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Sauce

Celery Sauce for Boiled Turkey

A sauce made from boiled celery, bacon, butter, lemon juice, flour, and milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Celery Sauce for Boiled Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash and peel the celery.

  2. Boil the celery in water with salt for 10 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Transfer the celery to a saucepan with bacon, butter, salt, lemon juice, and enough water to cover.

  2. Stew until the celery is tender.

  3. Stir in flour and milk or cream, and bring to a boil while stirring continuously.

  4. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve into a sauceboat.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Celery
Forms the body of the sauce and gives its main flavour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and smooths the sauce.
Milk or cream
Adds creaminess and moisture, softening the sauce's texture.
Fat bacon
Contributes savoury fat and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Bring the flour and milk mixture to a boil while stirring continuously. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly or is left unstirred. Constant stirring disperses the starch so it gelatinises into a smooth, lump-free sauce.

Swap the celery

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

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

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