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Soup

Of Celery

A creamy celery soup made with butter, flour, broth, and crushed sugar.

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 ↓

Of Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Clean, wash, and peel the celery, then cut it into small pieces.

  2. Boil the celery in water with salt and pepper until well cooked, then drain.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter.

  2. Stir in the flour until combined, then add the cooked celery.

  3. Cover with broth and simmer for 2 hours.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the crushed sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 bulk of the soup and provides its main flavor and body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup by binding with the butter and absorbing liquid.
Broth
Supplies the liquid that cooks the celery into a soft, spoonable soup.
Crushed sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that rounds out the celery flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Cooking flour in fat before adding liquid coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly. Adding liquid too early or without enough stirring can leave lumps and an uneven thickness.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, sugar. 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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