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Celery En Surprise
Pare off the green branches of two stalks of fine, fresh, white celery, Separate all the branches; nicely trim the tender parts, as well as the roots. and place them in a basin with plenty of cold water and wash thoroughly. Remove the branches from the basin, lay them on a towel, and then with the forefinger gently spread a very little green butter on the inside of each branch. Dress on a celery dish. Cover with chopped ice and serve. (Always keep the discarded celery for soups or for other useful purposes.)
A raw celery appetizer from the era when celery came to the table as a course in its own right. The whole thing hinges on the butter being soft enough to spread without snapping the ribs.
- "Stalks" and "branches"In this book a stalk appears to be the entire head of celery; a branch is what we now call a rib. Two stalks therefore means two whole heads, which after trimming gives enough ribs to serve several people as a nibble.
- Green butterbeurre vert: softened butter worked with pounded soft herbs such as parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives, sometimes tinted with blanched spinach pressed through a sieve. The recipe specifies no proportion; a workable one is roughly two tablespoons of finely chopped soft herbs to a stick of butter, seasoned with salt.
- Spreadable, not meltedThe butter should be at cool room temperature and beaten smooth. Chilled butter tears the ribs and warm butter slides out onto the dish once the ice goes on.
- "A very little"Take this literally. The point is a green line in the groove of each rib, not a filled celery stick; a heavy hand turns a light course into something closer to a canapé.
- The rootsThe trimmed heart and the pale base of the head, not celeriac. Split the base lengthwise so each piece keeps a little of the crisp core.
- Chopped icePeriod celery dishes were long and shallow, and the ice was served with the celery in them. Modern practice is to set the celery on a bed of crushed ice in a shallow bowl, or to soak the trimmed ribs in ice water for an hour, dry them, and serve on a chilled platter.
- The trimmingsThe outer green ribs and leaves the recipe tells you to save are worth keeping: leaves for stock and for chopping into the green butter itself, coarse ribs for soup.
Celery was a status vegetable in late nineteenth-century America, expensive to grow because the stalks had to be blanched by banking earth or boards against them, and households owned dedicated celery glasses and long celery dishes to display it raw. Serving it plain on ice, before or between courses, is often said to have been the way to show off good celery, and this recipe is that convention with one small flourish added: beurre vert, the classic French herb butter of the professional kitchen, used here as a garnish rather than a sauce. The book is Alexander Filippini's, written out of a career in New York restaurant cooking, and the instruction to keep the discarded outer ribs for soup is the note of a chef used to costing out a kitchen rather than of a home cook.