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Celery Sauce

A sauce made with flour, butter, milk, and boiled celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut the celery into small pieces.

  2. Boil the celery in water for a few minutes.

  3. Strain the water from the celery.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the flour with the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  3. Add the celery to the melted butter.

  4. Cook over low heat for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + celerytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

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

Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and milk.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and forms the base for the flour.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that the flour thickens.
Celery
Provides the main flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking over low heat while stirring constantly. Flour thickens milk only when it is stirred and heated gently. Without constant stirring, lumps can form and the flour may scorch on the bottom of the pan, leaving the sauce grainy or with a raw taste.

Swap the celery

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

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

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