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Celery, Au Jus

Celery cooked in a butter, flour, and stock sauce seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Celery, Au Jus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Clean the celery and cut into equal lengths of 2 to 3 inches.

  2. Cut each stick lengthwise and place in a deep dish.

  3. Pour boiling water over the celery until covered and let soak for a few minutes.

  4. Drain the celery through a colander.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Sprinkle the flour over the melted butter.

  3. Gradually pour in the stock while stirring continuously.

  4. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Add the celery to the sauce and let it simmer uncovered until the sauce reduces.

  6. Towards the end, add more stock, butter, and flour to thicken the sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve the celery in a deep dish with the sauce.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour 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
The main vegetable, which softens and becomes tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavour in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the melted butter and liquid.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and supplies its savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the stock while stirring continuously. Flour mixed into melted butter can form lumps if liquid is added all at once. Adding the stock slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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