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Cream of Celery Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream of Celery Soup

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the celery base

  1. Cook the chopped celery in boiling water until very soft.

  2. Strain the celery and reserve the hot liquid.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the reserved hot liquid and cook until thickened.

  3. Stir in the heated milk, salt, cream, white pepper, and onion juice.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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
Provides the main flavour and, once softened and strained, the body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and with the flour forms the roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and the hot celery liquid into a roux.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mildness, lightly thinning the thickened base into a smooth soup.
Cream
Adds fat and a smooth, rich mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the hot liquid to the roux. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour smooth and lump-free, and cooking it until thickened lets the starch swell fully so the soup has even body.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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