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Cream of Celery Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Cook the celery

  1. Boil the celery in 1 pint of water for 30 to 45 minutes.

  2. Mash the cooked celery in the water it was boiled in.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pot, boil the mace, onion, and milk together.

  2. Mix the flour with 2 tablespoons of cold milk.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Stir the mashed celery into the boiling milk.

  6. Add the butter.

  7. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  8. Strain the soup and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the body and flavour of the soup when cooked and mashed.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy texture of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Add the flour mixture to the boiling milk. Flour mixed with cold milk first and then added to hot liquid disperses evenly, so it thickens smoothly without lumps. Dumping dry flour into hot milk causes clumps that are hard to remove.

Swap the mace

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

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

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