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Sauce

Celeri Au Jus

A sauce of blanched celery simmered in stock and thickened with a butter‑flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Celeri Au Jus

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Blanch the celery in boiling water for a few minutes.

  2. Cook the blanched celery in the stock until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and butter to form a paste.

  2. Add the flour and butter mixture to the stock to thicken.

  3. Simmer until the sauce is smooth and serve.

  4. Garnish with slices of truffle if desired.

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. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  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. Celery + truffletop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Celery + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 becomes tender as it cooks in the stock.
Stock
Serves as the savory liquid that flavors the celery and becomes the base of the sauce.
Flour
Starch swells in the hot liquid, thickening the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps bind the flour into a smooth paste.

The step that matters

Simmering the thickened sauce. Flour starch needs heat and time in the liquid to swell fully. Simmering long enough thickens the sauce and cooks out the raw floury taste, while stopping too early leaves it thin or pasty.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, truffle. 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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