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Celery Cream Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Celery Cream Soup

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Trim the celery, remove the green parts, wash thoroughly, and cut into small pieces.

  2. Blanch the celery in slightly salted water, drain well, and return to the saucepan with 1 oz. of butter.

  3. Cook for a few minutes over medium heat without browning, moisten with a little stock, and add salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste.

  4. Cover and simmer slowly for about 30 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. In another saucepan, mix the flour with the remaining butter and cook without browning.

  2. Dilute with the milk, add the stock and partly-cooked celery, and simmer until the celery is tender.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Boil again, skim, add the sugar and more seasoning if needed, then stir in the cream.

  5. Reheat without boiling and pour into a soup tureen.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread or croutons on the side.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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 once cooked and sieved.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and is cooked with the flour to build the roux.
White stock
Liquid base that cooks the celery and forms the body of the soup.
Milk
Dilutes the roux and adds softness and body to the soup.
Cream
Stirred in at the end to add richness and a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter without browning. Cooking the roux gently lets the flour swell and thicken without developing brown colour or a toasted taste, which would darken the soup and change its flavour.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cream, pepper, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cream, pepper, nutmeg, sugar. 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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