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Soup

Celery and Chervil Sour

A celery soup flavored with chervil, onions, carrots, and consommé, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Celery and Chervil Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Blanch the celery and stew it in good consommé with herbs, onions, and carrots.

  2. Remove the seasoning and drain the celery on a napkin.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cut the celery into large dice and place it in a tureen with blanched chervil and prepared croutons.

  2. Pour the consommé over the mixture and serve.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + cherviltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Celery + cherviltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together278 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main bulk and a tender, slightly fibrous texture after stewing.
Good consomme
Supplies the clear, savory broth that the soup is built on.
Chervil
Adds a delicate, mildly anise-like aroma to the finished soup.
Croutons
Add a crisp contrast to the soft celery and broth.

The step that matters

Blanching the celery before stewing. Blanching softens the celery and mellows its raw, bitter edge, so it becomes tender during stewing rather than stringy or harsh. Draining it well keeps excess water from diluting the consommé.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, carrot, chervil):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, carrot, chervil. 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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