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Soup

Cream of Celery Soup

A creamy soup made from cooked celery, milk, flour, butter, salt, onion, and whipped cream.

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

Make the soup

  1. Combine celery and milk in a pot and heat until near boiling.

  2. Mix flour and butter in a small bowl until smooth, then stir into the soup.

  3. Add salt and cook well in a double boiler.

  4. Add raw onion to the hot soup and let steep for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove onion, stir in whipped cream, 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.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 flavour and body of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and adds creaminess.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks, giving it a smoother body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the thickening step.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Mix flour and butter until smooth before stirring into the soup. Flour clumps if added dry or unevenly to hot liquid. Blending it smoothly with fat first lets the starch disperse and thicken the soup evenly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, onion, 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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