To make the sauce, put the butter on the fire, in a pan, and when it is melted add the flour. Stir until smooth and frothy; then gradually add the milk, stirring all the while. Season with a scant teaspoonful of salt, and boil up once.
If you prefer, the asparagus may be seasoned with salt and butter, using a generous tablespoonful of butter and half a teaspoonful of salt; moistening with a gill of the water in which it is boiled.
1/2 peck of spinach. 1 generous tablespoonful of butter. 1 level tablespoonful of salt.
Pick over the spinach, removing all the roots and brown leaves. Have two pans filled with cold water. Put the spinach in one pan and wash it, a few leaves at a time, dropping it into the second pan of water. When all is done, turn the water from the first pan, which should at once be rinsed and filled again with clean water. Continue washing the spinach in this way until there is not a grain of sand left in it. This you learn by passing the hand over the bottom of the pan. Put the cleaned spinach in a stewpan with a pint of boiling water and the salt, and cook for half an hour. Turn into the colander and cut with a knife. Put into a hot vegetable dish and add the butter.
Greens of all kinds are cooked in about the same way that spinach is, but they all require boiling water enough to cover them, and most of them require a much longer time to boil.
A small piece of salt pork or smoked bacon, or a shank of ham, is often boiled in the water for two or more hours before the greens are put in to cook. This meat is served with the greens, which require no seasoning except salt.
1 small head of cabbage. 1 tablespoonful of salt. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Take all the green and broken leaves from a small head of cabbage. Then divide the cabbage into eight parts, cutting from the top down to the stalk. Wash it and let it stand in cold water for an hour or more. Put it in a large kettle of boiling water and boil rapidly for forty-five minutes. The kettle must not be covered. When the cabbage is done, drain, and put in a chopping bowl. Mince rather fine and season with the salt and butter. If the cabbage be fresh from the garden, half an hour’s cooking will be sufficient.