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Soup

Celery Soup

A creamy soup made with celery, stock, milk, flour, and cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Make the soup base

  1. Cook the celery in the white stock for 45 minutes.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil.

  3. Mix the flour with a little milk, then stir it into the boiling milk.

  4. Strain the cooked celery and stock through a fine sieve, mashing the celery through.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the strained mixture to the milk and bring to a boil for 5 minutes, stirring thoroughly.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the cream just before 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.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 cooked and mashed, the body of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup a smooth, velvety body.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the soup and carries the flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the boiling milk. Flour mixed in as a paste with a little milk disperses evenly. Added to hot liquid without this, it can clump, leaving lumps that a smooth soup should not have.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, cream, 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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