Celery Taste is ever plac'd in the middle of the Grand Sallet, at our Great Men's tables, and Praetors feasts, as the Grace of the whole Board". Celery makes a minor appearance in colonial American gardens; its culinary limitations are reflected in the observation by the author of "A Treatise on Gardening, by a Citizen of Virginia" that it is "one of the species of parsley." Its first extended treatment in print was in Bernard M'Mahon's "American Gardener's Calendar" (1806). After the mid-19th century, continued selections for refined crisp texture and taste brought celery to American tables, where it was served
Celery medicinal herbs and vegetables the Frankish emperor desired to see grown. At some later point in medieval Europe celery displaced alexanders. Celery's late arrival in the English kitchen is an end-product of the long tradition of seed selection needed to reduce the sap's bitterness and increase its sugars. By 1699, John Evelyn could recommend it in his "Acetaria. A Discourse of Sallets": "Sellery, apium Italicum, (and of the Petroseline Family) was formerly a stranger with us (nor very long since in Italy) is an hot and more generous sort of Macedonian Persley or Smallage... and for its high and grateful