Why it works: Celery and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 278 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Celery Cream Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the celery as described in the previous recipe.
Cook the celery thoroughly in broth.
Add 3 quarts of cream sauce to the cooked celery.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and return it to the saucepan to keep warm.
Before serving, add ½ pound of butter in small pieces, stirring until fully melted.
Stir in chopped chervil and ensure the soup is not too thick.
Optionally, add cooked farina or vermicelli.
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.
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Celery + cherviltop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together278 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,787 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Cream + cherviltop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together288 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Swap the celery
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sauce, butter, chervil):
- Capersfits better
- Tarragonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Celerythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce, butter, chervil. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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