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Cream Celery Soup

A creamy soup made from celery, beef stock, flour, butter, and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine chopped celery and beef stock in a soup pot and cook until tender.

  2. Melt butter in a separate saucepan and whisk in flour until browned.

  3. Strain the celery mixture and pour it into the saucepan with the flour mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, adding a spoonful of whipped cream on top of each dish.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Celery + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Celery
Provides the main vegetable flavor and body of the soup.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the savory flavor through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and cooks with the flour to form a roux.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in butter. Cooking flour in melted butter until it browns, while whisking constantly, cooks out its raw starch taste and prevents lumps. The toasted roux then thickens the soup smoothly when the liquid is added.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, butter, 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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