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Celery Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with milk, cream, celery extract, thickened with flour and water, served with fried bread.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, heat the milk and cream until almost boiling.

  2. Add the celery extract and thicken with a mixture of flour and water.

Fry the bread and serve

  1. In the meantime, fry the bread pieces in butter until golden brown.

  2. Place the fried bread in a serving dish and pour the soup over it.

  3. Season to taste just before serving.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 celery flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the soup a smoother, fuller mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Bread
Soaks up soup at the table and adds a toasted, crisp-to-soft contrast.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour and water. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water before being stirred into hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens the soup only as it heats, so the mixture should be stirred in and kept at a simmer briefly to cook out the raw flour taste and reach full thickness.

Swap the celery

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

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

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