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Stewed Celery with Cream

A dish of boiled celery topped with a thickened cream sauce flavored with mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,769 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stewed Celery with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the celery in salted water until tender.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the cream and mace over medium heat until the cream thickens.

  3. Dish the celery and pour the sauce over it 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. Celery + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  3. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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 becomes tender when boiled.
Cream
Thickens over heat to form the sauce that coats the celery.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream. Cream thickens as it heats and reduces, but if it is heated too hard or for too long it can scorch on the bottom of the pan or separate. Gentle medium heat and constant attention let it thicken smoothly while the mace infuses its flavour.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, mace):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. White pepperfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, mace. 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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