Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Celery

A soup made with veal or chicken stock, ham, onions, celery, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cream of Celery

Why it works: Onion and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cream of Celery

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine the stock, ham, onions, celery, and mace.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer until the celery is soft.

  3. Remove the ham from the pot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main vegetable flavor and softens during simmering to give body to the soup.
Veal or chicken stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor of the other ingredients.
Knuckle of ham
Adds savory, smoky depth to the stock as it simmers.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic flavor to the stock as they cook.

The step that matters

Simmer until the celery is soft. Celery needs enough time at a gentle simmer for its fibers to break down. Undercooked celery stays fibrous and tastes harsh, while a hard boil can cloud the stock and toughen the ham.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, onion, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, onion, celery. 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.

More cream of celery recipes

Soup 140 See all 14 →

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes