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Celery, Stewed
Wash four heads of celery very clean, trim them neatly, cutting off the leaves and tops; cut them into three-inch lengths, and tie them in small bundles, and parboil them in sufficient salt and water to cover them. Drain and stew them, until tender, in some stock. Brown two ounces of butter together with a table-spoonful of flour in a saucepan, dilute it with the stock in which the celery was boiled, lay the celery in it, let it boil for ten minutes more, and serve as hot as possible. Time, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 2d. to 4d. per head. Sufficient for six persons.
A plain Victorian braise that still works, provided the celery is cut and tied so it holds shape and the sauce is reduced enough to have flavour. The whole thing takes about 45 minutes and serves six as a side.
- Heads, not stalks"Four heads of celery" means four whole bunches, not four ribs. Victorian celery was usually trench-grown and blanched pale, and often slimmer than modern heads, so four supermarket heads will likely give a good deal more; three is usually plenty for six people.
- TrimmingCut off the leafy tops and the root base, then peel the outer ribs with a swivel peeler to remove the coarse strings. The original does not call for this; blanched, earthed-up celery may well have been less stringy, but skipping the step on modern celery can leave fibrous mouthfuls.
- Tying the bundlesButcher's twine around each three-inch bundle keeps the pieces intact through two cookings and lets you lift them out without breaking. Cut the twine before serving, or plate the bundles whole.
- Parboil brieflySalted water just to cover, and only five to eight minutes. The celery finishes in stock; boiling it soft here leaves nothing to braise and washes out the flavour.
- Save the cooking waterThe recipe uses "the stock in which the celery was boiled" for the sauce, so keep both liquids. Reduce the strained braising stock hard before adding it to the roux, or the sauce will be thin and watery.
- The brown rouxTwo ounces is about 57 g of butter to one tablespoon of flour, which is a fat-heavy roux by modern proportion. Cook it to a nut-brown colour over medium heat, stirring, then add the hot stock a little at a time to avoid lumps; if it seems greasy, add a second spoonful of flour.
- Stock choiceA light chicken or veal stock suits it best. Beef stock overwhelms celery, and a cube-based stock will make the dish salty on top of the salted parboiling water, so season at the end.
- ServingCelery loses its appeal as it cools and the butter sauce breaks, which is why the original insists on "as hot as possible." Warm the dish and send it straight to the table, traditionally alongside roast or boiled meat.
Stewed celery belongs to a long British habit of treating celery as a cooked vegetable rather than a raw one. Celery was grown in trenches and earthed up through autumn to blanch the stalks pale and mild, which made it a winter vegetable in Victorian kitchens and explains its constant appearance in nineteenth-century vegetable chapters, braised, creamed, or served in a white sauce. The price is given as 2d. to 4d. per head, a small enough sum that the dish sat comfortably in a middle-class household. The method here, parboil then finish in a brown sauce built from the cooking liquid, is often described as an English adaptation of the French braise, and the same treatment turns up in the period applied to endive, cardoons and sea kale.