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Celery Soup

A soup made with celery, stock, butter, onion, milk, flour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the celery.

  2. Cut the celery into thin slices.

  3. Slice the onion.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the celery and onion, stirring without browning.

  3. Add the stock.

  4. Boil for one hour until the vegetables are tender.

  5. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  6. Return the strained mixture to the saucepan.

Thicken and finish

  1. Blend the flour and milk together.

  2. Strain the mixture into the boiling soup.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 it its main vegetable flavour and body.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth as it softens in the butter.
Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries flavour through the soup.
Stock
Liquid base that cooks the vegetables and gives the soup its savoury backbone.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells with heat.
Milk
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Add the celery and onion, stirring without browning.. Gently softening the vegetables in butter draws out their sweetness and keeps the soup pale and fresh-tasting. Browning would add caramelised, bitter notes that dominate the delicate celery flavour.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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