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Celery-Sauce for Boiled Fowls, Turkeys, Partridges, or Other Game

A sauce made from celery, milk, water, spices, and butter, served with boiled fowls, turkeys, partridges, or other game.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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-Sauce for Boiled Fowls, Turkeys, Partridges, or Other Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash and peel the celery, then cut it into thin pieces about 2 inches long.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the celery in milk and water until tender.

  2. Add beaten mace, pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour, then boil it again.

Serve

  1. Pour some sauce into the dish and serve the rest in a sauce-tureen.

  2. Optionally, add cream and lemon juice or lemon pickle for extra flavor.

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main flavor and body as it softens in the milk and water.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce and adds richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour, then boil it again. Flour needs to be cooked in the hot liquid so its starch swells and thickens the sauce smoothly. Adding it in lumps or stopping the boil too soon can leave floury specks or a thin sauce.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, milk, pepper, 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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