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Celery Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, milk, chopped celery, and cream, served with turkey or fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Boil the white parts of the celery in a saucepan, then drain and chop finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, then stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the milk and stir until it boils.

  3. Season well, then add the chopped celery and 1-2 tablespoons of cream.

  4. Serve with 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, and with flour starts the thickened base.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth, coating sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as the flour starches swell when it boils.
Celery
Adds its mild, aromatic flavour and fine texture to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter until smooth. Cooking the flour in melted butter forms a roux; stirring constantly keeps it free of lumps so the milk blends in evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, 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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