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Savory Celery

A celery stew simmered in stock, seasoned with onion juice, salt, pepper, parsley, and thickened with roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 celery stalks and soak them in ice water.

Make the soup

  1. Cut the outer, coarser stalks into three-inch lengths and stew them in stock with onion juice, salt, pepper, and parsley for one hour, covered.

  2. Drain the cooked stalks in a colander.

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

  4. Add the reserved stalks, cut into short lengths, and cook gently until tender.

  5. Thicken the mixture with a spoonful of roux, boil briefly, and 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
Provide the main vegetable flavor and body of the soup.
Stock
Forms the liquid base in which the celery cooks and softens.
Roux
Thickens the soup to a smoother, heavier texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with roux. Roux is a cooked flour and fat mixture that thickens liquid when heated. Adding it to a boiling soup and boiling briefly lets the starch swell fully, so the soup thickens evenly without raw floury taste or lumps.

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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