Home › Salads and Salad Dressing › Celery Salad
Celery Salad
After thoroughly freshening the celery and wiping it dry, cut it into inch lengths and then into strips, which place in a salad bowl, and add sufficient mayonnaise dressing to moisten the whole. Serve at once. Celery salad admits of a wide range of additions, any cold meat, fish or fowl left from a previous meal being most palatable when served in it.
A bare-bones formula that depends entirely on the texture of the celery and the quality of the mayonnaise. Two details in the original wording need translating.
- "Freshening" the celeryThis means crisping the cut stalks in ice water to firm up limp market celery; period cookbooks give no fixed time. Modern refrigerated celery is generally crisp already, but 20 minutes in ice water still improves it noticeably.
- Dry it properlyThe instruction to wipe it dry is the hinge of the recipe. Mayonnaise will not cling to wet celery, and the water thins the dressing into a puddle at the bottom of the bowl. A salad spinner or a clean towel both work.
- CutInch lengths then cut lengthwise into strips gives batons, not the fine crescent slices common in modern celery salads. The larger pieces are what carry the crunch here.
- Amount of dressing"Sufficient to moisten" is not quantified in the original; a few tablespoons of mayonnaise per large head is a workable starting point. Add it in stages; celery gives up a little liquid as it sits and an over-dressed bowl turns soupy.
- Serve at onceMeant literally. Salted mayonnaise soon draws water out of the stalks, so dress it just before it goes to the table.
- The leftover meatThe suggested additions of cold meat, fish or fowl were written for an unrefrigerated or icebox household. Use only cooked meat that has been kept properly chilled, and cut it in pieces about the size of the celery batons.
- YieldOne large head of celery, dressed, serves about four as a side salad; with a cup of diced chicken or ham added it makes lunch for two or three.
Celery was a comparative luxury in nineteenth-century America, grown in trenched and blanched beds and often served on its own in tall cut-glass celery vases as a centerpiece rather than a salad ingredient. By the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book, commercial celery growing around places like Kalamazoo, Michigan was well established. The second half of the entry may suggest something of the household-economy outlook often associated with Butterick: the salad bowl is where yesterday's cold roast is quietly used up, and mayonnaise is the agent that makes the reappearance palatable. Recipes of this stripe, dressed leftovers under a spoonful of homemade mayonnaise, anticipate the deli chicken and tuna salads that came later.