228 CULTIVATED VEGETABLES. 



colouring that cooks and confectioners should 

 be allowed to vise in their ornamental eata- 

 bles. Wealthy families should allow the use 

 of a silver saucepan for this vegetable as 

 well as sorrell. These plants being of so 

 moist a nature should be boiled without wa- 

 ter, except what hangs to the leaves in rins- 

 ing them. Many persons prefer a mixture of 

 these two vegetables to either cooked sepa- 

 rately. 



The young leaves of spinach were used in 

 salad, not only in the time of Queen Eliza- 

 beth, but so late as the days of Charles I. 



Gerard observes, " This herbe, of all 

 other pot-herbs and sallade herbes, maketh 

 the greatest diuersities of meats and sal- 

 lades." This author considered it a kind of 

 Orach, At rip lex; but this plant is of the 

 class Polygamia Moimcia. 



The garden Orach, Atriplex hortensis, is 

 a native of Tartary, and seems to have been 

 cultivated in England previous to spinage, as 

 we have accounts of it as early as 1548. It 

 is now but seldom seen in either our gardens 

 or markets ; yet there are some people among 

 us who prefer it to spinage, and in France it 

 is greatly esteemed. Its qualities are nearly 

 the same as those of spinage : we have now 



