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Salt and Pepper (Quarter of a saltspoonful)
Two pounds of Brussels Sprouts. Two ounces of Butter. Quarter of a saltspoonful of Carbonate of Soda.
Wash the sprouts well in salt and water, and trim them; put them into a saucepanful of boiling water with some salt and the carbonate of soda.
Let them boil fast with the lid off till quite tender -from ten to twenty minutes, according to age.
When done, strain them off, dry them in a cloth, put them into a stewpan with the butter, pepper, and salt, toss them in this till thoroughly hotthey must not fry; then serve. Champignons grillés.
Lay some toast cut in neat pieces in your dish.
Trim the mushrooms and place them in a deep tin, add a tablespoonful of stock and one ounce of butter, salt and pepper; baste the mushrooms ; cover them over and cook in the oven till tender; put the mushrooms on the croûtes and serve hot.
Two short vegetable dishes run together here, and the page opens mid-ingredient-list: the butter quantity for the sprouts was given in the heading that has been lost, so work to about 1 oz (30 g) butter per pound of sprouts. Everything else is workable as written.
- The soda is the one thing to leave outA quarter of a saltspoonful is roughly a sixteenth of a teaspoon — a genuine pinch. Carbonate of soda is baking soda, added to hold the green colour in alkaline water, but it softens cell walls into mush and destroys most of the vitamin C. Salted boiling water alone, lid off, gives colour that is nearly as good.
- SaltspoonA Victorian saltspoon holds about a quarter teaspoon, so quantities given in quarter-saltspoonfuls are pinches. Do not read it as a full teaspoon.
- Ten to twenty minutes is for old sproutsTen to twenty minutes 'according to age' -- The recipe's upper end is for old, large sprouts. Sprouts sold now are picked small and young. Five to eight minutes in fast-boiling water is enough; test with a knife tip at the stem end. Twenty minutes gives the sulphurous, grey result the vegetable is unfairly blamed for.
- Drying them in a clothNot fussiness. Wet sprouts will steam rather than take up the butter, and the butter will split. A clean towel or a minute in the empty hot pan does the job.
- "They must not fry"The hinge of the sprout recipe. The stewpan is for coating and reheating over gentle heat; once the butter browns and the outer leaves catch, the dish tastes of scorched cabbage.
- Champignons grillés are not grilledDespite the name, the mushrooms are baked in a covered tin. The recipe gives no oven setting, only 'cook in the oven till tender'; in a modern oven about 350F (175C) for 15 to 20 minutes depending on size works. Large flat mushrooms take longer than buttons and give more juice.
- CroûtesSimply the toast, cut to fit the mushrooms. Fry it in butter rather than toasting dry if you want it to stand up to the pan juices, which should be spooned over at the end.
- YieldNeither dish is quantified. Reckon 1 lb (450 g) sprouts for four as a side, and 4 to 6 oz of mushrooms per person on one thick slice of toast.
Boiling green vegetables with a pinch of carbonate of soda was a widespread practice in British kitchens through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, and it turns up in manuals of this type; the alkali keeps chlorophyll bright, and colour on the plate was often given priority over texture. The practice was being criticised well before the twentieth century and was still common in institutional cooking long after, though it fell out of favour in kitchens that cared about texture. The second dish shows the other half of this book's world: an English mushroom on English toast, given a French title, as was the fashion for high-class tables. Croûte means crust, and here it is simply the fried or toasted base that keeps a wet garnish off the dish, a word used for everything from these mushrooms to a savoury of anchovy at the end of dinner.