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Soup

Brown Celery Soup

A soup made from shredded celery simmered in brown stock and thickened with potato flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Brown Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Remove the heart of the celery, shred it finely, and set aside.

  2. Cut up the remaining celery and boil it in the quart of stock until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the shredded celery in the stock until tender.

  2. Rub the cooked celery through a sieve into the stock.

  3. Mix the potato flour with a small amount of cold stock or water, then add it to the soup.

  4. Return the soup to the saucepan and stir over heat until boiling.

Serve

  1. Place the shredded celery in a tureen and pour the soup over it.

  2. Serve with croutons.

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 + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, with the sieved portion thickening the stock.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the celery flavour through the soup.
Potato flour
Thickens the soup as it comes to the boil, giving it a smoother, heavier texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the thickened soup up to the boil. Potato flour must be mixed smoothly into cold liquid first, then heated while stirring. Adding it dry or letting it sit unstirred causes lumps, and the starch only thickens fully once the liquid boils.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, flour, 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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