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Celery Soup

A soup made with beef shank, celery, and cream, thickened with flour.

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 broth

  1. Make a broth by simmering the beef shank in water until tender.

  2. Skim off the fat from the broth.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix a little flour with water to create a slurry and thicken the broth.

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

  3. Stir in the rich cream and season with salt and 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. 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
Simmered in water to build the rich, meaty flavour of the broth.
Celery
Softens as it boils, adding its own vegetal flavour and body to the soup.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture when stirred in.
Flour
Mixed with water and stirred in, it thickens the broth.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour slurry. Flour must be mixed with cold water first and stirred smoothly before going into the hot broth; added dry or lumpy, it clumps and thickens unevenly.

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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