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Creamed Celery

Creamed Celery is a dish of cooked celery in a butter, flour, and milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Cook the celery in salted water until tender, about 20 minutes.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  3. Add the roux to the heated milk and stir until thickened.

Combine and season

  1. Drain the cooked celery and stir it into the thickened milk mixture.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its vegetable flavor and tender texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk by forming a roux with the butter, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour to make the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, providing moisture and creaminess.

The step that matters

Add the roux to the heated milk and stir until thickened. Flour must be cooked in fat before liquid is added, and the mixture must be stirred steadily as it heats. This prevents lumps and lets starch granules swell evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, pepper, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, milk. 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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