Name: Stewed Celery with White Sauce
Ingredients: 6 heads of celery; 2 tablespoons butter; ½ gallon water; 1 heaped tablespoon coarse sea salt; 1 cup white sauce

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Celery with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Bring water to a boil in a large pot and add salt and butter.
Wash the celery, remove decayed leaves, trim the tops, and shape the root into a point.

Cook and serve

Place the celery in the boiling water and cook until tender, about 15-25 minutes.
Remove the celery, drain well, and place on a serving dish.
Pour about ½ cup of white sauce over the celery 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.

Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Celery + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,360 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Celery + buttertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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: Is the main vegetable, softening as it cooks until tender in the boiling water.
Butter: Adds richness and a mild flavour to the cooking water.
White sauce: Adds creamy moisture and body over the cooked celery.