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BagoOt Op Celery

A side dish of celery boiled, soaked in cold water, then stewed in gravy with mushroom ketchup, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

BagoOt Op Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery well and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the celery and place it in cold water for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the celery.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the celery in good gravy with mushroom ketchup, salt, and pepper.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Celery + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,006 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Celery + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Celery
Is the main vegetable, becoming tender after boiling and then stewing in the gravy.
Good gravy
Provides the liquid and savory base in which the celery finishes cooking.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savory, umami flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Boiling the celery for 30 minutes. The celery must be cooked fully until tender before stewing; undercooked stalks stay fibrous and tough, and the cold-water rest helps the stalks firm up for handling.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, ketchup, 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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