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Celery Soup

A creamy soup made with celery, onion, milk, butter, flour, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Break celery into 1-inch pieces and pound in a mortar.

Make the soup

  1. Cook celery, onion, and milk in a double boiler for 20 minutes.

  2. In a separate pan, melt butter, stir in flour, and cook for 2 minutes.

  3. Add the cooked celery mixture to the flour mixture, stirring well.

  4. Stir in cream and season with salt and pepper to taste.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 as it cooks down in the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the celery flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base for the flour roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth, creamy texture when cooked with butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in butter. Cooking the butter and flour together for 2 minutes cooks out the raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken evenly. Stirring well when adding the celery mixture prevents lumps from forming in the soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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