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Celery with Sauce

Celery cooked in a butter, flour, stock, milk, and cream sauce, garnished with parsley and optional onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Clean and cut the celery into pieces, then keep them warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and cook for a few minutes without browning.

  3. Add the strained stock and milk to the flour mixture, stirring until it boils.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

  5. Stir in the cream and parsley.

Serve

  1. Arrange the celery on a hot dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the celery.

  3. Garnish with onions and remaining parsley.

  4. Substitute mushrooms for the onions for a variation.

  5. Serve on fried or toasted bread if desired.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 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
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its mild, crisp-tender vegetable texture.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour and forms the base for the roux.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce as a roux when cooked in butter and liquid is added.
Strained stock
Provides the savoury liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess, giving the sauce a smooth, mild body.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter without browning. Cooking the flour briefly in butter removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. If it browns, the sauce takes on a darker colour and nutty flavour, and if the liquid is added too early, lumps can form.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, butter, flour, milk, cream, parsley, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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