Celery
Celery is a widely distributed biennial plant native to the lowlands of the Mediterranean region. Apium graveolens has long fibrous stalks, which taper and branch into leafy stems.
The plant can reach heights exceeding 2m. The small, creamy white flowers occur in dense umbels and the tiny fruits are generally around 1mm long. The fruits are mid to dark brown and ridged, in a similar manner to many of the other Apiaceae species. They have a surprisingly strong, earthy aroma, while the taste is bitter, with a slight burning sensation.Celery leaves were found on the garland of the second anthropomorphic coffin of Tutankhamun (d. 1325 BCE), there being three coffins, the innermost one made of solid gold. Celery appears in Homer’s Odyssey (eighth century BCE) as ‘selinon’. Celery mericarps from the seventh century BCE were found in the Heraion of Samos in Greece, a huge temple complex dedicated to the goddess Hera. There is doubt as to when cultivation of celery, rather than use of the wild variety, came about, but it was probably sometime in the first millennium BCE. Certainly, the botanist and philosopher Theophrastus (d. 287 BCE) described many of the properties of celery and its cultivation.67 The wild variety of celery is called ‘smallage’ and is very leafy, with thin stalks.
Mineralised celery seeds were found (infrequently) in the Cardo V sewer at Herculaneum. The seeds were an important spice in Roman cuisine according to Apicius, and while not to the same degree as the related lovage, they still appeared in a huge variety of recipes. Celery seed was used in spiced salts, though parsley could be substituted, and in a very large variety of sauces, purees, dressings, pickles, marinades, casseroles … and even in a laxative recipe with leeks.
Celery appears in Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica as selinon, and cultivated versions were used as a medicine to address burning in the stomach, hard swollen breasts, and poisonous animal bites, among numerous other disorders.68 It could be applied with bread for inflammation of the eyes.
It also appears to be the helioselinon of Pliny, a useful remedy for spider bites. Celery archaeobotanical remains have been found distributed widely across north-west Europe, though, in common with certain other condiments, it has a strong correlation with proximity to Roman military sites and towns and was also found in some more distant rural sites.69 It also appears to have been introduced to Britain by the Romans (though it is possible that wild celery was already present before their arrival). A 2008 study found forty-nine occurrences of celery from Roman Britain sites.70 Celery occurrences increased from early to middle Roman times but then decreased by late Roman times, in common with several other introduced species: the strong association with Roman cuisine is the cause of their decline. But despite the decline, by the time the Romans left, it is likely that celery was already part of the horticultural landscape of Britain. It has been found in late Saxon sites at Winchester and was eaten daily according to the monk Aelfric Bata.71 It was also shown in the plan of the ninth-century monastery kitchen garden of St Gall in Switzerland. The Chinese appear to have used wild celery from at least the fifth century CE and they later developed cultivated varieties; their celery is thinner, juicier and has a stronger flavour than European varieties.72
Celery is extremely rare in medieval recipes, despite its evident availability. It is conceivable that it was only eaten raw and in salads.
Giles Rose referred to celery within salads in his delightfully named 1682 book A perfect School of Instructions for the Officers of the Mouth: shewing the whole art: ‘as for your Sallets of Sellery serve them both boyl’d and raw, as these two former ones, and their Roots in like manner.’73
In the mid-nineteenth century, the botanist Dr Antonio Targioni Tozzetti commented that, although celery was known to the ancients, it ‘was considered rather as a funereal or ill-omened plant than an article of food’, though this seems only partly correct based on the popular usage during the Roman era.74 It is mentioned only as a medicinal plant by early modern writers; however, it had started to be grown for the table in Tuscany by the sixteenth century.
Smallage appears in a peculiar remedy for the ague in The Widowes Treasure (1588):
Take a handfull of smalledge, and a handfull of baye Salte, and a handfull of white frankensence, and *** Plantaine leaves, beate all these finely in a Morter then devide them into foure partes, and lay two partes to your brests, and the other two partes to the bought of your armes. An howre before your fit come, you must have a pinte of Ale sodds to the halfe, and when it riseth, skimme it, then put in a white breade crust, and let it seethe with the Ale, and when your Ague beginneth to come drink it and eat the crust of bread.75
Smallage appears in Gerard’s late sixteenth-century Herbal; the alternative name is water parsley, but this looks very much like celery from drawing and description: ‘the stalks be chamfered and divided into branches.’76 He provides numerous medical uses for the juice, leaves and seed.
Smallage seed is listed in The English Huswife of 1615 in a remedy for ‘collicke and stone’, and smallage occurs in remedies for all manners of swellings and aches, including venomous stings, for toothache, and to dry up any sore.77 However, celery is absent from the extensive list of herbs and salads and culinary recipes. According to E. L. Sturtevant, the Dutch physician and botanist Rembertus Dodonaeus in his 1616 Pemptades commented on the wild plant being transferred to gardens but distinctly said it was not for food use.78 The French horticulturalist Olivier de Serres referred to a cultivated celery in 1623.79
In the 1675 Accommplish’d Lady’s Delight there is a recipe for syrup of vinegar which uses the roots and greens of smallage, the syrup being a medicine to clear ‘Phlegm, or tough Humours’.80 Smallage and other herbs were also used in a decoction for sore eyes and another one to cure blindness in a man under 50 years of age. The other herbs used were fennel, rue, betony, vervain, agrimony, cinquefoil, pimpernel, eyebright, celandine and sage.
They were mixed into a quart of good white wine and then to this was added thirty crushed peppercorns, six spoonfuls of honey and ten spoonfuls of the urine of ‘a Man-Child that is wholsom’, the whole being boiled, strained and then put into the eyes of the patient with a feather.The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digby Kt opened, first published in 1669, contains a recipe for Smallage-Gruel, which is basically boiled oatmeal, with chopped smallage added, seasoned with salt and optional dash of nutmeg and mace, and butter stirred in after the gruel is removed from the fire.81
The Accomplished Ladies Rich Closet of Rarities, from 1691, also used smallage for an eye treatment, syrup of vinegar (again) in a concoction for internal bruising, in a decoction for black jaundice, in a poultice for aches and sprains, and in a recipe to prevent spitting blood, but not in any culinary recipes.82
Eliza Smith (1727) gave a recipe for Celery Ragoo:
WASH and make a bunch of celery very clean, cut it in pieces, about two inches long, put it into a stew-pan with just as much water as will cover it, tie three or four blades of mace, two or three cloves, about twenty corns of whole pepper in a muslin rag loose, put it into the stew-pan, a little onion, a little bundle of sweet-herbs; cover it close, and let it stew softly till tender; then take out the spice, onion and sweet-herbs, put in half an ounce of truffles and morels, two spoonfuls of catchup, a gill of red wine, a piece of butter as big as an egg rolled in flour, six farthing French rolls, season with salt to your palate, stir it all together, cover it close, and let it stew till the sauce is thick and good. Take care that the rolls do not break, shake your pan often; when it is enough, dish it up, and garnish with lemon. The yolks of six hard eggs, or more, put in with the rolls, will make it a fine dish. This for a first course. If you would have it white, put in white wine instead of red, and some cream for a second course.
She also provided a recipe for turkey fowl in celery sauce and used celery in a ‘hodge podge of beef with savoys’, in pease soup (these latter described as French dishes). Hannah Glasse (1747) also used it in numerous recipes. It looks like the late seventeenth century to early eighteenth century was when celery started to become more mainstream as a culinary item.
In 1806, Bernard M’Mahon noted different varieties of celery for American garden use: hollow-stalked, solid-stalked and red solid-stalked (the stalks being deemed the most useful part).83
In 1888, Mrs Agnes B. Marshall, a leading Victorian cookery writer (famous among other things for inventing, or at least popularising, the ice cream cone), produced a well-known cookery book, called, unsurprisingly, Mrs A B Marshall’s Cookery Book.84 By this time, celery was well established in the kitchen and numerous recipes are included: in celery sauce; chiffonade of chicken à la Princesse; celery sauce with boiled turkey; cucumber and celery salad for plovers eggs à la Charmante; braised celery; celery à la Villeroi; ragout of celery; and celery à la creme.
Celery is cultivated widely in Europe and the USA, primarily as a herb and vegetable. It is also cultivated for seed as a spice, mainly in India, southern France, China and Egypt.85 Although celery was introduced quite late to India (around 1930), the country is now the largest producer and exporter of celery seed.
Processed products of the seed are the volatile oil (used in food flavourings, perfumery and the pharmaceutical industry), celery oleoresin (food flavourings), seed powder (food flavourings and condiment) and celery salt – mixture of seed or oleoresin or ground stems and finely ground salt. Dehydrated celery stalks and leaves are used for flavouring soups, broths, canned tuna fish, stuffings and stewed tomatoes.86