Name: Celery
Ingredients: ½ pound celery seed or 1 quart cider vinegar; 6 celery roots; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons granulated sugar

Why it works: Celery and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,794 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Celery

Ingredients

½ pound celery seed or 1 quart cider vinegar
6 celery roots
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons granulated sugar

Directions

Prepare

If using celery seed, mix all ingredients in a porcelain-lined kettle.
Bring to a boil, then let cool.

Steep and bottle

Bottle the mixture and shake daily for two weeks.
Strain through a fine cloth or filter.
Bottle and cork tightly.

Store and use

Store to flavor salad dressings and sauces.
If using celery roots, peel and slice them thinly, then add to the vinegar and follow the same steps.

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.

Celery + sugartop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,794 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery seed: Supplies the concentrated celery aroma and flavor that infuses the vinegar.
Cider vinegar: Provides the acidic base that extracts and preserves the celery flavor.
Celery roots: Adds fresh celery flavor to the vinegar as it steeps.
Granulated sugar: Softens the sharpness of the vinegar with a little sweetness.

“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.