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Pickled Celery
Cut the stalks from three heads of celery into equal lengths; wash these thoroughly in plenty of water, put them in a bowl, cover them with brine sufficiently strong to bear an egg, and leave them for a week or ten days. At the end of that time refresh the celery by placing it in plenty of clean cold water, and set it on a sieve where it may remain until it is dry. Boil enough vinegar to cover the spices with any kind that may be desired. Place the celery in a jar, pour over it the boiling vinegar, and leave it until the vinegar is cold; then cover the top of the jar with stout brown paper, and tie it down tightly. Place it in a dry cupboard, and use it as required.
A two-stage pickle: a long salt cure first, then a hot spiced vinegar. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the original instructions need translating and one needs replacing outright.
- Brine strong enough to float an eggThat is the hinge of the recipe. An egg floats at roughly 10 percent salt by weight, about a third of a cup of table salt to a quart of water (more by volume if using flaked kosher salt); this is well short of saturation. Pickling or kosher salt is preferable, as additives in iodized salt can cloud the brine. A weaker brine is less reliable over a week to ten days at room temperature.
- "Refresh the celery"Soaking in clean cold water pulls the excess salt back out. One change of water for an hour or two is usually enough, but taste a piece before you drain: cured celery straight from the brine is close to inedible, and the finished pickle takes its saltiness from this step alone.
- The garbled vinegar line"Boil enough vinegar to cover the spices with any kind that may be desired" means boil the vinegar with whatever spices you like, in a quantity sufficient to cover the celery. Mustard seed, black peppercorns, a blade of mace and celery seed are period-appropriate; simmer five minutes, then pour over hot.
- Vinegar strengthUse a standard 5 percent vinegar — cider or white wine. Nineteenth-century vinegars varied widely, and a weak or homemade vinegar will not preserve the celery on its own.
- Brown paper and the dry cupboardSkip both. A paper cover tied down keeps out dust but does not seal; jars stored this way could grow surface mold, which was skimmed off. Use a clean lidded jar and keep it in the refrigerator, where it will hold for a month or two.
- TextureDo not expect snap. Between the salt cure and the boiling vinegar the celery comes out limp and translucent, closer to a relish than to a crisp refrigerator pickle. Cut the stalks into two-inch lengths so they sit neatly in the jar.
- Yield and servingThree heads of celery fill roughly two quarts. Serve it as a condiment with cold roast meats, ham or cheese, or chop it into a potato or chicken salad in place of fresh celery and pickle both.
Celery was a prestige vegetable in late nineteenth-century America, not a soup-pot afterthought. Blanched bunches were grown on the muck soils around Kalamazoo, Michigan, and shipped east to be stood upright in tall cut-glass celery vases on the dinner table as a display of freshness and expense. Pickling was one way to have celery on hand out of season. The method itself is generic English kitchen practice of the period, the same treatment given to cucumbers, walnuts, samphire and cauliflower, and the vague "any kind that may be desired" for the spicing suggests a cook expected to know a pickling spice mixture without reading one off a page.