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Celery (Pound of celery seed or a I)
¼ pound of celery seed or a 1 quart of cider vinegar, half dozen roots of celery, 1 teaspoonful of salt, 2 teaspoonfuls of granulated sugar.
If you use the celery seed, simply mix all the ingredients together, put in a porcelain-lined kettle, bring to boiling point. When cold, bottle, shake every day for two weeks, strain through a fine cloth or filter. Bottle and cork tightly. Put away to flavor salad dressings and sauces. If the celery roots are used, take off the outside and cut the roots into thin slices, add to the vinegar and proceed precisely the same as when you use the celery seed. .
This is celery vinegar, an infusion rather than a dish, and the printed ingredient line has been mangled in typesetting. Read it as: a quart of cider vinegar, plus either about a quarter pound of celery seed or half a dozen celery roots, with a teaspoon of salt and two teaspoons of sugar.
- On the celery seedThe printed page gives ¼ pound of celery seed to a quart of vinegar, which is roughly a cup of seed. That is a very assertive ratio; 2 to 3 tablespoons per quart gives a vinegar you can use in a dressing without it dominating.
- "Celery roots"This may well mean celeriac, the knobbly root variety, rather than the base of a bunch of stalk celery, though usage varied. Half a dozen roots is a lot for one quart; two peeled and thinly sliced roots will scent a quart thoroughly.
- Porcelain-lined kettleThe point is a nonreactive pan. Vinegar strips metal from bare cast iron, aluminium and unlined copper, taking on a grey, metallic taste. Use stainless steel, enamel or glass, and the same for any funnel or ladle.
- Bring to boiling point, then stopHeat the vinegar only until it just reaches a boil, then take it off. Prolonged boiling drives off the volatile oils in the seed, which is the entire flavour you are trying to capture.
- Two weeks of shakingThe daily shake keeps the seed from settling into a solid mat at the bottom, where it infuses poorly. A cool dark cupboard is right; direct light dulls the colour and flavour over a fortnight.
- StrainingCelery seed is small enough to slip through a mesh sieve. A double layer of muslin, a jelly bag or a paper coffee filter is what the original means, and filtering twice gives a clear vinegar that keeps better looking.
- Yield and keepingAbout one quart. Sealed in clean bottles it holds a year or more in the cupboard on the strength of its own acidity, though the aroma fades after six months or so.
- How to use itSubstitute it for part of the plain vinegar in a French dressing, in coleslaw, in potato or chicken salad, or in a cocktail sauce. It can stand in for celery salt in older receipts, bearing in mind that the vinegar itself is lightly salted.
Flavoured vinegars were a standing feature of the Victorian and Edwardian storeroom: tarragon, garlic, shallot, chilli, horseradish and celery, often made in autumn and drawn on through the winter when the fresh herb or root was unavailable. Celery in particular had a short season, so cooks preserved its flavour in whatever medium they had — vinegar, salt (celery salt, generally traced to the same impulse) or a dried seed. The seed here is not the seed of table celery but of a wild or smallage type grown specifically for seed; the recipe offers seed and root as alternatives simply because either carries the flavour. The whole purpose of the bottle was to make a plain oil-and-vinegar dressing taste of something in February.