Boil, peel, and break to paste the potatoes; then, to two pounds, add a quarter of a pint of milk, and a little salt, with two or three ounces of butter, and stir all well over the fire. Serve thus, or brown the top, when placed on the dish in a form, with a salamander; or in scollops.
To mash Parsnips.
Boil tender; scrape them; then mash into a stewpan, with a little cream, a good piece of butter, pepper, and salt.
To keep Green Peas.
Shell, and put them into a kettle of water when it boils: give them two or three warms only, and pour them into a colander. When the water drains off, turn them on a dresser covered with cloth; pour them on another cloth to dry perfectly: then bottle them in widemouth bottles, leaving only room to pour clarified mutton suet upon them an inch thick, and for the cork; rosin it down, and keep in a cellar, or in the earth, as ordered for gooseberries. Boil them, with a bit of butter, a spoonful of sugar, and a bit of mint, till tender, when to be used.
Another way, as practised in the Emperor of Russia’s Kitchen.
Shell, scald, and dry as above. Put them on tins or earthen dishes in a cool oven to harden, once or twice. Keep them in paper bags hung up in the kitchen. When to be used, let them lie an hour in water; then set them on with cold water, and a bit of butter, and boil till ready. Put a sprig of dried mint to boil with them.
To preserve French Beans, to eat in the Winter.
Pick them young, and throw into a little wooden keg a layer three inches deep; then sprinkle with salt: put another layer of beans, and do the same as high as you think proper, alternately with salt; but do not be too liberal of the latter: lay a plate, or cover of wood that will go into the keg, and put on it a heavy stone. A pickle will rise from the beans and salt. If too salt, the soaking and boiling will not be sufficient to make them pleasant to the taste. When to be eaten, cut, soak, and boil as when fresh.
Potatoes should be kept in the earth that adheres to them when dug; and preserved from frost.