Skip to main content
Main

Celery Purise

A smooth purée of boiled celery, milk, bay leaf, mace, and onion, seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,518 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Celery Purise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and blanch

  1. Wash the celery well and remove all the outside parts.

  2. Cut the celery into small pieces and place it in cold salted water.

  3. Bring the water to a boil.

  4. Remove the celery from the water and drain it.

Simmer and sieve

  1. In a pan, combine the celery with milk, bay leaf, mace, and onion slice.

  2. Boil until the celery is tender.

  3. Sieve the mixture.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Celery + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Milk + oniontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the purée's body and provides its main flavour once softened and sieved.
Milk
Cooks with the celery to add moisture and a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Boil until the celery is tender. Celery's fibrous cell walls soften only with enough heat and time. Undercooked pieces stay stringy and will not sieve into a smooth purée.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, milk, onion):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, milk, onion. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes