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Brown Celery Sauce

A savory sauce made from stewed celery, spices, butter, wine, catsup or Worcestershire sauce, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Brown Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the celery in a little water until tender.

  2. Add mace, nutmeg, pepper, coarse sea salt, and the butter rolled in flour.

  3. Stir in the red wine, catsup or Worcestershire sauce, and good gravy.

  4. Boil all ingredients together and pour into the dish.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main vegetable flavour and body once stewed until tender.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour and butter thicken the sauce, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Good gravy
Supplies the savoury liquid base and richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil all ingredients together. Flour thickens only when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred, so the sauce needs to come fully to the boil to reach its intended thickness.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, nutmeg, pepper, butter, flour, red wine, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, nutmeg, pepper, butter, flour, red wine, sauce. 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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