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To Fry Celery

Fried celery sticks coated in egg and wine batter, cooked in lard and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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To Fry Celery

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Fry Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut the green tops off the celery and remove the outer stalks.

  2. Clean the lower parts of the celery well.

  3. Cut each head of celery in half.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, make a batter with the eggs, wine, and salt.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the lard and butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Dip each piece of celery in the batter.

  3. Fry the battered celery until golden in the hot lard and butter.

  4. Transfer the fried celery to a warm dish.

  5. Pour melted butter over the fried celery.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it cling to the celery while frying.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it coats the celery and crisps as it fries.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the coating a golden, crisp surface.
Butter
Adds rich flavor and browning to the fried coating.

The step that matters

Fry the battered celery until golden. Frying at a steady medium heat sets the egg batter into a crisp coating. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns soggy; if too hot, it browns before the celery softens.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, wine, flour, butter. 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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