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Celery Soxip

A creamy celery soup made with butter, onion, flour, milk, and cream.

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 Soxip

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash the celery and cut it into 1-inch lengths.

  2. In a saucepan, combine celery, onion, and butter. Cover and cook over low heat for a few minutes to sweat the vegetables.

  3. Drain off the fat and add water or stock. Simmer until tender.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Mix flour with cold water to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add boiling milk to the paste to make a pint of white sauce.

  3. Combine the white sauce with the celery pulp, add pepper and salt, then stir in cream. Heat and 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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, once puréed, the body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce that gives the soup its smooth body.
Milk
Forms the base of the white sauce, adding creaminess and mild sweetness.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished soup.
Butter
Adds fat to sweat the vegetables, carrying flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold water before adding the boiling milk. Flour mixed straight into hot liquid clumps, because starch grains swell on contact with hot liquid before they can disperse. Making a smooth paste with cold water first lets the grains separate, so the boiling milk thickens the sauce evenly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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