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Celery Salad
Pare off the green stalks from two or three heads of celery, trim the roots and cut them into short shreds; wash them thoroughly in cold water, lift them out with the hands, and drain in a cloth. When well drained place the celery in a salad-bowl and season with one pinch of salt, one-half pinch of pepper, and one or two salad teaspoonfuls each of oil and vinegar. Mix well, and serve.
A four-line salad that depends almost entirely on how the celery is cut and dried. Two details in the original need translating before it will taste like anything.
- Get the celery bone dryThe whole point of lifting it out by hand and draining it in a cloth is that wet celery repels oil and dilutes the vinegar into water. Spin it in a salad spinner or roll it in a towel until no moisture shows, then dress it. A "head" is one whole bunch as sold today; two or three bunches, once the outer green stalks are pared away, makes a bowl for several people.
- Why the green is discardedLate 19th-century celery was banked with soil or paper to blanch it pale, and the outer green ribs were coarse and bitter. Modern Pascal celery is bred green and tender throughout, so keep the outer stalks and simply peel off any stringy ribs with a vegetable peeler.
- "Trim the roots"This means cleaning up the solid base where the ribs join, not using celeriac. Trim off the browned bottom and slice the tender heart of the base along with the stalks.
- Short shredsCut the ribs into 2-inch lengths, then lengthwise into thin julienne. Cut this way celery stays crisp and holds dressing; sliced crosswise into coins it goes watery.
- "Salad teaspoonfuls"An informal measure of the period rather than a standardised one. The recipe gives one or two teaspoonfuls each of oil and vinegar for the whole bowl, and note that equal oil and vinegar is very sharp by current taste — 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar is the usual modern balance.
- Oil and vinegar of the periodMost likely olive oil with a wine or cider vinegar. Whisk them together with the salt and pepper before they hit the bowl rather than pouring each on separately, which is how the salt actually dissolves.
- Serve immediatelyDressed celery soon begins to weep. Cut and chill the shreds in advance if you like, but dress at the table.
Oscar Tschirky published his Cook Book in 1896, while he was maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf, and this spare little salad shows how highly celery was regarded in American dining at that moment. Blanched celery was a cash crop around Kalamazoo, Michigan, which marketed itself as Celery City, and the pale hearts were expensive enough to be set out on their own in tall cut-glass celery vases as a relish alongside the other dishes. A plain salad of shredded hearts with salt, pepper, oil and vinegar was therefore not a filler but a way of showing off an ingredient — the same instinct that produced the hotel's more famous Waldorf salad of apple, celery and mayonnaise, generally traced to Oscar's kitchen in the same decade.