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Celery Soup

A creamy soup made with milk, celery, onion, butter, flour, mace, salt, pepper, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Scald the milk with the minced onion for 30 minutes.

  2. Boil the chopped celery in 1 pint of water until tender.

  3. Strain the celery.

Make the soup

  1. Add the strained celery to the milk mixture.

  2. Blend the butter and flour together.

  3. Add the butter-flour mixture to the soup to thicken.

  4. Add mace.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Cook for an additional 10 minutes.

  7. Just before serving, stir in the whipped cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and carries the onion and celery flavour.
Celery
Provides the main vegetable flavour and body once cooked and strained.
Butter and flour
Blended together, the flour thickens the soup into a smooth, velvety texture.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, silky texture stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Add the butter-flour mixture to the soup to thicken. Flour clumps if added raw or unevenly. Blending it with butter first and stirring it in gradually lets the starch disperse and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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