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Celery Stewed a LA Creme

A stew of celery cooked with bacon and consommé, served with béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,360 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Celery Stewed a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the celery

  1. Boil the celery in salted water until nearly done.

  2. Stew the celery between slices of bacon with enough consommé to cover.

  3. Once very tender, drain the celery on a sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve with béchamel sauce.

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 + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,360 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White celery
Forms the tender main body of the stew, absorbing flavour from the consommé and bacon as it braises.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour that seasons the celery as it stews.
Consommé
Provides a flavourful liquid that braises the celery and carries seasoning into it.
Béchamel sauce
Adds a creamy, rich sauce that balances the savoury, tender celery when served.

The step that matters

Stew until very tender. Celery has tough fibres that only soften fully after long, gentle simmering in liquid. Stopping early leaves it stringy, so the stew should be checked until it is very tender before draining.

“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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