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Savory Celery

Savory Celery is a stew of tender celery in stock with onion juice, salt, pepper, parsley, thickened with roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Savory Celery

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Select the whitest and tenderest stalks and soak them in ice-water.

  2. Cut the outer, coarser stalks into three-inch lengths.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew the cut stalks in stock, seasoned with onion juice, salt, pepper, and parsley, covered for one hour on low heat.

  2. Drain the cooked stalks and press them in a colander.

  3. Return the stock to the heat and bring it to a boil.

  4. Add the reserved stalks.

  5. Cut the reserved stalks into short lengths.

  6. Cook gently until tender.

  7. Thicken the mixture with a good spoonful of roux.

  8. Boil briefly.

  9. Serve.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery stalks
Form the main body of the stew, becoming tender through long, gentle stewing.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the seasoning and cooks the celery.
Roux
Thickens the stock to give the stew a smooth, body-rich texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with a good spoonful of roux. Roux thickens only when the liquid is hot enough for its starch to swell, so it should be stirred in and brought to a brief boil. Adding too much or leaving it unstirred can cause lumps or an overly thick, pasty result.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper, parsley. 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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