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Sauce

Celery Sauce, White

A white sauce flavored with stewed celery, seasoned with salt, and thickened with milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Sauce, White

Ingredients

Directions

Make the celery purée

  1. Stew the celery in salt and water until soft.

  2. Remove the celery and pound it in a mortar.

  3. Rub the pounded celery through a sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add the White Sauce to the celery.

  2. Season with salt and adjust thickness with milk or cream as needed.

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 + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + milktop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,759 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 sticks
Provides the main flavour and, once softened and sieved, the body of the sauce.
White sauce
Adds richness and a smooth, thick base that carries the celery flavour.
Milk or cream
Thins the sauce to the desired consistency and adds richness.

The step that matters

Rub the pounded celery through a sieve. Pushing the softened celery through a sieve breaks down the fibres, giving a smooth texture. Skipping this leaves stringy pieces that a sauce cannot hide.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, milk. 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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