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Sauce

Meat and Fish Sauces

A sauce made from bay leaves, garlic, celery, white wine, butter, and flour, served hot with roast fowl or meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Meat and Fish Sauces

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil bay leaves, garlic, and celery until reduced by half. Add white wine.

  2. Strain through a fine sieve.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix in butter and flour until well combined.

  2. Return to heat, stirring until the sauce thickens.

  3. Serve hot with roast fowl or meat.

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. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + celerytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,321 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Garlic + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,044 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Adds a savoury, aromatic vegetable flavour that builds the base of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth, and helps lift the flavour as it reduces.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells with heat and stirring.
Bay leaves
Contributes a subtle herbal aroma to the reduced liquid.

The step that matters

Return to heat, stirring until the sauce thickens. Flour only thickens fully when heated while stirring, as its starch swells and sets the liquid. Stopping early can leave the sauce thin or lumpy.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, clove, white wine, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, clove, white wine, butter, flour. 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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