Celery goes mainstream
Some writers have attributed celery’s late 19th-century vogue to the fact that it was rare and expensive, a perfect article for the conspicuous consumption of the Gilded Age. In explaining for Taste why “Celery Was the Avocado Toast of the Victorian Era”, Heather Arndt Anderson writes, “It was fussy to grow and difficult to obtain—and this made it irresistible to the Victorian upper classes.” Paula Mejía echoes this rationale for Atlas Obscura, explaining that “celery didn’t grow easily, which made it a luxury and all the more enticing for upper and emerging middle classes.”
In actuality, its rise was made possible by a convergence of agricultural and economic developments in the years just before and after the Civil War, including new celery varieties, advances in growing and marketing techniques, and improved transportation. These improvements actually made celery less fussy to grow and less difficult to obtain, and its cachet only grew as it became more accessible to an expanding market of middle-class consumers.
Since the late 18th century, a small number of farmers on the outskirts of American cities had made a living by commercial gardening. Unlike ordinary farmers, who might have a small plot of vegetables for family use but focused primarily on grains or other large-scale commodity crops, these so-called “market gardeners” specialized in perishable and labor-intensive fruits and vegetables—lettuce, beans, peaches, strawberries—that fetched high prices in urban markets.
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. With a primary focus on maximizing profits, these growers and middlemen soon turned to more perishable but more lucrative produce, like celery.
The market gardeners of New Jersey set out to develop varieties more suitable for the American climate and evolving urban markets. In The Field and Garden Vegetables of America (1865), Fearing Burr, Jr., identified 19 available celery varieties, some of which were just recently introduced. Some bore the names of their originators (Cole’s Superb White, Nutt’s Champion White) or their primary characteristics (Dwarf Curled White, Red Solid).