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Boiled Leeks
Wash the leeks and tie into bunches of three or four. Trim the tops perfectly even. Have ready a kettle of boiling salted water, put in the leeks and boil rapidly twenty minutes. Drain carefully without breaking. Serve on toast with Drawn Butter the same as asparagus.
A plain vegetable dish of the asparagus school, and the only real difficulties are grit and overcooking.
- Wash properlyLeeks trap sand between the layers, and a rinse under the tap will not reach it. Split the trimmed white and pale green lengthwise, fan the layers under cold running water, then tie the halves back into bunches with kitchen string.
- Twenty minutes is too longTwenty minutes is likely longer than needed -- bunched trimmed leeks of about an inch across are usually tender in 8 to 12 minutes at a gentle simmer; test the thick end with a knife tip.
- Simmer, do not boil rapidlyA hard rolling boil is what breaks the bundles apart, which is the fault the recipe warns against at the draining stage. Keep the water at a bare simmer and lift the bunches out with a skimmer or tongs.
- Salt the water generouslyAbout a tablespoon of salt per quart. Leeks are watery and bland on their own, and there is no other seasoning step in the method.
- Drawn butterNot clarified butter, despite the modern sense of the phrase. In period American cookbooks drawn butter is generally a light flour-and-butter sauce loosened with the vegetable water or milk; proportions vary, but something near a tablespoon each of butter and flour to a cup of liquid is typical, seasoned with salt and sometimes lemon.
- Dry before servingStand the drained bunches on a folded towel for a minute. Wet leeks turn toast to pulp, and the sauce will slide off rather than cling.
- QuantityThe recipe ties the leeks in bunches of three or four; allow one bunch and one slice of toast per person.
Leeks are among the oldest cultivated alliums in Europe and were a staple of the medieval English kitchen garden long before they became a garnish; by the late nineteenth century, when books of this kind were being written, they seem to have slipped down the social scale in America and appeared far more often as the base of a soup than as a dish in their own right. Serving them whole on toast under a sauce is a straight borrowing of the way asparagus was presented at the same tables, and the recipe says as much outright.