FoodNetArchive

The household cook book

1902

Page 164 · 1 recipe record on this page

Presented as published in 1902. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
WALNUT SALAD — Get the kernels as nearly whole as possible, and let them soak 2 hours in lemon juiceWalnut Salad; pick them out without draining, and serve on water-cress or lettuce, with French dressing. VEGETABLES. N abundance and variety of vei^etables are essential to perfect health. They furnish the mineral matters, alkalies and ^X acids in which meat is deficient, and most of the carboliy drates needed by the system. The lack of fat in vegetables should be supi)lied by using butter, or some other form of fat, with them all. A moment's thought will show our readers that in arranging a dietary the object is to supply the lack of any element in one article of food, by using with it some other food containing the missing element. Although the foods in every-day use thus supplement each other, many people do not think of the principle involved. Why does butter go with bread? Because the gluten of the bread furnishes the albumenoid element needed by the body, while the starch supplies the carbohydrates, but bread it- self lacks fat, and the butter used supplies that. So meat and pota- toes go well together, the lean meat suj^plying the albumenoids, the potato the carbohydrates, and the fat or butter furnishes the fats, the 3 together thus supplying the body with" the 3 great food ele- ments which it needs. Vegetables when taken as food are valuable not only for the direct nourish- ment which they afford to the system, but also because they impart to the blood certain constituents which are necessary to maintain its highest purity. This has been amply proved by the appearance of such blood diseases as scurvy, etc., in cir- cumstances where vegetable food was not procurable for any length of time. Few people rightly estimate the value of vegetables to the system. One of the chiet benefits derived from eating them comes from the salts which they contain, while they also introduce into the system some water necessary for digestion and assimi- lation, and afford the benefit of variety in food. It is much to be regretted that by the method of cooking vegetables which commonly prevails in this country the greater part of their salts are dissolved out by the water in which they are cooked, and this water is thrown away, only the vegetable itself being eaten. There seems to be a common impression that the water in which many vegetables are boiled is poisonous, but this is a most erroneous idea. In this connection we quote from Mr. Mattieu Williams: "I must add a few words in advocacy of further adoption in this country of the French practice of us- ing aspotage{iov soups, etc) the water in which vegetables generally (excepting po- tatoes) have been boiled. When we boil cabbages, turnips, carrots, etc., we dissolve out of them a very large proportion of their saline constituents; salts which are absolutely necessary for the maintenance of health; salts without which we become victims of gout, rheumatism, lumbago, neuralgia, gravel, and all the ills that hu- man flesh with a lithic acid diathesis is heir to; i.e.. about the most painful series of all its inheritances." To which we may add the recommendation to save vegetable broth, and utilize it for soup, sauce, etc. A rich soup can be made from the water •in which potatoes have been boiled (if xvithout their skins) by mashing 2 or 3, and adding a little thickening and seasoning and a little butter.