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Chapter X-Vegetables
LL vegetables should be thoroughly washed in cold water to remove dust and possible insects. If at all wilted, let them stand for an hour or more in cold water. In using canned vegetables, empty the can as soon as opened and allow contents to stand an hour before using, in order to become re-oxygenated.
Vegetables like peas, asparagus and string beans should be at once turned from the can into a colander and cold water from the faucet run over them to remove any possible taste of the tin.
Many of the choicer vegetables, or those elaborately prepared, are considered as entrées, and are served as a separate course. Artichokes, asparagus, green corn on the cob, mushrooms, green peppers and stuffed tomatoes are among the vegetables often used as entrées.
ASPARAGUS (Canned) - Drain liquor from asparagus and throw it away. Rinse the stalks thoroughly in cold water, place carefully in a shallow saucepan with a little boiling water and heat thoroughly, but do not allow it to boil. Remove carefully so as not to break the pieces and serve on toast with melted butter or sauce Hollandaise.
ASPARAGUS (Fresh) - Trim stalks to uniform length, wash, and retie with soft string. Cook in boiling salted water until tender, keeping the tips above the water for the first ten minutes. Drain, untie, and serve with melted butter, white sauce, or sauce Hollandaise. Many persons prefer cutting asparagus in inch pieces before cooking in which case the stalks are put in the boiling water five minutes or more before the tender tips are added.
Two short methods for asparagus, canned and fresh, prefaced by general vegetable handling notes that reflect turn-of-the-century canning as much as cooking. The fresh method still works; most of the canned advice can be set aside.
- The hinge: keep the tips out of the waterAsparagus stalks and tips cook at very different rates. Standing a tied bundle upright so the stems boil while the tips steam is still the reliable way to get both done at once; a tall pot with an inch or two of water and a lid works as well as any dedicated asparagus kettle.
- Cooking timeThe book gives no total time, only "until tender," though it does specify keeping the tips above the water for the first ten minutes (or adding tips five minutes or more after the stalks when cut in pieces), which implies a longer cook than modern practice. Medium spears take 3-5 minutes in boiling salted water once trimmed; thick ones 6-8. Test at the base of the stalk with a knife tip.
- TrimmingRather than cutting to a uniform length, snap one spear and let it break where it wants, then cut the rest to match. The woody portion varies with the season and thickness of the crop.
- Retying with soft stringUse plain cotton kitchen twine, not the coated or synthetic sort.
- "Re-oxygenating" canned vegetablesEmptying a can and letting the contents stand an hour was standard advice when cans were soldered with lead-tin seams and the metallic taste was real. Modern lined cans do not need it, and vegetables left out at room temperature for an hour gain nothing. Drain, rinse if you like, and heat.
- Canned asparagus, heated not boiledThis instruction is sound and worth keeping. Canned spears are already fully cooked and structurally fragile; bringing them to a simmer breaks them up. Warm them in a shallow pan of hot water and lift them out with a slotted spatula.
- Salting the waterThe recipe says salted water without a quantity. About a tablespoon of salt per quart is the usual proportion for green vegetables.
- YieldA pound of fresh asparagus, roughly one supermarket bunch, serves three as a side or two if it is being sent out as a separate course in the manner the introduction describes.
The framing here is as informative as the cooking. In this period asparagus, artichokes, mushrooms and stuffed tomatoes were classed as entrees rather than side dishes, served alone as their own course in the formal French-derived service then followed at American tables, which is why the book bothers to list them. The suspicion of canned goods is equally of its moment: commercial canning had expanded enormously in the decades after the Civil War, but the tinned taste from soldered seams was a genuine and widely discussed complaint, and household manuals of the period commonly told cooks to empty, air and rinse the contents. The idea that standing in the open air would restore something lost in the can, often expressed as re-oxygenation, was folk chemistry rather than science, but it reflects a real distrust that took some time to fade. Asparagus itself was still a spring luxury tied to a short local season, which explains why a canned version merited its own entry at all.