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Soup

Champagne Cup

A celery and ham soup simmered with onions, butter, milk, and flour.

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 ↓

Champagne Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions and celery, and sauté without browning.

  3. Stir in the diced ham, salt, pepper, and water.

  4. Simmer for 30 to 40 minutes until the celery is tender.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve back into the saucepan.

Thicken and serve

  1. Add the milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix the flour with a little milk to form a paste, then stir the paste into the soup.

  3. Cook for 5 to 6 minutes.

  4. Season to taste.

  5. Serve.

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
Provides the main vegetable flavor and body of the soup as it softens during simmering.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma when sautéed gently without browning.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when used to sauté the vegetables.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the soup base.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it is stirred in as a paste and cooked.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the soup. Flour clumps if added dry or unmixed. Mixing it with a little milk first to form a smooth paste lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly when cooked.

Swap the onion

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

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

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