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Escalloped Celery
Use the coarse, large pieces of celery not suitable to serve uncooked. Cut them into small pieces. Butter a baking-dish, put in a layer of celery, then a layer of tomatoes (canned ones may be used).
Sprinkle over them a teaspoonful of chopped onion, a little salt and pepper. Repeat, having last layer tomatoes. Cover with small cubes of bread and dot with a tablespoonful of butter. Bake in hot oven half an hour.
Corn "Oysters" Grate the pulp from ears of any cooked sweet corn, and to each cup allow one egg beaten light, one tablespoonful milk, one tablespoonful flour, one teaspoonful melted butter, one half teaspoonful salt. Mix all together and drop by spoonfuls on a hot buttered griddle and brown on both sides.
A little uncooked corn pulp is a great addition to these cakes.
Two separate recipes share this page: a scalloped celery-and-tomato bake and corn fritters made from leftover cobs. Both are straightforward, but the celery needs one adjustment the original does not mention.
- Parboil the celery firstThe outer ribs and coarse butt ends this recipe calls for are fibrous, and half an hour in the oven surrounded by acidic tomato will not soften them fully. Simmer the cut pieces in salted water for 5 to 8 minutes and drain well before layering.
- "Hot oven"In period usage this generally means somewhere between 400F and 450F; 425F is a reasonable reading. At that heat the bread cubes brown in about 30 minutes; if you drop to 375F to be safe with the celery, give the dish 40 to 45 minutes and finish under the broiler.
- Canned tomatoesCanned tomatoes of this period were commonly packed whole in thin juice. Use whole or diced canned tomatoes drained of most of their liquid, or the dish will be soupy under the bread topping. The recipe gives no quantities; roughly two cups of drained tomato to three cups of celery works.
- Bread cubes, not crumbs"Small cubes of bread" suggests something around half an inch, though the recipe specifies neither size nor stale bread. Tossing them with the melted butter rather than dotting cold butter on top, as directed, browns them more evenly.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; a quart to one-and-a-half-quart baking dish, serving four as a side, is a reasonable scale.
- Corn "oysters": grating the pulpGrating the cob rather than cutting the kernels off releases the starchy milk that binds the batter. Run the back of a knife down each scraped cob to get the rest. One cup of pulp takes about three medium ears.
- Batter consistencyThe proportions give a very loose batter, closer to a thick pancake than a fritter. If it spreads too far on the griddle, add flour a teaspoon at a time; cooked corn holds less liquid than raw, so the amount needed varies.
- Griddle heatMedium, around 350F on an electric griddle. Too hot and the egg sets before the interior cooks; the cakes should take two to three minutes a side.
- Why "oysters"The name refers to the size and shape of a fried oyster, not to any seafood in the batter. About a dozen small cakes per cup of pulp.
Left-over cookery of this kind belonged to the era before home refrigeration, when a household bought celery by the bunch and had to use the tough outer ribs somehow: the tender heart went raw to the table in a celery glass, and the coarse stalks were stewed, creamed or baked like this. Scalloping — layering a vegetable with seasoning under a buttered crumb or bread topping — was a common American treatment for vegetables that needed using up, and celery with tomato was a familiar pairing, canned tomatoes being among the cheapest and most widely stocked pantry goods of the period. Corn "oysters" are older still, appearing in American cookbooks through the nineteenth century; the name is generally traced to the resemblance in size and shape to a fried oyster, at a time when oysters were cheap enough to be a point of comparison rather than a luxury.