Name: To Boil Asparagus
Ingredients: a handful of salt; a large slice of bread sufficient to cover the dish

To Boil Asparagus

Ingredients

a handful of salt
a large slice of bread sufficient to cover the dish

Directions

Large or full grown asparagus is the best. Before you begin to prepare it for cooking, set on the fire a pot with plenty of water, and sprinkle into it a handful of salt. Your asparagus should be all of the same size. Scrape the stalks till they are perfectly nice and white; cut them all of equal length, and short, so as to leave them but two or three inches below the green part. To serve up asparagus with long stalks is now becoming obsolete. As you scrape them, throw them into a pan of cold water. Then tie them up in small bundles with bass or tape, as twine will cut them to pieces. When the water is boiling fast, put in the asparagus, and boil it an hour; if old it will require an hour and a quarter. When it is nearly done boiling, toast a large slice of bread sufficient to cover the dish (first cutting off the crust) and dip it into the asparagus water in the pot. Lay it in a dish, and, having drained the asparagus, place it on the toast with all the heads pointed inwards towards the centre, and the stalks spreading outwards. Serve up melted butter with it.
SEA KALE.--Sea kale is prepared, boiled, and served up in the same manner as asparagus.
POKE.--The young stalks and leaves of the poke-berry plant when quite small and first beginning to sprout up from the ground in the spring, are by most persons considered very nice, and are frequently brought to market. If the least too old they acquire a strong taste, and should not be eaten, as they then become unwholesome. They are in a proper state when the part of the stalk nearest to the ground is not thicker than small asparagus. Scrape the stalks, (letting the leaves remain on them,) and throw them into cold water. Then tie up the poke in bundles, put it into a pot that has plenty of boiling water, and let it boil fast an hour at least. Serve it up with or without toast, and send melted butter with it in a boat.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

455Calories

13 gProtein

1 gFat

95 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 2 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Flour	1 cup (125g) all-purpose	455
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.