Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Celery Soup

A creamy soup made from celery, sweet milk, butter, flour, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cream of Celery 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 ↓

Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the chopped celery in sweet milk for 20 minutes.

  2. Add melted butter.

  3. Dissolve flour in a little milk or water, then add to the soup to thicken.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Add a little cream if desired for extra richness.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 milk.
Sweet milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and carries the celery flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred into the hot liquid, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Flour must be dissolved in a little cold milk or water first, then stirred into the hot soup. Added dry or lumpy, it clumps and leaves the soup grainy instead of smoothly thickened.

Swap the celery

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

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

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

You might also like

Celery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipesCelery Seed InfusionCelery Seed Infusion10 recipes