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Celery Sauce

A creamy sauce made from celery, butter, flour, milk, and water, served with poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Cook the celery in water with salt until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Stir the butter‑flour mixture into the milk.

  3. Pour the milk mixture over the cooked celery and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with fowl.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,491 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 sauce and gives it its vegetable flavor and texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Its starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Milk
Provides the creamy liquid base, and its proteins and fat add richness.

The step that matters

Bring the milk mixture to a boil. Flour starch only thickens fully once the liquid is hot enough for the granules to swell. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin, and stirring keeps the flour from clumping.

Swap the celery

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

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

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