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Celery Soup

A soup made from boiled celery, onion, milk, butter, flour, salt, white pepper, and finished with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash, scrape, and cut the celery into 1‑inch pieces.

  2. Boil the celery in 1 pint of boiling salted water until very soft.

  3. Mash the celery in the water left in the kettle.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the chopped onion in 1 pint of milk for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the milk to the mashed celery and strain through a fine strainer.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil again.

  4. In a separate pan, cook the butter and flour together, then add to the boiling soup.

  5. Stir in the salt and white pepper, boil for 5 minutes, and strain into a tureen.

  6. Finally, add 1 cup of whipped cream before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the main body and flavour of the soup once boiled and mashed.
Milk
Adds creaminess and body, softening the texture of the mashed celery.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the soup.
Flour
Cooked with butter first, it thickens the soup into a smoother body.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, smooth texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour together before adding them. Cooking flour in fat first, a roux, removes raw flour taste and helps it blend smoothly without lumps when added to the hot soup.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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