Skip to main content
Sauce

Celery Sauce

A creamy celery sauce made by stewing celery, adding milk and stock, thickened with butter and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the head of celery until tender.

  2. Add the milk and chicken or veal stock if available.

  3. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Celery
Provides the main flavour and, once stewed soft, becomes the body of the sauce.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, and forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid, or the sauce can taste raw and form lumps. Adding it gradually while stirring keeps the texture smooth and the sauce evenly thickened.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, chicken, butter, flour, 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 celery sauce recipes

White 5Brown 3for Boiled Turkey 3for Turkey 3 See all 250 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes