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Celery Cream with Croutons

A creamy celery soup finished with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Cream with Croutons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Trim celery, remove green parts, wash thoroughly.

  2. Cut into small pieces and blanch in slightly salted water.

  3. Drain celery and return to saucepan with ½ cup butter.

  4. Cook for a few minutes over low heat without browning.

  5. Moisten with a little stock, add salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste.

  6. Cover and simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Mix flour with remaining butter and cook without browning.

  2. Dilute with milk, add stock, and partly cooked celery.

  3. Let it simmer until celery is tender.

  4. Pass mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Boil again and skim.

  6. Add sugar and more seasoning if needed.

  7. Stir in cream.

  8. Reheat mixture without boiling and pour into soup tureen.

Serve

  1. Serve croutons separately.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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 body of the soup once cooked and sieved.
Butter
Cooks the celery gently and enriches the soup with fat and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the soup into a smooth, velvety body when cooked with butter.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness, mellowing the flavour of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture at the end.

The step that matters

Reheat without boiling. Once cream is stirred in, boiling can cause it to curdle or separate, leaving the soup grainy and less smooth.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Celerythe original

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