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Sauce Au Celery

A creamy sauce made from celery, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sauce Au Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Cut the celery into 1‑inch lengths and place it in a saucepan.

  2. Cover the celery with boiling water and boil for about 30 minutes until tender.

  3. Strain the celery.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter.

  2. Whisk in the flour to make a roux.

  3. Blend the cooking water with the roux.

  4. Set the mixture over medium heat.

  5. Stir until smooth and thick.

  6. Add salt, pepper, and the cooked celery to the sauce.

  7. Place the sauce over boiling water.

  8. Let it stew gently until the celery begins to break down.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Provides the main flavor and, as it breaks down, body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the flour for the roux.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.

The step that matters

Making the roux and thickening the sauce. Flour must be cooked in the melted butter and blended smoothly with the liquid while heating, or it forms lumps and the sauce fails to thicken evenly. Stirring keeps starch granules dispersed so the sauce becomes smooth and thick.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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