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Celery Soup

A soup made with celery, rice, milk, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the stock, rice, and milk.

  2. Grate the white part and root of the celery into the pot.

  3. Cook the rice slowly, adding more milk if it becomes too thick.

  4. Once the rice is tender, mash it through a colander into the stock.

  5. Stir in salt, white pepper, and cayenne, then bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a tureen.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  3. Celery + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Veal + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Veal + ricetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,119 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down when mashed, thickening the soup to a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, and its liquid keeps the rice soft as it cooks.
Celery
Provides the main celery flavour and aroma that define the soup.
Stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the other flavours.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice slowly. Rice thickens the soup as its starch releases during cooking. Heat that is too high can scorch the milk on the bottom of the pot, and the mixture can become too thick, so adding milk as needed keeps it smooth and evenly cooked.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, rice, milk, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, rice, milk, celery. 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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