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Celery Soup

A soup made from boiled celery, milk, onion, butter, flour, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper 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 ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the celery into half‑inch lengths.

  2. Boil the celery in water until soft, mashing it as much as possible.

  3. Cook the onion in the milk in a double boiler for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the cooked onion to the celery mixture.

Strain and thicken

  1. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. Return the strained mixture to the heat.

  3. Make a paste with the butter and flour.

  4. Stir the paste into the boiling soup.

Season and serve

  1. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

  2. Serve the soup.

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

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

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

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Celery
Forms the main body and flavor of the soup once mashed and strained.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild, rich body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness, and helps bind the flour into a paste.
Onion
Adds a savory aroma that gives the soup depth.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the boiling soup. Flour clumps if it is added cold or unevenly. Mixing it into a smooth paste first and stirring while the soup boils disperses the starch so it swells evenly and thickens the soup smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, milk, butter, flour, 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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