American Cookery | Page 4

A roast Potato is brought on with roast Beef, a Steake, a Chop, or
Fricassee; good boiled with a boiled dish; make an excellent stuffing
for a turkey, water or wild fowl; make a good pie, and a good starch for
many uses. All potatoes run out, or depreciate in America; a fresh
importation of the Spanish might restore them to table use.
It would swell this treatise too much to say every thing that is useful, to
prepare a good table, but I may be pardoned by observing, that the Irish
have preserved a genuine mealy rich Potato, for a century, which takes
rank of any known in any other kingdom; and I have heard that they
renew their seed by planting and cultivating the _Seed Ball_, which
grows on the tine. The manner of their managing it to keep up the
excellency of that root, would better suit a treatise on agriculture and
gardening than this--and be inserted in a book which would be read by
the farmer, instead of his amiable daughter. If no one treats on the
subject, it may appear in the next edition.
_Onions_--The Madeira white is best in market, esteemed softer
flavored, and not so fiery, but the high red, round hard onions are the
best; if you consult cheapness, the largest are best; if you consult taste
and softness, the very smallest are the most delicate, and used at the
first tables. Onions grow in the richest, highest cultivated ground, and
better and better year after year, on, the same ground.
_Beets_, grow on any ground, but best on loom, or light gravel grounds;
the red is the richest and best approved; the white has a sickish
sweetness, which is disliked by many.
_Parsnips_, are a valuable root, cultivated best in rich old grounds, and
doubly deep plowed, _late sown_, they grow thrifty, and are not so
prongy; they may be kept any where and any how, so that they do not
grow with heat, or are nipped with frost; if frosted, let them thaw in
earth; they are richer flavored when plowed out of the ground in April,
having stood out during the winter, tho' they will not last long after, and
commonly more sticky and hard in the centre.

_Carrots_, are managed as it respects plowing and rich ground,
similarly to Parsnips. The yellow are better than the orange or red;
middling fiz'd, that is, a foot long and two inches thick at the top end,
are better than over grown ones; they are cultivated best with onions,
sowed very thin, and mixed with other seeds, while young or six weeks
after sown, especially if with onions on true onion ground. They are
good with veal cookery, rich in soups, excellent with hash, in May and
June.
_Garlicks_, tho' used by the French, are better adapted to the uses of
medicine than cookery.
_Asparagus_--The mode of cultivation belongs to gardening; your
business is only to cut and dress, the largest is best, the growth of a day
sufficient, six inches long, and cut just above the ground; many cut
below the surface, under an idea of getting tender shoots, and
preserving the bed; but it enfeebles the root: dig round it and it will be
wet with the juices--but if cut above ground, and just as the dew is
going off, the sun will either reduce the juice, or send it back to nourish
the root--its an excellent vegetable.
_Parsley_, of the three kinds, the thickest and branchiest is the best, is
sown among onions, or in a bed by itself, may be dryed for winter use;
tho' a method which I have experienced, is much better--In September I
dig my roots, procure an old thin stave dry cask, bore holes an inch
diameter in every stave, 6 inches asunder round the cask, and up to the
top--take first a half bushel of rich garden mold and put into the cask,
then run the roots through the staves, leaving the branches outside,
press the earth tight about the root within, and thus continue on thro' the
respective stories, till the cask is full; it being filled, run an iron bar
thro' the center of the dirt in the cask and fill with water, let stand on
the south and east side of a building till frosty night, then remove it, (by
slinging a rope round the cask) into the cellar; where, during the winter,
I clip with my scissars the fresh parsley, which my neighbors or myself
have occasion for; and in the spring transplant the roots in the bed in
the garden, or in any unused corner--or let stand upon the wharf, or the
wash shed. Its an useful mode of cultivation, and a pleasurably tasted

herb, and much used in