celery in a saucepan and add enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Boil the celery for 1 hour, adding hot water as needed to keep it covered.

Make the soup

  1. In another saucepan, melt the butter and mix it with the flour. Boil the milk.

  2. Slowly stir the butter and flour mixture into the milk until well combined.

  3. Strain the water off the celery and pour the celery into the milk mixture. Stir the mixture until it comes to a boil.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and ground mace if desired. Strain the soup through a fine sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks. Quickly mix the egg yolks into the soup before serving.

  2. Serve with small diced pieces of fried stale bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Celery
Provides the main flavour and, once simmered and strained, the body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and forms the base of the flour roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy soup when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its body and mild sweetness.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and add thickness and a smooth, velvety texture when stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so if the soup is too hot or boiled after they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Mix them in quickly and keep the soup below a boil.

Swap the mace

The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, butter, flour, milk, pepper, egg, bread):

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

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