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Sauce

Celery Sauce

A sauce made from celery, stock, butter, flour, cream, and seasonings, served over boiled turkey or fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,331 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Boil the celery in a little white stock.

  3. Season with white pepper, coarse sea salt, and nutmeg.

Make the sauce

  1. When tender, add butter rolled in flour and cream.

  2. Heat gently without boiling.

  3. Pour over boiled turkey or fowl.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Celery
Provides the main flavour and body of the sauce as it softens in the stock.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when rolled with butter and stirred in, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Once flour has thickened the sauce, boiling can cause the dairy cream to separate and curdle, and can make the sauce grainy or too thick. Gentle heat keeps it smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, nutmeg, 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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