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Celery Soup

A soup made with celery, onions, ham, stock, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the white part of the celery into 1‑inch pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, combine celery, onions, ham, and 1 pint of white stock.

  3. Boil until vegetables are soft, then press through a sieve back into the saucepan.

Finish the soup

  1. Add 3 pints of stock, butter, salt, white pepper, and flour mixed with a little cold stock or water.

  2. Boil for another 30 minutes, skim if necessary, then add boiling cream or milk.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 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
Forms the bulk of the soup and gives its main vegetable flavour and body.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften into the base.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a softer, creamier texture at the end.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold liquid first. Flour dropped straight into hot liquid clumps, as its outer layer gelatinises before the grains separate. Blending it smoothly with a little cold stock or water first lets each grain disperse, so the soup thickens evenly without lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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