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Celery Sauce

A sauce made from puréed celery hearts, simmered with consommé, herbs, onion, and cream, served with poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Clean the celery.

  2. Place only the hearts in a sauté pan.

  3. Immerse the celery in consommé.

  4. Add the faggot of herbs and the onion.

  5. Cook gently.

  6. Drain the celery.

Make the sauce

  1. Pound the celery in a mortar.

  2. Rub the purée through a fine sieve.

  3. Put the purée in a stewpan.

  4. Thin it with an equal amount of cream sauce.

  5. Add a little reduced celery liquor.

  6. Heat the mixture moderately.

  7. If it needs to wait, place it in a bain‑marie.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled or braised poultry.

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 + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Celery hearts
Provide the main flavour and the bulk of the purée.
Cream sauce
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the purée.
Consommé
Gently cooks the celery, seasoning it while keeping it moist.
Reduced celery liquor
Concentrates celery flavour and adjusts the sauce's consistency.

The step that matters

Rub the purée through a fine sieve. Pounding alone leaves fibres that make the sauce grainy. Pressing through a fine sieve removes the fibrous pieces, giving the smooth texture the sauce depends on.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, onion, cream, sauce. 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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