The "Queen" cookery books: Vegetables

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This is the tenth volume in the Queen Cookery Books series, published in 1902 and devoted entirely to vegetables. Written by S. Beaty-Pownall, it is structured as an alphabetical culinary reference moving from artichokes through truffles, turnips, and vegetable marrow. The book opens with a substantial preface addressing common failures in British vegetable cookery, covering cleanliness, washing methods, peeling and scraping, boiling technique, salt ratios, and timing, and it includes a cooking time table. Steaming is recommended over boiling wherever practical. The bulk of the volume then works alphabetically through individual vegetables, herbs, and fungi, giving basic cooking methods alongside more elaborate French-influenced preparations, sauces, and garnishes. With 173 anchored food records, this is a densely packed reference intended for the serious household cook or professional kitchen of the period, reflecting a strong French culinary influence layered onto English domestic cookery. Readers today will find it a useful window into Edwardian-era vegetable cookery, technique, and taste, as well as a period piece of Victorian and Edwardian print culture, complete with contemporary advertising at its close.

The book is organized as an alphabetical sequence of vegetable, herb, and fungus entries, beginning with a preface on general principles (cleanliness, washing, peeling, boiling, and a cooking time table) and proceeding through artichokes, asparagus, aubergine, beans, cabbage and root vegetables, corn salad through mushrooms, peas and potatoes, radishes through tomatoes, and concluding with truffles, turnips, vegetable marrow, watercress, and yams. Each entry typically gives one or more basic cooking methods followed by named elaborated preparations and sauces. The volume closes with two garnish techniques (macedoine and jardiniere), an alphabetical index with page references, and period advertising for Cadbury's Cocoa.