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Cream Celery Soup

A soup made from beef shank broth, celery, flour, water, and finished with 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 ↓

Cream Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Make a broth from the beef shank.

Thicken and cook

  1. Thicken the broth with flour rubbed smooth in water.

  2. Cut the celery into small pieces and boil in the soup until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Strain the soup and add the cream just before serving.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Gives the broth its meaty flavour as the base of the soup.
Celery
Provides the main vegetable flavour and, once puréed, body to the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture when stirred in at the end.
Flour
Thickens the broth so it has body rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the broth. Flour must be rubbed smooth in water first, otherwise it forms lumps that won't disperse. Stirring while it heats lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the broth.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, cream, 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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