[Sca-cooks] P: Celery Seed / Lovage

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> "Celery Seed
> The name seems like a no-brainer. But these aren't the seeds of
> garden-variety celery. Most celere seed comes from a wild variety of celery
> called lovage, and, like many other spices, hails from India. While it does
> taste something like the celery everyone knaos and loves, the seeds' flavor
> is underpinned by an earthier note and a hint of bitterness......"

No, wrong. Lovage and wild celery are NOT the same. Wild celery is
SMALLAGE. Lovage seeds are larger than 'celery seed'

> >From McCormick's spice page you get:
> Celery seed is the dried fruit of the Apium graveolens which is related, but
> not identical, to the vegetable celery plant. The tiny brown seeds have a
> celery-like flavor and aroma.
>
> Gernot Katzer is strangely silent on the subject.

No, actually, he isn't. He points out that Lovage is Levisticum
officinale, though it is _similar_ to celery, and that celery is Apium
graveolens.

Encyclopedia Britanica also says that smallage is celery seed, the seeds
of the wild celery.

> This is one of the ingredients oft called for but more difficult to find.
> So, has anyone else heard of this? Is it factual?

No, it's not factual. I don't know where this nonsense about Lovage
being celery seed started, but every reputable book will show that they
aren't the same. I suspect one of the cooking shows started it on their
website and it's just being copied.

Lovage isn't hard to grow-- if you don't have access to a garden, see if
you know anyone who does and wouldn't mind a six-foot background plant.
Buy a plant of it (you can get them through mailorder) and stick it in the
ground, make sure it doesn't shrivel up and die, and you are in
business... it's a perennial.


-- Pani Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"But he's a human being and terrible things happen to him so attention
must be paid.... Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a
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