Both took up their irons, and after a few minutes Mrs. Lennox exclaimed:—
“It is positively true!”
“What is?”
“That cabbage has no disagreeable smell.”
“No, but it would have if you left it on the stove to cook slowly for an hour or two. It is the long slow cooking in little water that ruins it and all green vegetables.”
Mrs. Lennox now prepared to lay the cloth, and when she returned to the kitchen Molly had taken up the cabbage and pressed it. It was bright pale green, streaked, where the heart was, with creamy white.
“Is that the cabbage? and is it done?”
“Try for yourself. You see it is far more tender than when slowly boiled, and is marrowy as spinach.”
“So it is; but how did you find it out?”
“I didn’t. I was told by an English lady. I had noticed that all English cooking-books gave twenty minutes to half an hour to boil cabbage, while ours always say two hours. And I noticed, too, it was never alluded to as a coarse, rank vegetable, and I asked an explanation from her, and she also told me she dared not eat cabbage here, for fear of indigestion; but I never yet found any one who believed me when I told them cabbage should only be boiled twenty-five minutes, nor can I induce them to try it. They all think that I prefer half-raw cabbage. Now I leave you to dress it as you like, for I must run home.”