If you wish to have vegetables delicately clean, put on your pot, make it boil, put a little salt in it, and skim it perfectly clean before you put in the greens, &c., which should not be put in till the water boils briskly; the quicker they boil, the greener they will be. When the vegetables sink, they are generally done enough, if the water has been kept constantly boiling. Take them up immediately, or they will lose their color and goodness. Drain the water from them thoroughly before you send them to table.
This branch of cookery requires the most vigilant attention.
TO DRESS SALAD.
Two large potatoes, pressed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give;
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon;
Distrust the condiment that bites too soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.
Four times the spoon with oil of Lucca crown,
And twice with vinegar procured from town;
True flavor needs it, and your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two boiled eggs;
Let onion’s atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, scarce suspected, animate the whole;
And, lastly, in the flavored compound toss
A magic spoonful of anchovy sauce.
O great and glorious! O herbaceous treat!
’Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat,
Back to the world he’d turn his weary soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl.
Rev. Sidney Smith.
If the herbs be young, fresh-gathered, trimmed neatly, and drained dry and the sauce-maker ponders patiently over the above directions, he cannot fail of obtaining the fame of being a very accomplished salad-dresser.
ONIONS.
The things we eat, by various juice control
The narrowness or largeness of our soul.
Onions will make e’en heirs or widows weep;
The tender lettuce brings on softer sleep.
King.
Peel a pint of button onions, and put them in water till you want to put them on to boil; put them into a stewpan, with a quart of cold water; let them boil till tender; they will take (according to their size and age) from half an hour to an hour.