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Creamed Celery on Toast

Creamed celery on toast is a dish of boiled celery in a white sauce served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Celery on Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cook the celery

  1. Scrape and cut enough celery to make three cups.

  2. Cook the celery in boiling salted water, covered, until tender, about 45 minutes.

  3. Uncover and let boil until the liquid is nearly evaporated.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a thin white sauce by melting the butter, adding flour, and gradually whisking in the milk until smooth.

  2. Pour the white sauce over the cooked celery.

Toast and serve

  1. Trim the crusts from the bread and cut into triangles.

  2. Toast the bread in a 350°F (175°C) oven until crisp.

  3. Serve a spoonful of the creamed celery on each slice of toast.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main body of the dish and gives it its vegetable flavor and tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Butter
Enriches the white sauce with fat and adds a rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Bread
Provides a crisp base that holds the creamed celery.

The step that matters

Uncover and let boil until the liquid is nearly evaporated. Excess cooking water left in the celery would thin the sauce and make the toast soggy. Reducing it concentrates the celery flavor before the sauce is added.

Swap the celery

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, butter, flour. 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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