Skip to main content
Main

Celery Soup

A soup made with rice, celery, milk, butter, and seasonings, served hot.

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 ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the base

  1. Wash and drain the rice.

  2. In a double boiler, combine the rice and boiling water.

  3. Add the chopped celery and salt, and boil gently for one hour.

Strain and finish

  1. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve using a potato masher.

  2. Return the mixture to the fire.

  3. Add hot milk and butter.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

  2. Add flour for thickening if desired.

  3. Serve with croutons or toasted bread.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens the soup as it cooks and is pressed through the sieve.
Celery
Provides the main aromatic, vegetal flavor of the soup.
Milk
Adds creamy body and a mild sweetness to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the texture smoother and richer.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk and bringing the soup to a boil. Milk contains sugars and proteins that scorch on the bottom of the pan and can boil over quickly. Stir constantly and watch the pot as it heats.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, butter, pepper, nutmeg, flour, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, pepper, nutmeg, flour, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes