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Celery Soup

A soup made from boiled celery, onion, milk, and butter, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the celery in 1 pint of water for 45 minutes.

  2. In a separate pot, boil the onion, mace, and milk together.

Finish the soup

  1. Mix the flour with 2 tablespoons of cold milk and add it to the boiling milk, then cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Mash the boiled celery in the water it was cooked in.

  3. Add the butter and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Strain the soup.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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, once mashed, most of the soup's body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a soft, smooth body to the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup as its starch swells in the hot milk.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Onion
Contributes savoury aroma and depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold milk before adding it. Flour dropped dry into hot liquid clumps, because the outer starch gelatinises before the rest disperses. Mixing it first with cold milk spreads the starch evenly, so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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