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Celeey Sauce Foe Boiled Fowls

A sauce made from celery, butter, flour, and cream, served over 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 ↓

Celeey Sauce Foe Boiled Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

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

  2. In a separate pan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and whisk in 2 tablespoons of flour.

  3. Gradually add 1 pint of cream or rich milk to the butter and flour mixture, stirring until smooth.

  4. Pour the sauce over the cooked celery and bring to a boil.

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
Softens into the base, giving the sauce its body and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the liquid with butter to form a smooth, stable sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Cream or rich milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the sauce is built on, adding richness and smoothness.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or milk to the roux. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour and butter blended, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

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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