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Celery Potatoes

A sauté of finely chopped potatoes and celery cooked in butter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,047 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the potatoes and celery finely.

Fry

  1. Heat a frying pan until hot.

  2. Add the butter and lard or drippings to the pan.

  3. Add the chopped potatoes and cook slowly until browned on one side.

  4. Turn the potatoes and brown the other side, turning only once.

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. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Celery + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Their starch cooks into a tender interior while the cut surface browns and crisps.
Butter
Adds fat that carries heat to the potatoes and gives a rich flavour.
Lard or drippings
Adds fat with a high heat tolerance that helps the potato surface brown evenly.

The step that matters

Turn the potatoes only once. Browning needs contact with the hot pan. Turning often stops a crust from forming, so the potatoes stay pale and soft. Turn once, after the first side is well browned.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter. 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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