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Celery Stewed Brown

A stew of celery cooked in brown gravy with red wine, pepper, salt, nutmeg, ketchup, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Stewed Brown

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut celery into pieces, half-boil it and drain it.

  2. Stew the celery in good gravy with red wine, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and ketchup.

  3. Mix flour smooth in a little gravy and boil it all together.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the main body of the stew and supplies its vegetable texture and flavour.
Good gravy
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour that the celery stews in.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang that rounds out the savoury gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when boiled.

The step that matters

Mix flour smooth in a little gravy before boiling. Flour added dry clumps and stays raw-tasting. Whisking it smooth into a little liquid first lets the starch disperse evenly, and boiling it swells the starch granules so the whole stew thickens without lumps.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, red wine, pepper, ketchup, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, red wine, pepper, ketchup, flour. 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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