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Celery-sauce

A sauce made from boiled celery, spiced with mace, nutmeg, white pepper, salt, thickened with roux, butter, or egg yolks, finished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Celery-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the celery in water until tender.

  2. Season with pounded mace, grated nutmeg, white pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Thicken with white roux, a good piece of butter kneaded in flour, or a liaison of 2 egg yolks.

  4. Add the juice of ½ lemon for extra flavor.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  5. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main flavor and body of the sauce once cooked until tender.
White roux or butter kneaded in flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling starch granules as it heats.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce through protein setting and add richness when gently heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Thicken with the egg yolk liaison gently. Egg yolks set and can curdle or scramble if the sauce boils after they are added, leaving a grainy texture. Keep the heat low and stir constantly once the yolks go in.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, mace, nutmeg, butter, egg, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, mace, nutmeg, butter, egg, lemon. 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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