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Stewed Celery

A dish of boiled celery roots simmered in broth, finished with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Stewed Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the celery roots to fit the dish and remove coarse leaves and green tops.

  2. Trim the root ends and wash the celery thoroughly in several waters.

Boil and arrange

  1. Boil the celery in just enough water to cover it, with salt and butter, until tender (25-30 minutes).

  2. Drain the celery and arrange it on a hot dish.

Sauce and serve

  1. Pour a thick béchamel or white sauce over it.

  2. Stew it in broth and serve with rich brown gravy.

Stew and finish

  1. Slice the celery and simmer it in broth until soft.

  2. Thicken with flour and butter or arrowroot.

  3. Add cream, salt, and pepper.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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
Forms the bulk of the dish and turns soft and tender when boiled and stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the cooking water and the thickened liquid.
Broth or stock
Supplies savoury flavour and the moisture that stews the celery.
Flour or arrowroot
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smoother, more clinging sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the liquid. Flour or arrowroot must be fully blended into the hot liquid, or it clumps and leaves the sauce lumpy. Arrowroot also thins if overheated or boiled for long, so the thickener should be added near the end of simmering.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, cream. 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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