Mrs. Lincoln's Boston cook book

Fried Raw Potatoes. — Pare, wash, and cut into the desired shape. Soak in cold salted water, drain, and dry between towels. Fry in clear fat, hot enough to brown while counting sixty. Drain, and sprinkle with salt. Saratoga Potatoes are shaved in thin slices. Parisienne Potatoes are cut in small balls with a French Vegetable cutter. Macaroni or Shoo Fly. Potatoes are cut in quarterinch slices, then in quarter-inch strips. Crescents and other shapes may be cut with vegetable cutters. These are all to be fried ; but some prefer to boil the Parisienne potatoes, and serve in a cream sauce flavored with -parsley. Sweet Potatoes may be baked or boiled. They are better baked. Cold sweet potatoes may be cut in slices, warmed in milk and seasoned with butter and salt or browned in butter. A Southern Dish. (Adaline Miller.) — Cut cold baked sweet potatoes into quarter-inch slices, and put them in an earthen dish. Spread each layer with butter, and sprinkle slightly with sugar, and bake until hot and slightly browned. Sweet potatoes are much richer when twice cooked. Spinach. Pick over, trim off the roots and decayed leaves ; wash thoroughly, lifting the spinach from one pan of water into another, that the sand may be left in the water, and The Boston Cook Book. 297 changing the water until it is clear. Put the spinach in a large kettle without water. Place it on the stove where it will cook slowly until the juice is drawn out, then boil until tender. Drain and chop fine. For half a peck of spinach add one large tablespoonful of butter, half a teaspoonful of salt, and a quarter of a saltspoonful of pepper ; or add a little thin cream sauce. Heat again and serve on toast. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs and toast points, or serve cold with French dressing. Spinach is nearly all water, and a smaller portion of the potash salts — its most valuable constituent — is lost when it is cooked in its own juices. Greens. The leaves and stalks of young beets, milkweed, dandelions, and narrow dock are useful as food in the early spring, chiefly for the water and alkaline salts which they contain. They should be picked over, and washed carefully, cooked in boiling salted water until tender, then drained, and seasoned with butter and salt. Vinegar is often used with them as a desirable condiment. Many people consider it necessary to boil a piece of salt pork with greens, but they are more wholesome when seasoned with butter. Dandelions should be cooked in plenty of water ; but other tender greens may be cooked, like spinach, in their own juices. Asparagus. Wash carefully and break (not cut) into inch pieces as far as each stalk can be broken. When it will not snap off quickly, the stalk is too tough to be used. Cook in boiling salted water, deep enough to cover, for fifteen minutes, or until tender. When the asparagus is not fresh and tender, it is well to boil the hardest part first, and add the tender heads after ten minutes. Drain, season with butter and salt, or pour white sauce over it, and serve on toast. Many people prefer to leave the stalks whole, and tie them into bundles before boiling. When served in this way, unless all the tough part be broken off before cook- 298 * The Boston Cook Book. ing, it is inconvenient, if not impossible, to cut the stalk afterward. Green Peas.