No. 2722

Celeriac Mirabeau or a la Villeroi

Celeri-rave Mirabeau ou a la Villeroi

Mirabeau.—Peel the celeriac, cut them either into balls with a large vegetable spoon (Fig. 91) or in the shape of cloves or crescents; blanch in salted water, drain and place in a deep buttered sautoir; cover with broth (No. 194a) and finish cooking while glazing; dress and pour over some Mirabeau sauce (No. 500).

A la Villeroi.—Cut the celeriac into four pieces; pare them like cloves of garlic, having one pound in all; blanch in salted water, drain, place in a saucepan, adding half a pint of stock (No. 194a), and a little sugar; cook, drain once more, and when cold cover over with a Villeroi sauce (No. 560) with mushrooms and chopped parsley; lay on a baking sheet to cool, after which pare off the surplus sauce, dip them in eggs and bread-crumbs and fry to a fine color; dress on a folded napkin, with a bunch of parsley leaves on top.

← No. 2721 Celery Stalks with half-Glaze, Espagnole and Other Vegetables No. 2723 Cepes, Provencal Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Two treatments of the same root, both from Ranhofer's cross-referenced system: one glazed and sauced, one coated, chilled and fried. The Villeroi version is the more demanding, and it hinges entirely on the sauce setting hard.

The hinge: Villeroi sauce must set firmA Villeroi is a very reduced allemande or velouté, thickened with egg yolk, cooked down until a spoonful holds its shape. If it is even slightly loose the coating slumps off the celeriac on the baking sheet and again in the fat. Chill the coated pieces until rigid, ideally an hour or more, before trimming and breading.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan. Any wide saucepan or deep skillet that holds the pieces in a single layer will do.
MeasuresHalf a pint is one cup. A pound of pared celeriac means a pound after peeling, which is roughly one large root of 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb as bought.
"Finish cooking while glazing"Cook uncovered so the broth reduces to a syrup that films the pieces as they turn tender, shaking the pan rather than stirring. If the celeriac softens before the liquid reduces, lift it out and boil the broth down separately, then return the pieces to coat.
Blanching and shapingCeleriac oxidises quickly; hold the balls or clove shapes in acidulated water until they go into the salted blanching water. A few minutes at a boil should do, depending on the size of the pieces; the recipe itself gives no time.
Frying temperature350-375F. Cooler and the breading absorbs fat before it colours; hotter and the crust darkens before the sauce inside has softened. The pieces are already cooked, so this is a matter of colour only, a minute or two.
Mirabeau sauceThe Mirabeau garnish is generally associated with anchovy and tarragon, though the book's No. 500 is not reproduced here. A bearnaise, or a compound anchovy butter finished with tarragon, may serve as a substitute.
Yield and serviceOne pound of pared root gives roughly four modest portions. Dishes of this kind were commonly served as a vegetable course or as a garnish alongside a roast rather than as a dish on their own. The folded napkin was the conventional service for fried items and absorbs some of the frying fat; paper serves the same purpose.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its numbered cross-references are the point of the book: it is a working system, not a collection of standalone recipes, which is why the celeriac here depends on three other entries to be cookable at all. Both names follow the French habit of naming dishes after public figures; the Villeroi sauce is generally traced to the Villeroy family of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, and it is used across the classical repertoire as a setting coat for anything to be crumbed and fried, from sweetbreads to sole. Celeriac was established in French and German cooking well before it was much used on American tables, and its appearance in a Delmonico's book suggests the kitchen's continental ambitions; American cooks of the period were more likely to know celery by its stalks, eaten as a raw relish, than to know the root.