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Soup

Cream Celery Soup

A soup made from celery, milk or cream, butter, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Celery Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the white part of the celery as finely as possible.

  2. Boil the chopped celery with the milk until it can be rubbed through a sieve.

  3. If the soup is too thick, adjust the consistency as needed.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + celerytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Chicken + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 boiled and sieved, the body of the soup.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the soup.
Chicken soup
Supplies the savoury base liquid that carries the celery flavour.
Corn starch
Thickens the soup by gelatinising in hot liquid, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounder, mellow flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the celery with the milk until it can be rubbed through a sieve. The celery must be cooked fully soft so its fibres break down and pass through the sieve smoothly. Undercooked celery leaves a stringy, grainy texture, while scorching the milk can cause it to catch and taste burnt.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, corn, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, corn, milk. 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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