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Frizzled Celery
Take one large head of good celery, pare off the green stalks and cut off the root, which may be used for salad. Cut the stalk lengthwise into four equal parts, wash them well in cold water and cut each one into pieces about three inches long, and by doing this all the branches will be separated. With the aid of a small sharp knife pare the thin sides a little, making five or six slits in each piece, starting from the top downward, leaving from one-half to three-quarters of an inch uncut, and put them in cold water with plenty of ice, allowing them to remain for about two hours. Then remove them from the ice water, arrange them tastefully on a round glass dish and serve. Celery arranged and served in this way makes a beautiful effect on the table, though it requires time and patience to prepare it.
A knife exercise rather than a cooked dish: celery cut into fringes that curl outward in ice water. Nothing here has become unsafe, but the celery itself has changed enough to affect the result.
- "Frizzled" means curled, not friedNo heat is involved anywhere. The slits open and bend back as the cut cells take up water, the same principle behind scallion brushes and radish roses.
- The celery of 1896 was blanchedThe celery of 1896 was often blanched -- celery was commonly hilled up with soil or wrapped so it grew pale, tender and mild, which may be behind Oscar's instruction to pare off the green stalks. Today's green Pascal-type celery is green throughout; use the paler inner ribs and save the tough dark outer ones for stock.
- "The root" is the heart"The root" is probably the base -- he most likely means the solid base where the ribs join rather than celeriac. Trimmed and sliced, it is the part he sends to the salad bowl.
- Cut with the grainThe slits must run lengthwise along the fibres, from the cut end toward the uncut base. Cutting across the grain gives you shreds that fall apart instead of curls.
- Depth of cutLeave the half to three-quarters inch uncut that he specifies, or the fringes separate entirely. Thinning the sides first, as he says, lets each strand curl more tightly.
- Two hours is generousIn genuinely iced water the cuts will usually curl well before the two hours he allows. Longer soaking risks the celery going waterlogged and limp rather than crisp.
- Keep it cold and drain wellRefrigerate the bowl if the kitchen is warm and the ice is melting. Shake the pieces dry before arranging or the glass dish fills with water.
- Yield and servingServing -- the recipe gives no yield; one large head makes a dish for a table rather than a portion. Celery of this kind commonly appeared as a relish, plain with salt, alongside olives, radishes and salted nuts.
Celery was a status vegetable in nineteenth-century America. Blanching it white took labour and land, and households owned dedicated celery vases and glass celery dishes to display the ribs upright at table. Oscar, for his part, specifies a round glass dish and concedes that the work "requires time and patience." Cut-and-curled vegetables belonged to the same garde-manger tradition as radish roses and turned mushrooms. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's ma u00eetre d'h u00f4tel, was not a trained chef but the man responsible for what reached the dining room, and his 1896 book is full of this kind of table effect. Celery in various forms runs all through it, the best-known instance being the apple-and-celery salad that took the hotel's name.