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Cream of Celery Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream of Celery Soup

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 ↓

Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the celery base

  1. Cook the chopped celery in boiling water until tender enough to pass through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pot, combine milk, butter, and flour, and heat until thickened.

  2. Add the celery mixture to the milk mixture, seasoning with celery salt, salt, and pepper.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the scalded cream 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. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Provides the main flavour and, once cooked and passed through a sieve, body to the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the flour thickens into a smooth soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps form the smooth flour-thickened base.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Heating the milk, butter and flour until thickened. Flour must be cooked in the fat and liquid long enough to swell and thicken smoothly; heating too fast or unevenly can leave lumps or a pasty taste, so stir constantly.

Swap the celery

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

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

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