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Sauce for Celery Au Jus
(Salsa per sedani al sugo) The celery, prepared as above, are seasoned with the following sauce: Make a roux melting a piece of butter and browning an equal weight of flour; stir for about three minutes on the fire, after which thin the roux with a little brown stock or with bouillon cubes diluted in water.
Continue stirring and reduce the sauce. Then rub through a sieve, pour over the celery and serve very hot.
A short brown-roux sauce with no quantities given, meant to finish celery that has already been blanched and braised in the preceding recipe. The whole thing hinges on how far you take the flour.
- Brown the roux, do not burn itEqual weights butter and flour, cooked over moderate heat until the mixture smells nutty and turns the colour of light peanut butter. Three minutes is the minimum, not a guarantee; go by colour and stop the moment it darkens past hazelnut, because scorched flour turns the sauce bitter and loses thickening power.
- Working quantitiesThe original gives none. For a head or two of celery, 2 tablespoons butter (about 1 oz) with 1 oz flour, thinned with roughly 1 1/2 cups stock, reduces to a coating sauce for four.
- Brown stock and bouillon cubesBrown stock here means stock from beef or veal bones, usually roasted before simmering. Bouillon cubes were already an accepted substitute when this book appeared; modern cubes are often heavily salted, so dilute generously and taste before adding any salt of your own.
- "Reduce the sauce"Add the liquid gradually and let it simmer down to the consistency of thin cream. A roux-thickened sauce goes on tightening as it reduces, so keep a little extra stock at hand to loosen it.
- The sieveRubbing through a fine sieve catches any flour lumps and gives a smooth, uniform texture. Press with the back of a ladle rather than pouring through.
- "Prepared as above"This sauce depends on the preceding entry, in which the celery has already been trimmed and cooked; consult that recipe for the preparation. Raw celery will not do; the sauce is a finish, not a cooking medium.
- ServingSauce and celery both hot, plated immediately. A flour-thickened sauce forms a skin as it sits, and reheating it over direct heat can scorch it or turn it grainy.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was aimed at American households discovering Italian cooking, and its sauce chapter leans hard on the French vocabulary that professional kitchens of the period used everywhere: roux, brown stock, and the title's au jus, borrowed even though the Italian al sugo sits right beside it. The pairing of braised celery with a meat-based sauce is squarely in the Italian tradition of treating vegetables as a course in their own right rather than a garnish, and celery braised in broth appears in Italian cookery writing well before this book. The casual suggestion of bouillon cubes is the most datable thing on the page: commercial cubes had spread widely by the early twentieth century, and it is often said that cookbooks of the 1910s and 1920s began quietly admitting them as a stand-in for the stockpot, though how far home kitchens had given up keeping one going is harder to document.