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Celery Fritters, Curried
Wash and clean some white celery, cut it into two-inch pieces, and cook it until tender in stock or salted water. Drain on a sieve. When cold toss them in thick bechamel sauce, previously mixed with curry paste. Dip each piece into frying batter, or egg and bread-crumb each, and drop into boiling fat, fry to a golden colour, drain on a cloth or paper, sprinkle with fine salt mixed with sufficient curry powder to colour it, dish up on a folded napkin, and send to table at once. Probable cost, 8d.
A straightforward fritter, but it depends entirely on the celery being cold and the béchamel being stiff enough to cling. Rush either stage and the coating slides off in the fat.
- The hinge: chill the coated celeryThe hinge: cold celery, stiff sauce -- The béchamel must be thick enough to set on the celery like a paste, and the recipe is explicit that the pieces be cold before they are tossed in it. A spell on a tray in the refrigerator after coating is a modern addition, but it helps the sauce firm up before the batter or crumbs go on.
- Béchamel consistencyBéchamel consistency -- Aim for a thick coating sauce rather than a pouring one — roughly 2 tbsp each butter and flour to 1 cup milk. The recipe asks for the celery to be cold; letting the sauce cool and stiffen also makes it cling more readily.
- Curry paste vs. curry powderVictorian curry paste was a commercial oily, vinegared spice paste sold under brands like Crosse & Blackwell. A tablespoon of a modern mild curry paste, or 2 tsp curry powder bloomed in the roux butter, does the same job.
- White celeryThe recipe means blanched, pale celery, once produced by earthing up the stalks. Ordinary green supermarket celery works; take the inner stalks and peel any stringy outer ribs.
- Cooking the celerySimmer the two-inch lengths in stock or salted water 8-12 minutes, until a knife tip goes through with slight resistance. Fully collapsed celery will not survive being tossed and dipped.
- Frying fat"Boiling fat" means deep fat at 350-375F, hot enough that a crumb sizzles briskly on contact. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not drop.
- Cost and yieldThe "probable cost, 8d." is a Victorian price note, not a measurement. The recipe gives no quantity of celery, so judge by appetite: a couple of heads will make enough for a savoury or a first course for four.
- ServingThe fritters are drained on cloth or paper first; the folded napkin was largely a matter of presentation, and a warm platter lined with paper does the job. Serve immediately — the béchamel core softens the crust within minutes.
Fritters of cooked vegetables bound in a stiff sauce, then crumbed and fried, belong to the Anglo-French kitchen repertoire that Cassell's was written to codify for middle-class households with one or two servants. The technique is essentially that of a croquette, applied to a vegetable rather than minced meat, and it let a cook turn a cheap winter crop into a dish grand enough to appear as a savoury or an entremets. The curry element reflects how thoroughly Indian seasoning had been domesticated in British cooking by the end of the nineteenth century: bottled curry paste and tinned curry powder were pantry staples, used less to imitate any particular Indian dish than as a general-purpose warming, colouring flavour. Blanched white celery itself was a mark of good gardening — growers banked earth or boards around the stalks to keep them pale and tender — and it appears constantly in Victorian cookery books between autumn and early spring, when it was one of the few fresh vegetables reliably to hand.