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Fried Celery
Boil two or three sound, well-trimmed heads of celery till they are about half cooked, or a trifle more; remove, drain thoroughly, cut them into short lengths, dip them in batter, and fry in hot fat to a light brown. If it is well done this dish is very tasty; but it is useless to attempt it without a deep fryingpan, and plenty of oil or fat to fry in.
A straightforward deep-fry that hinges almost entirely on how dry the celery is when it meets the batter. Oscar's warning about the pan is the real instruction here.
- Dry the celery hardParboiled celery holds water in its ribs and channels, and wet celery sheds batter into the fat. Drain, then blot the lengths on a towel and let them air-dry a few minutes before dipping.
- Half cooked, in practiceBoil the whole trimmed heads until a knife tip meets slight resistance, not until they are soft; the timing depends entirely on the size of the heads. Fully soft celery collapses in the fryer and the batter separates from it.
- Heads, not stalksA head of celery here is the whole bunch, trimmed of leaves and the coarse outer ribs. Two or three heads make a side dish or savoury for a small table.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe says only 'hot fat' for a light brown; in modern terms somewhere around 350-365F answers. Cooler than that and the batter drinks oil; much hotter and the coating darkens before it sets properly.
- The batterNo formula is given. A plain frying batter of 1 cup flour, 1 egg, and about 3/4 cup milk or beer, rested twenty minutes, coats well and fries light.
- Depth of fatOscar's insistence on a deep pan is about recovery: the pieces should float and turn freely, which means fat deep enough to submerge them and only a few pieces in at a time.
- FinishingDrain on a rack rather than paper so the underside stays crisp, salt immediately, and serve at once. It goes limp within a few minutes of leaving the fat.
Fried celery belongs to a long line of battered and deep-fried vegetables that filled out the vegetable and entremets courses of nineteenth-century restaurant menus, alongside fried salsify, fried parsnips and fritters of every sort. Celery itself was a prestige vegetable in American dining of the period, grown blanched and pale, sold in tall cut-glass celery vases and set on the table raw as a matter of course, so a kitchen with celery on hand daily had every reason to find a cooked use for it. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, is traditionally credited with the salad that pairs celery with apple, and this entry is a reminder of how much of the hotel's celery never reached the salad bowl. The blunt closing line, that the dish is useless without a deep pan and plenty of fat, marks it as a recipe written for a kitchen equipped to deep-fry.