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Celery Relish
1 1/2 cups chopped celery 4 teaspoons powdered sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon mustard 1/4 cup vinegar Mix ingredients in order given. Cover and let stand in a cold place one and one-half hours. Drain off the liquid before serving. When preparing celery include some of the small tender leaves.
An uncooked celery relish of the quick-pickle type, meant to be mixed, chilled briefly and drained. It comes together in minutes and keeps only a day or two.
- Powdered sugarIn American books of this period "powdered sugar" usually means a fine granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Ordinary granulated sugar dissolves fine in the vinegar and is the closer match.
- MustardThe half teaspoon is dry mustard powder, not prepared mustard from a jar. Prepared mustard would add its own vinegar and salt and throw the balance off.
- VinegarNo type is specified; cider vinegar suits celery better than distilled white, which at modern 5 percent acidity can be harsh. Taste before the full quarter cup goes in if your vinegar is strong.
- The choppingCut the celery small and even, about a quarter inch. Larger pieces will not take up the dressing in ninety minutes and the relish tastes merely salted.
- Why it is drainedThe salt and sugar pull water out of the celery, so the bowl fills with liquid. Draining it off leaves the celery crisp and seasoned rather than swimming; do it just before it goes to the table.
- The tender leavesWorth following. The pale inner leaves carry most of the celery aroma, and in an uncooked relish that aroma is the whole point.
- YieldRoughly a cup once drained, on the writer's estimate from 1 1/2 cups chopped celery; enough for four to six as a condiment alongside cold meat, chicken or a plain roast.
Relishes like this belong to the era when a cold, sharp, crisp accompaniment was expected beside almost any plain meat, and when celery itself was still something of a luxury vegetable displayed upright in a cut-glass celery vase. Nineteenth-century American celery was commonly blanched by banking soil against the stalks, which made it paler and more tender. The technique -- salt and sugar drawing liquid from a raw vegetable, which is then drained -- is the same one behind cucumber salads and the older "mock" pickles, and it gave a cook something pickle-like on the table in an hour and a half rather than a season.