Skip to main content
Main

Egos with Celery

Poached eggs served in a celery and béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 853 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Egos with Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Make the celery sauce

  1. Boil the celery in the white broth for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the celery from the broth.

  3. Cut the celery into 1-inch pieces.

  4. Return the celery pieces to the broth.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Reduce the mixture to ¾ cup over 10 minutes.

  7. Add the hot béchamel sauce.

  8. Bring to a boil.

Poach and serve

  1. Poach the eggs.

  2. Arrange the poached eggs neatly on a hot dish.

  3. Pour the celery sauce in the center.

  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 + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. White pepper + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Celery + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,360 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. White pepper + saucetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together525 recipes
  5. Celery + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 as it simmers in the broth.
Fresh eggs
Set when poached, giving the dish its soft, rich centerpiece.
White broth
Cooks the celery and forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Hot béchamel sauce
Adds creaminess and thickens the celery sauce.

The step that matters

Reduce the mixture to ¾ cup over 10 minutes.. Reducing concentrates the flavor and thickens the sauce by evaporating water. Reducing too far makes it salty and overly thick, while too little leaves it thin and weak in flavor.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white pepper, sauce, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against white pepper, sauce, egg. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes