CELERY. 145 
snack luncheon, and was in either case laid on thick, being 
sprinkled over with chopped onion, and lemon.” At St. 
Petersburg it is eaten fresh as a hors @@uvre, from glass plates, 
with glass spoons. As to the Sturgeon (or royal fish) for food, 
its flesh in firmness, and dark red colour resembles beef, or veal, 
and is almost as savoury. Robert Lovell declared this fish 
cleareth the voice. It is called a stirrer, because it stirs up the 
mud by floundering at the bottom of the water. The Sturgeon 
is killed in the Mediterranean by blows on the head with heavy 
clubs, and its spinal marrow is taken out, being then made into 
patés ; the flesh may be boiled in slices, or stuffed and roasted. 
This flesh cannot be cooked better than by being roasted 
thoroughly before the fire, whilst basted liberally with white 
wine; or the fish will make a delicious soup. Queen Elizabeth 
was very fond of Sturgeon in puddings, or pies. She ordered 
sturgeon-pie with rosemary-mead to be prepared for breaktfast. 
Alexis Soyer taught persons of limited means to smuggle a slice 
of Sturgeon, with a few chopped shalots, beneath the piece otf 
meat which was sent to the bakehouse, under cover of the 
potatoes which accompanied it. George the Second of England, 
who had a German chef as cook, liked everything very full 
flavoured, Sturgeon not too fresh being one of his favourite 
dishes. 
CELERY. 
Our garden Celery (Apium sativum) is a cultivated variety of 
the wild Celery (Apium graveolens) which grows abundantly in 
moist English ditches, and in water, being unwholesome as a 
food, and with a fetid smell. But like several other plants of the 
same natural order (umbelliferous), when transplanted into the 
garden, dressed, and bleached, it becomes fragrant, healthful, 
and an excellent condimentary vegetable, besides now taking 
high curative rank. Our edible celery is a striking instance of 
the fact that most of the poisonous plants can by human in- 
genuity be so altered in character as to become eminently 
serviceable for food, or physic. Thus the wild Celery, which is 
certainly dangerous when growing as a plant exposed to the 
daylight, becomes most palatable, as well as beneficial, by having 
its young, crisp, leaf-stalks earthed up, and bleached during a 
time of cultivation. It contains some sugar, and a volatile, 
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