The Penn's Grove record., 1882-05-13
NUMBER 40.
English and American
Vegetables.

eatable overwhelmingly raises
once more the perennial question
Why have we in Finland no vegeta
bles? To doubt the fact is impossibl,
at least to anybody who knows whai
real vegetables are like. Sir" said an
American stranger at a restaurant In
the Strand n day, "Sir, this is one
thing you csn raise in your country
and we can't Taise in ours-a mutton
chop; but then you never tasted green
peas in all your life." That antithesis
puts the great vegetable question in q
nutshell. 1t is impossible in the same
country to have good meat and good
vegetables. For the best beef and
mutton are a product of the soft, ten
der English greenswsrd, which only
exists in a few countries along the
Atlantic seaboard of Europe, and owes
its origin to the constant rainfall.
The same causes which give us good
meat, however, deny us in England
the possibility of good fruit and egg
Italics. For while the heritage requires
copious rain, the fruits, seeds, pods,
flowers, buds and other miscellaneous
objects which we class from the culin-
airy point of view as vegetables, all
require copious sunlight. That is
why we have none ofthem. Our only
good vegetables are such as very young
Hubbard, seakale, asparagus and
celery, which are the blsnched sprout-
ing shoots of perennial plants. These
mostly come in spring time, and as
they are none the worse, or even all
the better, for a little wholesome soak
ing, they manage to survive our
climate well enough in the long run.
But most other vegetables are more or
less ffuity in their nature; and really
totaste these n must go to America
or Italy-for choice the first. or
thoroughgoing fruity vegetables-such
as the tomato-we in England know
nothing. We never have sun enough
to ripen them properly; and ever
with all the appliances of modern
gardeners, they lever get thoroughly
red and soft throughout in our gardens
as they do in the open air under a
Canadian or italian sky. They always
have q halfgreen taste, and are wholly
lacking in the true rich tomato flavor.
Indeed, the timed American speci.
mems, though tasting of the solder OF
course, ere better savored after all
than our poor starved sunless English
things. AS to purple egg fruit and
green chow-chows, we know them not
at all while the profusion of rich red
fieshed watermelons and primrose
skinned squashes and golden pump
kins in a Massachusetts market would
astonish Covent G arden, and set some
nascent Turner to work with all the
pigments on his palette to try his hand
at a new and m~any-colored subject.
These things require the sun to ripen
them, and we see his face here as a
rule for some two and a half hours
weekly, as duly registered at Glynde
Place, Lewes. Then, again, there are
the winter cherries, the sweet puta-
toes, and, best of all earthly vegetables,
green Indian corn, eaten off the cob
with fresh butter, and likest to nectar
of all mortal delicacies. AS for pulse
generally, our beans are all stringy;
we have neither the variety nor the
tenderness of the American bean.
Our peas have some good points-for
English peas; but they are not half so
large, or luscious, or melting, as Amer
lean peas. They take too long grow
ing, and have got old and hard before
they are big enough to pick. The
delicious crinkly ealable-pod pea would
be impossible here iG would have got
tough snd sinewy a month before 1t
was ready for cooking. We grow
buckwheat to feed our pheasants, butt
never ripe Ms as it ought, and buck
wheat pancakes at break fast will
doubtless be an unknown luxury with
us forever.
In the matter of leafy vegetables we
can do a little better, but not enough
to boast about. We are strong In
salads our climate provides US with
plerty of fresh green lettuce, and
plenty of slugs, too, to hide in its
recesses. But endive does not -four
ish it is a scrubby.looking plant in
England though we make up for it
in crosses and the lesser salad stuffs.
Our roots, too, are good who will
deny the British farmer tue glory of
his turnips, his beets and his mangold-
wurzel? When it comes to edible
flowers, however, we are hopelessly
left IN the lurch. Our top artichekes
are the hardest and poorest in the
world; they contain a maximum of
fbrous, UNBEATABLE bract and a mimi
min OF soft, starchy pulp. In tho
south of France, Italy and America
you can often eat the whole flower
head, choke aud all In England you
a only extract a pitiful piItance Of a
5 fl mouthful off the base OF each great
leathery scale. 1t would be impossible
TO dress English artichokes In flied
butter as they do so d~eliciously at
Florence one might as well eat fried
boots. Our caulihowers and broccoli
are not nearly as good as the Ameri-
can they are neither so white nor so
delicate in flavor. We car grow Gu
eumbers under glass;, because cueum-
bers are eaten green; but what a
miserable farce are our vegetable
marrowsI What Is true of vegetables
Is even more true OF fruits. To be sure
or English dollhouse grapes are tho
best in the world but for strswber-
ries, raspberries, currants, gooseber-
rles, plums and cherries we must 60
to America. Our peaches are a suo-
cess 4; our apples are a national failure;
and our pears are a standing insult to
the human intelligence. But we may
at least congratulate ourselves that
NTH tha aid of ulaas and afnuaa Wa