Let's Get Cooking
One of the really fun things about old cookbooks is the way they tell you how to cook some things.
Baked goods haven't changed at all: breads and muffins and biscuits and pies will all burn themselves into inedibility if you leave them in the oven for too many minutes. Meats and fish are much the same: leave 'em in the oven or the roaster too long and they turn hopelessly dry and tough.
But then we have the vegetables, the poor, poor vegetables. Looking at an older cookbook's recommendation for cooking methods and times will leave you marveling that anyone would bother eating them at all.
The Victorians had definite ideas about vegetables. Here are the "Rules Applicable to the Cooking of All Vegetables", as set down by Marion Harland in Common Sense in the Household (1875):
1. Have them as fresh as possible. Stale and withered ones are unwholesome and unpalatable. Summer vegetables should be cooked on the same day they are gathered, if possible.
2. Pick over and wash well, cutting out all decayed or unripe parts.
3. Lay them, when peeled, in cold water for some time before cooking.
4. If you boil them, put a little salt in the water.
5. Cook them steadily after you put them on.
6. Be sure they are thoroughly done. Rare vegetables are neither good nor fashionable.
7. Drain well.
8. Serve hot!
There's really not all that much to argue with, is there? Except for Clause #6. Not only does it give a real insight into the Victorian psyche ("Fashionable" vegetables? Really?), it kind of leaves open the question of what constitutes "thoroughly done." Have no fear, though, she gives cooking times in several of her recipes, and the standard cooking method was boiling.
Cabbage, for instance: Pick off the outer green leaves, quarter, examine carefully to be sure there are no insects in it, and lay for an hour in cold water. Put into a pot with plenty of boiling water and cook fifteen minutes. Throw away the water, and fill up the pot from the boiling tea-kettle. Cook until tender all through. Three-quarters of an hour will do for a good-sized cabbage when young.
Or spinach: Wash it in several waters and let it lie in the last half an hour at least. Take out with your hands, shaking each bunch well, and put into boiling water, with a little salt. Boil from fifteen to twenty minutes.
Asparagus: Cut your stalks of equal length, rejecting the woody or lower portions, and scraping the white part which remains. Throw into cold water as you scrape them. Tie in a bunch with soft strings -- muslin or tape -- and put into boiling water slightly salted. Boil from twenty to forty minutes, according to the age.
Corn: Choose young sugar-corn, full grown, but not hard . . . clean by stripping off the outer leaves, turn back the innermost covering carefully, pick off every thread of silk, and re-cover the ear with the thin husk that grew nearest it. Tie at the top with a bit of thread, put into boiling water salted, and cook fast from twenty minutes to half an hour.
Even cucumbers were not exempt, although at least they weren't boiled: Pare and lay in ice-water half an hour. Cut lengthwise into slices nearly half an inch thick, and lay in ice water ten minutes longer. Wipe each piece dry with a soft cloth, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and dredge with flour. Fry to a delicate brown in sweet clarified dripping, nice lard, or butter. Many declare that cucumbers are never fit to eat unless fried, and they are assuredly more wholesome than when served raw.
Oddly enough, the one vegetable that seems not to have changed much in cooking since 1875 is broccoli, for which the directions read (after laying the stalks in cold water half an hour): Cook quickly in boiling water, with a little salt, until tender. This will be in twelve or fifteen minutes.
So, now you know. If you are suddenly whisked back into the Victorian era, just about the only cooked vegetable that will taste normal will probably be broccoli! In paging through the book, I could find only three vegetables (other than the cucumber mentioned above) that were eaten raw: tomatoes (with a caveat that it was really better to cook them), radishes, and celery. Everything else was boiled to death.
No wonder so many Victorians complained of indigestion!
Baked goods haven't changed at all: breads and muffins and biscuits and pies will all burn themselves into inedibility if you leave them in the oven for too many minutes. Meats and fish are much the same: leave 'em in the oven or the roaster too long and they turn hopelessly dry and tough.
But then we have the vegetables, the poor, poor vegetables. Looking at an older cookbook's recommendation for cooking methods and times will leave you marveling that anyone would bother eating them at all.
The Victorians had definite ideas about vegetables. Here are the "Rules Applicable to the Cooking of All Vegetables", as set down by Marion Harland in Common Sense in the Household (1875):
1. Have them as fresh as possible. Stale and withered ones are unwholesome and unpalatable. Summer vegetables should be cooked on the same day they are gathered, if possible.
2. Pick over and wash well, cutting out all decayed or unripe parts.
3. Lay them, when peeled, in cold water for some time before cooking.
4. If you boil them, put a little salt in the water.
5. Cook them steadily after you put them on.
6. Be sure they are thoroughly done. Rare vegetables are neither good nor fashionable.
7. Drain well.
8. Serve hot!
There's really not all that much to argue with, is there? Except for Clause #6. Not only does it give a real insight into the Victorian psyche ("Fashionable" vegetables? Really?), it kind of leaves open the question of what constitutes "thoroughly done." Have no fear, though, she gives cooking times in several of her recipes, and the standard cooking method was boiling.
Cabbage, for instance: Pick off the outer green leaves, quarter, examine carefully to be sure there are no insects in it, and lay for an hour in cold water. Put into a pot with plenty of boiling water and cook fifteen minutes. Throw away the water, and fill up the pot from the boiling tea-kettle. Cook until tender all through. Three-quarters of an hour will do for a good-sized cabbage when young.
Or spinach: Wash it in several waters and let it lie in the last half an hour at least. Take out with your hands, shaking each bunch well, and put into boiling water, with a little salt. Boil from fifteen to twenty minutes.
Asparagus: Cut your stalks of equal length, rejecting the woody or lower portions, and scraping the white part which remains. Throw into cold water as you scrape them. Tie in a bunch with soft strings -- muslin or tape -- and put into boiling water slightly salted. Boil from twenty to forty minutes, according to the age.
Corn: Choose young sugar-corn, full grown, but not hard . . . clean by stripping off the outer leaves, turn back the innermost covering carefully, pick off every thread of silk, and re-cover the ear with the thin husk that grew nearest it. Tie at the top with a bit of thread, put into boiling water salted, and cook fast from twenty minutes to half an hour.
Even cucumbers were not exempt, although at least they weren't boiled: Pare and lay in ice-water half an hour. Cut lengthwise into slices nearly half an inch thick, and lay in ice water ten minutes longer. Wipe each piece dry with a soft cloth, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and dredge with flour. Fry to a delicate brown in sweet clarified dripping, nice lard, or butter. Many declare that cucumbers are never fit to eat unless fried, and they are assuredly more wholesome than when served raw.
Oddly enough, the one vegetable that seems not to have changed much in cooking since 1875 is broccoli, for which the directions read (after laying the stalks in cold water half an hour): Cook quickly in boiling water, with a little salt, until tender. This will be in twelve or fifteen minutes.
So, now you know. If you are suddenly whisked back into the Victorian era, just about the only cooked vegetable that will taste normal will probably be broccoli! In paging through the book, I could find only three vegetables (other than the cucumber mentioned above) that were eaten raw: tomatoes (with a caveat that it was really better to cook them), radishes, and celery. Everything else was boiled to death.
No wonder so many Victorians complained of indigestion!