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Celery Soup

A veal and celery soup thickened with corn starch and finished with butter, served over fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. In a large pot, combine veal, cracked bones, and cold water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 4 hours, adding boiling water as needed to maintain the volume.

  2. Strain the broth, pressing the meat to extract all the liquid.

Make the soup

  1. Add the celery and minced onions to the broth and cook until soft enough to pass through a colander.

  2. Strain the soup again and return it to the pot with the pulped celery.

  3. Season the soup and thicken it with corn starch mixed in the milk. Stir until it boils.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the butter.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup over a handful of fried bread in a tureen.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Celery + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Simmered for hours to release gelatin and flavor, giving the broth body.
Celery
Cooked soft and pulped, it gives the soup its main flavor and body.
Onions
Cooked into the broth, they add savory sweetness and aroma.
Corn starch
Mixed with milk and boiled in, it thickens the soup to a smooth texture.
Milk
Added with the starch, it makes the soup creamier and mellower in flavor.
Butter
Stirred in off the heat, it adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Thickening with corn starch and milk. Corn starch must be mixed into cold milk first, then brought to a boil, so the starch granules swell evenly and thicken without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, celery, milk, corn, pepper, butter, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, celery, milk, corn, pepper, butter, bread. 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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