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Sauce

Celery Sauce

A sauce made from celery hearts, consommé, herbs, onion, cream sauce, and reduced celery liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Clean the celery hearts and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Immerse the celery in consommé, add the faggot and onion, and cook gently.

  3. Drain the celery and pound it in a mortar.

  4. Rub the pounded celery through a fine sieve into a stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Thin the purée with an equal amount of cream sauce and reduced celery liquor.

  2. Heat the mixture moderately, and if needed, keep it warm in a bain-marie.

  3. Serve with boiled or braised poultry.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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 hearts
Provide the main flavour and the bulk of the smooth purée.
Cream sauce
Adds richness and a silky body, thinning the purée to a pourable texture.
Consommé
Cooks the celery gently, adding savoury depth to its flavour.
Reduced celery liquor
Concentrates celery flavour and helps thin the purée without diluting it.

The step that matters

Rubbing the celery through a fine sieve. Pounding alone leaves fibres that make the sauce stringy. Pressing the purée through a fine sieve removes them, giving the smooth texture the sauce depends on.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, onion, cream, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, onion, cream, sauce. 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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