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Soup

Modern Cookery

A simple celery soup made with broth, flour, butter, cream, salt, and pepper.

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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the celery.

Make the soup

  1. Simmer the celery in broth until soft, about 25 to 30 minutes.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix flour and butter to create a thickening paste.

  3. Add the thickening paste to the celery and broth mixture.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the cream.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 of the soup and gives it its flavor.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smoother, heavier soup when combined with butter.
Butter
Combines with flour to form the thickening paste and adds richness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the thickening paste. Flour clumps if dropped in raw or added dry. Mixing it with butter first and then stirring it into the hot broth helps it disperse evenly and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

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

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