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Stuffed Celeriac with Spanish Sauce

A stuffed celeriac dish with a Spanish sauce made from milk, butter, breadcrumbs, flour, eggs, sugar, walnuts, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stuffed Celeriac with Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stuffing

  1. Heat the milk and butter in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Stir in the bread crumbs and flour, cooking until a smooth paste forms and detaches from the pan.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Beat the eggs and gradually stir them into the mixture until smooth.

  5. Add sugar, chopped walnuts, cream, salt, and pepper, mixing well.

Prepare and fill the celeriac

  1. Clean and scrape the celeriac.

  2. Cut off the tops of the celeriac to create covers.

  3. Use an apple corer to hollow out the celeriac, leaving a ¼ inch thick shell.

  4. Fill each celeriac with the stuffing, leaving ½ inch at the top.

  5. Replace the covers on the celeriac.

  6. Tie the celeriac to secure them.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Place the celeriac in a saucepan with water, ensuring the water does not cover the tops.

  2. Add the celeriac scraps to the saucepan.

  3. Boil gently for about an hour, adding boiling water as needed.

  4. Once tender, remove the celeriac and keep warm.

  5. Strain the cooking water.

  6. Form the leftover stuffing into small cylinders and boil them in the strained stock for 5 minutes.

  7. Melt butter and flour together in a skillet until browned.

  8. Proceed with the sauce.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Celeriac roots
Forms the edible shell that holds the stuffing and turns tender during gentle boiling.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing so it sets firm when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and butter to give the stuffing body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the stuffing and the browned sauce base.
Rich milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and softens the stuffing.
Walnut meats
Add crunch and a nutty flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Boiling the celeriac gently with the tops out of the water. Keeping the tops above the water lets the filling heat through with the shell without turning the celeriac watery or breaking it apart. A hard boil can split the shells and let the stuffing leak into the cooking liquid.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, bread, flour, egg, sugar, meat. 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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