Modern cookery for private families

the stalk ends uppermost; this will destroy the small snails and other insects which cluster in the leaves, and they will fall out and sink to the bottom. A pound and a half of salt to the gallon of water will answer for this purpose, and if strained daily it will last for some time. TO BOIL VEGETABLES GREEN. After they have been properly prepared and washed, throw them into plenty of boiling water which has been salted and well skimmed; and keep them uncovered and boiling fast until they are done, taking every precaution against their being smoked. Should the water be very hard, a _small_ half-teaspoonful of carbonate of soda, may be added with the salt, for every two quarts, and will greatly improve the colour of the vegetables; but if used in undue proportion it will injure them; green peas especially will be quickly reduced to a mash if boiled with too large a quantity. Water, 1 gallon; salt, 2 oz.; soda, 1/4 oz.; or carbonate of soda, 1 teaspoonful. POTATOES. (_Remarks on their properties and importance._) There is no vegetable commonly cultivated in this country, we venture to assert, which is comparable in value to the potato when it is of a good sort, has been grown in a suitable soil, and is properly cooked and served. It _must_ be very nutritious, or it would not sustain the strength of thousands of people whose almost sole food it constitutes, and who, when they can procure a sufficient supply of it to satisfy fully the demands of hunger, are capable of accomplishing the heaviest daily labour. It may not be wise to depend for subsistence on a root of which the crop unhappily is so frequently in these days destroyed or greatly injured by disease, and for which it is so difficult to find a substitute that is equally cheap, wholesome and satisfying; but we can easily comprehend the predilection of an entire people for a tuber which combines, like the potato, the solidity almost of bread, with the healthful properties[103] of various other fresh vegetables, without