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Stewed Celery with Brown Sauce

Stewed celery served in a brown butter and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Celery with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Boil the celery until tender, then drain.

Make the brown sauce and serve

  1. In a frying pan, heat the butter until dark brown.

  2. Add the flour and stir until the paste is smooth and dark.

  3. Pour in the water from boiling the celery and bring to a boil.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, then pour over the celery and serve.

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. Butter + flourtop 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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Main vegetable; boiling softens its fibers until it becomes tender.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and, when browned, adds color and a nutty taste to the sauce.
Flour
Thickener that cooks with the butter into a paste, which thickens the sauce as it simmers.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Dark browning adds color and a toasted flavor, but the butter and flour can scorch quickly, leaving a bitter taste. Stir constantly and watch closely as the paste darkens.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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