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Cream Soup

A creamy clam soup made with butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream Soup

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Rub together the flour and add it to the melted butter.

  3. Slowly add the milk while stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Add salt, pepper, celery salt, and the minced clams.

  2. Bring to a boil 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.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + clamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together840 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Enriches the soup and carries flavor while it melts with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a creamy base as it cooks with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the soup, thickened by the flour roux.
Boiled clams
Provide the main seafood flavor and texture in the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the milk slowly while stirring. Adding liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the soup thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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