- America eats its head celery religiously, and likes it. But leaf celery, as seasoning, is almost unknown. Some cooks give directions for drying celery tops for use in soup. But no one tells the secret of reveling in the spiced pungency that fresh celergy leaves give salads and cooked dishes. In the Italian quarter of any American city that secret is open for all to read. In the tiny kitchen gardens, green plots literally snatched from encroaching pavements, one finds beds of unbanked, leafing celery plants, ready for the knife of the cook. For such a bed celery is sown each spring, and is allowed to grow without hilling or thinning. It will grow about eight or ten inches tall, with tender leaves. Cut it recklessly, for it continues to spring up.
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Apium graveolens
While the Celery plant which gives us the aromatic spice, Celery Seed, has the same botanical name as the plant providing Celery Flakes or Diced Celery, there is a distinct difference in flavor.
Celery Seed is the fruit of wild Celery or smallage, a plant grown for medicinal purposes for many centuries and mentioned by Homer and later writers. It takes more than 750,000 of these tiny brown pungent seeds to weight a pound.
Celery Seed is available whole or as Celery Salt, which is a mixture of ground Celery Seed and table salt. Either one is excellent with fish and in soups, tomato juice, oyster stew, clam juice, potato salad, salad dressings, eggs and sauerkraut. Very good, too, in croquettes and canape mixtures.
Celery Seed is improted from India and France. - (Apium graveolens is an aromatic plant of the same race as the parsley. It has been cultivated from the wild smallage, and is now grown extensively and used as a favlouring vegetable or salad.
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is a cultivated plant of the parsley family, with closely packed succulent leafstalks that are eaten raw or cooked.
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ORIGIN from French celeri, from Italian dialect selleri, based on Greek selinon 'parsley' -
Celery (Apium graveolens, of the Carrot Family) which appears in bountiful array in all of our American markets nonstop throughout the year, is a sort of supervegetable.
Celery is known by various vernaculars in differing parts of the globe. For example, in Italian, sedani; in Chinese, chin-t'sai; in Spanish, apio; in French celeri; in German, Sellerie
As a wild plant it grows in boggy areas from Scandinavai to middle Africa, eastward into Russia. Interestingly enough in this original state it is not fleshy-stalked at all, and scarcely recognizable as relating to our cultivated vegetables.
French gardeners first took up the development of superior forms of this plant during the seventeenth century, and it was first produced in this country byt dutch farmers in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1874, according to the record. - Mazza, Irma Goodrich. 1952July. Herbs for the Kitchen. Little, Brown and Company, boston.
Apium graveolens - Biennial
America eats its head celery religiously, and likes it. But leaf celery, as seasoning, is almost unknown. Some books give directions for drying celery tops for use in soup. But no one tells the secret of reveling in the spiced pungency that fresh celery leaves give salads and cooked dishes.
In the Italian quarter of any American city that secret is open for all to read. In the tiny kitchen gardens, green plots literally snatched from encroaching pavements, one finds beds of unbanked, leafing celery plants, ready for the knife of the cook. For such a bed celery is sown each spring, and is allowed to grow without hilling or thinning. It will grow about eight or ten inches tall, with tender leaves. Cut it recklessly, for it continues to spring up.secret is open for all to read. In the tiny kitchen gardens, green plots literally snatched from encroaching pavements, one finds beds of unbanked, leafing celery plants, ready for the knife of the cook. For such a bed celery is sown each spring, and is allowed to grow without hilling or thinning. It will grow about eight or ten inches tall, with tender leaves. Cut it recklessly, for it continues to spring up.
- Edible stems of Apium graveolens. Analysis per 100g, raw: 93.5 g water, 1.3 g carbohydrate, 1.8g dietary fiber, 0.9g protein, 8 kcal (36 kJ), trace of B vitmains, approximately 7 mg vitamin C. Related to celeriac, Apium graveolens var rapaceum, which is grown for the swollen base at its stem. Nutrient Composition
Excerpted from American Spice Trade Association. 1966. A glossary of Spices. American Spice Trade Association. 76 Beaver Street, New York, NY 10005
Garrett, Theodore Francis (edited by). 1898. the Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery. L. Upcott Gill, 170, Strand, W.C. London. Vol. I
Grimes, William. 2004. Eating Your Worlds. Oxford University Press.
Excerpts from Hawkes, Alex D. 1968. A World of Vegetable Cookery. Simon and Schuster, New York.
Excerpts from Bender, Arnold E. 1990. Dictionary of Nutrition and Food Technology. Butterworths, Boston.
