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Celery
Clean and wash the heads, cut in nice pieces; ; stew them in little water for twenty-five minutes; serve on toast, and pour butter over.
A brief instruction of the kind that assumed a cook already knew the shape of the dish. Two details govern the result: how much water, and how much of the celery you keep.
- "Heads" of celeryA head is the whole bunch, not a single rib. Two heads serve four; trim the root end, separate the ribs, and cut them into 2-inch lengths. String the coarse outer ribs with a peeler if they feel fibrous.
- "Little water"Roughly half a cup for two heads in a covered pan. The point is to steam-braise rather than boil, so the liquid concentrates instead of carrying the flavour off down the sink.
- Twenty-five minutesLikely suited to thick, coarse outer ribs; celery sold today is generally more tender and may go soft well before then. Start checking at 12 minutes and pull it when a knife meets slight resistance.
- The cooking liquidDo not discard it. Reduce what remains in the pan to a spoonful or two and stir the butter into it, which gives you a light sauce rather than melted fat sitting on the bread.
- "Pour butter over"Around 2 to 3 tablespoons for two heads, melted or lightly browned. A grating of nutmeg or a little lemon suits stewed celery, though the original expects neither.
- The toastUse a firm, close-crumbed white bread cut thick and toasted dry, or it will go to paste under the celery. Serving vegetables on toast was a standard way to turn a small quantity into a supper dish.
- YieldTwo heads with butter and toast makes a side for four, or a light supper for two.
Celery in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a prestige vegetable, blanched in trenches or boards to whiten and sweeten the stalks, and American cookbooks of the period print separate entries for serving it raw in a tall glass celery vase on the table. Cooked celery was plausibly the thriftier fate of the coarse outer ribs, though the connection is inference rather than record, and stewing them in a covered pan with butter is essentially the English braised-celery method reduced to two lines. Serving on toast was a general habit of the era rather than anything specific to celery: creamed mushrooms, dried beef, poached eggs and stewed tomatoes all arrived the same way, the bread standing in for the pastry or rice that a more elaborate kitchen would have used.