Skip to main content
Soup

Cream Celery

A creamy soup made with milk, celery, butter, flour, cream, and crushed crackers, seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cream Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped celery.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour to form a paste, then add to the milk mixture.

  2. Stir in the cream and crushed crackers.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt to taste and serve.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the other ingredients.
Celery
Provides the main flavour and bulk of the soup.
Butter and flour
Form a paste that thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy soup.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, silkier texture.
Crackers
Add body and help thicken the soup as they break down.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour paste. If the flour is not fully mixed into the butter and then whisked into hot milk, it can clump instead of thickening evenly. Mixing it into a smooth paste first lets it disperse and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Celerythe original

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

Cream of CeleryCream of Celery37 recipesIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipes