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Soup

Cream of Celery

A creamy soup made with celery, onion, mace, milk, butter, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cream of Celery

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 ↓

Cream of Celery

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the celery in 1 pint of water for 30 to 45 minutes.

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

  3. Mix the flour with 2 tablespoons of milk and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Mash the cooked celery in the water it was boiled in and stir it into the boiling milk mixture.

  5. Add the butter and season with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Strain the soup and serve immediately.

  7. For improved flavor, add 1 cup of whipped cream when serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

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 mashed.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and carries the flavor of the aromatics.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes smooth and velvety rather than thin.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour with milk. Flour must be cooked for the full time so its starch swells and thickens the milk fully and the raw floury taste cooks off. Undercooked flour leaves the soup pasty and tasting of raw starch.

Swap the mace

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

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

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