Skip to main content
Main

Celery Soup

A clear soup made from celery, ham, stock, butter, and optional cream and 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

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Cut the white part of the celery into small pieces.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil the celery in 4 pints of white stock with the ham and butter for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve and return the liquid to the pan.

  3. If desired, thicken with a little flour.

Finish and serve

  1. Carefully stir in a few spoonfuls of cream.

  2. Serve with toasted bread and season to taste.

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 flavour and body of the soup as it simmers and breaks down.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the celery flavour and cooks the vegetable.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the stock during the long simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, milder texture when stirred in at the end.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the soup a heavier body if used.

The step that matters

Carefully stir in a few spoonfuls of cream. Cream can curdle or separate when it meets hot liquid that is boiling or too acidic. Adding it gently, off the boil, keeps the soup smooth.

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