02 - Roots and Vegetables -- Beans -- Fruits

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Part two of American Cookery by Amelia Simmonds. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. We proceed to roots
and vegetables, and the best cook cannot alter the first quality.
They must be good or the cook will be disappointed.
Potatoes take rank for universal use, profit, and easy acquirement.

(00:24):
The smooth skin, known by the name of How's potato,
is the most mealy and richest flavored. The yellow rusticoat
next best. The red and the red rusticoat are tolerable,
and the yellow Spanish have their value. Those cultivated from
imported seed on sandy or dry loamy lands are best
for table use, though the red or either will produce

(00:47):
more in rich, loamy, highly manured garden grounds. New lands
in a sandy soil afford the richest flavored and most
mealy potato. Much depends on the ground on which they grow,
more on the species of potatoes planted, and still more
from foreign seeds, and each may be known by attention
to connoisseurs. For a good potato comes up in many

(01:09):
branches of cookery, as herein after prescribed. All potatoes should
be dug before the rainy seasons in the fall, well
dried in the sun, kept from frost and dampness during
the winter. In the spring, removed from the cellar to
a dry loft, and spread thin and frequently stirred and dried,
or they will grow and be thereby injured. For cookery,

(01:30):
a roast potato is brought on with roast beef, a steak,
a chop, or furcusee good boiled with a boiled dish,
make an excellent stuffing for a turkey, water or wild fowl.
Make good pie, and a good starch for many uses.
All potatoes run out or depreciate in America. A fresh

(01:50):
importation of the Spanish might restore them to table use.
It would swell this treatise too much to say everything
that is useful to prepare a good table. But I
may be pardoned by observing that the Irish have preserved
a genuine, mealy rich potato for a century, which takes
rank of any known in any other kingdom. And I
have heard that they renew their seed by planting and

(02:13):
cultivating the seed ball which grows on the tyne. The
manner of their managing it to keep up the excellency
of that root would better suit a treatise on agriculture
and gardening than this, and be inserted in a book
which would be read by the farmer instead of his
amiable daughter. If no one treats on the subject, it
may appear in the next edition. Onions, the Madeira white

(02:37):
is best in market, a steamed, softer flavored and not
so fiery. But the high red, round hard onions are
the best if you consult cheapness. The largest are best
if you consult taste and softness. The very smallest are
the most delicate and used at the first tables. Onions
grow in the richest, highest cultivated ground, and better and

(03:00):
better year after year on the same ground. Beets grow
on any ground, but best on loam or light gravel grounds.
The red is the richest and best approved. The white
has a sickish sweetness which is disliked by many. Parsnips
are a valuable root, cultivated best in rich old grounds

(03:21):
and doubly deep plowed. Late sown. They grow thrifty and
are not so prongy. They may be kept anywhere in
anyhow so that they do not grow with heat or
are nipped with frost. If frosted, let them thaw in earth.
They are richer flavored when plowed out of the ground
in April, having stood out during the winter, though they

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will not last long after and commonly more sticky and
hard in the center. Carrots are managed as it respects
plowing and rich ground, similarly to parsnips. The yellow are
better than the orange red. Middling sized that is a
foot long and two inches thick at the top end
are better than overgrown ones. They are cultivated best with

(04:04):
onions sowed very thin and mixed with other seeds while
young or six weeks after sown, especially if with onions
on true onion ground. They are good with veal cookery,
rich in soups, excellent with hash in May and June. Garlics,
though used by the French, are better adapted to the

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uses of medicine than cookery asparagus. The mode of cultivation
belongs to gardening. Their business is only to cut and dress.
The largest is best the growth of a day sufficient
six inches long and cut just above the ground. Many
cut below the surface under an idea of getting tender
shoots and preserving the bed, but it enfeebles the root,

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dig round it and it will be wet with the juices.
But if cut above ground, and just as the dew
is going off, the sun will either reduce the juice
or send it back to nourish the root. It's an
excellent vegetable parsley. Of the three kinds, the thickest and
branchiest is the best. Is sown among onions or in
a bed by itself may be dried for winter use,

(05:12):
though a method which I have experienced is much better.
In September, I dig my roots. Procure an old, thin stave,
dry cask, bore holes an inch diameter in every stave,
six inches asunder round the cask and up to the top.
First take a half bushel of rich garden mold and
put into the cask. Then run the roots through the staves,

(05:35):
leaving the branches outside, press the earth tight about the
root within, and thus continue on through the respective stories
till the cask is full. It being filled, run an
iron bar through the center of the dirt in the
cask and fill with water. Let stand on the south
and east side of a building till frosty night. Then

(05:55):
remove it by slinging a rope round the cask into
the cellar, where during the winter I clip with my
scissors the fresh parsley, which my neighbors or myself have
occasion for, and in the spring transplant the roots in
the bed, in the garden, or in any unused corner
or let stand upon the wharf or the wash shed.
It's an useful mode of cultivation and a pleasurably tasted herb,

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and much used in garnishing viands. Rattish salmon colored is
the best. Purple next best white turnip. Each are procured
from southern seeds. Annually. They grow thriftiest sown among onions.
The turnip radish will last well through the winter. Artichokes

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the Jerusalem is best, are cultivated like potatoes, though their
stalks grow seven feet high and may be preserved like
the turnip radish or pickled. They, like horse radish, once
in the garden, can scarcely ever, be totally eradicated. Plowing
or digging them up with that view seems at times
rather to increase and spread them. Cucumbers are of many kinds.

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The prickly is best for pickles, but generally bitter. The
white is difficult to raise in tender. Choose the bright green,
smooth and proper sized melons. The water melons is cultivated
on sandy soils only above latitude forty one and a half.
If a stratum of land be dug from a well,
it will bring the first year good watermelons. The red

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cord are highest flavored. A hard rine proves them. Ripe
musk melons are various. The rough skinned are best to eat.
The short, round, fair skinned is best for mangoes. Lettuce
is of various kinds. The purple spotted leaf is generally
the tenderest and free from bitter. Your taste must guide

(07:48):
your market. Cabbage requires a page they are so multiferous.
Note all cabbages have a higher relish that grow on
new unmatured grounds. If grown in an old town and
on old gardens, they have a rankness, which at times
may be perceived by a fresh air traveler. This observation

(08:08):
has been experienced for years that cabbages require new ground
more than turnips. The low Dutch only will do in
old gardens. The early Yorkshire must have rich soils. They
will not answer for winter. They are easily cultivated and
frequently brought to market in the fall, but will not
last the winter. The green savoy, with the richest crinkles

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is fine and tender and although they do not head
like the dutcher yorkshire, yet the tenderness of the out
leaves is a counterpose. It will last through the winter
and are high flavored. The yellow savoy takes next rank,
but will not last so long. All cabbages will mix
and participate of other species, Like Indian corn. They are

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culled best in plants, and a true gardener will in
the plant describe those which will head and which we
will not. This is new but a fact. The gradations
in the savoy cabbage are discerned by the leaf. The
richest and most scalloped and crinkled and thickest green savoy
falls little short of a cauliflower. The red and reddest,

(09:15):
small tight heads are best for slaw. It will not
boil well, comes out black or blue, and tinges other
things with which it is boiled. Beans. The clabvered bean
is easiest cultivated and collected. Are good for string beans,
will shell must be pulled. The windsor bean is an
earlier good string or shell bean. Cranberry bean is rich,

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but not universally approved equal to the other two. Frost
bean is good only to shell. Six weeks bean is
a yellowish bean. And early, brought forward and tolerable. Lazy
bean is tough and needs no pole. English bean what
they denominate. The horse bean is mealy when young, is profitable,

(10:02):
easily cultivated, and may be grown on worn out grounds.
As they may be raised by boys. I cannot but
recommend the most extensive cultivation of them. The small white
bean is best for winter use and excellent calivants are
run out. A yellow small bush, a black speck or
eye are tough and tasteless and little worth in cookery,

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and scarcely bear exportation. Peas green peas. The crown imperial
takes rank in point of flavor. They blossom purple and
white on the top of the vines, will run from
three to five feet high. Should be set in light
sandy soil only, or they run too much to vines.
The crowned pea is second in richness of flavor. The

(10:46):
rendezvoals is large and bitterish. Early carlton is produced first
in the season. Good marrow fats green yellow, and as large,
easily cultivated, not equal to sugar. Pea needs no bush.
The pods are tender and good to eat. Easily cultivated.

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Spanish manrato is a rich pea requires a strong high bush.
All peas must be picked carefully from the vines as
soon as dew is off, shelled and cleaned without water,
and boiled immediately. They are thus the richest flavored herbs.
Useful in cookery. Thyme is good in soups and stuffings.

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Sweet marjoram is used in turkeys, summer savory ditto, and
in sausages and salted beef and legs of pork. Sage
is used in cheese and pork, but not generally approved.
Parsley good in soups and to garnish roast beef, excellent
with bread and butter in the spring. Pennyroyal is a
high aromatic, although a spontaneous herb in old plowed fields,

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yet might be more generally cultivated in gardens and used
in cookery and medicines. Sweet thyme is most useful and
best proved in cookery. Fruits pears there are many different kinds,
but the large bell pear sometimes called the pound pear,
the yellowest, is the best, and in the same town

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they differ essentially. Hard winter pair are innumerable in their qualities,
are good in sauces and baked harvest and summer pear
are a tolerable dessert and are much improved in this country,
as all other fruits are by grafting in inoculation. Apples
are still more various, yet rigidly retain their own species,

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and are highly useful in families, and ought to be
more universally cultivated, excepting in the compactest cities there is
not a single family, but might set a tree in
some otherwise useless spot which might serve the twofold use
of shade and fruit, on which twelve or fourteen kinds
of fruit trees might easily be engrafted, and essentially preserve

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the orchard from the intrusions of boys, et cetera, which
is too common in a marema. If the boy who
thus planted a tree and guarded and protected it in
a useless corner, and carefully in grafted different fruits, was
to be indulged free access into orchards whilst the neglectful
boy was prohibited, how many millions of fruit trees would

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spring into growth, and what a saving to the union.
The net saving would in time extinguish the public debt
and enrich our cookery. Currants are easily grown from shoots
trimmed off from old bunches and set carelessly in the ground.
They flourish on all soils and make good jellies. Their
cultivation ought to be encouraged. Black currants may be cultivated,

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but until they can be dried, and until sugars are propagated,
they are in a degree unprofitable. Grapes are natural to
the climate, grow spontaneously in every state in the Union
and ten degrees north of the line of the Union.
The Madeira, Lisbon and mulaga grapes are cultivated in gardens
in this country, and are a rich treat or dessert.

(14:02):
Trifling attention only as necessary for their ample growth. End
of Part two of American Cookery by Amelia Simmons