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Sprouts, to Boil Young
INGREDIENTS. - To each 1/2 gallon of water allow 1. heaped tablespoonful of salt; a very small piece of soda.
Pick away all the dead leaves, and wash the greens well in cold water; drain them in a colander and put them into fast-boiling water, with salt and soda in the above proportion. Keep them boiling quickly, with the lid removed, until tender; and the moment they are done, take them up, or SPROUTS. their colour will be spoiled; when well drained, serve. The great art in cooking greens properly, and to have them a good colour, is to put them into plenty of fastboiling water, to let them boil very quickly, and to take them up the moment they become tender.
TIME.-Broccoli sprouts, 10 to 12 minutes; young greens, 10 to 12 minutes; sprouts, 12 minutes, after the water boils.
SEASONABLE.-Sprouts of various kinds may be had all the year.
A method rather than a recipe: fast-boiling salted water, no lid, and the greens lifted out the instant they yield. Two of its instructions are worth ignoring.
- Skip the sodaThe "very small piece of soda" is bicarbonate, added to keep the water alkaline so the chlorophyll stays bright green. It also destroys most of the vitamin C and softens the cell walls into sliminess. Leave it out; brief cooking and a lid-off pot do the same job for colour.
- The timings are longTwelve minutes will take most modern Brussels sprouts past tender. Whole small sprouts want roughly 5-8 minutes, halved ones 3-4, and spring greens or broccoli sprouting shoots 2-4. Test with a knife tip at the base.
- Water and saltHalf a gallon in Beeton's imperial measure is 4 pints, about 2.3 litres; a heaped tablespoon of salt to that is a firm but reasonable seasoning, close to modern practice for green vegetables.
- Why the lid comes offThe usual explanation is that volatile plant acids released by brassicas would otherwise be trapped and dull the colour; uncovered, they escape with the steam. This part of the instruction is generally held to be sound.
- Plenty of water, hard boilThe point is that adding the greens should not drop the water off the boil. Use a wide pan and cook in batches rather than crowding.
- "Take them up the moment they are done"The hinge of the whole method. Drain immediately and, if not serving at once, spread them out or plunge into iced water to stop the carryover cooking, then reheat in butter.
- YieldAllow roughly 100-150 g (3 1/2-5 oz) of sprouts or greens per person as a side dish.
Mrs Beeton's greens chapters are governed by an almost military concern for colour, which is why soda appears here at all. A pinch of bicarbonate was added to the water to keep the green bright, and copper pans, still in use in larger households, greened vegetables further by a reaction now understood to be undesirable. The word "sprouts" in this entry covers more than the Brussels kind: the timings mention broccoli sprouts and young greens, meaning the tender shoots thrown up by overwintered brassicas in late winter and spring. Brussels sprouts themselves are generally traced to the region around Brussels, where they were cultivated by the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and were still a relatively minor English vegetable when this book's parent volume, the Book of Household Management, appeared in 1861. The seasonable note that sprouts "of various kinds may be had all the year" reflects a household that ate whatever the kitchen garden was producing, not a greengrocer's shelf.