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Stewed Celery

A simple dish of boiled celery simmered in a butter, flour, and milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Stewed Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Scrape and wash the celery stalks clean.

  2. Cut them into 1-inch pieces and soak in cold water for 15 minutes.

  3. Boil in a saucepan of water with 1 teaspoon of salt for 30 minutes or until tender.

  4. Drain the celery in a colander and place in cold water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the melted butter and mix until smooth.

  3. Stir in ½ pint of milk and cook until it boils.

  4. Add 3 tablespoons of the boiling water from the celery, along with salt and white pepper to taste.

Combine and serve

  1. Stir in the celery and heat through 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Butter and flour 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 stalks
Forms the tender vegetable body of the dish, softened by boiling.
Butter
Provides fat and richness as the base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving it body and creaminess.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the melted butter. Stirring the flour in fully and cooking it briefly with the butter, then adding liquid gradually, helps prevent lumps and lets the starch thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, butter, flour, 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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