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Sauce

Celery Sauce

A sauce made by stewing celery in broth, then adding cream, butter, flour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the celery and remove the outer leaves.

  2. Cut the celery into 3 to 4-inch pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the celery in the broth or white gravy until tender.

  2. Add the cream and butter rolled in flour.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Simmer together.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Forms the body of the sauce and gives its main flavour as it softens.
Broth or white gravy
Cooks the celery and provides the liquid that becomes the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when rolled into butter and simmered in the liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Add the butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid by simmering; if added raw or left too briefly, the sauce can taste pasty and stay thin or lumpy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour, 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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