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Potatoes (Two of French vinegar three)
two of French vinegar, three of salad oil, a teaspoonful of mixed mustard, some pepper and salt, and serve.
A Dish of Macaroni.
Boil 4 ounces of macaroni till it is quite tender, then lay it on a sieve to drain, and put it into a stewpan with about a gill of cream, and a piece of butter rolled in flour; stew it five minutes and pour it on a plate. Lay Parmesan cheese toasted all over it, and send it up in a water-plate. Cole-Slaw.
Get a fresh cabbage, take off the outside leaves, cut it in half, and with a sharp knife shave it into fine slips. Put it into a deep dish, and pour over it a dressing prepared in the following manner:
Beat up 2 eggs, add to it 1 gill of vinegar and water mixed; place it on the range; when it begins to thicken stir in a piece of butter the size of a small walnut, a little salt; when cold pour it over the cabbage and stir it together; and before sending to table sprinkle with a little black pepper.
To boil Peas.
Early peas require about half an hour to boil, and the later kinds rather longer; the water should boil when they are put in; when they are tough and yellow, they may be made tender and green by putting in a little pearl-ash or ashes tied up in a bag, just before they are taken up; this will tender all green vegetables, but do not put too much; when done dip them out; drain and season them with butter, pepper and salt; put a bunch of parsley in the middle of the dish.
String Beans.
These, to be tender, should be boiled from three to four hours, after the strings have been very carefully removed. Add a little butter, salt and black pepper when they are dished.
Potatoes. Fourteen ways of Dressing Them.
This page is a run of short vegetable and pasta receipts printed nose to tail, opening mid-sentence in a salad dressing and breaking off at the head of a potato chapter. Three of the four complete receipts are usable; the timings for the green vegetables are not.
- The opening fragmentThe page begins in the middle of a dressing: two parts vinegar to three parts oil with mustard, pepper and salt. That is sharper than the modern one-to-three vinaigrette; the salad it belonged to was presumably on the page before.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. It appears twice here, in the macaroni cream and in the cole-slaw dressing.
- Macaroni, boiled "quite tender"Nineteenth-century macaroni was routinely cooked well past what we would call done. Cook to just short of al dente instead, since it finishes for five minutes in the cream.
- "Parmesan cheese toasted all over it"Grate the cheese over the hot macaroni and brown it under a broiler or with a salamander. Four ounces of dry macaroni serves two as a side.
- A water-plateA double-walled serving dish filled with hot water through a plugged hole in the rim, used to keep food warm at table. Any warmed platter does the same job.
- The cole-slaw dressingThis is a boiled dressing: eggs, vinegar and water thickened over gentle heat, enriched with butter, then cooled. Keep it well below a simmer and stir constantly or the eggs will scramble; a double boiler is the safer vessel. Take it to 160F so the eggs are properly set, then chill before it meets the cabbage.
- Peas, half an hourModern shelled peas want three to five minutes in boiling salted water, frozen ones less. The half-hour suits larger, starchier peas than a market today supplies; anything bought now will be grey mush long before the clock runs out.
- Pearl-ash for greeningPotassium carbonate, an alkali once obtained by leaching wood ashes and also used as a leavener before baking soda. It does keep vegetables green, but it destroys vitamin C and turns the texture slimy. Salt the water well and cook briefly instead.
- String beans, three to four hoursFar longer than anything else on this page. Modern beans need five to eight minutes. The instruction to remove the strings carefully is the one part that still applies to older heirloom varieties.
These entries sit in the plain-cookery run of an unidentified receipt book — the presence of cole-slaw, from the Dutch koolsla, cabbage salad, and of pearl-ash, an American export commodity made from hardwood ashes, marks this as an American context. The cooking times for peas and beans are not carelessness so much as a record of different vegetables: garden produce was picked mature, shipped slowly and often stored, and the ideal of a green vegetable was soft, buttered and thoroughly done rather than crisp. Boiling in alkaline water to restore colour is often found in English cookery books of the period and was still being repeated, and criticised by dietitians, into the early twentieth century. The macaroni receipt is the older tradition, English rather than Italian: pasta boiled soft, bathed in cream, gratinated with Parmesan and served in a heated dish, a genteel supper item rather than a main course.