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Celery Sauce

A sauce made from celery, egg yolks, sweet cream, butter, mustard, vinegar, flour, water, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the celery.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine egg yolks, sweet cream, butter, mustard, and vinegar.

  2. Stir the mixture over heat until it boils.

  3. Add a little flour and water to thicken slightly, then remove from heat.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the chopped celery.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the sauce and set into a rich, thickened custard when heated.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the sauce's texture.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and smooth body to the sauce.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity that sharpens the flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks can scramble if overheated or boiled too hard. Stirring over gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and thickened, and the flour helps stabilise it.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, butter, vinegar, flour. 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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