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A thickened celery soup made with broth, flour or arrow-root, butter, cream, salt, and pepper.

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

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Slice the celery.

  2. Simmer the celery in enough broth to just cover it until soft.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, mix flour and butter (or arrow-root) to create a thickening agent.

  2. Add the thickening to the celery and broth mixture.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the cream.

  4. Cook for an additional 25 to 30 minutes, or until desired consistency is reached.

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

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 vegetable body and fresh, savoury flavour of the soup.
Good broth
Forms the cooking liquid that softens the celery and makes up most of the soup's moisture.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated with the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and cooks with the flour to help it thicken smoothly.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Adding the thickening to the hot liquid. Flour starch clumps if it meets hot liquid unevenly. Blending it smoothly first, then stirring it in while the soup is simmering, lets the starch swell evenly and gelatinise into a uniform, smooth texture.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, 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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