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Cream of Celery Soup

A creamy soup made from boiled celery, milk, butter, flour, celery salt, and white pepper.

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: 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 ↓

Cream of Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut the green portions of the celery into small pieces, about 12 to 14 stalks.

  2. Cover the celery with ½ cup of cold water, bring to a boil, and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Drain and press the celery through a colander to extract as much liquid as possible.

Make the soup

  1. Add 1 pint of milk to the celery liquid in a double boiler.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub together 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 tablespoons of flour, then stir into the soup.

  3. Stir and cook until the soup is smooth.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon of celery salt and a dash of white pepper before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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
Provides the main flavor and body of the soup once simmered and pressed.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and carries the celery flavor.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and flour mixture. Flour clumps if added raw to hot liquid. Rubbing it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse, and stirring keeps the soup smooth as it thickens.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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