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Celery Stew

A savory celery stew made with veal or white stock, cream, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash and clean the celery, cutting it into 2-3 inch pieces.

  2. Boil the celery in veal or white stock until tender.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream, beaten egg yolks, lemon peel, nutmeg, salt, and butter.

  2. Heat the mixture gently, stirring constantly, but do not let it boil.

  3. Strain the mixture over the cooked celery.

Finish the stew

  1. Fry the celery pieces until browned, then add gravy and stew until tender.

  2. Season with mace, pepper, and salt, thicken, and let cool.

  3. For flavor, add ½ teaspoon of celery seeds to two quarts of soup.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 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. 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

Heads of celery
Forms the body of the stew and becomes tender when boiled and stewed.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture gently when heated and add richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor in the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture gently, stirring constantly, but do not let it boil.. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the cream mixture boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, veal, cream, egg, lemon, nutmeg, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, veal, cream, egg, lemon, nutmeg, butter. 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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