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Celery Soup

A soup made from pearl barley, celery, bouillon, egg yolks, cream, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and celery work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 571 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Soak the pearl barley in cold water overnight.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the barley in 2 cups of bouillon with the celery pieces until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve and combine it with the remaining bouillon.

  3. Add sliced boiled celery and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. In a tureen, whisk the egg yolks and cream together.

  2. Gradually pour in the soup while whisking continuously.

  3. Serve with toasted bread.

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. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Barley + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together201 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Thickens the soup and gives it a hearty body as it softens and breaks down.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the flavour and smoothing the texture.
Celery
Provides the main flavour and, once cooked and sieved, most of the soup's body.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the soup while whisking continuously. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot too fast. Adding hot soup slowly while whisking gently tempers the yolks, so the mixture thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, egg, cream, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, egg, cream, bread. 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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