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Celery Sauce

A sauce made with 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. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the celery and fry until it begins to soften.

  3. Stir in the flour and allow it to brown slightly.

  4. Pour in the broth or beef gravy and season with pepper or cayenne.

  5. Simmer until the celery is tender and the sauce is heated through.

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 vegetable body and flavour, becoming tender as it simmers in the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the celery and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and, once lightly browned, adds a nutty depth to the sauce.
Broth or beef gravy
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and supplies savoury, meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Flour cooked in fat must be stirred and cooked until lightly browned before liquid is added. Browning develops a nutty flavour and removes the raw starchy taste, and adding liquid too early can leave lumps.

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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