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Cream of Celery

A creamy soup made with celery, butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream of Celery

Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the celery base

  1. In a pot, combine celery and enough water to cover it. Cook until tender.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in flour, salt, and white pepper to make a roux.

  2. Gradually whisk in milk, cooking until the sauce thickens.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the cooked celery and its liquid to the white sauce. Stir well and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + milktop 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 ends
Provide the main celery flavor and body once cooked and blended into the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavor and enriches the sauce as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by forming a roux with the melted butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the white sauce, which thickens as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux. Flour must be cooked briefly in the butter before liquid is added. Undercooked roux tastes pasty, while stirring in milk gradually prevents lumps and lets the sauce thicken evenly.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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