The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery

the boiling water with any of the vegetables except beans, counteracts any excess of mineral elements in them, and helps to preserve their color. A lump of loaf sugar boiled with turnips neutralizes their excessive bitterness. Cabbage, potatoes, carrots, turnips, parsnips, onions, and beets, are injured by being boiled with fresh meat, and they also hurt the color of the meat, and impair its tenderness and flavor. When vegetables are cooked for use with salt meat, the meat should first be cooked and taken from the pot liquor, and the vegetables boiled in the latter. The following table will be a guide in boiling vegetables, but it must be remembered that the youngest and freshest boil in the least time; and that in winter all the roots except potatoes require nearly double the time to cook, that they would take in summer, when they are new; spinach, ten to fifteen minutes; brussels sprouts, peas, cauliflowers, and asparagus, fifteen to twenty minutes; potatoes, cabbage, corn, and string-beans, twenty to thirty minutes; turnips, onions, and squash, twenty to forty minutes; beets, carrots, and parsnips, about one hour. 147. =Asparagus with Melted Butter.=--Trim the white tough ends from two bunches of asparagus, tie it in packages of about a dozen stalks each; put them into three quarts of boiling water, with three tablespoonfuls of salt, and boil them gently until done, about twenty minutes; meantime make some drawn butter according to receipt for caper sauce, omitting the capers; fit two slices of toast to the bottom of the dish you intend to use, dip it for one instant in the water in which the asparagus has been boiled, lay it on the dish, and arrange the asparagus in a ring on it with the heads in the centre; send the butter to the table in a gravy boat, with the dish of asparagus. 148. =Green Peas.=--Boil two quarts of freshly shelled peas in two quarts of boiling water with half an ounce of butter, one bunch of green mint, and one teaspoonful each of sugar and salt, until they begin to sink to