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Celery Soup

A light soup made from celery, stock, water, cream, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut the celery into 1‑inch lengths.

  2. Combine the celery and water in a pot and cook until tender.

  3. Remove the celery and rub it through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Add the sieved celery to the soup stock and cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  2. Heat the cream and stir in the flour mixed with the butter; cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the cream mixture into the celery 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Celery
Provides the main flavour and, once sieved, the body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter and cream.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and butter into the cream and cook for 5 minutes. Flour must be cooked for a few minutes to lose its raw taste and to thicken properly. Adding it without cooking leaves a pasty flavour and grainy texture.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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