HFF 4.19: Eat Your Veggies

The Challenge: Eat Your Veggies! Make a dish featuring a vegetable.

The Recipe: Carrots from Mrs. Shaw's Receipt Book and Housekeeper's Assistant

Carrots--When young it is not necessary to scrape them. but wash carefully. Put in boiling water with a little salt, and cook three-quarters of an hour, or in winter an hour and a half. Serve with butter and pepper. 

The Date/Year and Region: 1878, Portland, Maine 

How Did You Make It:  I picked all the mature carrots from my planter box, washed them, and cut off the top. [These tiny carrots are oxhearts, and they're the best crop I've yet gotten from my balcony garden. The light levels are much better for herbs than vegetables]. Per the instructions, I boiled the carrots for 45 minutes, with a pinch of salt in the water. I removed the carrots from the water, sprinkled them with a pinch of pepper, and let 1 Tbsp of salted butter melt over them.

Time to Complete: About 50 minutes (five minutes to prepare plus 45 to cook).

Total Cost: No immediate expense, as I grew the carrots and already had salt, pepper, and butter on hand.

How Successful Was It?: More than I thought. I really feared 45 minutes would have these cooked into a mush, and I generally avoid cooked vegetables because of textural issue. However, these carrots remained firm and flavorful, and were actually quite good. The salt, pepper, and butter suited the carrots well, and while distinctly cooked, the carrots themselves still had structural integrity.This is going into my dinner party/event rotation as an easy hot side dish.

How Accurate Is It?: Very good. I didn't make any substitutions, and used an 1870s heritage carrot variety for an 1870s recipe, which feels appropriate. The butter is store-bought, and I cooked on my electric range, but "boiling water" isn't practically changed by the heat source.

A bumper crop of carrots, relatively speaking.

A cooked vegetable I will actually eat. For a change.