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Kale
Remove all the old or tough leaves; wash the kale thoroughly and drain. Put it into boiling water to which has been added salt in the proportion of one half tablespoon to two quarts of water. Boil rapidly, uncovered, until the vegetable is tender; pour off the water; chop the kale very fine; return it to the kettle with one tablespoon of butter and two of meat stock or water to every pint of the minced vegetable. Add more salt if necessary; cook for ten minutes and serve at once. The entire time for cooking varies from thirty to fifty minutes.
A straightforward boiled-and-buttered kale, written for the tough, mature curly kale of a winter market stall. The one thing to change is the clock.
- The cooking timeThirty to fifty minutes will reduce modern kale to grey mush. Today's curly kale is tender in 5 to 8 minutes of rapid boiling, and young Tuscan or baby kale in 3 to 4. Test a stem piece with a knife rather than watching the clock.
- Why the pot is left uncoveredBoiling brassicas uncovered is usually explained as letting volatile compounds, including sulphur compounds and acids, escape as steam, which is said to help both flavour and colour. This instruction is worth keeping even with the shorter time.
- Salt proportionHalf a tablespoon to two quarts is light by current standards — about three-quarters of a teaspoon per quart. Modern practice for green vegetables is generally saltier water than this.
- "To every pint of the minced vegetable"The measure is by volume of the chopped, cooked kale, not the raw weight. Very roughly, a pound of trimmed raw leaves cooks down to something in the region of a pint minced, so one tablespoon butter and two of stock per pound is a rough working ratio.
- Meat stockThe recipe asks only for 'meat stock or water', and two tablespoons is a seasoning, not a braising liquid. Any decent stock works, and the dish is fine with water and a little more butter.
- The final ten minutesWith modern kale, cut this to two or three minutes — just long enough to melt the butter through and drive off the loose water. It is a finishing step, not further cooking.
- Stems"Old or tough leaves" removed still leaves the thick central ribs. Strip them out before boiling; they take far longer than the leaf and never soften in step with it.
- YieldA pound of trimmed kale serves three to four as a side dish.
Kale is often said to be the oldest form of cultivated cabbage still eaten in quantity, grown across northern Europe long before the heading cabbage was bred, and it is traditionally prized because frost is thought to improve it — the plant is generally held to convert starch to sugar in cold weather, so it stood in the kitchen garden through the winter when little else did. That seasonal role explains the long cooking time here: a cook was working with plants that had overwintered and toughened, not the tender bunched leaves sold year-round now. Chopping the boiled greens fine and returning them to the pan with butter and a spoonful of stock is a standard Anglo-American treatment, closely related to the creamed and buttered spinach recipes that sit near it.