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Soup

Cream of Celery Soup

A soup made from boiled celery, milk, flour, butter, salt, and pepper, thickened with a flour‑milk roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cream of Celery Soup

Why it works: Pepper and celery 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 ↓

Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery, cut it into small pieces, and boil until soft in just enough boiling water to cover it.

  2. Press the celery through a strainer, saving the cooking water.

Make the soup

  1. Scald the milk.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold milk to smooth out lumps.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the hot milk, stirring constantly, and boil for about five minutes.

  4. Add the salt, pepper, and butter.

  5. Then add the strained celery and the reserved cooking water.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy body as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup.
Celery
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the soup when pressed through a strainer.

The step that matters

Mix the flour with cold milk before adding it to the hot milk. Flour clumps when it meets hot liquid directly. Blending it first with a little cold milk separates the particles so they disperse evenly, and constant stirring while it boils keeps the thickener smooth.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, milk. 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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