CARDOON 
23 
To Cook Cardoons 
The best way to cook Cardoons is to follow Mrs 
Roimdell’s advice and to cut them into four or five inch 
lengths, and throw them into boiling water into which a 
little lemon-juice has been squeezed. Keep the 
Cardoons boiling till their outer woolly skin will rub off 
in a cloth. Drain them, and throw them into cold water. 
When the Cardoons have cooled, scrape them, and pull 
off the stringy skin. Fill a crockery stewpan with boil- 
ing water flavoured with pepper and salt, lay a good- 
sized piece of raw bacon at the bottom, cutting the rind 
in strips, add a bunch of herbs, and then the Cardoons. 
Simmer gently till the Cardoons are tender, which may 
take two hours or more, according to their age and size. 
Drain the Cardoons and warm them up in good brown 
sauce. Or they can be served with white sauce. 
JVyvern advises that Cardoons should be placed on 
slices of fat bacon at the bottom of a stewpan, with 
more bacon above them, and only just enough hlanc to 
cover all. Then add slices of lemon, a little mignonette, 
pepper, and salt, cover the pan, and let the Cardoons 
simmer very gently till done. The blanc is a sort of 
stock which is used in boiling celery or any white vege- 
table to preserve the colour. To make blanc, cut up as 
small as possible a quarter of a pound of beef suet, and 
put it with a tablespoonful of flour into three and a half 
pints of cold water in a stewpan. Boil up and add eight 
ounces of onion cut up small, a bunch of curly parsley, 
a tablespoonful of dried thyme or marjoram, the rind of 
a lemon, a teaspoonful of sugar and one of salt. Stir 
well over a brisk fire for half an hour, strain, but do not 
take off the fat as the blanc cooks. When the Cardoons 
or other vegetables are cooked in blanc, put in with 
them two or three slices of lemon freed from pips, to 
improve the colour. 
