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Soup

Cream of Celery. Creme Au Celeri.

A light soup made from celery, onion, stock, egg yolks, and cream.

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 ↓

Cream of Celery. Creme Au Celeri.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash the celery and cut off all the green parts.

  2. Prepare the onion and boil both in salted water with lemon juice until tender.

  3. Drain well and rub through a fine sieve back into the saucepan.

Finish the soup

  1. Add enough stock to make the mixture thin and bring to a quick boil.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the beaten egg yolks and boiling cream or milk.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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
Provides the main flavour and, once puréed, the body of the soup.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the cooking water.
Stock
Supplies the savoury liquid that thins the purée to a soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the soup as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks just before serving. Egg yolk proteins thicken the soup by setting with gentle heat. If the soup is kept at a rolling boil after the yolks go in, the proteins overcook and curdle, leaving the texture grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, lemon, egg, 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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