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Cream of Celery Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled celery, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream of Celery Soup

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 of Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Cover the celery with boiling water and boil for about 30 minutes, or until tender.

  3. Press the cooked celery through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk with the onion.

  2. Rub the butter and flour together.

  3. Stir the butter-flour mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Remove the onion and add the strained celery and water, along with the salt and pepper.

  5. Heat thoroughly.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides the main flavor and, once pressed through, the body of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and adds richness.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps form the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy soup when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Stir the butter-flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour lumps form if the roux is added to hot liquid without being well blended, so the mixture should be rubbed smooth and stirred in steadily to thicken evenly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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