196 
THE GARDENERS' CHRONICLE OF AMERICA 
toss until hot, pour over the dandelion leaves and serve. 
Any of the recipes for spinach can be used for this weed- 
vegetable. 
The wild yellow dock is one of the most troublesome 
of weeds, something to be rooted up and destroyed, and 
yet this vegetable outlaw is one of the best and most nu- 
tritious of food staples. The tender leaves when well 
cooked and daintily served are far superior to either 
spinach or kale. It will be found to add a spicy flavor to 
them if the crisp and tender leaves of the common horse- 
radish, which grows in every country kitchen garden, is 
cooked with the dock. After the cooked dock has become 
cold it makes a splendid salad when served with either 
French or mayonnaise dressing, the slight bitterness it 
possesses being very palatable. This dock has the long, 
curly leaf, which distinguishes it from the "thick-leaved 
dock which is not edible. 
The common sorrel or sour grass is a well-known weed 
in all parts of the United States ; it has been cultivated by 
some Americans who have seen its luxuriance in the gar- 
dens of their French cousins, and tasted it in some of the 
ways their German neighbors use it. A most delicious 
soup is made by mixing one pint of sorrel leaves, one 
onion minced, a few lettuce leaves, spinach or celery 
chopped fine, a little salt, pepper and nutmeg, and putting 
the whole in a pan in which a tablespoonful of good drip- 
pings, olive oil, or butter has been well heated. Cover 
and steam in their own juices about fifteen minutes and 
then add a cupful of milk in which has been mixed two 
tablespoonfuls of flour and one eg^, well beaten. When 
incorporated with the rest of the mixture, add three pints 
of boiling water and- cook until smooth and slightly 
thickened. Just before serving add another cup of hot 
milk. Another dish found in many Dutch families is 
made by chopping two quarts of sorrel, a head of lettuce, 
half a bunch of chevril, and a sprig of parsley together 
and heating in a stewpan until the vegetables wilt, then 
season with butter, salt and pepper, and thicken with the 
yolks of two eggs beaten with a half cupful of cream 
and set in the oven to finish cooking. Sorrel may be 
eaten by itself as a salad or mixed with other leaves and 
things. It is a little too sour bv itself unless one leaves 
the vinegar or lemon from the dressing. 
Thoreau, when he lived in a hut at the edge of W'alden 
Pond, found that purslane, or "pursley," boiled in a little 
salted water, with a dish of rice, gave him sufficient food 
for a noonday meal. Purslane is one of our commonest 
weeds, growing not only by the roadside, but also in every 
garden and yard. It is very good when boiled and served 
with a little French dressing, or it may be added to stews 
and made into sauce to serve with boiled salted beef. 
Lamb's quarter, a weed common to both America and 
Europe, is found to be a most nourishing vegetable. It 
grows in waste places where the ground is rich and moist. 
When cultivated in the garden it grows very large stems 
and succulent leaves. It may be cooked like spinach 
and other greens and may be served as a salad if chopped 
after being boiled, pressed into small cups to mould and 
when cold served with mayonnaise dressing. 
A delicious and novel tasting dish is furnished by the 
common varrow when it is quite young and- tender — it 
is too bitter to eat when it matures — and mixed with a few 
other salad leaves. It is excellent for children and is a 
good Spring medicine. In some parts of the country 
this herb is called milfoil, thousand-leaf clover, green 
arrow, old-man's pepper and bloodwort. 
To children the weed called "cheeses" because of the 
little pulpy seed-containers that have somewhat the flavor 
of cheese, is very familiar, but few grown persons would 
think of it. the common mallow, as a vegetable, but it has 
proved upon experiment to be a most valuable addition 
to our weed-vegetables, either cooked or as a salad. It 
makes a very substantial salad and the leaves are rich in 
nutrition for the roots strike deeply into the soil, and 
therefore draw the most valuable mineral elements into 
the leaves, which are tender and crisp, and have a taste 
quite unlike anything else. They are excellent as a 
foundation for various vegetable and fruit salads. It 
loses most of its tastiness when cooked. 
The wild pepper-grass is to the farmer a well-known 
and troublesome weed. \\'hole fields are vellow from the 
beautiful flower of the wild nmstard, as it is known to- 
most people. But upon examination we find the leaves 
smaller than those of the true mustard. When picked 
carefully and washed they make most excellent flavoring 
for salads, and are an agreeable addition to meat sand- 
wiches. They may be used in place of watercress or 
lettuce and contain just enough mustard flavor to be 
agreeable without the irritating effect of the true ground 
mustard. 
The young and tender shoots of hops make a most de- 
licious dish in the spring. The shoots may be cooked or 
eaten raw as a salad with other salad greens. When 
cooked they are eaten with butter and taste somewhat like 
peas. Another food with a taste of peas is the lupine, or 
wild pea, the pods of which are broad, flat and very hairy 
and contain four or five seeds. These may be shelled like 
peas and cooked and served as one would cultivated peas. 
Grapevine leaves, either wild or cultivated, which find 
little use in the United States except for covering pickles, 
to which they are supposed to impart a green color, are 
commonly used in Turkey for making a number of dishes. 
For instance, little rialls- of -highly seasoned forc-emeat' 
wrapped in grape leaves and cooked until tender are 
nearly always found at wedding feasts. In the southern 
markets of this country we find the tiny leaves of the sas- 
safras in the form of a powder — rubbed into this state 
after thorough drying — and sold under the name of 
gumbo file. These leaves are rich in mucilage and have 
a dainty flavor without any of the sassafras characteris- 
tics. 
Flowers as a food do not seem to be a;']>reciated by 
Americans, though they are of considerable importance 
in the tropics. The unopened buds of the marsh mari- 
gold, or cowslip, add much to the flavor of the dish if 
cooked with the leaves, while elder blossoms are used in 
Italy for making fritters. 
The roots of the wild golden thistle are now being 
used as a valuable vegetable. The flavor is somewhat 
like salsify, and it is cooked in the same manner. This 
is an all-the-year-round vegetable, like carrots, turnips, 
and other "tubers." the roots being dug in September or 
early Ocober and kept throughout the winter. Wild 
thistles may be dug in any pasture or meadow, but those 
cultivated in gardens are much larger and somewhat 
better flavored. The tuberous roots of the broad-leaved 
arrowhead — which is common on muddy shores and 
shallow waters — are quite wholesome. They are cooked 
with meat usually, but may be boiled alone. In either 
case the tubers remain over the fire until the bitter flavor 
entirely disappears. The yellow pond lily, or spatter 
dock, has long roots growing under the water whose food 
value few people seem to know about. They may be 
cooked in the same manner as the arrowhead. 
The field of possibilities which the cultvation of weeds 
opens up to the gardener is almost limitless if he will but 
remember that our present vegetables were but weeds at 
one time, and to think what a few years ago it was that 
tomatoes, now a staple market food, were looked upon as 
''love apples" and grown only as ornaments, and mush- 
rooms were considered nothing but the most poisonous 
growth. 
