hope for from
an untrained cook.

But the cunningly devised minces, the artful preparations choicely
flavored, which may be made of yesterday's repast,--by these is the true
domestic artist known. No cook untaught by an educated brain ever makes
these, and yet economy is a great gainer by them.

* * * * *

As regards the department of _Vegetables_, their number and variety in
America are so great that a table might almost be furnished by these
alone. Generally speaking, their cooking is a more simple art, and
therefore more likely to be found satisfactorily performed, than that of
meats. If only they are not drenched with rancid butter, their own
native excellence makes itself known in most of the ordinary modes of
preparation.

There is, however, one exception.

Our stanch old friend, the potato, is to other vegetables what bread is
on the table. Like bread, it is held as a sort of _sine-qua-non_; like
that, it may be made invariably palatable by a little care in a few
plain particulars, through neglect of which it often becomes
intolerable. The soggy, waxy, indigestible viand that often appears in
the potato-dish is a downright sacrifice of the better nature of this
vegetable.

The potato, nutritive and harmless as it appears, belongs to a family
suspected of very dangerous traits. It is a family-connection of the
deadly-nightshade and other ill-reputed gentry, and sometimes shows
strange proclivities to evil,--now breaking out uproariously, as in the
noted potato-rot, and now more covertly in various evil affections. For
this reason scientific directors bid us beware of the water in which
potatoes are boiled,--into which, it appears, the evil principle is
drawn off; and they caution us not to shred them into stews without
previously suffering the slices to lie for an hour or so in salt and
water. These cautions are worth attention.

The most usual modes of preparing the potato for the table are by
roasting or boiling. These processes are so simple that it is commonly
supposed every cook understands them without special directions; and yet
there is scarcely an uninstructed cook who can boil or roast a potato.

A good roasted potato is a delicacy worth a dozen compositions of the
cook-book; yet when we ask for it, what burnt, shrivelled abortions are
presented to us! Biddy rushes to her potato-basket and pours out two
dozen of different sizes, some having in them three times th