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Celery Sauce for Pulled, &C

A brown celery sauce made with celery, broth, béchamel or cullis, egg yolks, cream, and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Celery Sauce for Pulled, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut celery heads into 3‑inch pieces.

  2. Trim the celery pieces.

  3. Wash the celery pieces.

  4. Blanch the celery pieces.

  5. Drain the celery.

Make the sauce

  1. Add broth and boil until nearly done and the liquid is almost reduced.

  2. Stir in béchamel sauce.

  3. Add egg yolks (if desired).

  4. Add cream (if desired).

Serve

  1. Wait five minutes before serving.

  2. Dress celery as above.

  3. Use cullis instead of béchamel.

  4. Serve the sauces in dishes.

  5. Place fried bread around the celery heads.

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. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 dish and softens into a tender, mildly flavoured base when blanched and boiled.
Broth
Supplies the cooking liquid that softens the celery and carries savoury flavour into the sauce.
Béchamel sauce
Adds body and a smooth, thick texture to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce as their proteins set gently with heat.
Cream
Adds richness, a silkier mouthfeel and a softer, milder flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add egg yolks (if desired). Egg yolks thicken a sauce by setting gently with heat. If the sauce is kept at a hard boil after they go in, the proteins can scramble and the sauce turns grainy, so keep the heat low once they are added.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, cream, bread. 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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