Peas should be put into boiling water, with salt and saleratus, in the proportion of a quarter of a tea spoonful of saleratus to half a peck of peas. Boil them from fifteen to thirty minutes, according to their age and kind. When boiled tender, take them out of the water with a skimmer, salt and butter them to the taste. Peas to be good should be fresh gathered, and not shelled till just before they are cooked.
Corn is much sweeter to be boiled on the cob. If made into sucatosh, cut it from the cobs, and boil it with Lima beans, and a few slices of salt pork. It requires boiling from fifteen to thirty minutes, according to its age.
108. To cook various kinds of Beans.
French beans should have the strings taken off—if old, the edges should be cut off, and the beans cut through the middle. Boil them with a little salt, from twenty-five to forty minutes, according to their age. A little saleratus boiled with them preserves their green color, and makes them more healthy. Salt and butter them when taken up. Lima beans can be kept the year round, by being perfectly dried when fresh gathered in the pods, or being put without drying into a keg, with a layer of salt to each layer of beans, having a layer of salt at the bottom of the keg. Cover them tight, and keep them in a cool place. Whenever you wish to cook them, soak them over night, in cold water—shell and boil them, with a little saleratus. White beans for baking, should be picked over carefully to get out the colored and bad ones. Wash and soak them over night in a pot, set where they will keep lukewarm. There should be about three quarts of water to three pints of the beans. The next morning set them where they will boil, with a tea spoonful of saleratus. When they have boiled four or five minutes, take them up with a skimmer. Put them in a baking pot. Gash a pound of pork, and put it down in the pot, so as to have the beans cover all but the upper surface—turn in cold water till you can just see it at the top. They will bake in a hot oven, in the course of three hours—but they are better to remain in it five or six hours. Beans are good prepared in the same manner as for baking, and stewed several hours without baking.
White mustard, spinach, water cresses, dandelions, and the leaves and roots of very small beets, are the best greens. Boil them with a little salt and saleratus in the water. If not fresh and plump, soak them in salt and water half an hour before cooking them. When they are boiled enough, they will sink to the bottom of the pot.