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Soup

Celery Soup

A chilled soup made with chopped celery, onion juice, milk, rice flakes or peas, parsley, and seasoned with salt or cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the chopped celery and onion juice in a bowl.

  2. Pour the milk over the mixture while stirring and let it sit for several hours.

  3. Rinse the rice flakes or flaked peas in cold water three or four times.

Serve

  1. Place some flakes in a soup bowl, add a little parsley, and pour the soup over them.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt or cayenne pepper.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 aroma of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds richness and body to the soup.
Rice flakes or flaked peas
Hold their shape in the bowl and thicken the soup slightly as they absorb liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, milk, rice, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, milk, rice, parsley. 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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