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Fowl, Duck, Game, Hare: Celery
No. 164. Sedani fritti all' italiana (Celery) Ingredients: Same as No. 163, eggs, bread crumbs, tomatoes.
Prepare a head of celery as above, and cut it up into equal pieces. Blanch and braize as above, and when cold egg and breadcrumb and sautez in butter. Serve with tomato sauce. breadcrumb them, fry like croquettes, and serve with a good Espagnole sauce (No. 1).
No. 163. Sedani alla Parmigiana (Celery) Ingredients: Celery, stock, ham, salt, pepper, Parmesan.
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No. 165. Cetriuoli alla Parmigiana (Cucumber) Ingredients: Cucumber, butter, cheese, gravy, salt, cayenne.
Cut a cucumber into slices about half an inch thick, boil a for five minutes in salted water, drain in a sieve, and fry slightly in melted butter, then strew little grated Parmesan over it, and add a good thick gravy, put it into the oven for ten minutes to brown, and serve as hot as possible.
No. 166. Cetriuoli alla Borghese (Cucumber) Ingredients: Cucumber, cream, salt, Béchamel sauce, butter, Parmesan, cayenne pepper.
Cook a cucumber as in No. 165, braize it for five minutes, add to it a good rich Béchamel (No. 3), mixed with cream and grated Parmesan.
Spread this well over the cucumber, and put it into the oven for ten minutes, keeping the rounds of cucumber separate, so as to arrange them in a circle on a very hot dish. Care should be taken not to cook the cucumber too long, or it will break in pieces, and spoil the look of the dish.
Four short vegetable garnishes from an Italian repertoire, written for cooks who already knew the base methods. The text is garbled where it cross-references, so read all four together before starting.
- The missing method in No. 163No. 164 says "blanch and braize as above," but the printed No. 163 gives only its ingredient list, so the method has to be inferred from that list: trim the head to the tender hearts, blanch briefly in salted water, then braise gently in stock with a little chopped ham until a knife slides through, and finish with Parmesan. That braised, cooled celery is what No. 164 crumbs and fries.
- Two endings for No. 164The paragraph runs together two variants: pieces egged, crumbed and sautéed in butter with tomato sauce, or the same mixture shaped and fried like croquettes with Espagnole. Pick one. For the croquette version the braised celery needs chopping and binding with thick béchamel, or it will not hold.
- Braize and sautez"Braize" here means a short cook in a little stock in a covered pan, not a long oven braise — five minutes is enough for cucumber. "Sautez" is simply to fry in butter over moderate heat, turning once.
- Oven heat for the ten-minute browningNo temperature is given because the dish was set in whatever heat the range had. Around 425F, high on the shelf, browns the cheese in ten minutes; a broiler for two or three minutes does the same and is less likely to collapse the cucumber.
- Cucumbers have changedFrame cucumbers of the period were generally large and seedy, which may be why half-inch rounds are expected to survive boiling and frying. Modern slicing cucumbers are wetter and softer — peel them, scoop the seeds, salt the slices for fifteen minutes and pat dry, and keep the boil to the stated five minutes. The warning about breaking is the real hinge of No. 166.
- Gravy and BéchamelGravy and Bechamel -- The "good thick gravy" of No. 165 is most likely meat gravy or reduced brown stock rather than a flour-thickened pan gravy. The Bechamel of No. 166 is the book's own No. 3, enriched with cream here; it should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon or it will run off the rounds.
- SeasoningCayenne appears in both cucumber dishes and is meant as a bare pinch for lift, not heat. Parmesan is already salty, so salt at the end.
- YieldEach of these makes a garnish or side for two to three people — one head of celery or one large cucumber per dish. Serve immediately; all four go slack as they cool.
The Cook's Decameron (1901) was compiled by Mrs W. G. Waters, who framed a collection of Italian dishes as ten days of dinners recounted by a house party, in open imitation of Boccaccio. Its purpose was to persuade English households that Italian cookery amounted to more than macaroni, and the vegetable chapters are where that argument is made hardest: celery and cucumber, both usually eaten raw and cold in Britain, appear here braised, crumbed, fried and gratinated. Note that alla Parmigiana in this book means only "with Parmesan", not the layered baked aubergine dish that now owns the name in English. Cooked cucumber, which reads oddly today, was entirely ordinary in Victorian and Edwardian kitchens, where the large frame cucumber grown under glass was firm enough to stew, stuff or fry.