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Vegetables: Cover
Cover with boiling water, and boil gently twenty-five or thirty minutes.
Season with salt and butter, and serve at once.
Shelled Beans Stewed. 1 quart shelled beans, + pound salt pork, I onion, teaspoonful pepper, 1 tablespoonful flour, 1 quart boiling water, Salt to taste.
Cut the pork in slices and fry ten minutes in a stewpan. Add the onion, cut fine, cook twenty minutes.
Cover the beans with boiling water and boil ten minutes. Drain off the water. Put the beans and flour in the stewpan with the pork and onion, and stir over the fire five minutes.
Add the boiling water and pepper.
Place the saucepan where its contents will simmer for two hours.
Green Lima Beans.
Cover 1 quart shelled beans with boiling water. Place on the fire where they will boil up quickly, then draw back where they will simmer until done. When tender, pour off part of the water. Season with a teaspoonful salt and 2 tablespoonfuls butter.
Dried Beans Sautéd.
Soak beans over night, and cook until tender, but not broken. Drain when soft. For 1 quart beans put 3 tablespoonfuls butter in a stewpan.
When hot, put in the beans, which have been seasoned with a tablespoonful salt and teaspoonful pepper. Cook for fifteen minutes, frequently turning the beans with a fork. Cover, and let cook slowly for half an hour.
If they are liked moist, add a cupful meat broth, then cook for half an hour.
Baked Lentils. 1 quart lentils, 1 quart water, 6 ounces mixed salt pork, 1 clove garlic or 1 small onion, 1 teaspoonful salt, teaspoonful pepper.
Pick over and wash the lentils.
Soak in cold water over night. In the morning pour off the water and put them in a stewpan with 2 quarts cold water and place on the fire. As soon as the water begins to boil, the lentils will rise to the top. Take them off with a skimmer and put in a deep earthen dish, with the pork and onion in the center. Mix the pepper and salt with a quart boiling water and add. Put the dish in a moderate oven, and cook slowly four or five hours. The lentils must be kept moist, and it may be necessary to add a little water from time to time.- MARIA PARLOA.
Stewed Okra.
Use only the small green pods, not more than two and a half inches long. Wipe the pods, cut off the stems and tips, if the latter be discolored. Put them into boiling salted water and cook gently for twenty to thirty minutes. Drain off the water, add 1 tablespoonful butter, 1 ta blespoonful vinegar, and a little pepper and salt. Let them simmer at the back of the range until the butter is absorbed, then turn out without breaking the pods, and serve hot.
Baked Hubbard Squash.
Select a thoroughly ripened squash, cut in halves and remove the seeds, scraping the inside thoroughly. Bake one and a half hours in a moderate oven, remove the thin brown skin and with a spoon scrape the squash out of the shell into a hot dish, mashing it with butter, salt, and pepper to taste.
Scalloped Onions.
VEGETABLES Boil 6 or 8 onions till tender, changing the water once. Separate them with a fork and arrange in layers in a buttered earthen dish, alternating the layers with buttered bread crumbs. Season with salt and pepper, pour over milk to nearly cover, spread with melted butter, and brown in a moderate oven.
Yankee Fried Parsnips.
Scrape parsnips thoroughly and parboil in salted water; cut in slices lengthwise, dip each piece in molasses, and fry in fat. Tomatoes Stuffed with Succotash.
Wash, wipe, and remove a thin slice from the stem end of 6 tomatoes, scoop out the inside, sprinkle with salt, invert, stand half an hour.
Mix the pulp with 1 cupful succotash; stuff the tomatoes and arrange them in a buttered pan, sprinkle the top of each with buttered cracker crumbs. Bake in a hot oven twenty minutes. Baste with melted butter.
Peppers with Macaroni (Italian recipe).
Cut the tops from green peppers, remove seeds and core, and let stand ten minutes in boiling water. Chop cooked macaroni into small pieces and mix with a thin cream sauce.
Drain the peppers, fill with macaroni, adding to each a generous spoonful of grated cheese. Bake in a granite dish with very little water until the peppers are tender. Serve with tomato sauce made from fresh or canned tomatoes pressed through a sieve and thickened with melted butter to which a tablespoonful flour has been added. Salt and a few drops of onion juice should be added, but no pepper.
Fried Turnips.
Peel the turnips, cut in inch cubes, boil until tender, drain, and fry in butter until golden brown on both sides.
Potatoes Hashed with Green Peppers.
To hashed brown potatoes add chopped bacon in the proportion of one slice to each person, and minced red or green peppers.
Stuffed Cucumbers and White Sauce.
Peel large cucumbers and cut lengthwise; scoop out the centers; fill with bread-crumb stuffing, plain or mixed with chopped meat; put side by side in a pan, and bake in a hot oven, basting frequently with melted butter and hot water. When the cucumbers are soft, remove, and put a spoonful white sauce over each as it is served.
Corn Custard. 6 ears corn, 3 eggs, 1 cupful milk, teaspoonful salt, Dash cayenne.
Scrape the corn from the ears, beat the eggs, add the milk to the corn, then add a seasoning of salt and cayenne, and mix the eggs in lightly; bake in a deep buttered dish in a pan of hot water in the oven till a knife blade put into the custard comes out dry. Serve at once.
Pepper Rings.
Cut a large pepper in 4 rings, removing the seeds; boil fifteen minutes; cut 4 rounds of stale bread and brown them in the oven. Butter the slices, lay a ring of pepper on each and fill the center with well-seasoned, cold minced meat. Moisten with water in which the pepper was boiled, adding salt and butter to season, and set in the oven.
Chile con Carne (a Mexican recipe).
Soak 1 pint dried Lima beans over night; in the morning arrange in the bean pot with 1 pound solid lean beef, 2 ounces sweet fat or suet, a red pepper cut in rings, and onion, shaved. Cover with water, season with salt, teaspoonful mustard wet up with vinegar, a dash McIlhenny's Tabasco Sauce, and bake slowly in a MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK moderate oven for three or four hours.
To Boil Cabbage.
Cut a head of cabbage in 4 parts.
Soak half an hour in a pan of cold water to which has been added a tablespoonful salt; this will draw out insects or worms that may be hidden in the leaves. After soaking, cut in slices. Have a large stewpan half full of boiling water; put in the cabbage, pushing it under the water with a spoon. Add 1 tablespoonful salt, and cook twenty-five to forty minutes. Turn into a colander and drain; put in a chopping bowl and mince. Season with butter, pepper, and more salt if required. Allow a tablespoonful butter to a pint cooked vegetable. a Cabbage Cooked with Pork.
For a small head of cabbage use pound salt pork. Boil the pork gently for three or four hours. Prepare the cabbage, and boil rapidly till tender. Serve the pork with the cabbage.
Creamed Cabbage. 2 cupfuls boiled and minced cabbage, 1 cupful hot milk, 1 tablespoonful butter, 1 teaspoonful flour, teaspoonful salt, teaspoonful pepper.
Put the cabbage, hot milk, salt, and pepper in a stewpan. Beat the butter and flour together until creamy, then stir into the contents of the stewpan. Simmer ten minutes; serve very hot.
Cabbage and Potato Purée. 2 cupfuls boiled finely minced cabbage, 6 medium-sized potatoes, 2 tablespoonfuls butter, 2 teaspoonfuls salt, teaspoonful pepper, 1 cupful hot milk.
Peel the potatoes and put them in a stewpan with enough boiling water to cover. Cook thirty minutes. Pour off the water and mash fine. Beat in the hot milk, seasoning, and cabbage.
Cook five minutes longer.
This is a run of a dozen or more vegetable dishes from a single chapter, so the notes below apply across the group rather than to one dish. Most need only two adjustments: shorter cooking and real oven numbers.
- Oven temperatures"moderate oven" in books of this period is usually read as roughly 350F and "hot" as about 400-425F, though the terms were never fixed. For the baked lentils, four or five hours "slowly," something nearer 300-325F suits better.
- Missing fractionsSeveral quantities have lost their fractions in this text: the salt pork in the stewed shelled beans and in cabbage cooked with pork, and most of the pepper and salt measures given as bare "teaspoonful." Read pepper as a quarter to a half teaspoon. The salt pork figure is not recoverable -- a quarter or a half pound would both fit -- so season by taste rather than guessing at the number.
- Boiling times for green vegetablesTwenty-five to forty minutes for cabbage and twenty-five to thirty for the beans belong to an era that valued vegetables soft. Cabbage wedges are done in 8-10 minutes, green beans in 5-7. The okra is treated differently here: the pods are left whole, which limits the mucilage, and the vinegar is a traditional check on it as well.
- Corn custard doneness"Until a knife blade comes out dry" overshoots. Pull the custard when the center still trembles slightly and a knife an inch from the middle comes out clean; carryover heat finishes it, and a fully set custard will have begun to weep.
- Scraping cornSix ears "scraped" means cutting the kernel tops and then pressing the cob with the back of the knife to release the milky pulp. That pulp carries the starch and body; frozen whole kernels will give a thinner custard.
- Granite dishThe "granite dish" called for with the stuffed peppers is granite-ware, enameled steel, not stone. Any shallow enameled or ceramic baker works.
- Hubbard squashA Hubbard is a large, hard-shelled squash, often around 8-15 lb, and needs a heavy knife to open. Halve it and seed it; the recipe's hour and a half in a moderate oven is about right for a large half.
- Tabasco and molassesThe chile con carne relies on a single red pepper and a dash of bottled sauce, which will read as very mild to anyone expecting modern chili. The Yankee fried parsnips, dipped in molasses, are correspondingly sweeter than expected; use a thin coating only, since molasses scorches fast in hot fat.
- YieldThe bean, lentil and cabbage recipes built on a quart of the main ingredient serve six to eight as a side. The stuffed tomatoes, pepper rings and stuffed cucumbers are portioned by the piece, one or two per person.
Vegetable chapters in American household books of this period were still organized around long boiling and salt pork, the two techniques a coal range and a barrel of cured meat made easy, and the interest of a run like this lies in watching newer material push in at the edges. Maria Parloa, credited with the baked lentils, ran a cooking school in Boston and was one of the most widely reprinted cookery writers of the late nineteenth century; her name on a recipe was a selling point. Alongside her sit dishes flagged as foreign or regional novelties — peppers with macaroni labeled an Italian recipe, chile con carne labeled Mexican and cooked, tellingly, in a New England bean pot — which is how such food generally entered mainstream American cookbooks, adapted to familiar equipment before it was understood on its own terms. The naming of McIlhenny's Tabasco Sauce is worth noting too: the recipe specifies the condiment by maker rather than by type.