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Braized Celery with Brown Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Braized Celery with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clean and cut the celery into 6-inch lengths, trimming the roots neatly.

  2. Parboil the celery in water for 10 minutes, then immerse in cold water.

  3. Drain the celery on a sieve and place in a stewpan with stock.

  4. Braize gently over low heat for about 1 hour.

  5. Drain the celery on a napkin and cut each head into three equal lengths.

  6. Dish the celery like cutlets and garnish with small circular croutades of fried bread filled with boiled beef marrow.

  7. Toss the beef marrow in a stewpan with liquid glaze, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  8. Pour brown sauce mixed with a pat of butter and a little lemon juice over the celery and serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Celery + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lemon, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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