Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

up by the handful, dripping wet, and put, with no other water, into the inner vessel of a farina boiler. Fill the outer kettle with boiling water; cover the inner closely, and cook fast for half an hour. Rub the leaves through a vegetable press or a colander into a saucepan; beat in a tablespoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, salt and pepper to taste, a teaspoonful of lemon juice, and, at the last, three tablespoonfuls of hot cream to which has been added a pinch of soda. Stir until smoking hot over the fire, turn out into a heated dish, garnish with sippets of fried bread, and serve. Dandelion greens cooked thus are almost as good as spinach _à la crême_. EGGPLANT—A MUCH ABUSED VEGETABLE Tens of thousands of average American housewives know but one way of cooking it, and not one in a hundred performs that one properly. Fried eggplant is one of the many dishes which remind the eater of the small girl of nursery-rhyme fame, who— “When she was good was very, very good But when she was bad she was horrid.” When only half fried, or soaked with grease, this vegetable is an abomination to the educated palate and the self-respecting stomach. When tender and thoroughly cooked, it is one of the most delicious of the summer and fall garden products. Fried eggplant Peel an eggplant and cut into slices half an inch thick. Lay in cold salt water for an hour; wipe each slice dry and dip, first in beaten egg, and then in cracker dust. Set in a cold place for an hour and fry in deep boiling cottolene or other fat. Drain in a heated colander before dishing. Stuffed eggplant on the half-shell Wash and wipe a large eggplant and parboil it in boiling salted water for ten minutes. Let it get perfectly cold, cut in half lengthwise, and scrape out the center, leaving the walls of the vegetable three-quarters of an inch thick. Chop the pulp fine and add to it a small cupful of minced chicken, half a cupful