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Celery Soup

A simple soup made with celery, onion, butter, water or stock, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and sweat

  1. Wash the celery and cut it into 1-inch lengths.

  2. Put the celery, onion, and butter in a saucepan and cover it.

  3. Cook over low heat for a few minutes to sweat the vegetables.

Simmer and finish

  1. Drain off the fat and add the water or stock.

  2. Simmer until the vegetables are tender.

  3. Strain the soup through a sieve.

  4. Mix the flour with cold water to make a smooth paste and add to the soup.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main vegetable flavor and body of the soup as it softens and breaks down.
Butter
Carries fat for sweating the vegetables, adding richness and rounding the flavor.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when mixed into the liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water before it goes into the hot soup, because dry flour or lumps can clump and stay undissolved. Starch thickens properly only when it is evenly dispersed.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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