Skip to main content
Main

Celery Soup

A veal bone broth with rice, celery, onion, and a butter‑flour milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the veal bone in 1 quart of water, skimming well.

  2. Add the rice, celery, celery salt, and onion.

  3. Boil until reduced to 1 pint.

  4. Remove the meat and pass the soup through a colander, mashing to extract as much puree as possible.

Thicken and serve

  1. Boil 1 quart of milk separately.

  2. Rub the flour into the butter, then add this mixture to the boiled milk.

  3. Cook for a few minutes, then mix the milk with the celery puree 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Carries the flour so it blends smoothly into the milk and adds richness.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and adds mild sweetness and body.
Celery
Provides the main flavour and, once pureed, the bulk of the soup.
Rice
Adds body and helps thicken the stock as it boils down.

The step that matters

Rub the flour into the butter, then add to the milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch grains swell on the outside before the inside hydrates. Coating the flour in fat first separates the grains so the milk thickens smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, rice, onion, milk, 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.

More celery soup recipes

Cream 7Creamy 3Spanish 3 See all 210 →

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipes