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Celery Sauce

A creamy sauce made from stewed celery, milk, and flour, seasoned with salt, butter, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the celery

  1. Clean and chop the celery.

  2. Stew the celery slowly in ½ cup of water until very tender.

  3. Press the cooked celery through a colander.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pot, heat 1 pint of milk and whisk in 1 tablespoon of flour until thickened.

  2. Stir the pressed celery into the thickened milk.

  3. Add salt, butter, and pepper to taste.

  4. Serve the sauce with boiled 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 bulk of the sauce and provides its main flavour and body once pressed.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the celery and gives the sauce its smooth body.
Flour
Starch swells in the hot milk, thickening the liquid into a sauce.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the flavour and gives the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Whisk the flour into the milk until smooth and thickened. Flour added to hot liquid can clump if not whisked in thoroughly. Its starch must be evenly dispersed to swell and thicken the milk evenly.

Swap the celery

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

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

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