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Sauce

Celery Sauce for Roasted or Boiled Fowls

A sauce made from boiled celery, spices, butter, flour, cream, and white wine, served with roasted or boiled fowls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Celery Sauce for Roasted or Boiled Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery and cut it finely.

  2. Boil the celery slowly in a little water until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Add beaten mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  2. Thicken the mixture with butter rolled in flour.

  3. Boil it up and pour it into your dish.

  4. Optionally, add cream and white wine 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.

  1. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main flavour and body of the sauce as it softens and breaks down.
Butter and flour
Form a roux-style thickener that gives the sauce body and a smooth, velvety texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel and softer flavour.
White wine
Contributes acidity and aroma that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be fully cooked into the hot liquid and boiled through so it thickens smoothly without a raw, floury taste or lumps. Adding it too cold or undercooking it leaves the sauce pasty.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, nutmeg, pepper, butter, flour, cream, white wine):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, nutmeg, pepper, butter, flour, cream, white wine. 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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