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Celery Stewed with Cream Sauce

A creamy stew of celery cooked in milk and butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

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 ↓

Celery Stewed with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the tender parts of the celery into pieces about 1 inch long.

  2. Place the celery in a saucepan and cover with water. Season with salt.

  3. Boil the celery until tender, then drain off half of the water.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Add the boiling milk to the saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter with the flour until smooth, then add to the boiling mixture.

  3. Stir gently until the butter is melted and the sauce thickens.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and let it boil for 10 to 15 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  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 bulk of the dish and gives it its main vegetable flavor and tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that give the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour into the boiling liquid. Adding the flour mixture to boiling liquid without first blending it smooth can leave lumps. Stirring gently as the butter melts lets the starch hydrate evenly and thicken the sauce.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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