Name: Essence of Celery
Ingredients: ½ cup brandy or proof spirit; ½ ounce celery seed, bruised

Why it works: Brandy and celery work together. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 217 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Essence of Celery

Ingredients

½ cup brandy or proof spirit
½ ounce celery seed, bruised

Directions

Make the infusion

Combine the brandy and bruised celery seed in a jar.
Seal the jar and let it steep for two weeks.

Use

Use a few drops to flavor a pint of broth or add to soups and salad dressings.

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.

Brandy + celerytop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together217 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery seed: Provides the main celery aroma and flavor that the brandy extracts over steeping.
Brandy or proof spirit: Acts as the solvent that draws flavor compounds out of the bruised celery seed.

“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.