Name: Celery Sauce
Ingredients: 1 head of celery; 2 cups water; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; drawn butter gravy

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 ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the celery into small pieces.
Boil the celery in 2 cups of water until tender.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Prepare a drawn butter gravy.

Finish and serve

Add the cooked celery and the boiling water to the gravy.
Boil everything together and serve.

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.

Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Celery + buttertop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Celery: Provides the main vegetable flavor and body of the sauce once cooked until tender.
Drawn butter gravy: Forms the rich, smooth base that the celery and its cooking water are combined into.