The "Queen" cookery books: Vegetables

When wanted slice them neatly, re-heat them in hot stock in the bain-marie, and serve on the cardoons or round them in little hollowed cases of fried bread or tiny patties of cheese pastry. Cold cardoons are excellent with either vinaigrette or mayonnaise sauce. Carrots (Carottes). — These are naturally only at their best when young, for then the hard core is not developed, but if, as often happens, it is necessary to cook old carrots, remember that both their flavour and their colour are improved if they are not cut in any way till cooked. Scrape them and cook them, then trim, slice, and otherwise prepare them. Young carrots take from twenty to thirty minutes to cook, according to age and size ; old carrots will take at least an hour’s cooking; whilst large and very old ones, towards the end of their season, may take quite two hours. Carrots need attention, for if overboiled they lose flavour, still they must be cooked till tender. Old carrots when they must be used for an entree, should be cooked whole, then sliced, quartered, or trimmed when tender, and carefully re-heated in sauce or stock to taste. A la maitre d'hotel. — Choose your carrots as much of a size as possible, wash and wipe them well, then parboil them for ten minutes in fast boiling water. Now drain them, trim and halve them if necessary, and toss them over the fire with 1 or 2oz. of butter, white pepper, salt, a pinch of caster sugar, some finely minced parsley, and a good squeeze of lemon juice. Let them cook thus for fifteen to twenty minutes, according to size, until tender, then serve very hot. A la menagere. — Wash and well rub a bunch of young carrots, and blanch them as before. slice them a quarter inch thick, and put them on with loz. of butter, one and a half pints of milk, a good pinch of salt, and a grate of nutmeg. Boil in a partly covered pan over a sharp fire for twenty minutes, keeping them well stirred all the time with a wooden spoon, to avoid all risk of burning. When the milk has well boiled in, serve very hot. Carrots a la flamande. — Parboil, drain, and well rub an ordinary sized bunch of young carrots, and put them on with loz. of butter, a coffeespoonful of caster sugar, some finely minced parsley, white pepper, and salt to taste, and as much water as will be needed for sauce. Simmer the carrots till tender (fifteen to twenty minutes), shaking them occasionally ; then stir in off the fire the yolk of one or two eggs beaten up with two or three spoonfuls of cream or new milk, and serve very hot. Of course old carrots may, if requisite, be cooked by these methods, but in that case cook them till almost done before cutting them, then slice them or otherwise trim them, only using the red part, and throwing aside the hard yellow core. If old carrots are parboiled, the red part being scooped out in olive shapes and finished off by stewing them with a good pat of butter, a coffeespoonful of caster sugar, pepper and salt to taste, with sufficient stock to prevent their burning, the pan being shaken all the time they are cooking, they make a delicious garnish for cutlets, fillets of beef, &c., which are then known as a la Nivernaise. Glacees. — Choose very small young carrots, and after blanching and drying them, trim them evenly or shape them into little balls ; now put them