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Celery Sauce, for Boiled Turkey, Poultry, &C.

A creamy celery sauce for boiled turkey and poultry, made with celery, stock, mace, herbs, butter, flour, cream, lemon juice, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Celery Sauce, for Boiled Turkey, Poultry, &C.

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the celery in salted water until tender, then cut it into 2-inch pieces.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the stock, mace, and herbs, and simmer for 30 minutes to extract flavor.

  3. Strain the liquid, add the celery, and thicken with butter kneaded with flour or arrowroot.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, stir in the cream, bring to a boil, and add a squeeze of lemon juice.

  2. Season with salt and white pepper to taste.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main body and mild vegetable flavor of the sauce once cooked tender and blended into the liquid.
White stock
Forms the savory liquid base that carries the flavor of the herbs and celery.
Butter and flour or arrowroot
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth sauce with a coating texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel, and softens the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, mild flavors of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and bringing to a boil. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils hard or is added to an acidic liquid too early. Adding it just before serving, then briefly heating, keeps the sauce smooth. Adding the lemon juice after the cream is in place helps limit this risk.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, mace, butter, cream, lemon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, mace, butter, cream, lemon. 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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