These crunchy stalks were once a lot less ubiquitous—and a lot less crunchy.
irresistible, explaining that “celery didn’t grow easily, which made it a luxury and all the more enticing for upper and emerging middle classes.”
In the era before railroads, market gardens needed to be just a few miles from a city, since growers had to haul their produce to market by wagon several times a week. By the 1840s, though, newly completed railroads made urban markets accessible to farmers much farther out. A new network of wholesale merchants soon emerged to buy produce from rural gardens and broker its sale in large cities, prompting more growers to cultivate produce for urban markets.
The same period saw a reaction from consumers against the giant gardeners’ trophies of prior decades, which sacrificed flavor and texture in favor of impressive height. Henderson deemed Incomparable Dwarf, with its two-foot height and 12-inch circumference, to be the best variety for the post-Civil War market. Though naturally light green in color, he noted, when blanched the variety turned “yellowish-white” and was “crisp, tender, and of a most agreeable nutty flavor.
It was during this era that celery became a staple on holiday menus, too. In part, this was due to its seasonality—fresh celery began arriving in urban markets in late October and peaked in November and December—but also because of the vegetable’s long-running position among the relishes on formal dining menus.from the newspaper’s archives and identified two relishes—celery and olives—that were constant fixtures of the holiday meal, starting in the late 1800s.
Chief among the new market-driven varieties was Giant Pascal, which Kinney described as “peculiarly adapted to the production of a large amount of edible matter” and “always of mild flavor.” Compared to White Plume or Golden Self Blanching, it was not as susceptible to disease, and it kept well while being shipped long distances—an ever more important quality.
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