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Soup

Cream of Celery

A creamy soup made from celery, milk, butter, flour, 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: 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery and scrape it.

  2. Cut the celery into half-inch slices.

  3. Put the celery into boiling water and cook until very soft.

  4. Mash the celery in the cooking water.

  5. Add salt and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. Cook an onion in the milk.

  2. Make a white sauce with butter and flour.

  3. Add the white sauce to the celery mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the mixture through a soup strainer.

  2. Mash the strained soup with the back of a spoon.

  3. Return the soup to a double boiler.

  4. Heat until steaming 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
Forms the main body and flavor of the soup, and its fibers thicken it when mashed and strained.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, and its proteins help give the soup a smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the texture of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that gives the soup body.

The step that matters

Adding the white sauce to the celery mixture. Flour thickens only when its starch is cooked in fat and liquid. Adding the sauce too fast or without stirring can leave lumps, and the soup will not thicken evenly.

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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