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Stewed Celery

A stew of celery cooked with broth, cream, butter, flour, and seasonings.

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 ↓

Stewed Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the celery and remove the outer leaves.

  2. Cut the celery into lengths of 4 inches.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the celery in a stew pan with the broth and stew until tender.

  2. Add the cream, butter rolled in flour, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Simmer for a few minutes.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 soft when stewed.
Broth
Cooks the celery through and supplies the liquid for the stew.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the stewing liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with flour helps thicken the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the stewing liquid when rolled with butter and stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the butter rolled in flour. Flour must be fully dispersed into the hot liquid, usually by whisking or simmering, or it forms lumps instead of thickening the sauce evenly. Simmering gently afterward lets the starch swell fully and the sauce reach a smooth consistency.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg. 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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