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Sauce

Celery Sauce

A creamy sauce made from simmered celery, milk, egg yolks, and thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,399 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Simmer the celery in the milk until tender, about 1 hour.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the thick cream.

  2. Mix the celery and milk with the egg yolk mixture.

  3. Stir over gentle heat for 5 to 6 minutes until the sauce thickens.

  4. Serve as desired.

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. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Celery + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Fine white celery
Provides the main flavour and, once simmered and sieved, the body of the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they gently set when warmed, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Thick cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the sauce's flavour and giving a smoother mouthfeel.
New milk
Softens the celery as it simmers and forms the liquid base that carries the flavour.

The step that matters

Stir over gentle heat. Egg yolks set when heated, so warming the sauce slowly and stirring keeps it smooth and thickened rather than curdled or grainy.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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