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Drink

Celery, Essence of

A medicinal infusion of celery seed in spirits, used by adding drops to sugar and heating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Spirit and sugar work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Celery, Essence of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put the celery seed into a bottle.

  2. Pour the spirits over the celery seed.

Infuse and bottle

  1. Let it infuse for three weeks.

  2. Strain and bottle for use.

Use

  1. When needed, put a few drops on a lump of sugar and throw it into the pan.

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. Spirit + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Celery + spirittop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Celery + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,794 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery seed
Supplies the main celery flavour, released slowly as it steeps in the spirits.
Spirits of wine
Acts as a solvent that draws the aromatic flavour out of the seed.

The step that matters

Adding the drops. The essence is highly concentrated, so a few drops are enough. Too much will overpower the dish with celery flavour.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spirit, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spirit, sugar. 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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