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Celery Sauce

A creamy sauce made from celery, stock, flour, butter, and milk, seasoned with salt and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Celery Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the celery and stock or water.

  2. Add ¾ teaspoon of salt, cover, and boil for 15 to 20 minutes until the celery is tender.

  3. Drain the celery, reserving the liquid, and add enough liquid back to the celery to make ¾ cup.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour.

  2. Gradually pour in the prepared liquid, stirring until boiling.

  3. Season with white pepper to taste.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 + white peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in butter and combined with the liquid.
Rich milk
Adds creaminess and body to the sauce.
Celery
Provides the main flavor and tender texture of the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the prepared liquid, stirring until boiling. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps and allowing the starch to thicken the sauce smoothly as it boils.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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