A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery

to be salted with a tablespoonful of salt in a quart of water, and to be actually boiling when you put in the vegetables. This same rule applies to the cooking of peas, only that the peas are treated a little differently in the cleaning, but they are cooked in the same way. Boil the vegetable (whatever it is) in salted water, fast, just till they are tender. Remember what I said about boiling carrots yesterday. As soon as the vegetables are tender, drain them and throw them into plenty of cold water. Leave them in the cold water until you want to use them. Then, if peas or beans, drain them, heat them quickly, with a little salt and pepper and butter, very quickly, or any sauce or gravy you wish to serve them in, and serve them hot. If lettuce or spinach, to make a _puree_, after having boiled in boiling salted water and then put in cold water, rub them through a sieve with a potato masher. After they are rubbed through the sieve they are ready to be used in different ways. In Europe the _puree_ of lettuce is served as a vegetable, just as the _puree_ of spinach is. We do not often cook it in that way, but it is very nice; it is such an exceedingly tender vegetable that it takes proportionately more than of spinach. After the lettuce or spinach is rubbed through the colander or sieve with a potato masher it is ready to be seasoned with salt, pepper and vinegar, or any sauce you like, and used as a vegetable, or used in soup. You remember what I told you about spinach soup yesterday--_puree_ of spinach with cream soup, colored green with spinach. Put in just enough spinach to cover it. If I succeed in getting spinach next week I shall make, at one of the lessons, spinach soup, and also boil and serve some as a vegetable. Now about peas. I spoke about washing string beans but not washing peas. If the shells of the peas are at all