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Sauce

Celery Sauce

A creamy sauce made from finely shredded celery, butter, flour, milk, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Clean the celery thoroughly and shred or slice it very finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the celery, butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Let it stew slowly until it becomes pulpy, ensuring it does not brown.

  3. Add the flour and mix well, then pour in the milk and boil for twenty minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve, reheat, and serve.

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 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 bulk and flavour base, breaking down into a pulpy body for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour while the celery stews.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the spoon.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the flour thickens into a creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stew without browning. If the celery browns during stewing, the sauce takes on bitter, caramelised flavours and loses its pale colour. Slow, gentle heat softens the celery until pulpy instead.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Celerythe original

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