Skip to main content
Drink

Cream of Celery Soup

A creamy soup made from celery, water, milk, cream, butter, flour, salt, white pepper, and onion juice.

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

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 add the hot liquid back to the pot.

Make the white sauce

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

  2. Cook the sauce until it thickens to the consistency of thick cream.

Combine and finish

  1. Combine the sauce with the celery mixture.

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

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Cream + buttertop 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
Softened in water, it supplies the main flavor and body of the soup.
Butter
Melted with flour to form the sauce, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Cooked in melted butter, it thickens the sauce so the soup turns creamy.
Milk
Adds liquid and milk proteins that give a soft, creamy texture.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the finished soup rich and smooth.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until it thickens. Flour must cook in the melted butter until the starch swells and thickens the liquid. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin texture.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes