The Pattern cook-book

Wash the salsify with a rough cloth, place it in a kettle with plenty of boiling, salted water, and boil slowly until nearly done, which will be an hour. Drain, and when cool enough to handle, scrape off the dark skin on the outside. Cut the vegetable in slices, return it to the kettle, add hot water, and let it simmer fifteen minutes. Drain again, add milk to nearly cover, and thicken the milk to a cream with a little flour stirred to a paste with cold milk. Add butter, salt and pepper to taste, and serve. Salsify prepared in this way will not turn dark, and it is much more easily scraped after being boiled than before. FRIED SALSIFY. Boil, scrape off the skin, cut in slices, and fry like parsnips. Salsify fritters are made the same as parsnip fritters. SPINACH. Spinach requires very careful washing to rid it of the sand with which the leaves are so often filled. Pick the spinach apart, throwing out the decayed portions, and place it in a large panful of water. Wash the spinach well, and lay it in a second pan of water ; wash again and lay it back in the first pan, which has been refilled with clear water. Continue washing thus until all trace of sand has disappeared. Then boil the spinach half an hour in two cupfuls of boiling, salted water, turn it into a colander, and press out all the water possible. With a knife chop the spinach rather coarsely, leaving it in the colander for this cutting. Now return it to the kettle in which it was boiled, add a table-spoonful of butter, and salt and pepper to taste, and stir until very hot ; turn at once into the serving dish, shape the spinach into a round mound, and lay on the top slices of hard boiled eggs. Serve while hot. SPINACH, WITH CREAM. Boil, drain and chop the spinach as directed above and make the following sauce : Three table-spoonfuls of butter. Two table-spoonfuls of flour. One cupful of cream or milk. Salt and pepper to taste. Heat the butter, add the flour, and stir until the mixture is frothy. Add the chopped spinach, and cook for four minutes, stirring constantly. Next put in the cream, salt and pepper, cook three minutes, and serve on nicely toasted bread. SUMMER SQUASH, STEAMED. There are many varieties of this vegetable. Unless the squash is very tender, pare it thinly, cutting away little but the outer rind. Cut it in slices, and if the seeds are young and small, do not remove them ; if at all large, however, take them out, lay the squash on a plate, set it in a steamer over a kettle of boiling water, and steam until tender, usually from thirty to forty minutes. Take it from the steamer, drain off any water that may be upon it, place it in a stew-pan, and mash well. Add butter, salt and pepper to taste, and set the stew-pan on the back of the range for fifteen minutes, uncovered, for the squash to dry as much as possible, stirring it once or twice meanwhile. Re-heat, and serve. This kind of squash may also be boiled and served in the same way, but it is rather more wet when boiled than when steamed. FRIED SQUASH.