Skip to main content
Main

Celeky Soup

A creamy soup made with celery, chicken broth, milk, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Celeky Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Cut the celery into small pieces and cook in the water for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the celery and add it to the chicken broth.

  3. Stir in the milk, chopped onion, and mace.

  4. Melt the butter and mix in the flour, then add to the soup.

  5. Cook for another 30 minutes and strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Whip the cream and add it just before serving.

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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

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 simmers and softens.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness when melted into the soup base.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when mixed with melted butter before being added.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness to the soup.
Whipped cream
Adds a light, rich texture when folded in just before serving.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture. Flour clumps if added directly to hot liquid. Mixing it into melted butter first coats the starch grains, letting them disperse smoothly and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More celery soup recipes

Cream 7Creamy 3Spanish 3 See all 210 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes