Skip to main content
Main

Celery a LA Parmesan

A baked celery dish with milk, Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Celery a LA Parmesan

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the celery into 3-inch pieces.

  2. Stew the celery in the milk until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Drain the milk and make a sauce by thickening it with wheatmeal, then add the cheese and seasoning.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the celery in a pie dish, pour the sauce over it, and sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top.

  2. Dot the top with small pieces of butter and bake for 15 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Celery + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together523 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the tender vegetable base that the sauce and crumbs sit on.
Milk
Cooks the celery until tender and forms the base of the thickened sauce.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and helps the sauce brown on top.
Wheatmeal
Thickens the milk into a sauce that coats the celery.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden topping when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Wheatmeal must be stirred into the drained milk so it dissolves without lumps; the starch then thickens as it heats, letting the sauce coat the celery rather than run off.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, parmesan cheese, bread, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, parmesan cheese, bread, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes