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Celery Au Bechamel

A dish of boiled celery simmered in white stock and finished with a béchamel sauce.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, scrape, and cut the celery into one-inch pieces.

  2. Plunge the celery into boiling water and boil for five minutes.

Cook the celery

  1. Drain the celery and add the white stock; let it simmer for thirty minutes or until soft.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour, and gradually pour in the cooked celery.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the dish, and simmering softens its fibers and mellows its flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the melted butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and helping form a smooth base for the flour.
White stock
Supplies the cooking liquid and savory flavor that becomes the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid to the flour and butter. Pouring the liquid in gradually while stirring keeps the flour starch dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, 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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