Always clean thoroughly before cooking and use outside leaves in stock pot. All fresh vegetables should be plunged into boiling salted water, the proportions being one tablespoon-ful of salt to one gallon of water.

Dried vegetables should be placed in lukewarm water.

A piece of sugar put into the water in which green vegetables are cooked, allows steam to escape easily.

Never allow vegetables to stay in the water in which they are boiled, but drain them at once and thoroughly.

Green vegetables take on an average about twenty minutes to cook, though ten minutes is often long enough for young peas, while cabbages sometimes take nearly an hour.