Skip to main content
Main

Celeri a LA Creme

A creamy celery dish made with boiled celery, white sauce, butter or cream, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Celeri a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Wash the celery thoroughly and cut it into 2-inch pieces.

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

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.

Simmer and serve

  1. Set the mixture over boiling water and simmer 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 main body of the dish and gives it its vegetable flavour and tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the covered mixture gently. Gentle heat over boiling water keeps the white sauce from scorching or splitting while the celery softens and absorbs its flavour. Too much heat can make the sauce separate or stick to the base of the pan.

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.

You might also like

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