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Celery Soup

A light soup made with celery, white stock, ham, butter, and cream, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 soup

  1. In a pot, combine chopped celery, white stock, diced ham, and butter.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve, returning the liquid to the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, thicken with a little flour.

  2. Carefully stir in a few spoonfuls of cream.

  3. Serve with toasted bread and season to taste.

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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main flavour and most of the body of the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the celery softens and flavours in.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, mellower texture when stirred in at the end.
Flour
Thickens the liquid slightly if used.

The step that matters

Carefully stir in a few spoonfuls of cream. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils after being added to a hot, acidic or salty liquid. Stirring it in gently and keeping the soup below a boil keeps it smooth.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, cream, bread, 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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