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Celery Croquettes
2 or 3 heads of celery, according to size 2 bay leaves 1 pint of milk 2 tablespoons cream Pepper, powdered mace and salt Trim and wash the celery, and cut it into short lengths. Then pour some boiling water on, and let it stand for ten minutes. Put the milk into a saucepan with the bay leaves, mace and pepper, and then add the celery to this, letting it cook until tender. When tender drain, and cut it into small pieces. Melt a teaspoon of butter in a saucepan, and stir in an ounce of flour; when well mixed, add a gill of milk. Stir till it boils, and put in the chopped celery. Cook for about fifteen minutes, adding a little pepper and a little cream. Spread the mixture on a dish, and let it get cold. Make up into croquettes, roll them in rusk crumbs, and fry in boiling oil to a golden color. Drain well on a cloth or paper, and serve hot.
A straightforward bound-vegetable croquette from the meatless-cookery tradition, though the ingredient list and the method disagree about quantities in a couple of places.
- The hinge: the panade must be stiffAn ounce of flour with a gill of milk is a very thick white sauce, and it needs to be for the mixture to hold a shape. If your drained celery is at all wet the cold mass will slump when you try to form it; press the cooked celery firmly and chop it fine before folding it in.
- A gillA quarter of a pint, so 5 fl oz in imperial measure and 4 fl oz (half a cup) in American. The pint in the list is the celery's poaching liquid; whether the gill for the sauce is taken from that drained milk or measured fresh, the recipe does not say.
- PintIf you are following a British edition this is 20 fl oz, an American one 16. Either works here, since the milk is a poaching bath and is drained away.
- Heads of celeryCelery of this period was often grown blanched and pale. The recipe leaves the quantity loose ('according to size'), so judge by the volume of chopped celery your sauce can bind rather than a fixed weight.
- Powdered maceStill sold, ground, in the spice aisle; it is the outer covering of nutmeg and tastes like a lighter, more floral version of it. A quarter teaspoon is plenty for this quantity. Nutmeg substitutes acceptably.
- Rusk crumbsRusk is twice-baked bread, drier and harder than a modern loaf. Panko or plain dried breadcrumbs give the same crisp shell; fresh soft crumbs will go soggy.
- "Boiling oil"Means deep fat at frying heat, 350-375F, not literally boiling. Chill the formed croquettes thoroughly first, and fry in small batches so the oil does not drop below temperature and soak in.
- TimingThe fifteen minutes of cooking after the celery goes into the sauce is about driving off moisture rather than tenderising anything. Stir often over low heat; the mixture is thick and will catch.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; expect enough for a small course for three or four, served with a sharp sauce or a green salad. The strained poaching milk makes a good soup base rather than being discarded.
Croquettes were the workhorse of meatless cookery around the turn of the twentieth century: a savoury vegetable or pulse bound in a stiff flour-and-milk panade, chilled, crumbed and fried, giving a dish with the shape, crust and richness expected of a meat course. Books of this sort were produced both for Lenten and fast-day cooking and for the growing vegetarian societies of Britain and America. Celery earned its place there partly through flavour, since it carries the same savoury, slightly salty note cooks look for in a stock, and partly through fashion: blanched celery was a prized winter crop, generally sold by the head with the leaves on, and appeared on tables both raw in glass celery vases and cooked. Mace and bay in the poaching milk are typical of the period's restrained approach to spicing a white dish.