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Celery Soup

A creamy soup made with celery, milk, cream, butter, flour, salt, white pepper, and onion juice.

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

Make the celery base

  1. Cook the celery in 1 cup boiling water until very soft.

  2. Strain the celery.

  3. Add the hot milk and hot cream to the strained celery.

Make the sauce and combine

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter.

  2. Whisk in the flour, salt, white pepper, and onion juice.

  3. Cook the sauce until thick.

  4. Add the sauce to the celery mixture.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 soft and strained.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the sauce and carries flavor into the soup.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Hot milk
Adds liquid and creaminess, giving the soup a mild, rich body.
Hot cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture from its fat content.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until thick. Flour must be cooked in the melted butter until it thickens and loses its raw taste. Stopping early leaves the sauce pasty and floury, and it will not thicken evenly once added to the soup.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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