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Celery Sauce for Roasted or Boiled Fowls

A sauce made from boiled celery, butter, flour, cream, and wine, seasoned with mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

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 into a dish.

  4. Optionally, stir in 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
Forms the bulk of the sauce and gives it its vegetable flavour and body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness when combined with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and a bright note that balances the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked through in the hot liquid to thicken smoothly and lose its raw taste. Adding it unevenly or too quickly can leave lumps, so stir well while the sauce boils.

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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