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Celery and Macaroni Stew
3 heads of white celery 1 pint of milk and water 1 bay leaf 1 1/2 gills Bechamel sauce Little pepper and salt 2 ounces macaroni A grate of nutmeg Trim and wash the celery, and boil it till tender with the bay leaf in the milk and water. Drain, and cut into short lengths. Cook the macaroni in boiling water; drain, and cut into short lengths also. Heat up the sauce, and add the celery and macaroni, with the seasoning, and let the whole simmer for fifteen minutes. Do not break the celery or macaroni, and serve very hot. CELERY STICKS 1 head of celery 1/2 a cream cheese Pepper, salt, mustard, cayenne and little chopped parsley 1 ounce butter Clean the celery, and cut the nicest white sticks into three lengths. Mix the butter, cheese and seasoning together and fill in the concaves with the mixture. Serve garnished with parsley.
A wartime-era meatless supper dish built on a béchamel base. Two recipes run together here; the second, celery sticks, is a cold savoury and needs no cooking.
- GillsA gill is a quarter of a pint: 4 fl oz US, 5 fl oz Imperial. One and a half gills is therefore about 7 1/2 fl oz of bechamel, a scant cup — barely enough to coat, which is the point: this is a stew, not a gratin.
- Milk and waterA pint of milk and water means the two combined, in whatever proportion you like; half and half is a safe default. British Imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so about 2 1/2 cups.
- BéchamelNot supplied here, as the book assumes it. About 1 oz butter, 1 oz flour and a cup of milk, cooked out for a few minutes so it does not taste of raw flour. The celery cooking liquid can replace some of the milk and is better than throwing it out.
- Three heads of celeryCelery of this period was generally blanched, and heads were probably smaller than modern supermarket ones; two large heads is likely closer to the intended volume, and the outer ribs need peeling of their strings.
- Do not break the celeryThis is the instruction that decides the dish. Boil the celery only until a knife meets slight resistance, then drain and cut. Fifteen minutes of further simmering in sauce will finish it; celery boiled soft first collapses into threads.
- MacaroniTwo ounces is a modest 55-60 g of dry macaroni. Cook it a couple of minutes short of done, since it keeps absorbing sauce during the simmer. Macaroni of this period was commonly sold in long tubes, which is why the recipe tells you to cut it.
- Cream cheese for the sticks"Half a cream cheese" means half a small fresh curd cheese of the period; the size is not recoverable, so judge by eye — a few ounces. Modern block cream cheese works; beat it with the softened butter and seasoning until pipeable.
- YieldNo yield is given. On these quantities the stew would serve about two as a main course or four as a side, and the celery sticks a plateful.
Meatless Cookery belongs to a run of books in which "meat substitute" meant a dish substantial enough to sit in the centre of the plate rather than a manufactured protein. Celery was a natural candidate: the blanched winter varieties then grown in the Fens and around Ely were valued as a cooked vegetable as well as a raw one, and their faint bitterness stands up to a milk sauce in a way that most vegetables do not. Pairing it with macaroni and béchamel follows the older English habit of treating pasta as a vehicle for cream and cheese rather than as an Italian dish in its own right. The celery sticks that follow show the other half of the vegetable's reputation in this period, as a cold savoury served at the end of dinner or with drinks, the hollow rib acting as an edible spoon for a seasoned cheese.