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Chicken Celery Soup

A soup made with celery, onion, chicken stock, cream, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Boil the celery and onion in salted water.

  2. Strain the mixture, passing the celery through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Add the chicken stock to a saucepan and heat until boiling.

  2. Off the heat, stir in the cream beaten with the egg yolk.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Celery + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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 body of the soup once boiled and passed through a sieve.
Chicken stock
Supplies the savoury liquid base that carries the soup's flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream and enriches the soup when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat and can scramble or curdle if the soup is boiling when it is added. Removing the pan from the heat first lets the yolk thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, chicken, cream, egg):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, chicken, cream, egg. 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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