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Ckeam of Celery Soup

A creamy soup made from celery, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ckeam of Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Simmer the chopped celery in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Press the mixture through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk.

  2. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth.

  3. Add the butter-flour mixture to the milk and stir until thick.

  4. Stir in the salt and white pepper.

  5. Add the celery mixture and strain through a fine sieve.

  6. Serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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 flavor and body of the soup once pressed through.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when mixed with flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it is stirred and heated.

The step that matters

Add the butter-flour mixture to the milk and stir until thick. Flour must be fully blended into the butter and whisked into hot milk so starch granules swell evenly. Adding it lumpy or without stirring leaves raw clumps and uneven thickness.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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