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Oeleby Soup

A creamy celery soup made with milk, butter, flour, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Oeleby Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the celery base

  1. Cook celery in boiling water until tender.

  2. Rub the cooked celery through a sieve.

Make the milk and roux

  1. Scald the milk with the onion for five minutes.

  2. Remove the onion from the milk.

  3. Melt the butter and stir in the flour.

  4. Add the butter-flour mixture to the milk mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the milk to the celery mixture.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Let the soup come to a boil.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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 flavor and body of the soup once cooked and sieved.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, rich texture to the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the flour thickener.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and milk.

The step that matters

Adding the butter-flour mixture to the milk. Flour thickens best when it is cooked in fat first and blended in smoothly. Adding it to hot liquid while stirring keeps it from clumping, and the soup then thickens as it comes to a boil.

Swap the onion

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

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

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