No. 3667

Celery Hearts, Crystallized

Coeurs de Celeri Cristallises

Peel the hearts of some small celery stalks; parboil them well in acidulated water, and when very tender drain and wipe on a cloth; range them in a flat dish and cover with a cold twenty-five degree syrup. Six hours after drain off this syrup and mix in with it some sugar steeped in water and cooked to thirty degrees, adding the juice of one lemon; pour this again over the celery hearts and six hours later recommence the operation. When cold dress into a preserve dish with the syrup poured over.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a professional confectioner's bench: a syrup hydrometer, several days of unhurried work, and celery grown for its pale blanched heart. All of that translates, but the degree readings need decoding first.

Degrees means BauméThe syrup is measured on the Baumé scale with a saccharometer, not on a thermometer. A cold 25° syrup is roughly 45 percent sugar by weight; 30° is roughly 55 percent. A hydrometer or a refractometer will read either, with conversion.
The hinge: raise the syrup slowlyThe whole method is a graduated candying. Each six-hour rest lets the syrup draw water out of the celery and sugar in; if you jump straight to a heavy syrup the pieces shrivel and toughen. Two or three rounds at rising density, as written, is the point of the recipe.
What to buyThe 1890s heart of celery was a tightly blanched, almost white inner bunch. Buy celery hearts or strip a large bunch down to the inner four or five ribs; peel the strings off the outer faces with a swivel peeler.
Acidulated waterWater with lemon juice or a splash of white vinegar, roughly a tablespoon per quart. It helps keep the celery from discolouring during the parboil.
Parboil to genuinely tender"Parboil well" here means cooked through — 10 to 15 minutes at a simmer, until a knife tip meets no resistance. Sugar syrup will not soften a firm rib later; it sets the texture in place.
Cook the added sugar, then cool itCook the added sugar -- When you reinforce the drained syrup, bring the whole thing to 30° Baumé over heat. The recipe does not say whether it goes back hot or cool; since the first syrup is specified cold, letting it cool is the safer reading.
Timing and yieldTiming -- Allow roughly a day start to finish: parboil, then three soaks at six hours apart. Serve in the syrup as a sweetmeat, as the recipe directs, dressed into a preserve dish.
KeepingThis is a fresh conserve, not a sealed preserve. The syrup is not concentrated enough to make it shelf-stable — refrigerate and eat within a week.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional reference, and its preserves chapter reflects a kitchen that still made its own candied fruit and peel rather than buying it in. Crystallized vegetables belong to the older French confectioner's repertoire — angelica stem, candied carrot, sweetened cucumber and pumpkin were all standard — where anything sufficiently bland and fibrous could be carried into the dessert course by degrees of syrup. Celery was a natural candidate in America in the 1890s, when blanched celery had become a fashionable and expensive table vegetable, grown on the muck soils of Michigan and New York and served upright in cut-glass vases as a course in its own right. The technique of raising syrup density in stages over days is the same one used for candied citron and is measured on the Baumé scale, an eighteenth-century French hydrometer standard that stayed in professional confectionery long after home cooks had moved to thermometers.}