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Celery Sauce

A sauce made from boiled celery, cream, egg yolks, butter, and seasonings, served with roast duck.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Cream method

  1. Boil the celery pieces in water until tender.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the cream or milk with the beaten egg yolks, salt, butter, and pepper or nutmeg.

  3. Bring the mixture to just boiling.

  4. Pour it over the cooked celery.

  5. Serve with roast duck.

Flour method

  1. Chop two bunches of celery and boil in 1½ pints of water for one hour.

  2. Mix flour with cold water until smooth.

  3. Stir into boiling celery mixture.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes.

  5. Add 2 tablespoons of butter.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  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

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture gently as they set with heat, giving the sauce body.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Flour
Its starch swells when heated in liquid, thickening the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to just boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, and boiling can curdle or scramble them. Heat slowly and stop as soon as the mixture just boils.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, cream, egg, butter, pepper, flour):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, cream, egg, butter, pepper, 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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