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Celery Sauce

A creamy sauce made from celery, milk, stock, butter, flour, and cream.

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. Blanch the celery.

  2. Place the blanched celery in a saucepan with the milk and stock.

  3. Simmer gently until tender.

  4. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour smoothly.

  3. Add pepper, salt, and the celery mixture gradually.

  4. Stir until boiling.

  5. Add the cream and cook for three 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Provides the main flavour and, once sieved, the body of the sauce.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux that thickens the sauce and carries flavour.
Flour
Cooked with the butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Milk
Adds creaminess and moisture, giving the sauce a smooth, rich body.
White stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid, helping the celery soften and the sauce season well.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture at the end.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour smoothly. Flour must be fully mixed into the melted butter to form a smooth roux. Lumps stay raw and taste floury, and adding the liquid gradually then keeps the sauce free of lumps as it thickens.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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