Skip to main content
Main

Celery Soup

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

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

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 ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the celery stock

  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 soup

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

  2. Gradually add the milk and cream, stirring until thickened like cream.

  3. Combine the thickened mixture with the celery liquid.

  4. Season with 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.

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
Gives the soup its main flavour and, once cooked soft, body.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the roux, adding richness to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth, creamy base when cooked in fat.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that thickens with the roux into the soup's body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk and cream to the roux. Adding liquid slowly while stirring lets starch granules disperse evenly, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, thickened sauce.

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.

More celery soup recipes

Cream 7Creamy 3Spanish 3 See all 210 →

You might also like

Celery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipesCelery Seed InfusionCelery Seed Infusion10 recipes