Cassell's dictionary of cookery

But of all the vegetable preserves, the green peas hold the highest place. The best are preserved without any use of copper, their colour being retained, or rather restored, simply, we believe, by a little spinach juice. The art of preserving peas has now reached so high a point of excellence, that it is almost impossible to distinguish them from the fresh gathered and fresh cooked vegetables — indeed, just as new peas come in, and during the pod season, those from the tias are consumed in enormous quantities at first-class hotels and resturants in London and all continental cities, and at the tables of the wealthy classes, without anybody but those who provide them being the wiser. "Hie fraud, if such it may be called, is a very harmless one, and confers a benefit on the pea-eaters, who are ensured against a dish of hard flavourless pellets. American preservers now send us large quantities of preserved tomatoes — a vegetable (perhaps we should almost say ' fruit ') daily found in some form or other on everj' dinner-table across the Atlantic, but strangely neglected among ourselves. They are perhaps somewhat inferior in flavour to those produced in the South of France, but thoucheapness would recommend them. From America also we get tins of ' green com,' and Indian maize, cooked in its milky state before VEG ( 1075 ) VEG it is ripe — a still more indispensable article on American dinner-tables. Green Lima beans are another preserved vegetable sent from America, retailed in one pound tins at about a shilling, and very excellent they are, but, like the ' green corn,' seldom experimented upon by the English public, being chiefly used by Auaerican residents in this country. No small success has attended the preservation in tins of fruit. The Americans send us yearly hundreds and thousands of tons of the various products of their gardens and orchards. In many parts of America — California, for instance, which seems likely to become 'the garden of the world' — fruit is a mere drug in the market, the supply of peaches, apricots, and pine-apples, to say nothing of what we consider more common fruits, being almost unlimited. They are now seen in most of the shops which deal in such articles, and have obtained that degree of i^ublic favour to which their excellence and cheapness entitle them. The Australian colonies are also fast developing their powers of fruit production ; and both the quality and cheapness of their preserves of various kinds which have found their way into oxw markets commend them to the public." Vegetables, Preserved, by Drying. — A convenient method of prepartng desiccated vegetables, as practised largely in some countries, consists in drying them for a short time, and then exposing them to a slow heat in ovens. When soaked for cooking, peas, roots, potatoes, beets, corn, and other substances swell out and show very little change in their esculent properties. A modification of this process consists in placing the substances, after being sun-dried, in paper bags, which are pasted up at the mouth, and then covered with sand, and heated till perfectly crisp, but not burned or materially altered in colour. Vegetables, Preserved, Fresh. —