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Sauce

Celery Sauce

A creamy celery sauce made by boiling celery, then adding a flour‑cream roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,905 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Chop the celery and place it in a pot with cold water and salt.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix the cream and flour in a bowl.

  2. Add the mixture to the pot and bring to a boil again.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the flavour base and, after long boiling, its softened pulp adds body to the liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel from its milk fat.
Flour
Its starch swells when heated with liquid, thickening the sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the cream and flour until smooth before adding. Flour clumps when it meets liquid unevenly, leaving lumps. Once the mixture returns to a boil, the starch swells and thickens the sauce.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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