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Celery, with White Sauce

Celery cooked in a white sauce of veal broth, milk, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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, with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Prepare the celery for stewing and stew it in salted water for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the celery and cover it with a little veal broth.

  3. Stew the celery again until tender, adding a little milk as the broth boils away.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, arrange the celery on a hot dish.

  2. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter, and season lightly with salt and pepper.

  3. Pour the sauce over the celery.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow stewing.
Veal broth
Provides liquid for stewing and flavour for the gravy.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the stewing liquid as it reduces.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the celery.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid long enough to lose its raw taste and to thicken evenly. Adding it to hot liquid without mixing well can cause lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, flour, butter, 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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