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Carrots
Scrape the carrots lightly; cut them into large dice or slices and drop them into a small quantity of boiling water; salt at the end of ten minutes. Boil until tender; drain and serve with butter and pepper or with cream sauce.
A plain method for boiled carrots that assumes a cook who already knows what cream sauce is. A few of its choices are deliberate and worth keeping.
- Scrape, don't peelCarrots were commonly scraped rather than peeled, and thin-skinned young carrots need no more. Modern storage carrots are usually peeled; a light peel is the equivalent gesture, and there is no need to remove more than the outer surface.
- "A small quantity of boiling water"An inch or so in the pan rather than a full pot. The carrots part-steam, and less of their sweetness leaches into water that is then drained away.
- Salting at ten minutesThis likely reflects a period belief that early salting toughened vegetables. It does no harm, but salting the water from the start seasons carrots more evenly and does not slow the cooking.
- TimingLarge dice take roughly 8-12 minutes from the boil, slices rather less, though the recipe's own direction to salt at ten minutes and then boil on implies a longer cooking than that. Test with a knife tip: it should meet slight resistance. Carrots boiled until entirely soft turn watery and lose shape when tossed with butter.
- Cream sauceIn a book of this date this means a basic white sauce: butter and flour cooked briefly together, then milk or thin cream whisked in, about 1 tablespoon each butter and flour to a cup of milk. Season with salt and white pepper.
- Butter and pepperDrain thoroughly and return the carrots to the dry hot pan for a moment before adding butter, or the water clinging to them will thin the glaze.
- YieldNo quantity is given. Reckon 1 1/2 to 2 lb of carrots for four to six as a side dish, with 2 to 3 tablespoons butter.
Instructions this brief were normal in cookbooks of the early twentieth century, where printed entries often served as reminders rather than teaching texts. The two finishes offered here might be read as marking two registers of American vegetable cookery at the time: buttered and peppered for family meals, and bound in cream sauce for a more formal table. The direction to salt only after ten minutes reflects a belief, often repeated in the nineteenth century, that salt drawn into vegetables too early made them tough.