Skip to main content
Drink

Celery Sauce

A pickled celery and onion sauce with mustard seed, ground mustard, green and red peppers, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Sprinkle chopped celery and onion with coarse sea salt and let stand for a few hours.

  2. Drain the mixture well.

Combine and seal

  1. In a crock, combine the drained celery and onion with mustard seed, green pepper, and red pepper.

  2. Mix in ground mustard and pour good vinegar over the mixture.

  3. Seal the crock.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the bulk of the sauce and supplies its crisp, fresh texture and vegetal flavor.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the celery and onion, softening them and concentrating their flavor.
Good vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the sauce its tang and helps preserve the mixture.
Mustard seed
Adds sharp, pungent heat and a distinctive mustard flavor to the sauce.
Ground mustard
Contributes further pungency and mustard flavor, blending with the mustard seed.

The step that matters

Draining the salted celery and onion. Salt pulls moisture out of the vegetables, so draining them well keeps the sauce from becoming watery and thins its vinegar balance. Skipping or rushing this step leaves excess liquid diluting the flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, mustard, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, mustard, pepper, vinegar. 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.

More celery sauce recipes

White 5Brown 3for Boiled Turkey 3for Turkey 3 See all 250 →

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes