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Celery Soup

A light soup made from celery, potatoes, and milk, thickened with flour and seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,047 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Wash and finely chop the celery.

  2. In a pot, combine the celery and sliced potatoes with a small amount of boiling water and cook until tender.

  3. Add the quart of milk and strain the mixture through a colander.

  4. Heat the strained soup to boiling.

Season and serve

  1. Season with coarse sea salt.

  2. To thicken, mix a little flour with cold water until smooth, then stir into the soup.

  3. Serve with rolled crackers if desired.

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 + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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.
Potatoes
Cook down with the celery to add starch and a fuller texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when stirred in as a smooth paste.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour mixture. Flour lumps if added dry or without first being smoothed in cold water. Mixing it into cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the hot soup smoothly instead of clumping.

Swap the celery

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

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

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