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Celery
Celery is usually eaten raw as a relish. Or it may be scraped, cut in inch pieces, cooked until tender, and served in a white sauce, or drained and fried in deep fat. It may also be scalloped with chopped red pepper, white sauce and crumbs.
This is a method note rather than a measured recipe — the book expects you to know its white sauce by heart. A few things worth pinning down before you start.
- "Scraped"Celery of the period is generally reckoned to have been stringier than most of what is sold now. Scraping means running a knife or peeler down the outer ribs to strip the coarse fibres; on modern celery only the largest outer stalks need it.
- How long "until tender"Inch pieces of celery take 8 to 12 minutes in boiling salted water, or slightly less if you intend to fry them afterwards. Past about 15 minutes the pieces lose their shape and turn watery.
- White sauceThe book assumes you know it; a typical period white sauce runs about 1 to 2 tablespoons butter and the same of flour to 1 cup milk with salt and pepper, the lighter proportion being the thin version. Cooking the celery in stock rather than water and using part of that liquid in the sauce is worth trying.
- Frying in deep fatBoiled celery should be drained and patted thoroughly dry, or the wet surface will spit in the fat. The recipe specifies no coating; if you egg and crumb the pieces, fry at about 375F until the coating is golden, roughly 2 minutes.
- The scalloped versionLayer the drained celery with white sauce and chopped sweet red pepper in a buttered dish and top with buttered crumbs. No oven heat is given; a moderate oven of around 375F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the crumbs colour and the sauce bubbles at the edges, works.
- "Red pepper"Here it means chopped fresh or canned sweet red pepper or pimiento, not cayenne; the instruction to chop it rules cayenne out.
- YieldOne large head of celery, trimmed and cut, gives about 4 cups and will serve four as a side dish.
- Don't discard the leavesThe inner leaves and the tough butt ends are worth simmering into the cooking water or into stock.
Celery was a comparative luxury in American kitchens through much of the nineteenth century — fussy to grow, blanched by banking soil or boards against the stalks, and costly enough that it was often served upright in a dedicated glass celery vase as a centrepiece rather than hidden in a dish. That may be part of why this entry begins by noting it is "usually eaten raw as a relish": on a formal table celery belonged with the olives and salted nuts. By the time Lowney's was published, self-blanching Golden and green Pascal types had helped make celery far cheaper and more plentiful. Boiling vegetables and serving them in white sauce was a common treatment in this period, and the scalloped variation with red pepper and crumbs reflects the era's fondness for baked dishes assembled from a sauce, a vegetable and a crumb topping.