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To Make Celery Sauce

A sauce made from celery, mace, nutmeg, butter, flour, sweet cream, white wine, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Make Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery thoroughly.

  2. Place the celery in a saucepan with a little water and cook until very tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the mace, nutmeg, butter rolled in flour, and sweet cream.

  2. Shake well and bring to a boil.

  3. Near the end of cooking, add white wine and ketchup to taste.

  4. Boil once more and 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the main body of the sauce and gives it its vegetable flavor and texture.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a silky, fatty mouthfeel.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich cream and celery flavors.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the cream. Flour rolled in butter must be whisked in and brought to a boil so the starch can swell and thicken the cream. If it is not fully mixed and heated, the sauce can stay lumpy or taste raw-floury.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, nutmeg, butter, flour, cream, white wine, ketchup):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, nutmeg, butter, flour, cream, white wine, ketchup. 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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