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Celery Sauce

A sauce made from boiled celery, veal broth, butter, flour, cream or egg yolks, seasoned with pepper, salt, 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Slice the white part from the celery and peel if not very young.

  2. Boil the celery in salted water for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain and chop the celery, then place it in a saucepan with the veal broth or gravy.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew until the celery is quite soft.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter with the flour.

  3. Add the butter-flour mixture and cream or egg yolks to the celery.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a tureen.

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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 main body and flavour of the sauce once stewed soft and chopped.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with the butter, giving it body.
Cream or egg yolks
Adds richness and body, and helps thicken and smooth the sauce as it heats.
Veal broth or gravy
Provides the savoury liquid in which the celery stews, adding depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or egg yolks. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot when they go in. Add them off the heat or with the sauce just warm, stirring constantly, so they thicken it smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, cream, 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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