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Celery and Onion Soup
Cut four or five heads of celery into pieces four or five inches long; wash them free from grit, and boil them for about ten minutes. Remove, drain and put them into another saucepan with one half pound of onions cut in slices, and add a little each of chervil and tarragon, one pinch of salt, a little sugar, and the necessary quantity of rich stock. Put the saucepan over the fire, and boil gently until the celery is quite done; then pour the soup into a tureen and serve very hot.
A plain, almost austere vegetable soup from the Waldorf's kitchen: blanched celery finished in stock with onion and two soft herbs. Nothing is puréed and nothing is thickened, so the quality of the stock decides the dish.
- The stock is the recipe"The necessary quantity of rich stock" points to a stock with real body; the book does not say which kind. For four or five heads of celery, figure on roughly 2 to 2 1/2 quarts. A thin or salty commercial broth leaves you with hot celery water.
- "Heads" of celeryA head is a whole bunch, not a rib. Four or five bunches is banquet scale; two bunches with 1/4 lb of onion makes a sensible pot for a modern household.
- Why blanch firstThe ten-minute boil in plain water draws off some of the bitterness of the coarse outer ribs. Drain it away and start fresh in the stock — do not use the blanching water.
- Cut for the spoonFour- or five-inch lengths suggest pieces to be lifted out or served in wide plates, though the recipe does not say. Cutting the blanched celery into 1-inch pieces before it goes into the stock makes it easier to eat and no worse to look at.
- Timing"Boil gently until quite done" is 25 to 40 minutes at a bare simmer, depending on how coarse the ribs are. The celery should give completely to a knife tip; hard, squeaky celery is the usual fault here.
- Chervil and tarragonBoth are best fresh; a teaspoon of each, chopped, added in the last five minutes so the anise character survives. Dried chervil is nearly flavorless — if you can only find one, use tarragon and use it sparingly.
- The pinch of sugarLikely there to round off celery's bitter edge rather than to sweeten. A quarter teaspoon in a large pot is enough, and salt should be held back until the stock has reduced.
- Yield and serviceSix servings or so, depending on how much stock is used. It cools fast because there is no fat or starch to hold heat, which is why the original calls for a tureen and "very hot" — though it does not specify heating the tureen.
Celery was still something of a luxury vegetable in the American dining rooms of Oscar Tschirky's era, served as a course of its own, and priced accordingly on hotel menus. A soup built on four or five whole heads was a quiet display of abundance as much as a recipe. The treatment is straightforwardly French: blanch, then finish in a rich stock with chervil and tarragon, two of the four classic fines herbes, alongside parsley and chives. Oscar's book records the Waldorf's working repertoire rather than dishes of his own invention, and this one belongs to the family of light, unthickened vegetable soups a hotel kitchen could send out.