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Cream of Celery

A custard-like dish made from boiled celery, milk, eggs, and cream, set in small moulds and served with lettuce or cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cream of Celery

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Cream of Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Clean and cut the white part of the celery into pieces.

  2. Boil the celery in 2 cups of milk until tender.

  3. Strain the celery and pass it through a sieve, keeping the milk.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs with white pepper and salt.

  2. Add 1 cup of cream and 1 cup of the reserved milk to the egg mixture.

  3. Stir over low heat until it begins to thicken, but do not let it boil.

  4. Add the strained celery to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Fill 18 small moulds or teacups, cover with buttered paper, and steam in water just off the boil.

  2. Turn out the moulds and serve with lettuce or cress.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Celery + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main flavour and, once puréed, the body of the cream.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook gently, giving it a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Cooks the celery and forms the liquid base that the custard is made from.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the custard a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat without boiling. Egg proteins thicken gently as they warm. If the mixture boils, the eggs can curdle and turn grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, milk, egg, cream, butter, lettuce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, milk, egg, cream, butter, lettuce. 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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