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Stewed Celery

A simple stew of celery cooked in beef broth and finished with a cream, butter, and flour mixture.

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 ↓

Stewed Celery

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Cut the tender celery stalks into small pieces.

  2. Stew the celery in beef broth until tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the cream, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add the mixture to the cooked celery and stir well.

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Tender celery stalks
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender vegetable base.
Beef broth
Provides the liquid in which the celery stews, adding savoury flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, body-giving texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the sauce clings to the celery.

The step that matters

Adding the cream mixture to the celery. Flour mixed into cream can clump if it is not whisked smooth first. Stirring well after adding the mixture to the hot celery helps it thicken evenly rather than forming lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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