VEGETABLES
"Herbs and other country messes,
Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses."
Use and abuse of the potato--Its eccentricities--Its
origin--Hawkins, not Raleigh, introduced it into
England--With or without the "jacket"?--Don't let it be
_à-la_-ed--Benevolence and large-heartedness of the cabbage
family--Peas on earth--Pythagoras on the bean--"Giving him
beans"--"Haricot" a misnomer--"Borston" beans--Frijoles--The
carrot--Crécy soup--The Prince of Wales--The Black Prince and
the King of Bohemia.
Item, the POTATO, earth-apple, murphy, or spud; the most useful, as
well as the most exasperating gift of a bountiful Providence. Those
inclined to obesity may skip the greater part of this chapter. You can
employ a potato for almost anything. It comes in very handy for the
manufacture of starch, sugar, Irish stew, Scotch whisky, and Colorado
beetles. Cut it in half, and with one half you restore an old master,
and with the other drive the cat from the back garden. More deadly
battles have been waged over the proper way to cook a potato, than
over a parish boundary, or an Irish eviction. Strong-headed men hurl
the spud high in air, and receive and fracture it on their frontal
bones; whilst a juggler like Paul Cinquevalli can do what he likes
with it. Worn inside the pocket, it is an infallible cure for chronic
rheumatism, fits, and tubercular meningitis. Worn inside the body it
will convert a living skeleton into a Daniel Lambert. Plant potatoes
in a game district, and if they come up you will find that after
the haulms have withered you can capture all your rich neighbour's
pheasants, and half the partridges in the country. A nicely-baked
potato, deftly placed beneath the root of his tail, will make the
worst "jibber" in the world travel; whilst, when combined with
buttermilk, and a modicum of meal, the earth-apple has been known to
nourish millions of the rising generation, and to give them sufficient
strength and courage to owe their back rents, and accuracy of aim for
exterminating the brutal owner of the soil.
The waiter, bless ye! the harmless, flat-footed waiter, doesn't know
all this. Potatoes to him are simply 2d. or 3d. in the little account,
according to whether they be "biled, mash, or soty"; and if questioned
as to the natural history of the floury tuber, he would probably
assume an air of injured innocence, and assure you that during his
reign of "thirty-five year, man and boy," that establishment had
"never 'ad no complaints."
The potato is most eccentric in disposition, and its cultivator should
know by heart the beautiful ode of Horace which commences
_Aequam memento rebus in arduis_ . . .
The experiences of the writer as a potato grower have been somewhat
mixed, and occasionally like the following:--Set your snowflakes in
deeply-trenched, heavily-manured ground, a foot apart. In due time
you will get a really fine crop of groundsel, charlock, and slugs,
with enough bind-weed to strangle the sea-serpent. Clear all this
rubbish off, and after a week or two the eye will be gladdened with
the sight of the delicate green leaf of the tuber peeping through
the soil. Slow music. Enter the Earl of Frost. No; they will not
_all_ be cut off. You will get _one_ tuber. Peel it carefully, and
place it in the pig-stye--the peeling spoils the quality of the pork.
Throw the peeling away--on the bed in which you have sown annuals for
choice--and in the late Spring you will have a row of potatoes which
will do you credit.
But this is frivolous. The origin of the potato is doubtful; but
that it was used by the ancients, in warfare, is tolerably certain.
Long before the Spaniards reached the New World it was cultivated
largely by the Incas; and it was the Spaniards who brought the tuber
to Europe, in the beginning of the sixteenth century. It was brought
to England from Virginia by Sir John Hawkins in 1563; and again in
1586 by Sir Francis Drake, to whom, as the introducer of the potato,
a statue was erected at Offenburg, in Baden, in 1853. In schools and
other haunts of ignorance, the credit for the introduction of the
tuber used to be and is (I believe) still given to Sir Walter Raleigh,
who has been wrongly accredited with as many "good things" as have
been Theodore Hook or Sidney Smith. And I may mention _en parenthèse_,
that I don't entirely believe that cloak story. For many years the
tuber was known in England as the "Batata"--overhaul your _Lorna
Doone_--and in France, until the close of the eighteenth century, the
earth apple was looked upon with suspicion, as the cause of leprosy
and assorted fevers; just as the tomato, at the close of the more
civilised nineteenth century, is said by the vulgar and swine-headed
to breed cancer.
Now then, With or without the jacket? And the reader who imagines
that I am going to answer the question has too much imagination. As
the old butler in Wilkie Collins's _The Moonstone_ observes, there is
much to be said on both sides. Personally I lean to the "no-jacket"
side, unless the tuber be baked; and I would make it penal to serve
a potato in any other way than boiled, steamed, or baked.[5] The bad
fairy _Ala_ should have no hand in its manipulation; and there be
few æsthetic eaters who would not prefer the old-fashioned "ball of
flour" to slices of the sodden article swimming in a bath of grease
and parsley, and called a _Sauté_. The horrible concoction yclept
"preserved potatoes," which used to be served out aboard sailing
vessels, after the passengers had eaten all the real articles, and
which tasted like bad pease-pudding dressed with furniture polish, is,
happily, deceased. And the best potatoes, the same breed which our
fathers and our forefathers munched in the Covent Garden "Cave of
Harmony," grow, I am credibly informed, in Jermyn Street. Moreover if
you wish to spoil a dish of good spuds, there is no surer way than by
leaving on the dish-cover. So much for boiling 'em--or steaming 'em.
The CABBAGE is a fine, friendly fellow, who makes himself at home,
and generally useful, in the garden; whilst his great heart swells,
and swells, in the full knowledge that he is doing his level best
to please all. Though cut down in the springtime of his youth, his
benevolence is so great that he will sprout again from his headless
trunk, if required, and given time for reflection. The Romans
introduced him into Great Britain, but there was a sort of cow-cabbage
in the island before that time which our blue forefathers used to
devour with their bacon, and steaks, in a raw state.
"The most evolved and final variety of the cabbage," writes a
_savant_, "is the CAULIFLOWER, in which the vegetative surplus becomes
poured into the flowering head, of which the flowering is more or less
checked; the inflorescence becoming a dense corymb instead of an open
panicle, and the majority of the flowers aborting"--the head gardener
usually tells you all this in the Scottish language--"so as to become
incapable of producing seed. Let a specially vegetative cabbage
repeat the excessive development of its leaf parenchyma, and we have
the wrinkled and blistered SAVOY, of which the hardy constitution,
but comparative coarseness, become also more intelligible; again a
specially vegetative cauliflower gives us an easily grown and hardy
winter variety, BROCCOLI"--_Broccilo_ in Costerese--"from which, and
not from the ordinary cauliflower, a sprouting variety arises in turn."
In Jersey the cabbage-stalks are dried, varnished, and used as spars
for thatched roofs, as also for the correction of the youthful
population. Cook all varieties of the cabbage in water already at the
boil, with a little salt and soda in it. The French sprinkle cheese on
a cauliflower, to make it more tasty, and it then becomes
_Choufleur aû Gratin_.
Remove the green leaves, and _underboil_ your cauliflower.
Pour over it some butter sauce in which have been mixed two
ounces of grated cheese--half Gruyère and half Parmesan. Powder
with bread crumbs, or raspings, and with more grated cheese.
Lastly, pour over it a teaspoonful of oiled butter. Place in
a hot oven and bake till the surface is a golden brown, which
should be in from ten to fifteen minutes. Serve in same dish.
Vegetarians should be particularly careful to soak every description
of cabbage in salt and water before cooking. Otherwise the vegetarians
will probably eat a considerable portion of animal food.
Here occurs an opportunity for the recipe for an elegant dish, which
the French call _Perdrix aux Choux_, which is simply
_Partridge Stewed with Cabbage, etc._
A brace of birds browned in the stewpan with butter or
good dripping, and a portion of a hand of pickled pork in small
pieces, some chopped onion and a clove or two. Add some broth,
two carrots (chopped), a bay-leaf, and a chopped sausage or
two. Then add a Savoy cabbage, cut into quarters, and seasoned
with pepper and salt. Let all simmer together for an hour and a
half. Then drain the cabbage, and place it, squashed down, on a
dish. Arrange the birds in the middle, surround them with the
pieces of pork and sausage, and pour over all the liquor from
the stew.
This is an excellent dish, and savours more of Teutonic than of French
cooking. But you mustn't tell a Frenchman this, if he be bigger than
yourself.
The toothsome PEA has been cultivated in the East from time
immemorial, though the ancient Greeks and Romans do not appear to
have had knowledge of such a dainty. Had Vitellius known the virtues
of duck and green peas he would probably have not been so wrapt up in
his favourite dormice, stuffed with poppy-seed and stewed in honey.
The ancient Egyptians knew all about the little pulse, and not one
of the leaders of society was mummified without a pod or two being
placed amongst his wrappings. And after thousand of years said peas,
when sown, have been known to germinate. The mummy pea-plant, however,
but seldom bears fruit. Our idiotic ancestors, the ancient Britons,
knew nothing about peas, nor do any of their descendants appear to
have troubled about the vegetable before the reign of the Virgin
Queen. Then they were imported from Holland, together with schnapps,
curaçoa, and other things, and no "swagger" banquet was held without a
dish of "fresh-shelled 'uns," which were accounted "fit dainties for
ladies, they came so far and cost so dear." In England up-to-date peas
are frequently accompanied by pigeon pie at table; the dove family
being especially partial to the little pulse, either when attached
to the haulm, in the garden, or in a dried state. So that the crafty
husbandman, who possesses a shot gun, frequently gathereth both pea
and pigeon. A chalky soil is especially favourable to pea cultivation;
and deal sawdust sprinkled well over the rows immediately after the
setting of the seed will frustrate the knavish tricks of the field
mouse, who also likes peas. The man who discovered the affinity
between mint and this vegetable ought to have received a gold medal,
and I would gladly attend the execution of the caitiff who invented
the tinned peas which we get at the foreign restaurants, at three
times the price of the English article.
Here is a good simple recipe for PEA SOUP, made from the dried article:
Soak a quart of split peas in rain-water for twelve hours.
Put them in the pot with one carrot, one onion, one leek, a
sprig or two of parsley (all chopped), one pound of streaky
bacon, and three quarts of the liquor in which either beef,
mutton, pork, or poultry may have been boiled. Boil for nearly
three hours, remove the bacon, and strain the soup through a
tammy. Heat up, and serve with dried mint, and small cubes of
fat bacon fried crisp.
GREEN-PEA SOUP is made in precisely the same way; but the peas will
not need soaking beforehand, and thrifty housewives put in the shells
as well.
Harmless and nutritious a vegetable as the BEAN would appear to be, it
did not altogether find favour with the ancients. Pythagoras, who had
quaint ideas on the subject of the human soul, forbade his disciples
to eat beans, because they were generated in the foul ooze out of
which man was created. Lucian, who had a vivid imagination, describes
a philosopher in Hades who was particularly hard on the bean, to eat
which he declared was as great a crime as to eat one's father's head.
And yet Lucian was accounted a man of common sense in his time. The
Romans only ate beans at funerals, being under the idea that the
souls of the dead abode in the vegetable. According to tradition,
the "caller herrin'" hawked in the streets of Edinburgh were once
known as "lives o' men," from the risks run by the fishermen. And the
Romans introduced the bean into England by way of cheering up our
blue forefathers. In the Roman festival of Lemuralia, the father of
the family was accustomed to throw black beans over his head, whilst
repeating an incantation. This ceremony probably inspired Lucian's
philosopher--for whom, however, every allowance should be made, when
we come to consider his place of residence--with his jaundiced views
of the _Faba vulgaris_. Curiously enough, amongst the vulgar folk, at
the present day, there would seem to be some sort of prejudice against
the vegetable; or why should "I'll give him beans" be a synonymous
threat with "I'll do him all the mischief I can?"
There is plenty of nourishment in a bean; that is the opinion of the
entire medical faculty. And whilst beans and bacon make a favourite
summer repast for the farm-labourer and his family, the dish is also
(at the commencement of the bean season) to be met with at the tables
of the wealthy. The aroma of the flower of the broad bean was once
compared, in one of John Leech's studies in _Punch_, to "the most
delicious 'air oil," but, apart from this fragrance, there is but
little sentiment about the _Faba vulgaris_. A much more graceful
vegetable is the _Phaseolus vulgaris_, the kidney, or, as the idiotic
French call it, the _haricot_ bean. It is just as sensible to call
a leg of Welsh mutton a _pré salé_, or salt meadow. No well-behaved
hashed venison introduces himself to our notice unless accompanied by
a dish of kidney beans. And few people in Europe besides Frenchmen and
convicts eat the dried seeds of this form of bean, which is frequently
sown in suburban gardens to form a fence to keep out cats. But the
suburban cat knows a trick worth a dozen of that one; and no bean that
was ever born will arrest his progress, or turn him from his evil
ways. It is criminal to smother the kidney bean with melted butter at
table. A little oil, vinegar, and pepper agree with him much better.
In the great continent of America, the kidney-bean seed, dried,
is freely partaken of. Pork and "Borston" beans, in fact, form
the national dish, and right good it is. But do not attempt any
violent exercise after eating the same. The Mexicans are the largest
bean-eaters in the world. They fry the vegetables in oil or stew
them with peppers and onions, and these _frijoles_ form the principal
sustenance of the lower orders. An English "bean feast" (Vulg.
_beano_) is a feast at which no beans, and not many other things, are
eaten. The intelligent foreigner may take it that _beano_ simply means
the worship of Bacchus.
With the exception of the onion there is no more useful aid to
cookery of all sorts than the lowly carrot, which was introduced
into England--no, not by the Romans--from Holland, in the sixteenth
century. And the ladies who attended the court of Charles I. were in
the habit of wearing carrot leaves in the hair, and on their court
robes, instead of feathers. A similar fashion might be revived at the
present epoch, with advantage to the banking account of vile man.
As the Flemish gardeners brought over the roots, we should not despise
carrots cooked in the FLEMISH way. Simmer some young carrots in
butter, with pepper and salt. Add cream (or milk and yolk of eggs), a
pinch of sugar, and a little chopped parsley.
H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, according to report, invariably eats
carrot soup on the 26th of August. The French call it "CRÉCY" soup,
because their best carrots grow there; and Crécy it may be remembered
was also the scene of a great battle, when one Englishman proved
better than five Frenchmen. In this battle the Black Prince performed
prodigies of valour, afterwards assuming the crest of the late
Bohemian King--three ostrich feathers (surely these should be carrot
tops?) with the motto "_Ich Dien_."
_Crécy Soup._
Place a mirepoix of white wine in the pot, and put a
quantity of sliced carrots atop. Moisten with broth, and keep
simmering till the carrots are done. Then pour into a mortar,
pound, and pass through a tammy. Thin it with more broth,
sweeten in the proportion of one tablespoonful of sugar to two
gallons of soup; heat up, pop a little butter in at the finish,
and in serving it add either small cubes of fried bread, or
rice boiled as for curry (see page 145).