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Cream of Celery Soup
One quart of crisp celery cut in inch lengths; one and one-half pints of cold water; one pint of milk; two tablespoons of flour; one tablespoon of butter; onehalf teaspoon of chopped onion; one bay leaf. Salt to season. Add the cold water, the onion and the bay leaf to the celery, cover closely and stew in a gentle heat for three hours, when there should be one pint of liquid; add a little water when cooking if the liquid reduces too much. Strain through a sieve or cheesecloth, crushing the celery; but not pressing it through. This part of the work may be done at any time, the celery stock being set away until needed. When ready to serve, rub the butter and the flour together until very smooth; warm the milk, add one spoonful to the flour mixture, stirring carefully; when smooth add more milk to further thin the flour mixture; then stir it all into the milk and add the milk to the celery stock. Cook for ten minutes in a double boiler. This formula will suffice for making a cream soup with corn, turnips, beans, peas and squash.
A two-stage soup: a long, gentle celery infusion that can be made days ahead, and a thin white sauce stirred in at the last minute. The proportions are sound; only the timing and a few measures need translating.
- What a quart of celery meansVolume, not weight — a quart of inch lengths is roughly one large head, about 1 lb trimmed. Use the outer ribs and the leafy tops, which carry most of the flavour; save the pale heart for eating raw.
- Three hours is longThe point is extraction rather than tenderness, and a covered pot at the barest simmer will do it; 45–60 minutes will give much of the flavour. What matters more is the instruction to keep the heat gentle and the lid on: a hard boil drives off aromatics and can leave the celery tasting harsh.
- Crush, do not pressThis is the hinge. Pushing the pulp through the sieve clouds the soup and makes it fibrous and slightly bitter. Crush the celery against the sieve to release liquid, then discard the solids.
- Reduce to a pintStart with three cups of water and finish with two cups of strained stock. If you have more, boil it down uncovered before adding the milk; if less, top up with water. The ratio of one part celery stock to one part milk is what makes it a cream soup rather than a thin broth.
- The rouxOne tablespoon butter to two tablespoons flour is a lean, flour-heavy paste — it will look dry. Thinning it with warm milk a spoonful at a time, as directed, is the reliable way to avoid lumps; a whisk makes short work of it.
- Double boilerUsed here because milk scorches easily over direct heat. A heavy-bottomed saucepan over low heat works, stirred often; ten minutes is enough to cook out the raw flour taste.
- SeasoningCelery stock is bland until salted, and the recipe leaves the amount to you ('Salt to season') — season at the end, after the milk goes in, to taste. White pepper and a scrape of nutmeg are period-appropriate additions.
- YieldAbout a quart of finished soup, or four small first-course servings. Remove the bay leaf before straining.
Cream soups of this kind — a vegetable stock let down with milk and bound with a butter-and-flour liaison — were a fixture of American cookery from the 1880s onward. The Butterick book, published by a pattern company for a readership of home sewers and housekeepers, is characteristically economical here: it gives one formula and then tells the cook it will do equally well for corn, turnips, beans, peas and squash. Celery itself had shifted by 1900 from an expensive forced delicacy, served upright in cut-glass vases at the table, to a common winter vegetable — Michigan and New York growers had made it cheap.