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Celery Soup

A creamy soup made from rice, celery, milk, salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over the rice, wash it in cold water, and drain it.

  2. In a pot, combine the rice with 6 cups of boiling water.

Cook the celery and rice

  1. Add the celery and 1 teaspoon of salt, and boil gently for 1 hour, ensuring there is enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Rub the rice and celery through a sieve using a potato masher.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the mixture to the saucepan and add 2 quarts of hot milk until the soup reaches a thick cream consistency.

  2. Season with salt, white pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg, then stir until it boils.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down during simmering and sieving to thicken the soup and give it body.
Celery
Provides the main flavor and, once pureed, adds fibrous body to the soup.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, and with the puree forms the thick cream consistency.

The step that matters

Boil gently with enough water. Rice and celery can scorch on the bottom of the pot if the heat is too high or the water runs low. Gentle simmering with sufficient liquid cooks them evenly without burning.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, celery, milk, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, celery, milk, nutmeg. 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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