Name: Celery Soup
Ingredients: 6 heads of celery; 3 quarts of water; salt to taste; a little sugar (optional); ½ teaspoon of celery seed (optional)

Why it works: Celery and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,794 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Split the celery into 2-inch pieces and wash them well.
Drain the celery on a sieve.

Simmer

In a large pot, combine the celery and water.
Set the pot by the fire to simmer gently for about 1 hour until the celery is tender.
Skim off any scum that rises to the surface.
Season with salt to taste.
If using celery seed, add it 15 minutes before the soup is done for flavor.

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.

Celery + sugartop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,794 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: Forms the body of the soup and gives it its main flavor and soft texture as it cooks.
Celery seed: Adds a concentrated celery aroma to the broth when added near the end of cooking.