The spirit of cookery

planted (after having been reared from seed), we have drawn the conclusion that the asparagus plant retains the char- acter of a marine littoral vegetable, by requiring, and refusing to prosper without, a plentiful supply of common salt in the soil around it. The great Italian physician and anatomist, Fallopia, wrote an exhaustive essay on asparagus, to which we may refer our readers for a complete history of this remarkable plant. The ancients ate the shoots of the spiny-leaved asparagus, A. acutifolius, L., which they called corruda. In the East Indies the large roots (observe, not shoots) of a particular kind of this plant, the A. sarmentos^is, are eaten, boiled in milk. In Malabar they are used for medical confections. One of the principal ingredients of the asjjaragus is a chemical substance, a so-called immediate lyrinciple, asiJara- gin, of which we have already spoken under the paragraph on Salsifis, or Scorzonera. It is very nutritious in this sense, that it probably is a compound which is used in the constructive processes of plants and animals, and is not only consumed in the downward metabolic changes for the production of power and heat. It seems to stand in a particular relation to the albuminous substances. Some authors distinguish two cultivated varieties of asparagus — the white and the green. Others admit three varieties, the third being the violet. This appears to us no valid distinction of varieties, inasmuch as all cultivated asparagus plants yield ^ohite shoots if they are cut before having seen the light, violet shoots if cut when just lifting the surface of the earth, and green shoots when they rise a few inches above the ground. The distinction between white and green was well known to the Greeks, who called the latter — the only form that could be gathered in nature — the high asgMragus, asjgaragon acron. The high green asparagus has the strongest flavour, and is certainly the ASPARAGUS 329 most tender ; the freshly-cut white is tender throughout, but becomes woody by being kept. An average sprout of the asparagus weighs from 15 to 24 grm. It contains from 93 to 94 per cent, of water, nearly 2 per cent, of nitrogenized matter, namely the albuminoiis substances and asparagin, some fat, nearly 0’5 per cent, of sugar, and 2’5 per cent, of other soluble organic substances free from nitrogen, besides woody fibre and ash. The asparagin forms one-seventh part of the whole amount of nitrogenized matter, or of the fresh sprout 0’35 per cent. Under the hands of most modern cooks this vegetable is now, like cauliflower, almost invariably overboiled. When it is immersed in boiling water during twenty minutes, it is completely done ; indeed, the high green sprouts require even less time. But they are. generally heated so long that much of their flavour, and a great deal of their cohesion, is lost, by the aid of which it can alone be conveniently eaten. Hence much of the asparagus served is broken, without heads, or otherwise incoherent and painfully mangled. Yet boiling is the only mode in which asparagus can be usefully prepared. Cooks should therefore remember the Eoman saying, which became applicable when things had to be done quickly : ‘ Do it in no more time than is neces- sary to boil asparagus.’ Now, this was evidently not equivalent to the twinkling of an eye, but it excluded the lingering destruction to which sparrowgrass, as Dr.