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Buttered Vegetables
Most vegetables may be served buttered. After they are boiled and drained, they should be returned to the stove and the butter and seasoning added. The pan should be well shaken so the butter will coat the vegetables.
A method rather than a recipe, and the whole thing turns on one detail: the vegetables must be dry before the butter goes in. Everything else is proportion and timing.
- Drain hard, then dryWater clinging to the vegetables will keep the butter from adhering and leave a thin, broken sauce in the bottom of the pan. Drain in a colander, then return the empty pan to the heat for a moment so residual moisture steams off before the vegetables go back in.
- How much butterThe original gives no quantity. Reckon on 1 to 2 tablespoons per pound of cooked vegetables, or per four servings. More than that and the butter pools instead of coating.
- "Returned to the stove"On a period range this most likely meant the cooler part of the top. Use low heat, or none at all -- the pan's retained heat is usually enough to melt the butter. Butter held over direct heat browns and separates while you are shaking it.
- The shakingShake the pan in short back-and-forth movements rather than stirring with a spoon, which breaks up anything soft. Cauliflower, new potatoes and green beans all take this well; tossing with a spoon will reduce boiled cauliflower to rubble.
- SeasoningSalt the cooking water and again at the finish, since the drained vegetables lose some of what they absorbed. A grinding of pepper and a squeeze of lemon are period-appropriate additions; chopped parsley was a common garnish.
- Which vegetablesBest on anything boiled and drained whole or in pieces -- carrots, turnips, beans, peas, cauliflower, potatoes, Brussels sprouts. Watery vegetables such as boiled cabbage need pressing in the colander first or the butter will never take hold.
- Boiling timesThe recipe gives no times, and vegetables were generally boiled longer in the period than now. Modern practice cooks green vegetables until just tender and no further, six to eight minutes for beans, three to five for peas, then drains immediately.
Buttering was a common finish for boiled vegetables in Anglo-American cooking, and by the early twentieth century it was routine enough that a general-purpose book like this could dispose of it in three sentences and move on. The Metropolitan Cook Book was distributed by an insurance company to policyholders as a plain domestic manual, which may account for a single entry covering every vegetable in the chapter at once.