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Stewed Celery

A dish of boiled celery roots finished with a creamy béchamel or thickened broth.

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 ↓

Stewed Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut celery roots to fit the serving dish and remove coarse leaves and green tops.

  2. Trim root ends and wash celery thoroughly in several waters.

Cook the celery

  1. Boil celery in enough water to cover it, with salt and butter, until tender (25-30 minutes).

  2. Alternatively, stew celery in broth until soft.

Finish the sauce

  1. Drain celery and arrange on a hot dish, then pour a thick béchamel or white sauce over it.

  2. Thicken with flour and butter.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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
Forms the main body of the dish and turns soft and tender when simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps build the flour-based thickening.
Flour
Its starch swells in hot liquid, thickening the broth into a smooth sauce.
Broth
Supplies moisture and savory flavour while the celery softens.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder body to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and hot liquid stirred in gradually so the starch disperses without lumps. Undercooked flour tastes pasty and raw, and the sauce will not reach full thickness.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, cream. 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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