No cook untaught by an educated brain ever
makes these, and yet economy is a great gainer by them.
As regards the department of _Vegetables_, their number and variety
in America are so great that a table might almost be furnished by these
alone. Generally speaking, their cooking is a more simple art, and
therefore more likely to be found satisfactorily performed, than that
of meats. If only they are not drenched with rancid butter, their own
native excellence makes itself known in most of the ordinary modes of
preparation.
There is, however, one exception. Our staunch old friend, the potato,
is to other vegetables what bread is on the table. Like bread, it is
held as a sort of _sine-qua-non_; like that, it may be made invariably
palatable by a little care in a few plain particulars, through neglect
of which it often becomes intolerable. The soggy, waxy, indigestible
viand that often appears in the potato-dish is a downright sacrifice of
the better nature of this vegetable.
The potato, nutritive and harmless as it appears, belongs to a family
suspected of very dangerous traits. It is a family connection of the
deadly-nightshade and other ill-reputed gentry, and sometimes shows
strange proclivities to evil--now breaking out uproariously, as in the
noted potato-rot, and now more covertly, in various evil affections.
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