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Celery, Stewed

A stew of celery cooked in white stock, finished with a white sauce of butter, flour, cream, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Celery, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the celery, remove the outer leaves, and cut it into 4-inch lengths.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the celery in a saucepan with the broth and stew until tender, about 20 to 25 minutes.

  2. Add the cream, butter, flour, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Simmer for 4 to 5 minutes.

  3. Pour into a dish and serve, garnished with toasted bread slices.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow stewing.
White stock or weak broth
Cooks the celery and forms the liquid that the sauce is built on.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth white sauce as it simmers.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a softer, silkier texture.

The step that matters

Add the cream and flour mixture and simmer gently. Flour thickens the liquid only as starch swells during simmering. Cooking too briefly leaves the sauce thin and pasty-tasting, while boiling hard or too long can cause the cream to separate and the sauce to turn grainy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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