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Sauce

Celery Sauce

A sauce made from boiled celery, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Cut the celery into 1-inch lengths.

  2. Put the celery in a saucepan and cover with boiling water.

  3. Boil for about 30 minutes until tender.

Make the roux

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

Thicken and finish

  1. Strain the celery, blending the boiling water with the roux.

  2. Set the mixture over low heat and stir until smooth and thick.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and the cooked celery.

  4. Let it stew gently over boiling water until the celery begins to break down.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Provides the main flavor and, once broken down, the body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and carries flavor through the roux.
All-purpose flour
Starch in the roux thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Set the mixture over low heat and stir until smooth and thick. Flour starch thickens only as it heats in the liquid, and stirring spreads it evenly so lumps do not form. Heating too hard can scorch the butter or leave the sauce unevenly thick.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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