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Chickens, with Celery Sauce

Chicken cooked in a sauce of celery, cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chickens, with Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the chickens until cooked through.

  2. Cut the white part of the celery into 1.5‑inch pieces.

  3. Boil the celery until tender, then strain off the water.

  4. In a stewpan, combine the celery with the cream and a piece of butter rolled in flour.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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
Provides the main vegetable body and fresh, aromatic flavour of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, helping the flour-thickened sauce turn smooth and glossy.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the celery and chicken.

The step that matters

Combining the cream, celery and flour-butter mixture. Flour rolled into butter must be stirred in well so it dissolves without lumps. Cooking the sauce gently while stirring lets the starch swell and thicken evenly, giving a smooth sauce rather than a grainy one.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Celerythe original

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