The spirit of cookery

Green peas, plain-boiled and dished with some butter, are termed a VAnglaise, and distinguished from the stewed, called d la Franqaise. The latter require some bouillon, a little sugar, and a roux ; the binding must be added sparingly, as when properly treated young peas effect their own binding spontaneously. Chick peas, or Spanish garbanzos, are apparently not often eaten in the green state. Sugar Peas is a form of peas of which the shells are edible, and very sweet, at a period when there is hardly any seed developed as yet. These shells are stewed just like the young green peas, and are very tasty ; they become stringy when older, and then have to be sucked or drawn through the teeth singly by the eater, or worked into purée by the cook. Marrow-fats are a late variety of peas of great size and tender substance. China chilo is a ragoût of green peas and mutton, stewed with some onions, lettuce, butter, and spices, to be served with rice boiled in broth and moistened with butter. This is a most excellent dish, and is most conveniently eaten with a dessertspoon. Green French and Broad Beans and Scarlet Runners. Raw green beans, before the development of their seeds, have a decidedly sweet taste. Like cabbage, they undergo a fermentation, which, when it is guided by the addition of salt and proper treatment, results in the production of lactic acid — the characteristic ingredient of sour milk. Such fermented or sour beans are made and eaten by millions of inhabitants of the northern part of the continent of Europe, and in Russia are the principal vegetable food, by the availability of which throughout the winter the peasants produce some variety in their monotonous black bread and fish diet, and ward off scurvy. Now, this sweet taste and fermentability of beans is due to the presence of a sugar, which, as it was first discovered in beans, was called 2)Jiaseomannite, from i^iiaseohbs, the Latin diminutive of the Greek and latin name for bean, and mannite, the sugar of manna, to which it appeared to have some similarity. It was next discovered that this was identical with a sugar which had been observed previously in flesh, and termed inosite ; but what was still more remarkable, it was found that it abounded regularly in the human brain. It was then observed in small quantities in many parts of vegetables, and some sweet Sauterne wines were found to owe their taste — at least, in part — to this carbo-hydrate. It crystallizes, and looks like a diminutive cauliflower. It is not capable of being fermented by yeast, but is decomposed by the lactic acid bacillus, and can be transformed into an explosive, equal in power to smokeless gunpowder. Now, seeing that inosite is unquestionably food for the brain as well as the muscles, it is right to look to its conservation in our food, and avoid its extraction. Green beans should therefore never be boiled, whereby the beansugar is lost to a great extent in the water ; but should be stewed, so as to preserve all their immediate principles. BEANS AND HARICOT BEANS