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Baked Celery with Cheese

A baked casserole of celery, cheese, and a creamy sauce topped with breadcrumbs.

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

Baked Celery with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut celery into one-inch pieces and cook in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Drain and reserve the cooking liquid.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the reserved celery stock to the roux, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add the cooked celery, cheese, and pepper to the sauce, mixing well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish and top with bread crumbs.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the top is delicately browned.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Becomes tender when cooked and adds moisture and mild vegetable flavor to the dish.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to add richness and savory flavor, and helps the top brown.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter to form a roux.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as they brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the roux. Add the reserved stock gradually while stirring so the flour disperses evenly. Adding it all at once lets starch clump into lumps, which keeps the sauce from thickening smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, pepper, flour, bread. 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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