In order to have good dishes of cooked vegetables you must first obtain good vegetables grown rapidly and cleanly and gathered young. Unless the market-gardener has studied his business, and produced his wares in the best possible condition, the cook will always be handicapped in preparing those wares.

Each vegetable has its good and bad seasons, and must be employed in consequence. In taste and quality spring carrots, for instance, differ widely from autumn carrots.

By the art of the gardener the seasons may be to a certain extent suppressed. At Paris, for instance, the fruits and vegetables of each season are anticipated to a great extent by forced culture, which is practised on a large scale in the outskirts of the capital. The Parisian primeurs, or first-fruits, are exquisite in quality and taste, and quite different from the early fruits and vegetables sent to Paris from the south of France, Spain, Portugal, Algeria, and even Egypt, which supplies fresh tomatoes to the Paris and London markets in January. Lately the Belgians have taken to grape culture, and supply the Paris market with fruit from January to May; from July to October the grape supply comes from Algeria; from September to January the finest grapes are produced by the growers of Thomery, near Fontainebleau. Thus there are only two months out of the twelve when you cannot have fresh grapes at Paris. In all kinds of vegetables and salads the Paris market is unrivalled. The methods of culture employed by the gardeners who supply this market are worthy of careful study.

As a general rule, all dry vegetables are cooked by putting them into cold water, the temperature of which is gradually raised to boiling-point, while all fresh and green vegetables are cooked by plunging them into salted water already boiling.

The reason is that, as in the cooking of meat, so in the cooking of vegetables, it is desirable to protect them against the infiltration of water.

Starch is as constant a constituent of vegetables as albumen is of meat. Raw starch is practically not digestible by man, so that it is absolutely necessary that vegetables should be thoroughly cooked. In boiling, the starch granules absorb water, swell up, and burst, thus undergoing the first necessary step to their subsequent transformation into glucose through the action of the digestive fluids. Also, when starch, in the dry state, is heated to 302 degrees Fahrenheit, it is changed into dextrine, in which state it is thoroughly digestible. The potato is composed almost entirely of starch, and the necessary transformation in cooking is comparatively easy to effect. But in the case of dried beans and peas, prolonged cooking is necessary in order to soften and disintegrate the woody fibre with which this class of food is more or less entangled. The development of flavor by cooking is much less marked in vegetables than in meat. In boiling dried vegetables a method is adopted which is the reverse of that in cooking meat. The vegetables are immersed in cold water, which is afterwards brought to the boiling-point, and then the cooking proceeds at a temperature somewhat below 212 degrees Fahrenheit, so as not to destroy the form of the vegetables.

Starch in the digestive tube is changed first into dextrine, then into glucose.

Much has been written about the ways of preserving the green color in cooked vegetables.

The French cooks, I have read in English cook-books, generally put a pinch of carbonate of ammonia into the water.

Dubois-Bernard and Souchay use a red copper pan to boil their vegetables in. The red copper, during the process of boiling, gives off a little oxychloride of copper, which is the same product that is used for giving a green patine to bronze statues.

In reality the great secret is simply to have abundance of water in the pot.

It will be found that string-beans, for instance, plunged into well-salted boiling water, in a pot of any material, provided it be large enough to allow the beans to float freely, each one careering round on its own account in the stream of ebullition, will retain their green color perfectly.

The pot should not be covered.

It is needless to add that the same holds good of other green vegetables.

Another idea which is found in many cookbooks, and which is indiscriminately practised by non-reasoning cooks - that is to say, by the majority - is a process of cooling or chilling, termed by the French cooks rafraichir. This process consists in plunging the vegetables into boiling water for a few minutes; then taking them out and throwing cold water on to them to cool them : then, after they are cooled and drained, continuing the cooking in boiling water. This process is employed to prevent the vegetables turning yellow.

Experience in my own kitchen, confirmed by the experience and practice of many intelligent chefs whom I have consulted, has convinced me that this cooling process is a mistake, except when the supplementary cooking operations justify it, and also when the vegetables have to be served cold, as for instance in the case of a macedoine or salad of vegetables.

As a general rule green vegetables should be boiled in an abundance of well-salted boiling water, in a roomy pot and without a lid. As soon as the vegetables are cooked serve them rapidly. Let as short a time as possible elapse between the cooking of vegetables and the eating of them.

In cooking cauliflower, asparagus, stringbeans, and any other vegetable which may sometimes have a slightly bitter taste, due to accidents of culture or what not, it is well always to put a lump of loaf sugar into the water. This precaution will effectually counteract the bitterness, if there be any.

To cook a cauliflower proceed thus: wash it carefully; cut it into four if it is large; pass each portion through a bowl of water with a dash of vinegar in it to drive the grubs out if there are any; drain and plunge into a gallon of boiling water containing about one half an ounce of salt and a lump of sugar.