Name: Stewed Celery
Ingredients: celery; salt; 1 pint of cream

Why it works: Celery and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,863 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Celery

Ingredients

celery
salt
1 pint of cream

Directions

Cut the celery into sticks about 1 inch long.
Cover the celery with boiling water and simmer until tender.
Season well with salt.
Pour off the water, add 1 pint of cream, and heat thoroughly before serving.

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.

Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,863 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery: Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender when simmered in water.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture when heated through with the celery.

“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.