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Clear Celery Soup

A clear soup made with celery, onion, butter, mace, pepper, salt, and vermicelli or sago, served with toasted wholemeal bread.

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 ↓

Clear Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Chop the onion and fry it brown in the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 4 pints of water, the washed and chopped celery, mace, pepper, and salt.

Cook the soup

  1. Cook until the celery is soft.

  2. Drain the liquid from the vegetables.

  3. Return the liquid to the saucepan.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Add the vermicelli, sago, or Italian paste.

  6. Cook until the pasta is soft.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted wholemeal bread.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 releases its juices into the water.
Onion
Frying until brown builds a sweet, savoury aroma that forms the base flavour of the broth.
Butter
Carries the onion's frying and adds richness and a rounded, savoury flavour to the soup.
Vermicelli, sago, or italian paste
Adds body and a starchy thickening to the broth as it cooks until soft.

The step that matters

Cook the celery until soft. Celery needs enough time in simmering liquid for its fibres to break down fully; undercooked celery stays stringy and tastes harsh, while the soup's flavour depends on it being properly softened.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, onion, butter, pepper. 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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