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Soup

Cream of Celery

A creamy soup made from boiled celery, onions, parsley, carrot, butter, flour, and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cream of Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the celery, onions, parsley, and carrot until tender.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a pot, melt butter and whisk in flour.

  2. Gradually add milk while stirring until smooth.

  3. Stir in some chopped celery, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. 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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that gives the soup its body.
Onions
Add savory sweetness and aroma to the cooked base.

The step that matters

Gradually add milk while stirring until smooth. Adding milk slowly while whisking keeps flour from clumping, so the sauce thickens evenly and turns smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, parsley, carrot, butter, flour, milk, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, parsley, carrot, butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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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