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CHAPTER XI: Celery
VEGETABLES CONTAINING LITTLE STARCH CELERY, HOLLANDAISE STYLE 1 cup of cooked celery (nearly a pint of uncooked) 1/4 teaspoonful of salt 2 tablespoonfuls of butter 1/4 teaspoonful of pepper 3 yolks of eggs 1 teaspoonful of lemon juice Use trimmed stalks of well-bleached celery; cut these into pieces half or three-fourths an inch long. Let simmer in water to cover until tender. Renew water as is needed during the cooking; when the celery is tender there should not be more than a cup of water with it. Cream the butter; add the salt, pepper and one yolk; beat in this yolk, then add the other, and when evenly mixed, stir into the cooked celery; let stand over hot water or on the back of the range while the mixture is being added; add the lemon juice. Serve at once in a hot dish or on slices of toast. The lemon may be omitted. CREAMED CELERY 1 cup of cooked celery 1 cup of milk, less the celery 2 tablespoonfuls of butter water 2 tablespoonfuls of flour 2 slices of toast 1/4 teaspoonful of salt Boiling salted water 1/4 teaspoonful of pepper Butter Cook the celery as above, but reduce the water till but little remains. Measure the water and use this with milk or cream to fill a cup as the liquid in making a sauce. Stir the cooked celery into the sauce. Dip the toast in boiling, salted water, set on plates, spread with butter and pour the celery and sauce over the toast. For a more hearty supper or luncheon dish set poached eggs above the celery.
Two ways with boiled celery from a book built around single-cup quantities. Both are quick, but both hinge on heat control at the moment the enrichment goes in.
- Do not let the yolks boilThe butter-and-yolk mixture is stirred into hot celery and held over hot water or at the back of the range, never over direct heat. Above roughly 180F the yolks scramble and the sauce goes grainy; keep it just hot enough to thicken and serve immediately.
- "Well-bleached celery"Bleached (blanched) celery was grown banked with soil or boards to keep the stalks pale, tender and mild. Modern Pascal celery is green and stringier; peel the outer ribs with a vegetable peeler and use the inner heart where you can.
- "Back of the range"On a coal or wood range the rear was the coolest zone. Translate it as the lowest burner setting, or better, a bowl set over barely simmering water.
- The garbled ingredient lineIn the creamed celery list, "1 cup of milk, less the celery" and "water" belong together: reduce the cooking water to a few tablespoonfuls, measure it, and top it up with milk or cream to make one cup of liquid for the sauce.
- Sauce proportionsTwo tablespoons each butter and flour to one cup liquid is a medium white sauce. Cook the roux a minute before adding liquid so the sauce does not taste of raw flour.
- Cooking timeTender young celery cut in half-inch pieces may be done in fifteen minutes or so, though the instruction to renew the water implies a longer simmer for the coarser stalks the book assumes. Judge by a knife tip; overcooked celery collapses to strings.
- Dipping the toastPassing toast through boiling salted water appears in a number of period household books, the point being to soften it so it absorbed sauce without going to paste. It is optional, and modern bread, being softer, needs it less.
- Raw-yolk caveatThe yolks in the first recipe are warmed but never brought to a hard-cooked temperature. Anyone cooking for the elderly, the very young or the immune-compromised should use pasteurized eggs.
The chapter heading, "Vegetables Containing Little Starch," is the giveaway: this is turn-of-the-century domestic science, where vegetables were sorted by their proportions of starch, protein and water rather than by season or flavor. Celery earned its place in such books partly on dietetic grounds and partly on status. Bleached celery was a labor-intensive crop, banked with earth or boards to keep the stalks white and mild, and through the late nineteenth century it was served upright in special celery glasses as a mark of a well-set table; Kalamazoo, Michigan, built a considerable reputation on growing it. The first recipe is "Hollandaise style" rather than true hollandaise: there is no emulsion whisked over heat, only creamed butter and yolks stirred into the hot vegetable, a simpler liaison that older household books used freely for vegetables and soups.