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Leeks, Boiling Of
Leeks are generally used in soups, etc. If served alone, take them when very young, trim off the roots, the outer leaves, and the green ends, and cut the stalks into six-inch lengths. Tie them in bundles, put them into boiling water, with a dessert-spoonful of salt and a table-spoonful of vinegar, and let them boil until quite tender. Drain them, and serve like asparagus, on hot toast, pouring white sauce or melted butter over them. Time to boil, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 4d. per bundle. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian way with young leeks, treated as a vegetable course in its own right rather than a soup base. Almost everything here still works apart from the timing.
- The forty-five minutesYoung leeks trimmed to six-inch lengths are tender in 8-15 minutes in boiling salted water, depending on thickness. Three-quarters of an hour turns them to grey threads; test with the tip of a knife at the thickest point and stop there.
- Wash before you tieGrit lodges between the layers where the white meets the green. Split the stalks lengthwise most of the way down and fan them under cold running water, then tie the bundles. The recipe assumes this step and does not mention it.
- The vinegarA tablespoon in the pot would do more to keep the whites pale than to season them. The recipe says only 'vinegar'; white wine vinegar or a squeeze of lemon does the same job with less smell.
- Dessert-spoonfulRoughly two teaspoons, a size between teaspoon and tablespoon that survives in British cutlery drawers but not in most measuring sets.
- Drain properlyLeeks hold a great deal of water between their layers and will flood the toast. Stand the bundles upright in a colander for a few minutes, then press gently in a clean cloth before untying.
- White sauce or melted butterThe white sauce meant here is a plain flour-and-butter sauce, usually made with milk.
- Probable costFourpence per bundle. The stated yield of five or six people assumes it is one course among several, not a main dish; count two bundles for four as a side.
Leeks were the poor relation of the onion family in nineteenth-century English cookery, valued mainly for the stockpot and for cock-a-leekie, which is why the entry opens by conceding that they are "generally used in soups." Serving them whole on toast under a white sauce borrows the treatment given to asparagus, and the comparison is made explicitly in the text: a cheap vegetable dressed in the manner of a costly one.