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Celery Au Gratin

A baked celery dish topped with sauce, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Celery Au Gratin

Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Celery Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Prepare and cook the celery until tender, then strain it using a fine sieve.

  2. In a sauté pan, add the strained celery and ½ pint of espagnol sauce, and bring to a boil.

Prepare the croutons and dish

  1. Cut croutons from bread into triangles or rounds, fry them in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Mix a little flour with the egg white to form a thick paste.

  3. Use the paste to attach croutons to the sides of the serving dish.

  4. Place the cooked celery on the dish between the croutons.

  5. Pour the hot sauce over the celery.

Glaze, coat and bake

  1. Crack 2 whole eggs and 1 yolk into a bowl, add salt, and beat together.

  2. Brush the egg mixture over each half head of celery.

  3. Coat the celery with bread crumbs.

  4. Bake until golden and serve hot.

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.

  1. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Forms the main body of the dish and gives its vegetable flavour and tender texture.
Espagnol sauce
Adds moisture and rich savoury flavour that coats the celery.
Eggs
Beaten egg coating sets when baked, helping bread crumbs stick and forming a golden crust.
Bread crumbs
Create a crisp, browned topping when baked.
Flour
Thickens the egg white into a paste that holds the croutons to the dish.

The step that matters

Bake until golden and serve hot. The egg coating must be baked until set and golden so the crumbs brown and the topping holds; underbaking leaves it wet, while the celery and sauce must stay hot for serving.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sauce, bread, flour, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sauce, bread, flour, egg. 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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