Skip to main content
Main

Braised Celery, Espagnole

Braised celery in a brown espagnole sauce, garnished with croutons filled with chicken forcemeat or beef marrow.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Braised Celery, Espagnole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash and trim the celery, cutting it into 4‑inch pieces.

  2. Parboil the celery, then steep in cold water and drain on a sieve.

Braise

  1. Line a stewpan with bacon slices and place the celery on top.

  2. Moisten with a little stock and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Braise gently for 30 minutes, then add brown sauce and cook for another 20 minutes over low heat.

Prepare the croutons

  1. Prepare croutons by filling them with chicken forcemeat or beef marrow and brushing with liquid meat glaze.

Finish and serve

  1. Dress the celery in the center of a dish and garnish with the croutons.

  2. Reduce the sauce to a glaze, add butter and lemon juice, then pour over the celery and serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Bread + chickentop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

White celery
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through gentle braising.
Bacon
Lines the pan, releasing fat and savory flavor into the celery as it braises.
Brown sauce (espagnole)
Provides a rich, savory coating that thickens into a glaze as it reduces.
Butter
Adds fat and gloss to the reduced sauce, giving it a smoother, rounder finish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its savory flavor.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce to a glaze. Reducing concentrates flavor and thickens the sauce by evaporating water. If it is reduced too far it becomes sticky and salty, and if too little it runs off the celery and dilutes the dish.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sauce, butter, lemon, bread, chicken):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sauce, butter, lemon, bread, chicken. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes