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CELERY, STEWED (a la Creme)
Wash very clean two heads of celery, trim them neatly, cutting off the outer stalks, the leaves, and the tops, and boil them in salt and water, until nearly tender. Drain them and put them in a dish. Have ready in another saucepan a breakfast-cupful of good cream. Let it boil, with a piece of butter rolled in flour, till it is thick and smooth; then pour it over the celery, grate a little nutmeg over the top, and serve. Time to boil the celery, from three-quarters of an hour to one hour and a half. Sufficient for four persons. Probable cost, 2d. to 4d. per head.
A plain Victorian vegetable dish that stands or falls on how long the celery boils. The published time reflects the coarse, fibrous celery of the period; modern celery needs a fraction of it.
- Cooking timeThree-quarters of an hour to an hour and a half will reduce today's celery to grey threads. Trimmed hearts want 12-20 minutes in simmering salted water, until a knife point meets no resistance at the base.
- "Two heads of celery"A head is a whole bunch, not a single rib. After the outer stalks, leaves and tops are removed you are left with two hearts, which is the intended yield of four portions.
- Breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup runs about 8-10 fl oz, so read this as a generous cup of cream. Use double or heavy cream; single cream splits more readily when boiled hard.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre manié — equal weights of soft butter and plain flour worked to a paste, roughly 1/2 oz of each here. Whisk it into the simmering cream in small pieces so it disperses before it sets into lumps.
- Drain thoroughlyThe hinge of the dish. Celery holds a great deal of water between its layers; if it goes into the dish wet, the cream thins to a puddle. Drain it upright in a colander, then blot on a cloth.
- NutmegGrate it fresh at the last moment; grated nutmeg loses its aroma fairly quickly, which is why it goes on as the dish is served.
- Yield and servingFour as a side dish. It is best served immediately in a warmed dish; the sauce skins and the celery weeps if it stands.
- "Probable cost, 2d. to 4d. per head"Most likely per head of celery rather than per diner, since the number served is given separately in the line above.
Celery reached the English kitchen garden as a cultivated vegetable in the seventeenth century, developed from wild smallage, and by the Victorian period it was grown in trenches and earthed up to blanch the stalks white and sweet. It was a winter vegetable, at its best after frost, which is why nineteenth-century cookery books give it so many hot preparations — stewed, braised in stock, or served à la crème like this — rather than treating it only as something raw in a glass on the table. The finish of cream thickened with beurre manié and scented with nutmeg is the standard English white sauce treatment of the day, here applied to celery.