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Celery Soup

A clear soup made from celery, onion, and stock, thickened with a butter‑flour roux and finished with milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the vegetables

  1. Combine celery, onion, and peppercorns with stock or water in a saucepan; boil until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make and finish the soup

  1. In a separate saucepan, melt butter, then add flour and mix well.

  2. Gradually add stock to the butter-flour mixture, stirring until it boils; boil for five minutes.

  3. Stir in milk, cream (if using), and salt; reheat and serve.

  4. If the soup is too thick, add more 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 gives its main flavour and body.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and sweetness as it softens in the stock.
Butter
Carries flavour and combines with flour to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked in butter and combined with stock.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the texture, and can be added to thin the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the butter-flour mixture. Flour must be cooked smoothly into the melted butter, then stock added gradually while stirring, so starch granules hydrate evenly and the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, milk, 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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