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Celery Soup

A soup made from celery, onion, milk, and thickened with flour, seasoned with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash and scrape the celery, then cut it into small pieces.

  2. Put the celery into 4 cups of boiling water and cook until very soft.

  3. Chop the onion and boil it in the milk for 10 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Add the cooked onion and milk to the celery.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve and return it to the pot. Boil again.

  3. Thicken with a little flour.

  4. Season with butter, coarse sea salt, and white pepper.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body and flavor of the soup as it softens and breaks down.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup, giving it body as it heats.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic depth to the milk and celery base.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a sieve. Pressing the softened celery and onion through a sieve breaks down fibers for a smooth texture. Incomplete straining leaves stringy bits, so the vegetables must be fully cooked first.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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