Pumpkins
Lady Llanover says: "Few vegetables are so little understood and consequently so much undervalued in Great Britain as pumpkins. Perhaps Gower in South Wales is the only part of the United Kingdom where pumpkins are grown as an article of diet by the rural population; and there they are to be seen, as on the Continent, hanging from the ceilings for winter store, and any little spare corner in the field or garden is made use of to place the small mound on which to sow a few pumpkin seeds. The varieties of this plant are so numerous that it would be beyond the limit of any cookery book to attempt an enumeration of comparative merits, from the vegetable marrow to the Turk's turban and the yellow pumpkin, which grows to such a size as to fill a wheelbarrow; but it will not be out of place to note shortly a few of the modes in which pumpkins are available. For white soup they can be used alone, with merely the addition of onion, celery and sweet-herbs for flavouring. They are excellent when boiled, sprinkled with salt and sweet-herbs; or fried in egg and crumbs like soles. Also plain, boiled in slices and Punch served with brown gravy. In Gower they are added to hashed meat, made into pies with apples, and put into soup. Pumpkins have one peculiar quality in addition to a good deal of natural sweetness: they will absorb and retain the flavour of whatever they are cooked with. If stewed with plums it tastes exactly like them in puddings and tarts; the same with apples, rhubarb or gooseberries; and for savoury cookery it would be difficult to say in what dish it may not be used with advantage as an addition."