Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Celery

A creamy celery dish simmered in broth and finished with heavy cream and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Clean the celery thoroughly and remove the coarse green outer leaves.

  2. Cut the celery into small pieces.

Cook

  1. Stew the celery in the broth until tender.

  2. Add the heavy cream, flour, and butter.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg if desired.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender and soft as it stews.
Broth
Provides the liquid in which the celery stews, adding savory flavor.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the stewing liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cream and broth mixture so it becomes a lightly bound sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the heavy cream, flour, and butter. Flour must be well incorporated into the hot liquid to avoid lumps, and cream should be kept at a gentle simmer rather than boiling hard, which can cause it to separate or thicken unevenly.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, cream, flour, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

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

More stewed celery recipes

with White Sauce 5with Cream 4 See all 108 →

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipesCelery Cream SoupCelery Cream Soup15 recipes