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Stewed Celery

Celery stewed in stock with mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stewed Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the celery and cut it into 2-inch pieces.

Stew

  1. Dissolve 2 teaspoons of Plasmon in 1 cup of stock over low heat.

  2. Add the celery, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to the saucepan.

  3. Stew until tender, about 20 minutes.

  4. Remove the mace and serve.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 bulk of the dish and softens into a tender, juicy texture as it stews.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the celery and carries its flavour.
Plasmon
Dissolves into the stock to add body and a mild, savoury richness to the liquid.
Mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the stewing liquid and celery.

The step that matters

Stew until tender, about 20 minutes. Heat slowly softens the celery's fibrous cell walls. Stewing too long past tender breaks them down further, leaving the celery limp, mushy and watery.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, nutmeg, 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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