e must be
taken that they stew merely, without being suffered to boil. Boiling
produces a sudden effect, stewing a slower effect, and both have their
appropriate advantages. But if preparations which ought only to stew,
are permitted to boil, the process is destroyed, and a premature effect
produced, that cannot be corrected by any future stewing. In order to
have vegetables in the best state for the table, they should be gathered
in their proper season, when they are in the greatest perfection, and
that is when they are most plentiful. Forced vegetables seldom attain
their true flavour, as is evident from very early asparagus, which is
altogether inferior to that which is matured by nature and common
culture, or the mere operation of the sun and climate. Peas and Potatoes
are seldom worth eating before midsummer; unripe vegetables being as
insipid and unwholesome as unripe fruit, and are liable to the same
objections as when they are destroyed by bad cooking. Vegetables are too
commonly treated with a sort of cold distrust, as if they were natural
enemies. They are seldom admitted freely at our tables, and are often
tolerated only upon a sideboard in small quantities, as if of very
inferior consideration. The effect of this is like that of all
indiscriminate reserve, that we may negatively be said to lose friends,
because we have not the confidence to make them. From the same distrust
or prejudice, there are many vegetables never used at all, which are
nevertheless both wholesome and palatable, particularly amongst those
best known under the denomination of herbs. The freer use of vegetable
diet would be attended with a double advantage, that of improving our
health, and lessening the expense of the table. Attention should however
be paid to their size and quality, in order to enjoy them in their
highest degree of perfection. The middle size are generally to be
preferred to the largest or the smallest; they are more tender, and full
of flavour, just before they are quite full grown. Freshness is their
chief value and excellence, and the eye easily discovers whether they
have been kept too long, as in that case they lose all their verdure and
beauty. Roots, greens, salads, and the various productions of the
garden, when first gathered, are plump and firm, and have a fragrant
freshness which no art can restore, when they have lost it by long
keeping, though it will impart a little freshness to put them into cold
spring wa