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Celery a LA Cr&Me

A boiled celery dish finished in a white sauce made from its cooking water and 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 ↓

Celery a LA Cr&Me

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the celery to remove all dirt and cut it into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Boil the celery in salted boiling water for about 20 minutes until tender.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of butter or a little cream to the sauce.

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

Stew and serve

  1. Set the mixture over boiling water and stew gently for about 45 minutes, keeping it covered.

  2. Serve hot.

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 bulk of the dish and becomes tender through boiling and gentle stewing.
Butter or cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the white sauce.

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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