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Celeri a LA Creme

Celery cooked in a white sauce made from its cooking water, finished with butter or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Celeri a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the celery thoroughly and cut it into 2-inch pieces.

Cook the celery

  1. Boil the celery in salted water until tender, about 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a white sauce using the water from boiling the celery.

  2. Stir in 2 teaspoons of butter or a little cream into the sauce.

Combine and simmer

  1. Drain the celery and add it to the sauce.

  2. Set the mixture over boiling water and simmer gently, covered, for about 45 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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Celery + buttertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its vegetable flavour and tender texture.
Butter or cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, covered, over boiling water. Gentle, covered heat keeps the sauce from scorching and separating while the celery softens in it. Vigorous boiling can break an emulsified cream sauce and make it grainy or thin.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. 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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