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Celery Soup

A clear soup made from celery simmered in stock, thickened with flour, finished with cream, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the white parts of the celery.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the celery in 4 pints of white stock with ¼ pound of salt and 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture and return it to the pan.

  4. Thicken the soup with a little flour.

  5. Carefully stir in a few spoonfuls of cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup over bits of toasted bread and serve.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Celery
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup as it simmers in the stock.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the celery flavour through the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup so it has more body and a smoother texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, creamier texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Carefully stir in a few spoonfuls of cream. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils or is added too hot to thin, acidic, or heavily salted liquid. Stirring it gently into a hot but not boiling soup keeps it smooth.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, 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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