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Celery Sauce

A sauce made from boiled celery, chicken stock, flour, butter, and milk, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Wash the celery stalks and cut them into very small pieces.

  2. Combine the chopped celery and just enough boiling water to cover it in a small saucepan.

  3. Boil gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the chicken boiling water and simmer the celery for 40 more minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and butter together. Stir in the boiling milk until smooth.

  2. Pour the mixture into the boiling celery and cook for 7 minutes, stirring constantly. Season to taste.

  3. Serve in a gravy boat.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Provides the main flavor and body of the sauce as it simmers and softens.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and cooks with the flour to form a smooth base.
Milk
Adds creaminess and liquid that thickens into a smooth, rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and milk mixture smooth before adding it to the celery. Flour clumps if it meets hot liquid unmixed. Blending it first into butter and milk, then stirring constantly while it cooks, keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, chicken, flour, butter, 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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