[Sca-cooks] Celery or Celeriac

Wed Sep 29 11:13:20 PDT 2004

> The modern Pascal celery, as well as celeriac, appear to be the 
> result of 19th-century engineering. Wild celery, AFAIK, has much 
> thinner, more fibrous, and much more strongly-flavored stems, similar 
> to lovage or smallage. 

Actually, wild celery has stems exactly like smallage, since smallage is 
wild celery. Celery seed, by the way, comes from wild celery/smallage.

The entry from the OED on smallage:

 One or other of several varieties of celery or parsley; esp. wild 
celery or water parsley, Apium graveolens. Now rare. 

  {alpha} c1290 St. Cuthbert 52 in S. Eng. Leg. I. 360 .Nim,. he seide, 
.{th}e milk of one kov.., Iuys of smal-Ache do {th}ar~to.. a1387 Sinon. 
Barthol. (Anecd. Oxon.) 11 Apium simpliciter,..smale ache. c1400 
Lanfranc's Cirurg. 94 Leie on {th}is confeccioun maad of flour of wheete 
& hony & ius of smalache. c1450 M.E. Med. Bk. (Heinrich) 101 Take 
smalache, reed fenel, rewe, verueyne [etc.]. 1545 T. RAYNALDE Byrth 
Mankynde 134 The decoction of rosemarye,..alexander, smallach, &c. 1578 
LYTE Dodoens 606 Smallache hath shyning leaues of a darke greene colour. 
1603 HOLLAND Plutarch 719 Afterwards when these [Isthmian] Games were 
accounted, they translated thither..the chaplet of Smallach.

  {beta} 14.. Nom. in Wr.-Wülcker 711 Hoc apium, smalege. 1530 PALSGR. 
271/2 Smallage an herbe, ache. 1562 TURNER Herbal (1568) 40 Smallage 
hath suche a strong savor,..that no man can..eat it with hys meate. 1636 
W. DENNY in Ann. Dubrensia (1877) 13 Each three yeeres Victor was with 
Smallage crown'd, Whose pendant leaves, his head enshadow'd round. 1685 
TEMPLE Ess. Gardens Wks. 1720 I. 178 The Plants he mentions, are the 
Apium, which tho' commonly interpreted Parsly, yet comprehends all Sorts 
of Smallage, whereof Sellery is one. 1712 Pomet's Hist. Drugs I. 2 The 
large Smallage, which the Gardiners falsly call Macedonian-Parsley. 1785 
MARTYN Rousseau's Bot. xvii. (1794) 236 Our wild Smallage,..which is 
common by ditches and brooks, cannot be rendered esculent by culture. 
1822-7 GOOD Study Med. (1829) I. 248 The cicuta virosa, or 
water-hemlock, the leaves of which have been mistaken for smallage. 1876 
Encycl. Brit. V. 290/2 Celery,..a biennial plant..which, in its native 
condition, is known in England as smallage.

  attrib. c1550 H. LLOYD Treas. Health giv, Smalladge rote hanged aboute 
thy necke doth alay the tooth ache. a1648 DIGBY Closet Opened (1677) 130 
Smallage Gruel. 1658 ROWLAND tr. Moufet's Theat. Ins. 1063 Give in Wine 
the decoction..of the Cyprus Nut, Smallage-seed. 1853 A. SOYER Pantroph. 
141 When it is cooked, add pepper and smallage seed.

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-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net 
"If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would 
be librarians." -- Warren Buffet, Washington Post, April 17, 1988