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Celeri a LA Deml-f/lace

Stewed celery cooked with butter, demi-glace, stock, and seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Celeri a LA Deml-f/lace

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the heads and roots of the celery, remove the green parts, and cut into even lengths (3 to 4 inches).

  2. Wash thoroughly in salted water and drain well on a cloth.

Cook

  1. Place in a sauté pan with the butter cut into small pieces and a ladleful of stock.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and cook until tender.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender and sweet as it stews.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the celery a smooth, glossy finish.
Demi-glace sauce
Supplies the brown sauce base, adding savory depth and body to the celery.

The step that matters

Cover with buttered paper and cook until tender. Gentle covered cooking in a little liquid softens the fibrous celery evenly. Cooking too hot or too long can make it mushy or dry, so check for tenderness rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, sauce, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sauce, bread. 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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