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Celery Sauce, for Boiled Turkey and Fowls

A sauce made from sautéed celery, butter, flour, lemon juice, and optional red wine, served with boiled turkey or fowls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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, for Boiled Turkey and Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut the celery into slices about 1½ inches long.

  2. Season with salt, a little white pepper, nutmeg, and mace.

  3. Simmer the celery in weak broth or water until tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. Thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  2. Add lemon juice when the sauce is ready.

  3. For a brown sauce, use browned flour and add red wine.

  4. Serve over the fowls or in a tureen.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the body and mild flavour of the sauce as it softens in the liquid.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms a roux that thickens it.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the butter.
Red wine
Adds depth and colour to the brown version of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid, or the sauce tastes pasty and thickens unevenly. Stir in the flour-butter mixture gradually so it dissolves without lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, nutmeg, mace, butter, flour, lemon, red wine. 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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