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Celery Soup

A creamy soup made with celery, ham, stock, butter, sugar, mace, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine celery, 1 pint of stock, butter, ham, and sugar.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes.

  3. Add 3 pints of stock, salt, and mace; simmer gently for 1 hour.

  4. Press the soup through a coarse sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the soup, pour into a tureen, and stir in boiling cream.

  2. Serve immediately with toasted sippets.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Celery + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 flavour of the soup as it simmers and breaks down.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour from the aromatics into the soup.
Ham
Contributes savoury, salty depth to the stock.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture when stirred in at the end.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that cooks the celery and carries the other flavours.

The step that matters

Stir in the boiling cream at the end. Cream can curdle or separate if it is overheated or boiled after being added, so it should be stirred in only once the soup is hot and served right away.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, butter, ham, sugar, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, butter, ham, sugar, cream. 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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