Skip to main content
Main

Celery Soup

A light soup made with celery, chicken stock, milk, onion, butter, flour, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Simmer the celery in the chicken stock until tender.

  2. Heat the milk with the piece of onion in a double boiler.

  3. Once the celery is tender, strain it through a strainer.

  4. Add the boiled milk to the strained celery.

Thicken and season

  1. Melt the butter in a separate pan and mix in the flour to thicken.

  2. Combine the thickened mixture with the celery and milk, and season with salt and white pepper.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 flavour and body of the soup as it softens and breaks down.
Chicken stock
Cooks the celery and adds savoury depth to the liquid base.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a smooth, mellow texture to the soup.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the thickening base.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the melted butter.

The step that matters

Thicken the butter and flour before combining. Flour needs to be cooked in fat so it swells smoothly rather than clumping. Adding it raw or too quickly to hot liquid can leave lumps and an uneven, floury texture.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, chicken, milk, onion, 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.

More celery soup recipes

Cream 7Creamy 3Spanish 3 See all 210 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes