e
of the year in which by nature and common culture, and the mere
operation of the sun and climate, they are in most plenty and
perfection.

Potatoes and pease are seldom worth eating before midsummer; unripe
vegetables are as insipid and unwholesome as unripe fruits.

As to the quality of vegetables, the middle size are preferred to the
largest or the smallest; they are more tender, juicy, and full of
flavour, just before they are quite full-grown. Freshness is their chief
value and excellence, and I should as soon think of roasting an animal
alive, as of boiling a vegetable after it is dead.

The eye easily discovers if they have been kept too long; they soon lose
their beauty in all respects.

Roots, greens, salads, &c. and the various productions of the garden,
when first gathered, are plump and firm, and have a fragrant freshness
no art can give them again, when they have lost it by long keeping;
though it will refresh them a little to put them into cold spring water
for some time before they are dressed.

To boil them in soft water will preserve the colour best of such as are
green; if you have only hard water, put to it a tea-spoonful of
_carbonate of potash_.[84-*]

Take care to wash and cleanse them thoroughly from dust, dirt, and
insects: this requires great attention. Pick off all the outside leaves,
trim them nicely, and, if not quite fresh gathered and have become
flaccid, it is absolutely necessary to restore their crispness before
cooking them, or they will be tough and unpleasant: lay them in a pan of
clean water, with a handful of salt in it, for an hour before you dress
them.

"Most vegetables being more or less succulent, their full proportion of
fluids is necessary for their retaining that state of crispness and
plumpness which they have when growing. On being cut or gathered, the
exhalation from their surface continues, while, from the open vessels of
the cut surface, there is often great exudation or evaporation; and thus
their natural moisture is diminished, the tender leaves become flaccid,
and the thicker masses or roots lose their plumpness. This is not only
less pleasant to the eye, but is a real injury to the nutritious powers
of the vegetable; for in this flaccid and shrivelled state its fibres
are less easily divided in chewing, and the water which exists in
vegetable substances, in the form of their respective natural juices, is
directly nutritious. The first care in the preservat