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Celery Soup

A hearty soup made with chopped meat, celery, onion juice, and cream, simmered with bones.

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 ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove fat from the meat and chop it finely to measure 1 cup.

  2. Dredge the meat with flour and place it in a pot with a close-fitting cover.

  3. Add the bones and pour in 1 pint of cold water.

  4. Let the mixture soak for at least 1 hour.

Simmer and finish

  1. Heat gradually and simmer, covered, for several hours until the bones fall apart.

  2. Add the chopped celery and onion juice.

  3. Cook for about 1 hour.

  4. Strain the soup through a strainer.

  5. Stir in the cream.

  6. Bring to a boil.

  7. Season with salt and pepper.

  8. Serve in cups.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  5. Meat + lambtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the savory body and flavor that the broth is built on.
Flour
Dusted on the meat, it helps thicken the soup slightly as it cooks.
Bones
Release gelatin and flavor into the water during long, slow simmering.
Celery
Adds its distinctive aroma and fresh, herbal flavor to the broth.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Heat gradually and simmer covered. Slow, gentle heating lets collagen in the bones break down into gelatin and flavor the broth without boiling away water. Rapid boiling makes the soup cloudy and tough, so the bones must be cooked until they fall apart before straining.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, flour, lamb, celery, cream, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, lamb, celery, cream, 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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