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Another Way to Stew Celery

A stew made from celery, water, salt, butter, flour, heavy cream, and black 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 ↓

Another Way to Stew Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut off the green tops and outer parts of a few heads of celery.

  2. Cut the celery into small pieces and wash them well.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil the celery in salted water until tender.

  2. Pour off nearly all the water.

  3. Add butter mixed with flour, a little heavy cream, salt, and pepper.

  4. Heat everything together.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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
Forms the main body of the stew and gives it its vegetable flavor and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the stew.
Flour
Mixed with butter to thicken the stew as it heats.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and body, softening the stew's texture.

The step that matters

Pour off nearly all the water. Removing most of the cooking water concentrates the celery flavor and leaves room for the butter and flour thickener to form a body rather than a watery broth.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, 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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