Preserved Vegetables

Ingredients

• Almost all vegetables
• salt
• a clean cloth
• a board
• a pretty heavy weight

Method

1. 1

   Layer salt and vegetables in a jar, finishing with salt.

2. 2

   Cover with a cloth, a board, and a weight to ensure airtightness.

3. 3

   When using, wash and steep in soft water for 12-24 hours, then boil with butter and season with lemon juice and white pepper.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The "Queen" cookery books: Pickles and Preserves (1902) by S. Beaty-Pownall, page 9. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

Almost all vegetables can be bottled by the above directions, and keep admirably if care has been taken to see that the covers are air-tight, so that full advantage may be taken of a year of extra plenty. Vegetables also, if reduced to a puree and stored in unglazed jars, with a covering of melted beef suet, &c., keep capitally. For instance, sorrel or spinach may either of them be preserved in this way : Remove the stalk and the spine or thread from the leaves, and boil up in a copper pan, till it has rendered all its liquid, then strain this off and return the puree of vegetable to the fire, and let it cook to a smooth puree ; now turn it into wide- mouthed unglazed jars, smooth over the top, cover with paraffin wax, and cover down and store as usual. Endive, lettuce, &c., can be done in this way, but must first be broken up. The sorrel or spinach for this can be obtained by letting the bed grow after the first spring crop has been cleared off in the spring and then utilising the later crop. CANNING AND BOTTLING. 19 Though French beaus (like broad, or Windsor beans) can be perfectly bottled by the previous directions, the commonest method of preserving these most useful vegetables is this: Gather the French beans whilst young, and on a line day ; put a fairly thick layer of salt at the bottom of a large, unglazed earthenware jar, and cover with a layer of beans, then more salt, and repeat these two layers till the jar is full, finishing with the salt. Cover with a clean cloth, lay a board on that, and lastly, a pretty heavy weight on that, to ensure its being air- tight. Be careful when taking out beans that the jar is carefully recovered, or they will not keep. To use them, wash them well when taken out, and then let them steep in soft water from twelve to twenty-four hours, changing the water pretty constantly. When boiled, do not salt them, but put a piece of butter with them, and season with lemon juice and white pepper. Again, it is not at all difficult to dry vegetables, and desiccated vegetables always form part of the winter stores abroad. For these, peel and shred fairly fine, potatoes, carrots, turnips, and such like, and boil them for five minutes in a wicker basket ; (if you are drying cauliflowers, endive, parsley, spinach, &c., pick them over, and wash them well, then boil for five minutes) ; then rinse them all in cold water (iced if possible), drain them well and dry carefully on a clean cloth. When dry, spread the vegetables in thin layers on canvas frames, so that they do not stick together in lumps, and leave these frames in the oven for the night, in an even, c 2 20 PICKLES AKD PRESERVES. moderate heat, repeating this process till the vege- tables are quite dry and crisp. Then store them in glass bottles covered down till air-tight. Cabbages can also be kept in this way, but must be very care- fully cleansed and steeped, and then parboiled in fresh water. All bottled vegetables should be carefully strained from the water in which they were preserved, and then thoroughly rinsed in fresh boiling water, and again well drained ; this helps to soften them before cooking, and entirely prevents any chance of a bitter taste sometimes given by the preserving water ; a taste frequently noticeable in carelessly cooked preserved vegetables. The drying frames can easily be made at home, as they only consist of four thin laths nailed together to fit the oven, and then covered with coarse canvas or sacking strained over them. Mushrooms, though susceptible of exactly the same treatment as other vegetables, are preserved generally somewhat differently from other vegetables, there- fore, various methods are here given. Old-fashioned country housewives preserve them thus : Choose large though still button mushrooms, and lay them on a sieve stalks uppermost, and sprinkle well with fine salt

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.