Skip to main content
Main

Celery, Sour

A creamy celery soup made with stock, water, cream, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Celery, Sour

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut the celery into 1‑inch lengths.

  2. Combine celery and water in a pot and cook until tender.

  3. Remove the celery and strain it through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Add the strained celery to the soup stock and cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  2. Heat the cream, then mix in the flour and butter and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour the cream mixture into the soup and heat until very hot but do not boil.

  4. Serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 flavor and body of the soup once cooked and strained.
Soup stock
Adds savory depth to the broth the celery cooks into.
Cream or rich milk
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so it blends smoothly into the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the flour thicken the cream mixture.

The step that matters

Mix in the flour and butter, then heat the cream mixture gently. Cooking the flour and butter briefly lets the starch thicken smoothly without lumps. Once the cream is added, keeping the soup below a boil prevents curdling and a grainy texture.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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