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Puree of Celery
(Macco di sedani) Take some big roots of celery, prepare as usual and wash in running water. Boil in salted water, crush and rub through a sieve. Put in a saucepan this purèe, with a piece of butter, salt, flour and a little cream or milk. The milk may be substituted with good soup stock or brown stock.
Just before serving add a little powdered sugar. 170
A vegetable purée given no quantities at all, in the manner of most Italian domestic cookbooks of the period. The key decisions are what vegetable is meant and how thick to let it get.
- "Big roots of celery" means celeriac"Big roots of celery" probably means celeriac -- stalk celery has no root worth boiling and crushing, though the Italian title given is simply macco di sedani, celery. Celery root is sold as celeriac; two knobby roots of about 1 lb each should serve four as a side dish.
- "Prepare as usual"Cut off the root fibres and the stem crown, then pare away the thick outer skin with a knife rather than a peeler. Cut into rough 1-inch pieces so they cook evenly.
- Boiling timeSalted water at a steady boil, 20 to 25 minutes, until a piece collapses under a fork with no resistance in the centre. Undercooked celeriac will not go through a sieve and leaves fibrous threads.
- Drain hardCeleriac holds a great deal of water. Let it steam dry in the colander for several minutes before crushing, or the purée will need far more flour to hold together and will taste pasty.
- Sieve, ricer or food millThe recipe asks only that the celery be rubbed through a sieve; a food mill on its medium plate or a potato ricer gives much the same result faster. A food processor is best avoided, as it tends to make the pur comes out slack.
- Butter, flour and liquid, in proportionThe recipe gives no quantities; for 2 lb of prepared root, roughly 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon flour and 1/2 cup cream, milk or stock is a workable guess. As written everything goes into the pan together, though melting the butter, stirring in the flour and cooking it a minute before the purée goes in will take the raw taste off the flour.
- The sugarA pinch, no more, and only at the end as written. Celeriac is faintly bitter and the sugar reads as roundness rather than sweetness; a teaspoon for the whole dish is already at the limit.
- Stock versionMade with brown stock instead of cream, as the recipe allows, this becomes a savoury purée to sit under roast pork, veal or game.
Macco is one of the oldest words in the Italian kitchen vocabulary for a mash: a thick purée of something boiled to collapse, most familiarly dried fava beans in Sicily, where maccu is still eaten. Applied here to celery root, it may be read as signalling texture rather than any particular ingredient. Celeriac was long more common in northern Italian and central European cooking than in the south, valued because the root keeps for months in a cool cellar and gives a celery flavour in winter when the stalks are gone. Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was written for American households, and the untranslated Italian title was carried in parentheses after almost every recipe: the reader was being handed the real names along with the method.