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Celeri Au Jus

A light celery sauce made with stock, flour, butter, and optional truffle slices.

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

Prepare the celery

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

Make the sauce

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

  2. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  3. Add the roux to the stock and celery, stirring to thicken.

  4. Simmer for a few minutes, then serve with optional truffle slices.

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
Provides the liquid and savory flavor that the sauce is built on.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when cooked with butter into a roux.
Butter
Carries the flour in the roux and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the roux to the stock. Whisk the roux into the hot liquid while stirring so the flour disperses evenly; dumping it in at once can form lumps that do not smooth out, and the sauce will not thicken evenly.

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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