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Cream of Celery Soup

A creamy soup made with cooked celery, chicken broth, milk, butter, and flour, seasoned with salt and paprika.

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

Prepare the base

  1. Pass the cooked celery through a meat chopper.

  2. In a pot, combine the chopped celery and chicken broth; bring to a boil.

Make the cream

  1. In a separate saucepan, heat the milk and whisk in the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Stir the milk mixture into the boiling celery and broth.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and paprika to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Butter
Enriches the soup with fat and adds a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the soup becomes creamy rather than watery.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the soup and mellows the celery flavor.
Chicken broth
Supplies savory liquid that carries the celery flavor through the soup.
Celery
Provides the main vegetable flavor and bulk of the soup.

The step that matters

Whisking the butter and flour into the hot milk. Flour lumps form if it meets hot liquid unevenly. Whisking it into the milk until smooth lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly as the soup heats.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Celerythe original

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