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Sauce

Celery Sauce

A creamy celery sauce made with stock, herbs, butter, arrowroot, cream, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Boil the celery in salted water until tender.

  2. Cut the boiled celery into 2‑inch pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the white stock, herbs, and mace.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes to extract flavor.

  3. Strain the stock.

  4. Add the celery.

  5. Thicken with butter kneaded with arrowroot.

  6. Stir in the cream.

  7. Bring to a boil.

  8. Add a little lemon juice before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Celery + arrowroottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together114 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 body of the sauce once cooked and added to the stock.
Butter
Kneaded with arrowroot, it thickens the sauce and adds a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce into a glossy, smooth consistency when combined with butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter kneaded with arrowroot. Arrowroot must be fully dispersed in the butter and then in the hot liquid; if it clumps or is left to boil too long, it can thin or turn gluey, so the sauce will not set smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, butter, arrowroot, cream, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, butter, arrowroot, cream, lemon. 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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