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Celery Sauce
Cut the white part of two heads of celery into pieces about one inch and a half long. Put two ounces of butter into a saucepan, and when it is melted, throw in the celery, cover closely, and stew gently till it is quite tender. Mix in very smoothly a large table-spoonful of flour, and when it has browned a little, add a breakfast-cupful of good gravy, some salt, and a little nutmeg. Rub through a sieve, make hot, and serve. Probable cost, 2d. to 4d. per head. Sufficient for one small fowl.
A brown celery sauce built on a butter-stewed base rather than the white cream version more familiar today. Two things decide whether it works: how patiently the celery sweats, and whether your gravy is worth using.
- Two heads of celeryCelery of the period was generally smaller and looser than a modern trimmed head, so two heads may amount to rather less than the phrase suggests; the recipe wants only the pale inner ribs and heart, and the dark outer ribs can go to stock.
- A breakfast-cupfulUsually reckoned at somewhere between 8 and 10 fl oz, so roughly a standard cup or a little more. A teacupful was the smaller measure, commonly given as 5 to 6 fl oz.
- "Good gravy"This means brown meat stock or the reduced pan juices of a roast, not thickened packet gravy. Use a well-flavoured brown chicken or veal stock; anything watery leaves the sauce tasting only of flour.
- Stew gently, coveredThe hinge of the recipe. The celery must soften in butter without colouring, over the lowest heat with a tight lid, which takes 20 to 30 minutes. Rushed and browned celery turns bitter and will not sieve smoothly.
- Browning the flourOnce the flour goes in, cook it a minute or two so the raw taste goes and it takes a little colour. Add the stock off the heat or in stages to keep it from seizing into lumps.
- Rub through a sieveA food mill or blender does this in seconds; pass the blended sauce through a fine sieve afterwards to catch the celery strings, which do not break down.
- SeasoningNutmeg here means a scrape, not a spoonful. Salt at the end, since a reduced gravy may already carry enough.
- YieldThe book says sufficient for one small fowl. It also suits boiled or roast turkey, veal and poached white fish.
Celery sauce was a familiar part of British cookery from the late eighteenth century onward, commonly served with boiled fowl, turkey or veal, where the dish itself was mild and the sauce did the work. Household books of the period often give two versions: a white one finished with cream or milk, and a brown one like this, thickened with flour and moistened with meat gravy. The price note, twopence to fourpence a head, goes with the 'Probable cost' and 'Sufficient for' formula used in Cassell's, which costed its recipes for readers running a household on a fixed budget. Celery in this era was commonly blanched in trenches or earthed up to keep the ribs pale and mild, which is consistent with the recipe calling for the white part only; the green outer ribs were reckoned stronger and stringier.