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Celeri a LA CrI:me

Creamed celery with butter, flour, milk, salt, pepper, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Celeri a LA CrI:me

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Blanch the celery in boiling water with salt, then set aside.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir continuously until it is white and not browned.

  3. Gradually pour in the hot milk, stirring constantly, and season with salt and white pepper.

Finish the dish

  1. Once it boils, add the blanched celery and simmer gently until tender.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the cream if desired.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked briefly with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Celery
Becomes tender through simmering and gives the dish its main vegetable texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Stirring the flour into melted butter until it is white, not browned, cooks out raw starch taste. Browning changes the colour and flavour, and adding hot milk too fast can make lumps, so pour gradually while stirring.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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