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Sauce

Celery Sauce, White

A creamy sauce made from celery, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Celery Sauce, White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the celery, then cut it into 1-inch pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the celery in water with salt until tender.

  2. In a separate bowl, roll the butter with flour.

  3. Add the butter and flour mixture to the cream and bring to a boil.

  4. Combine the boiled celery with the cream mixture 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. Butter + creamtop 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. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

White celery
Forms the bulk of the sauce and gives its mild, vegetal flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture, giving the sauce body when heated.
Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture to the cream. Flour must be fully incorporated and the mixture brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the cream. Otherwise the sauce can stay thin or taste pasty.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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