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To Stew Celery White

A creamy stew of celery cooked with cream, flour, butter, mace, lemon peel, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Stew Celery White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash and clean the celery, cutting it into 3-inch pieces.

  2. Boil the celery in water until tender, then drain.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. In a pan, heat the cream with flour and butter, stirring until combined.

  2. Add the celery, salt, pepper, and ground mace, along with lemon peel.

  3. Shake the pan gently until heated through, but do not let it boil.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 main body of the dish and gives it its tender texture and mild flavour.
Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce that coats the celery.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the flour thicken the cream smoothly.
Lemon peel
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the cream without boiling. Once the cream boils it can separate or curdle, and the flour-thickened sauce may turn grainy. Heating gently keeps it smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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