Skip to main content
Main

Eggs with Celery Sauce

A poached egg dish served with a creamy celery sauce over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Eggs with Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cover the celery with boiling water and cook until tender.

  2. Strain the celery.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and stir carefully.

  3. Heat the cream to boiling.

  4. Stir the boiling cream into the thickened butter.

  5. Let the sauce boil for 2 minutes.

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

  7. Cook until the celery begins to break.

Assemble and serve

  1. Poach the eggs.

  2. Lay the poached eggs on buttered toast arranged in a circle or oval on a platter.

  3. Pour the celery sauce over the eggs and toast.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Form the main body of the dish, setting firmly when poached.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Provides richness and body to the celery sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the sauce base and buttered toast.
Celery
Gives the sauce its main flavour and a tender, soft texture.

The step that matters

Let the sauce boil for 2 minutes. Flour needs to be cooked at a boil to lose its raw starchy taste and reach full thickening. Cream can scorch or separate if heated unevenly, so stir steadily.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, flour, cream, 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.

More eggs with celery sauce recipes

Poached 8 See all 2 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes