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Celery Rolls
1/4 cup cream cheese 1 tablespoon cream 2 drops onion juice 1/2 teaspoon salt shake of cayenne celery hearts butter Mix cheese, cream, onion juice, salt and cayenne together, and fill the hollow of the celery. Remove crusts from fresh bread and cut in thin slices. Place slice on damp towel to keep from breaking. Cut celery into same lengths as bread and roll. Spread butter on outside edges to hold bread in place. Chill well and serve.
A rolled tea sandwich of the sort meant to be made an hour ahead and served cold. Everything depends on the bread being fresh, thin and pliable — stale bread will crack the moment it curves.
- The hinge: bread that bendsUse a soft sandwich loaf sliced thin (about 1/4 inch) and no more than a day old. Rolling the slice out flat with a rolling pin first makes it compress and bend without splitting; the damp towel keeps it from drying while you work.
- Cream cheese quantityA quarter cup is roughly 2 oz. Bring it fully to room temperature before mixing or the tablespoon of cream will not blend in smoothly.
- Onion juiceEasiest made by grating half a small onion and pressing the pulp through a fine sieve. Two drops is genuinely two drops — it is there for background sharpness, not onion flavour.
- Celery heartsThe pale inner ribs, which are narrow, tender and curve deeply enough to hold filling. Outer ribs are too wide and too stringy to roll inside a slice of bread.
- The salt is highHalf a teaspoon against 2 oz of cheese is assertive by current taste, and celery carries its own salinity. Start with a quarter teaspoon and adjust.
- Butter as glueSoftened butter along the far edge of the slice seals the roll shut. It needs to be spreadable, not melted, or it will soak the bread.
- Chilling and holdingWrap the finished rolls snugly in plastic or a damp cloth and refrigerate at least an hour so they set in shape; slice into 1-inch pinwheels at serving time if you want them smaller. Best eaten the same day — the celery weeps by the next morning.
- YieldThe filling is enough for six to eight slices of bread, giving six to eight long rolls or roughly two dozen pinwheels.
Rolled sandwiches belong to the bridge-table and afternoon-tea cookery that filled American menu books between the wars. Celery had a particular status as a refined vegetable rather than a soup base — earlier it had been displayed upright in cut-glass celery vases on the dinner table, and it was sold by the heart. Pairing it with cream cheese, a spoonful of cream and a bare trace of onion juice is characteristic of the era's savoury fillings, which aimed at pale colour and mild flavour so they would not overwhelm a tea tray. The technique of softening the bread on a damp towel recurs in books of this kind.