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Celeriac Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled celeriac, macaroni, eggs, and cream, seasoned with cayenne pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Celeriac Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash, peel, and slice the celery roots.

  2. Put the sliced celery roots in a saucepan and cover with boiling water. Cook until tender.

  3. Mash the celery roots through a puree sieve with the cooking water.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pan. Stir in the flour.

  2. Add the celery puree. Season with cayenne pepper and salt to taste.

  3. Add the cooked macaroni and bring to a boil.

  4. Remove from heat. Stir in enough boiling milk to achieve the desired consistency.

Finish with egg

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the cream. Quickly stir the egg yolk mixture into the soup off the heat to prevent curdling.

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 + peppertop 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. 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. Flour + milktop 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 roots
Form the main body of the soup as a puréed vegetable, giving it bulk and flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form the base with the flour.
Flour
Cooked with the butter, it thickens the soup to a smooth body.
Cooked macaroni
Adds body and substance, making the soup heartier.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it gently when heated without boiling.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the soup a silkier, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot. Removing the pan from the heat and stirring the yolk and cream mixture in quickly spreads the heat evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the celery

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

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

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