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Celery Soup

A light soup made with celery, milk, and corn starch, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the soup

  1. Cover the chopped celery with boiling water and cook until tender.

  2. Add the milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the corn starch dissolved in a little milk or water.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Serve with a teaspoon of whipped cream in each cup.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Celery + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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, once softened by cooking, body to the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that gives the soup its richness and mild sweetness.
Corn starch
Thickens the hot milk as its starch granules swell and gelatinize, giving the soup body.

The step that matters

Stirring in the corn starch. Starch added straight to hot liquid clumps into lumps. Dissolving it in a little cold milk or water first lets it spread evenly, so when the soup heats it thickens smoothly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, corn, pepper, butter, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, pepper, butter, cream. 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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