eaten without mastication.

BOILED BEETS.--Wash carefully, drop into boiling water, and cook
until tender. When done, drop into cold water for a minute, when the
skins can be easily rubbed off with the hand. Slice, and serve hot with
lemon juice or with a cream sauce.

STEWED BEETS.--Bake beets according to recipe No. 2. Peel, cut in
slices, turn into a saucepan, nearly cover with thin cream, simmer for
ten or fifteen minutes, add salt if desired, and thicken the gravy with
a little corn starch or flour.

CABBAGE.

DESCRIPTION.--The common white garden cabbage is one of the oldest
of cultivated vegetables. A variety of the plant known as red cabbage
was the delight of ancient gourmands more than eighteen centuries ago.
The Egyptians adored it, erected altars to it, and made it the first
dish at their repasts. In this they were imitated by the Greeks and
Romans.

Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, considered the cabbage one of the
most valuable of remedies, and often prescribed a dish of boiled cabbage
to be eaten with salt for patients suffering with violent colic.
Erasistratus looked upon it as a sovereign remedy against paralysis,
while Cato in his writings affirmed it to be a panacea for all diseases,
and believed the use the Romans made of it to have been the means
whereby they were able, during six hundred years, to do without the
assistance of physicians, whom they had expelled from their territory.
The learned philosopher, Pythagoras, composed books in which he lauded
its wonderful virtues.

The Germans are so fond of cabbage that it enters into the composition
of a majority of their culinary products. The cabbage was first raised
in England about 1640, by Sir Anthony Ashley. That this epoch, important
to the English horticultural and culinary world, may never be forgotten,
a cabbage is represented upon Sir Anthony's monument.

The nutritive value of the cabbage is not high, nearly ninety per cent
being water; but it forms an agreeable variety in the list of vegetable
foods, and is said to possess marked antiscorbutic virtue. It is,
however, difficult of digestion, and therefore not suited to weak
stomachs. It would be impossible to sustain life for a lengthened period
upon cabbage, since to supply the body with sufficient food elements,
the quantity would exceed the rate of digestion and the capacity of the
stomach.

M. Chevreul, a French scientist, has ascertained that the peculiar odor
given of