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Celery Sauce
Scrape the outside stalks of celery and cut in pieces an inch long, let stand in cold water half hour, then put in boiling water enough to cover, and cook until tender; drain off water and dress with butter, salt, and milk or cream, thickened with a little flour : Or, make a dressing by adding to half pint milk or cream, the wellbeaten yolks of two eggs, a bit of butter, and a little salt and pepper or grated nutmeg; bring just to boiling point, pour over stewed celery, and serve with roast duck. - Mrs. A. Wilson.
A plain stewed-celery sauce in two versions: a flour-thickened cream sauce, or a richer egg-yolk custard poured over the cooked celery. The second is the one to watch.
- The hinge: the egg dressing must not boil"Bring just to boiling point" means take it to about 175-180F, stirring constantly, until it coats the spoon. A true boil scrambles the yolks and the sauce breaks into curds and whey.
- Half pintOne cup. Two yolks to a cup of cream is a light custard, so cook it in a heavy pan over low heat or in a bowl set over simmering water.
- Outside stalksThe recipe deliberately uses the tough, stringy outer ribs, which were not fit for the celery glass on the table. "Scrape" means pulling the coarse strings off with a knife or peeler; modern celery is less fibrous but the outer ribs still benefit.
- The half-hour soakThe recipe does not say why; a cold soak would help clean and crisp celery that arrived gritty from being banked in soil. With washed supermarket celery it can be skipped, though a cold soak does firm up limp stalks.
- Cook until tenderEight to twelve minutes in boiling salted water for inch lengths. Past that the celery collapses into strings and loses the faint bitterness that makes the sauce worth serving with duck.
- The flour version, in proportionFor about two cups of cooked celery, a tablespoon each of butter and flour cooked together, then a cup of milk or cream, gives a sauce of the right body. The original leaves quantities to the cook's judgement.
- YieldA bunch of outer ribs makes roughly two cups of sauce, enough for four to six as an accompaniment. Serve it hot; the egg version does not reheat well and will not hold on a warm stove.
Celery sauce belongs to the long English tradition of vegetable sauces served with poultry and game, alongside bread sauce for chicken and onion sauce for mutton, and it turns up in American household books over the course of the nineteenth century. Celery itself was a fussy, expensive crop before the twentieth century, blanched by banking soil or boards against the stalks, and the pale tender hearts were displayed upright in tall cut-glass celery vases as a table luxury. That economy explains the recipe's first line: the hearts went to the table raw, and the scraped outer stalks went into the saucepan. The pairing with roast duck is a sound one, since celery's slight bitterness cuts fat, and the contributor's name attached to the entry is typical of the many subscription cookbooks that gathered their receipts by attribution from local housewives.