Skip to main content
Main

Cream of Celery Soup

A creamy soup made with celery, onion, broth, butter, and heavy cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, melt butter over medium heat.

  2. Add chopped celery and onion; sauté until soft.

  3. Pour in vegetable broth and bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Blend the soup until smooth, then stir in heavy cream.

  2. Season with salt and pepper before serving.

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. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main flavor and body of the soup as it softens and breaks down.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.
Vegetable broth
Supplies the liquid that cooks the vegetables and becomes the base of the soup.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the blended soup.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds fat and rich flavor at the start of cooking.

The step that matters

Blend the soup until smooth. Blending while the vegetables are fully softened breaks down their cell walls for a smooth texture. Stirring in cream after blending keeps it from being overworked or separating under heat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, cream, pepper, butter. 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