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Stewed Celery

A simple stew of celery roots cooked with salt and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Stewed Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the celery roots to the desired length and remove all coarse leaves and green tops.

  2. Wash the celery in several waters until clean.

Cook

  1. Boil the celery in just enough water to cover it, adding a little coarse sea salt and the piece of butter.

  2. Cook until the celery is tender.

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 + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. 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

Fine roots of celery
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming soft and tender when simmered.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooking liquid and celery.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, butter):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, butter. 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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