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Celery Stewed a LA Creme

A stew of celery cooked with bacon and consommé, served with béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,360 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Celery Stewed a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Boil the celery in salted water until nearly done.

  2. Drain the celery on a sieve.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the celery between slices of bacon in enough consommé to cover them.

  2. Cook until the celery is very tender.

  3. Serve with béchamel sauce.

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 + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,360 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

White celery
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender and soft as it cooks slowly.
Good fat bacon
Adds savoury fat and flavour that seasons the celery as it stews.
Consommé
Provides the liquid that gently braises the celery and carries flavour into it.
Béchamel sauce
Adds a creamy, rich sauce that complements the tender celery when served.

The step that matters

Cook until the celery is very tender. Celery stalks are fibrous and stay tough unless cooked long enough in liquid to break down their structure. Stopping early leaves them stringy, so they should be checked for softness rather than judged by time alone.

“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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