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Celery Sauce for Boiled Fowls

A creamy celery sauce made by simmering celery, flour, butter, and cream, served hot with boiled fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Sauce for Boiled Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the celery in a pint of water with salt until tender.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub together the flour and butter.

  3. Add the flour-butter mixture to the cream or milk.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the mixture over the cooked celery and bring to a boil.

  2. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

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

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Celery
Provides the main vegetable flavour and body of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the liquid.
Cream or rich milk
Supplies fat and liquid that make the sauce rich and creamy.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil after adding the flour-butter mixture. Flour needs to be heated to swell and thicken the liquid. Stirring while it comes to a boil keeps lumps from forming, and the sauce should be watched so it does not scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the celery

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

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

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