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Soup

Celery Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with milk, rice, celery, and stock, seasoned with salt, pepper, and optional cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Celery Cream Soup

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 Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the rice in 3 quarts of milk until it can pass through a sieve.

  2. Grate the white part of the celery and add it to the strained rice milk.

  3. Add 1 quart of white stock and boil until the celery is tender.

Season and finish

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne if desired.

  2. If cream is available, substitute 1 pint for the same amount of milk.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Breaks down as it boils, thickening the milk into a smooth, body-rich soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and, with the rice, gives the soup its creamy texture.
Celery
Provides the main flavour and, once softened by boiling, becomes tender enough to blend into the soup.
White stock
Adds savoury depth and extra liquid to the soup base.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, making the soup silkier and more velvety.

The step that matters

Boil the rice until it passes through a sieve. Rice starch thickens the milk only when the grains are cooked soft enough to break down. Undercooked rice stays grainy and will not strain smoothly, leaving the soup thin and gritty.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, pepper, cream. 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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