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Vegetables, Preserved

Tinned vegetables and fruits preserved by the heat process are well worthy of attention. But it is to the French preservers that we look for the best productions in the higher classes. "Beans, celery, spinach, artichokes, asparagus, and especially tomatoes, are so well preserved by the French manufacturers that they lose little or nothing of their flavour, and may be served by good cooks to the most critical company; while for soups, entrees, stews, and also for garnishing the tins of macedoines (mixed vegetables) are found most useful. But of all the vegetable preserves, the green peas hold the highest place. The best are preserved without any use of copper, their colour being retained, or rather restored, simply, we believe, by a little spinach-juice. The art of preserving peas has now reached so high a point of excellence, that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from the fresh gathered and fresh cooked vegetables--indeed, just as new peas come in, and during the pod season, those from the tins are consumed in enormous quantities at first-class hotels and restaurants in London and all Continental cities, and at the tables of the wealthy classes, without anybody but those who provide them being the wiser. The fraud, if such it may be called, is a very harmless one, and confers a benefit on the pea-eaters, who are ensured against a dish of hard, flavourless pellets. American preservers now send us large quantities of preserved tomatoes--a vegetable daily found in some form or other on every dinner--table. They are perhaps somewhat inferior in flavour to those produced in the South of France, but their cheapness would recommend them. From America also we get tins of 'green corn,' and Indian maize, cooked in its milky state before it is ripe--a still more indispensable article on American dinner--tables. Green Lima beans are another preserved vegetable sent from America, retailed in one-pound tins at about a shilling, and very excellent they are, but, like the 'green corn,' seldom experimented upon by the English public, being chiefly used by American residents in this country. No small success has attended the preservation in tins of fruit. The Americans send us yearly hundreds and thousands of tons of the various products of their gardens and orchards. In many parts of America--California, for instance, which seems likely to become the 'garden of the world'--fruit is a mere drug in the market, the supply of peaches, apricots, and pineapples, to say nothing of what we consider more common fruits, being almost unlimited. They are now seen in most of the shops which deal in such articles, and have obtained that degree of public favour to which their excellence and cheapness entitle them. The Australian colonies are also fast developing their powers of fruit production; and both the quality and cheapness of their preserves of various kinds which have found their way into our markets commend them to the public."