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Celery Soup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

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

  2. Slice the onion.

  3. Put it in a pan with the milk and simmer until tender.

  4. Press through a sieve.

Make the soup base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and mix thoroughly.

  3. Gradually stir in the celery puree.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Season to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the cream into a tureen.

  2. Stir the soup into it.

  3. Serve with croutons.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 flavour and body of the soup once cooked and pureed.
Milk
Adds moisture and a creamy base that the vegetables cook and blend into.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour, and carries the flour into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated in the butter and liquid.
Onion
Contributes aroma and mild sweetness as it softens in the simmering liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the celery puree. Adding the puree slowly to the butter and flour mixture lets the starch disperse evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, onion, flour, 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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