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Celery Sauce

A sauce made from stewed celery, butter, milk or cream, flour, egg yolks, and seasonings, served with roast duck.

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 the celery

  1. Scrape the outside stalks of celery and cut into 1‑inch pieces.

  2. Soak in cold water for 30 minutes.

Cook and dress

  1. Boil enough water to cover the celery and cook until tender.

  2. Drain the water and dress with butter, salt, and milk or cream thickened with flour.

  3. For a dressing, mix milk or cream with beaten egg yolks, butter, salt, and pepper or nutmeg.

  4. Heat the dressing until just boiling, pour over the stewed celery, and serve with roast duck.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main body of the dish and becomes tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Milk or cream
Provides the liquid base that, with flour, forms the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream so the sauce coats the celery.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the dressing, giving it a silky texture when heated.

The step that matters

Heat the dressing until just boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can curdle or turn grainy if overheated, so the dressing should be heated only until it just boils and then poured over the celery promptly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour, egg, 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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