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Celery Soup

A creamy soup made with celery, potato, onion, stock, milk, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash the celery and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Peel the potato and onion, then boil them with the celery in just enough water to cover.

  3. Once tender, strain the mixture through a wire sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Add the white stock and bring to a boil again.

  2. Season with mace, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stir in the milk and let it sit for ten minutes.

  4. Mix the cornflour with a little cold water, then stir it into the soup until it thickens.

  5. Remove the mace and bay leaf.

Finish and serve

  1. Whip the cream and stir it in just 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture when whipped in at the end.
Flour or cornflour
Thickens the soup as it is heated, giving it body.
Potato
Adds starch that helps thicken and smooth the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base and carries the savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the thickener. Starch must be mixed smoothly into cold water first, then stirred into the hot soup, or it clumps. It thickens as it heats and needs a brief simmer to reach full thickness.

Swap the mace

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

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

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