Name: Beaized Celery with Brown Sauce
Ingredients: 6 heads of celery; stock; coarse sea salt; 1 pat of butter; lemon juice; pepper; fried bread (for garnish); beef marrow

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beaized Celery with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Clean and cut the celery into 6-inch lengths, trimming the roots neatly.
Parboil the celery in water for 10 minutes, then immerse in cold water.
Drain the celery on a sieve and place in a stewpan with stock.
Braize gently over low heat for about 1 hour.
Drain the celery on a napkin and cut each head into three equal lengths.
Arrange the celery like cutlets on a serving dish.
Garnish with small circular croutons of fried bread filled with boiled beef marrow.
Toss the marrow in a stewpan with a little glaze, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.
Pour brown sauce mixed with butter and lemon juice over the celery and serve.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).