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Celery Soup

A soup made from boiled celery, milk, onion, nutmeg, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Boil the celery in the water for 40 minutes.

  2. Mash the boiled celery in the water it was cooked in.

Make the milk base

  1. In a separate pot, boil the milk, onion, and nutmeg together.

  2. Add the flour and butter to the milk mixture.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the mashed celery with the milk mixture.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavour and body of the soup as it is mashed into the liquid.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and adds richness and mild sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the soup becomes smooth and full-bodied.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the thickened base a richer mouthfeel.
Onion
Contributes savoury aroma and background flavour to the milk base.

The step that matters

Add the flour and butter to the milk mixture. Flour needs fat and heat to thicken smoothly; adding it without stirring or cooking it through can leave lumps and a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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