ly harmful, can now in their own kitchen from
nourishing and harmless vegetables fashion sweets that are just as
beguiling to childish eyes.

Nor is this all. Children invariably have a craving for sweets that if
allowed to run its course is almost sure to lead to indigestion and
worse. On the other hand, if this craving is not satisfied, the children
will be deprived of a food of the utmost value--a food element, indeed,
that it is indispensable. Vegetable candy offers an ideal solution of
this difficulty. Sugar it of course contains, but the vegetable base
supplies no small part of the bulk; consequently children may eat their
fill of it and satisfy their natural longing for candy without having
gorged themselves with sugar. Moreover, the vegetable base has virtues
that are positive as well as negative; it itself supplies valuable food
elements and equally valuable vegetable salts.

Many colors and flavors are made available by this discovery. The use of
beets, for instance, has added to the candy-maker's palette a very
attractive new shade. Each vegetable contributes at least one new
flavor. Novel as are candies made from vegetables, they must not be
thought faddish. Caramels, marshmallows and bon-bons and all the rest
are here; tastes that have already won favor are here, and many new ones
as well.

In places, perhaps, the directions that follow may seem over detailed.
Invariably, however, I have tried to give information about all the
points that would come to the mind of the amateur confectioner. I have
tried to tell the _why_ as well as the _what_. Moreover, the processes
at times may seem, perhaps, a bit over long. It should be noted,
however, that vegetable candy-making is no more complicated, if as much
so, as is the making of any other confectionery. Good candy invariably
means effort, and intelligent painstaking effort at that.

It has been with the home candy-maker in mind that I have written this
book. Undoubtedly, however, the discovery will appeal to the
professional. I am glad, for the more vegetable candy is made, the less
unhealthful confectionery there will be consumed. For the same reason, I
hope, too, that women and girls seeking to make profitable their idle
hours at home, may embark in a small way in the manufacture and sale of
vegetable candy.

My thanks are due to _The Youth's Companion_ for its kind permission to
reprint material that first appeared on its Girls' Page--a department
that,