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Celery Soup

A light soup made from celery, lemon, butter, flour, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery stalks, scrape, and cut them into one-inch pieces.

  2. Boil the celery in a small amount of water with a pinch of salt until tender.

  3. Separate the celery and water into two cups.

  4. Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the celery and let it stand for 10 to 15 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the butter in a pan. Mix in the flour.

  2. Add the hot celery water.

  3. If needed, add more boiling water to achieve the desired consistency.

  4. Remove from heat. Add another teaspoon of butter.

  5. Mix in the celery.

  6. If the soup is too sour, pour boiling water over the celery. Drain.

  7. Before serving, combine the soup with the egg yolk.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 stalks
Forms the main body of the soup and gives it its vegetable flavor and texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form the base with the flour.
All-purpose flour
Mixed with the butter to thicken the soup as it is combined with the liquid.
Egg yolk
Added at the end to enrich the soup and give it a smoother, creamier body.

The step that matters

Combining the egg yolk. Adding the yolk to very hot soup can scramble it. Combine it off the heat and before serving so the soup stays smooth and creamy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, butter, flour, egg. 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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