Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Celery and Spanish Sauce

A stew of celery simmered in a Spanish-style sauce of butter, flour, broth, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stewed Celery and Spanish Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Clean and chop the celery into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir to form a roux.

  3. Gradually add the vegetable broth, stirring constantly.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the chopped celery, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Simmer until the celery is tender, about 15 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 recipes

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

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
Is the main vegetable, becoming tender and mild as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the roux.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Vegetable broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives the celery savoury flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the broth to the roux. Pouring liquid in all at once or too quickly can leave lumps, because flour clumps before it hydrates. Adding the broth gradually while stirring constantly lets the starch disperse evenly and thicken into a smooth sauce.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar, 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes