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Dandelions
They are fit for use until they blossom. Cut off the leaves, pick over carefully, wash in several waters, put into boiling water, boil one hour, drain well, add salted boiling water, and boil two hours; when done, turn into a colander and drain, season with butter, and more salt if needed, and cut with a knife; or boil with a piece of salt pork, omitting the butter in the dressing.
A plain nineteenth-century treatment of a wild green, notable mostly for how long it boils. The one thing to change is the timing.
- The three hoursOne hour in plain water plus two in salted water will reduce dandelion leaves to olive-drab mush. Young leaves need 5 to 10 minutes in well-salted boiling water; a tough late-season picking may want 15 to 20. The long boil may have been aimed at bitterness rather than texture, though the book does not say.
- Cutting bitterness insteadIf the greens are sharp, blanch 2 minutes, drain, discard that water, then finish in fresh salted water. That accomplishes in five minutes what the original spends an afternoon on.
- Pick before the flowerThe instruction to use them only until they blossom is sound and still the single most useful line here. Once the plant bolts, the leaves turn markedly bitter and fibrous, and no amount of boiling fixes it.
- Where you gather themThe recipe says nothing about where to pick. Avoid lawns, verges and any ground that may have been sprayed or salted, and rinse in at least three changes of water, as the original's "wash in several waters" directs.
- Crowns and rootsDigging the plant with a bit of pale crown attached is often said to give the sweetest eating; trim the root off and split the crown to wash out grit.
- The salt pork versionSimmer a 2- to 3-oz piece of salt pork in water for 20 to 30 minutes first, then cook the greens in that liquor for a few minutes and skip the butter. Taste before adding salt — the pork may have supplied enough.
- "Cut with a knife"Chopping the drained greens in the colander or on a board before dressing them; it keeps long leaves from matting on the fork. A chef's knife straight through the drained pile does it.
- YieldGreens collapse to a fraction of their raw bulk. Reckon a packed gallon of loose leaves, about 1 lb, for two servings.
Dandelion appears in The Dixie Cook Book as a vegetable rather than a curiosity because in the 1880s it still was one: an early spring green available weeks before garden crops, gathered rather than bought, and valued in the household literature of the period as a "blood purifier" after a winter of salt meat and root cellar stores. The common dandelion is not native to North America but a European import that spread with settlement, and the name comes through French dent-de-lion, lion's tooth, for the jagged leaf margin. The alternative given here boiled with a piece of salt pork instead of dressed with butter is a common Southern and Appalachian handling of bitter greens, used also for poke, turnip tops and creasy greens. Long boiling times of this kind are typical of nineteenth-century printed vegetable cookery.