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Celery Sauce

A creamy sauce made from boiled celery, stock, milk, cream, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Cut the washed celery.

  2. Boil the celery in water for a few minutes.

  3. Wash the celery again in cold water.

  4. Boil the celery in the stock until tender.

  5. Rub the cooked celery through a fine sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir the flour smoothly into the melted butter.

  3. Add the strained stock and milk.

  4. Cook for two minutes.

  5. Add the cream, pepper, and salt.

  6. Serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Provides the main flavour and, once cooked and sieved, the body of the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked into the melted butter.
White stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid to cook the celery and thin the sauce.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild richness to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Flour must be stirred smoothly into the butter so it cooks into a roux; if it is added carelessly it forms lumps that won't disperse evenly when the liquid is added.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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