Ingredients · Salt

Celery Salt

Apium graveolens with sodium chloride · Apiaceae (carrot family)

Celery Salt
Salt mixed with ground celery seed — and for a Calgary shop, the most local thing in the cabinet. The celery-salt rim belongs to the Caesar, which was invented here in 1969, so this is a hometown ingredient before it is anything else. Three products carry it. A usual home ratio is two parts salt to one of ground seed, though the supplier's exact ratio is not on our spec.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partBlend
KindSalt
CaffeineCaffeine-free
TasteSalty and green — the smell of a cut celery stalk, slightly bitter and grassy, with warmth underneath

How to use it

The rim of a Caesar or a Bloody Mary — wet the glass and roll it. In potato salad, egg salad, coleslaw and devilled eggs. On a hot dog, the Chicago way. In Old Bay, where it is a main component. It is salt, so account for it when seasoning.

With food

Tomato juice and clam. Eggs. Potato. Hot dogs and sausage. Shellfish and crab. Cucumber. Mayonnaise. Beef.

With spices

Black pepper. Paprika and cayenne, in a Caesar rim. Mustard powder. Dill. Bay, in Old Bay.

With tea

Not a tea ingredient.

Its story

Where it comes from

No origin is named for our lot. The celery seed in commercial celery salt mostly comes from Punjab, India, which grows around 90 per cent of a crop India took up around 1940 with seed imported from France.

What happened

In 1969 Walter Chell, managing a restaurant at the Calgary Inn, was asked to create a signature drink for the hotel's new Italian restaurant. Thinking of spaghetti alle vongole, he reasoned clams and tomato would make a drink, mashed baby clams by hand, worked on it for three months, and rimmed the glass with celery salt. The story goes that a British regular tasted it and said, "Walter, that's a damn good bloody Caesar." Within five years it was Calgary's most popular mixed drink, and the City proclaimed Caesar Day on 13 May 2009. Told plainly, the origin is disputed — clam-and-tomato cocktails are older, and a Seagram executive claimed a similar drink in Manhattan in 1968. Celery salt's other North American home is the Chicago hot dog, where it joined the toppings at the vegetable carts on Maxwell Street during the Depression, because Chicago was ringed by celery farms.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

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