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Celery or White Soup

A creamy soup made with barley, celery, cream, and flour, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and celery work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 571 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Celery or White Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the liquor from the boiled leg of mutton and barley.

  2. Add the tied bunch of celery and bring to a simmer.

  3. Stir in the cream and flour, mixing well.

  4. Season with salt to taste.

Variation

  1. For variation, substitute tomatoes for celery and omit the barley.

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. Barley + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mutton + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Liquor from boiled leg of mutton
Forms the savory base liquid and carries flavor through the whole soup.
Barley
Releases starch as it simmers, adding body and thickening the liquid.
Celery
Gives the soup its main aroma and vegetable flavor as it simmers.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the soup.
Flour
Starch that thickens the cream and liquid into a smoother soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream and flour, mixing well.. Flour clumps when it hits hot liquid unmixed. Whisking it thoroughly into the cream first disperses the starch so it thickens the soup evenly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, barley, cream, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, barley, cream, 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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