Celery Salad
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons. head of celery, lb. of AVERAGE COST, 6d. cheese, stilton or cheddar, mayonnaise sauce.
Cleanse the celery and cut it in small dice, cut the cheese in small squares, and mix these two ingredients with enough mayonnaise sauce just to mask them. Serve garnished with watercress, in a glass dish.
SEASONABLE at any time.
CELERY SAUCE.
Celery Sauce. (For Boiled Turkey, Poultry, &c.)- INGREDIENTS for sufficient for a turkey. large heads of celery, 1 pint of white stock, 2 blades of mace, 1 small bunch of savoury herbs; thickening of butter and flour, or arrowroot, 1/2 pint of cream or milk, lemon-juice. AVERAGE COST, with cream, 2s.
Boil the celery in salt and water until tender, and cut it into pieces 2 inches long.
Put the stock into a stewpan with the mace and herbs, and let it simmer for 1/2 hour to extract their flavour. Then strain the liquor, add the celery, and a thickening of butter kneaded with flour, or, what is still better, with arrowroot; just before serving, put in the cream, boil it up, and squeeze in a little lemon-juice. If necessary, add a seasoning of salt and white pepper.
TIME.-25 minutes to boil the celery.
Note. This sauce may be made brown by using gravy instead of white stock, and flavouring it with mushroom ketchup or Harvey's Sauce.
Celery Sauce. (A more simple Recipe.) - INGREDIENTS for sufficient for a turkey.-4 heads of celery, 1/2 pint of melted butter made with milk, 1 blade of pounded mace; salt and white pepper to taste. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Wash the celery, boil it in salt and water till tender, and cut it into pieces 2 inches long; make 1/2 pint of melted butter by recipe; put in the celery, pounded mace, and seasoning; simmer for 3 minutes, when the sauce will be ready to serve.
TIME.-25 minutes to boil the celery.
A cold celery-and-cheese salad bound with just enough mayonnaise to coat, followed on the same page by two celery sauces for boiled poultry. The quantities in the salad have not survived intact, so treat it as a ratio rather than a formula.
- Missing quantitiesThe salad line reads "head of celery" and "lb. of cheese" with the numbers absent, so no conversion can honestly be given. For four people, one large head of celery to about 6 oz of cheese, with 3-4 tablespoons of mayonnaise, gives the proportions the method describes.
- Mask, do not dressThe hinge of the salad is the phrase "just to mask them" - enough mayonnaise to coat the dice in a thin film and no more. Too much and the celery loses its snap and the cheese slumps into the sauce.
- The cheeseStilton or Cheddar, cut in small squares rather than crumbled, so the cubes stay distinct against the celery. A firm block Cheddar or a Stilton cut cold straight from the fridge dices cleanly; a soft or very ripe blue will smear.
- Cost and dish"Average cost, 6d." is a Victorian price note, not an instruction. The glass dish it calls for is genuine period presentation - clear glass was used for cold salads and jellies to show the food off.
- Celery for the saucesTwenty-five minutes is given for boiling the celery, but note the recipe boils it whole and cuts it into 2-inch lengths only afterwards; already-sliced ribs will be tender well before that and are better watched than timed. Boil until a knife passes easily, then cut into the 2-inch lengths.
- White stock and thickeningWhite stock here is a light veal or chicken stock. The arrowroot the recipe prefers to a butter-and-flour thickening gives a glossier, less cloudy sauce, but it must not be held at a hard boil once thickened or it thins again.
- Melted butterIn the simpler sauce, "melted butter made with milk" means the Victorian white sauce - a butter and flour roux let down with milk - not plain melted butter. Half a pint is roughly a cup and a quarter.
- MaceA blade of mace is a piece of the dried aril, removed after infusing; pounded mace is the same spice ground. About a quarter teaspoon of ground mace can stand in for a blade. Mace and nutmeg come from the same fruit and taste similar, but they are not simply swapped measure for measure.
Celery reached English tables as a winter salad vegetable long before it became a stock aromatic, and Victorian households served it raw and upright in tall celery glasses on the dinner table, much as this recipe asks for a glass dish. The pairing of celery with Stilton is one of the durable English combinations of the period - the two share a season, the cheese being at its best from autumn through Christmas when forced and blanched celery came in - and it survives today mainly as celery sticks beside the Christmas cheeseboard rather than as a dressed salad. Celery sauce for boiled turkey belongs to the same seasonal logic: boiled poultry was a plain dish that depended on its sauce, and celery, mace and cream gave it flavour without colour, white sauce on white meat being the correct look for a Victorian table.