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Celery, Stewed

Stewed celery in a white sauce made with cream, butter, flour, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Celery, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the celery, remove the outer leaves, and cut it into lengths of about 4 inches.

Cook

  1. Place the celery in a saucepan with the broth and simmer until tender, about 20 to 25 minutes.

  2. Add the cream, thickening, mace, nutmeg, and season with pepper and salt; simmer for an additional 4 to 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour into a dish and serve, garnished with toasted bread snippets.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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 becomes tender through slow simmering.
Butter and flour thickening
Thickens the stock into a smooth white sauce that coats the celery.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier texture to the sauce.
White stock or weak broth
Provides the cooking liquid that softens the celery and forms the sauce base.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce after adding the cream. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils hard, so keep the sauce at a gentle simmer and avoid vigorous boiling once the cream and thickening go in.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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