DIVISION I.--MEALY ROOTS.
These are the potato, in its numerous varieties, the artichoke, the ground-nut, and the comfrey. Of these the potato is by far the most important.
SECTION A.--_The Common Potato._
This may be roasted, baked, boiled, steamed, or fried. It is also made into puddings and pies. Roasting in the ashes is the best method of cooking it; frying by far the worst. I take this opportunity to enter my protest against all frying of food. Com. Nicholson, of revolutionary memory, would never, as his daughters inform me, have a frying-pan in his house.
The potato is best when well roasted in the ashes, but also excellent when baked, and very tolerable when boiled or steamed.
There are many ways of preparing the potato and cooking it. Some always pare it. It may be well to pare it late in the winter and in the spring, but not at other times. For, in paring, we lose a portion of the richest part of the potato, as in the case of paring the apple. There is much tact required to pare a potato properly, that is, thinly.
RECEIPT 1.--To boil a potato, see that the kettle is clean, the water pure and soft, and the potatoes clean. Put them in as soon as the water boils.[29] When they are soft, which can be determined by piercing them with a fork, pour off the water, and let them steam about five minutes.
RECEIPT 2.--To roast in the ashes, wash them clean, then dry them, then remove the heated embers and ashes quite to the bottom of the fire-place, and place them as closely together as possible, but not on top of each other. Cover as quickly as possible, and fill the crevices with hot embers and small coals. Let them be as nearly of a size as possible, and cover them to the depth of an inch. Then build a hot fire over them. They will be cooked in from half an hour to three quarters of an hour, according to the size and heat of the fire.
RECEIPT 3.--Baking potatoes in a stove or oven, is a process so generally known, that it hardly needs description.
RECEIPT 4.--Steaming is better than boiling. Some fry them; others stew them with vegetables for soup, etc.
SECTION B.--_The Sweet Potato._
This was once confined to the Southern States, but it is now raised in tolerable perfection in New Jersey and on Long Island. It is richer than the common potato in saccharine matter, and probably more nutritious; but not, it is believed, quite so wholesome. Still it is a good article of food.
RECEIPT 1.--Roasting is the best process of cooking these. They may be prepared in the ashes or before a fire. The last process is most common.
They cook in far less time than a common potato.
RECEIPT 2.--Baking and roasting by the fire are nearly or quite the same thing as respects the sweet potato. Steaming is a little different, and boiling greatly so. The boiled sweet potato is, however, a most excellent article.
DIVISION II.--SWEET AND WATERY ROOTS.
These are far less healthy than the mealy ones; and yet are valuable, because, like potatoes, they furnish the system with a good deal of innutritious matter, to be set off against the almost pure nutriment of bread, rice, beans, peas, etc.
RECEIPT 1.--The beet is best when boiled thoroughly, which requires some care and a good deal of time. It may be roasted, baked, or stewed, however. It is rich in sugar, but is not very easily digested.
RECEIPT 2.--The parsnep. The boiled parsnep is more easily _dissolved_ in the stomach than the beet; but my readers must know that many things which are dissolved in the stomach are nevertheless very imperfectly digested.
RECEIPT 3.--The turnip, well boiled, is watery, but easily digested and wholesome. It may also be roasted or baked, and some eat it raw.
RECEIPT 4.--The carrot is richer than the turnip, but not therefore more digestible. It may be boiled, stewed, fried, or made into pies, puddings, etc. It is a very tolerable article of food.
RECEIPT 5.--The radish, fashionable as it is, is nearly useless.
RECEIPT 6.--For the sick, and even for others, arrow root jellies, puddings, etc., are much valued. This, with sago, tapioca, etc., is most useful for that cla.s.s of sick persons who have strong appet.i.tes.[30]
CLa.s.s IV.--MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES OF FOOD.
Under this head I shall treat briefly of the proper use of a few substances commonly and very properly used as food, but which cannot well come under any of the foregoing cla.s.ses. They are chiefly found in the various chapters of my Young Housekeeper, as well as in Dr.
Pereira"s work on Food and Diet, under the heads of "Buds and Young Shoots," "Leaves and Leaf Stalks," "Cucurbitaceous Fruits," and "Oily Seeds."
RECEIPT 1.--Asparagus, well boiled, is nutritious and wholesome. Salt is often added, and sometimes b.u.t.ter. The former, to many, is needless; the latter, to all, injurious.
RECEIPT 2.--Some of the varieties of the squash are nutritious and wholesome, especially when boiled. Its use in pies and puddings is also well known.
RECEIPT 3.--A few varieties of the pumpkin, especially the sweet pumpkin, are proper for the table. Made into plain sauce, they are highly valued by most, but they are best known as ingredients of pies and puddings. A few eat them when merely baked.
RECEIPT 4.--The tomato is fashionable, but a sour apple, if equal pains were taken with it, and it were equally fashionable, might be equally useful. It adds, however, to nature"s vast variety!
RECEIPT 5.--Watermelons, coming as they do at the end of the hot season, when eaten with bread, are happily adapted (as most other ripe fruits are, when eaten in the same way, and at their own proper season) to prevent disease, and promote health and happiness.
RECEIPT 6.--Muskmelons are richer than watermelons, but not more wholesome. Of the canteloupe I know but little.
RECEIPT 7.--The cuc.u.mber. Taken at the moment when ripe--neither green nor acid--the cuc.u.mber is almost, but not quite as valuable as the melon. It should be eaten in the same way, rejecting the rind. The Orientals of modern days sometimes boil them, but in former times they ate them uncooked, though always ripe. Unripe cuc.u.mbers are a _modern_ dish, and will erelong go out of fashion.
RECEIPT 8.--Onions have medicinal properties, but this should be no recommendation to healthy people. Raw, they are unwholesome; boiled, they are better; fried, they are positively pernicious.
RECEIPT 9.--Nuts are said to be adapted to man in a state of nature; but I write for those who are in an artificial state, not a natural state.
Of the chestnut I have spoken elsewhere. The hazelnut is next best, then perhaps the peanut and the beechnut. The b.u.t.ternut, and walnut or hickory-nut, are too oily. Nor do I see how they can be improved by cookery.
RECEIPT 10.--Cabbage, properly boiled, and without condiments, is tolerable, but rather stringy, and of course rather indigestible.
RECEIPT 11.--Greens and salads are stringy and indigestible. Besides, they are much used, as condiments are, to excite or provoke an appet.i.te--a thing usually wrong. A feeble appet.i.te, say at the opening of the spring, however common, is a great blessing. If let alone, nature will erelong set to rights those things, which have gone wrong perhaps all winter; and then appet.i.te will return in a natural way.
But the worst thing about greens, salads, and some other things, is, they are eaten with vinegar. Vinegar and all substances, I must again say, which resist or r.e.t.a.r.d putrefaction, r.e.t.a.r.d also the work of digestion. It is a universal law, and ought to be known as such, that whatever tends to preserve our food--except perhaps ice and the air-pump--tends also to interfere with the great work of digestion.
Hence, all pickling, salting, boiling down, sweetening, etc., are objectionable. Pereira says, "By drying, salting, smoking, and pickling, the digestibility of fish is greatly impaired;" and this, except as regards _drying_, is but the common doctrine. It should, however, be applied generally as well as to fish.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Formerly called Graham meal.
[26] I shall use these terms indiscriminately, as they mean in practice the same thing.
[27] Both these processes are patented in Great Britain. The bread thus retains its sweetness--no waste of its saccharine matter, and no residuum except muriate of soda or common salt. Sesquicarbonate of soda is made of three parts or atoms of the carbonic acid, and two of the soda.
[28] Keep b.u.t.ter and all greasy substances away from every preparation of food which belongs to this division--especially from green peas, beans, corn, etc.
[29] Some prepare them, and soak them in water over the night.
[30] In general, the appet.i.tes of the sick are taken away by design. In such cases there should be none of the usual forms of indulgence. A little bread--the crust is best--is the most proper indulgence. If, however, the appet.i.te is raging, as in a convalescent state it sometimes is, puddings and even gruel may be proper, because they busy the stomach without giving it any considerable return for its labor.