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Celery Soup

A soup made from celery, stock, butter, ham, sugar, salt, mace, and cream or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cut the white part of the celery into 1‑inch pieces.

  2. Place the celery in a saucepan with the stock, butter, ham, and sugar.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes.

  4. Add 2 pints more of stock, salt, and mace.

  5. Stew gently for 1 hour.

  6. Press the soup through a coarse sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the soup again, pour it into a tureen, and add the boiling cream or milk.

  2. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Celery + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, once stewed and sieved, the body of the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that softens the celery and carries its flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder mouthfeel to the soup.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and smooths the texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stewing gently for 1 hour. Gentle heat softens the celery fibres slowly without a hard boil, which would break down the soup's texture and make it cloudy. Pressing through the sieve depends on the celery being fully tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, butter, ham, sugar, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, butter, ham, sugar, 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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