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Celery Soup

A soup made from celery, turnip, onion, bread crumbs, butter, flour, cream, and water, seasoned with salt, white pepper, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Strip the green part from the celery, using only the white.

  2. Cut it into shreds, reserving the inside of 3 roots.

  3. Slice the turnip and onion, then place them in a pan with the celery.

Make the soup

  1. Add 2 quarts of water, bread crumbs, and salt.

  2. Boil until the vegetables are soft.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve and return it to the pan.

  4. Add the reserved celery (boiled until soft), butter, and flour mixed well.

  5. Stir in white pepper, mace, and more salt if needed.

  6. Boil for 15 minutes.

  7. Stir in the cream, but do not allow it to boil afterwards.

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 + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 rubbed through a sieve.
Turnip
Adds bulk and a mild sweetness that thickens the soup as it cooks down.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help thicken the puree, giving the soup more body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup slightly when stirred in with the butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream without boiling. Boiling cream after adding it can cause it to separate or curdle and turn grainy, so it should only be warmed through once stirred in.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, turnip, onion, bread, butter, flour, 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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