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Celery Sauce

A sauce made from boiled celery, butter, flour, spices, and optionally cream, served with boiled poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 8 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 ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Take a large bunch of young celery and wash and pare it very clean.

  2. Cut it into pieces, and boil it gently in a small quantity of water until it is quite tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Add a little powdered mace and nutmeg, and a very little pepper and salt.

  2. Take a tolerably large piece of butter, roll it well in flour, and stir it into the sauce.

  3. Boil it up again, and it is ready to serve.

Alternative method

  1. Prepare and boil celery as above, adding mace, nutmeg, a piece of butter the size of a walnut rolled in flour, and half a pint of cream, and boil all together.

  2. When celery is out of season, use celery seed boiled in water, then strain out after boiling.

  3. Use that water for the melted butter.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

203Calories
2 gProtein
21 gFat
5 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Walnut1 walnut half (4g)26
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Celery1 stalk (40g)6
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main flavour and bulk of the sauce once boiled tender.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce, especially when rolled in flour to thicken it.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce as the butter melts into it.

The step that matters

Rolling the butter in flour before stirring it in. Flour coated on the butter lets it blend in without lumps, so the sauce thickens evenly rather than clumping.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, butter, walnut, cream, 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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