Skip to main content
Main

Celery Soup

A soup made from chopped celery, white stock, diced ham, butter, and cream, optionally thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine chopped celery, white stock, diced ham, and butter in a pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve back into the pot.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in a few spoonfuls of cream carefully.

  2. Thicken with flour if desired.

  3. Season to taste.

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

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

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

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

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 flavor and body of the soup as it softens and breaks down.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and gives a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup by swelling with liquid to give it more body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the cream carefully. Cream can curdle or separate when it is boiled or added to very hot liquid for too long. Adding a few spoonfuls gently and keeping the soup below a boil helps it blend smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, cream, flour, 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.

More celery soup recipes

Cream 7Creamy 3Spanish 3 See all 210 →

You might also like

Celery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipesCelery Seed InfusionCelery Seed Infusion10 recipes