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Sauce

Celery Sauce

A sauce made from celery, butter, flour, broth or beef gravy, seasoned with pepper or cayenne.

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 ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Fry the celery in butter until it begins to soften.

  2. Add the flour and allow it to brown slightly.

  3. Stir in the broth or beef gravy.

  4. Season with pepper or cayenne to taste.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Celery + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 body and vegetable flavor of the sauce as it softens in the pan.
Butter
Fats the pan and carries flavor while the celery softens and browns.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce and encourages slight browning for a deeper, nutty flavor.
Broth or beef gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds savory depth.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Cooking flour in fat until it only slightly browns removes raw starch taste and builds nutty flavor. Taking it too far burns it and makes the sauce bitter, while stopping too early leaves a pasty flavor.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, beef, 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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