HOUSE AND GARDEN 
August, 
1914 
country it is looked upon as a most undesirable weed by those 
whose lawns and meadows are overrun with it. It should be 
gathered very young, if it is to be used as a salad, but the leaves 
and roots may be gathered for cooking when the plant is quite 
large and spreading. The flowers are used as well as the leaves, 
both for cooking and raw salad. When just blossomed out they 
are tender and deliciously flavored. For a salad they should be 
pulled apart and scattered over the young leaves and served with 
a dressing of mayonnaise and a garnish of hard-boiled eggs. 
Any of the recipes that are suitable for cooking spinach can be 
used for this weed-vegetable. Some American market gardeners 
are following the example of the English and planting dandelions 
as a spring crop for market. In order to have successive crops 
through the summer the plants are not 
allowed to bloom, so that the roots con¬ 
tinue sending up successive rounds of 
leaves until frost nips them. 
A familiar weed which has been pro¬ 
moted to the ranks of edible vegetables is 
the common leek. It has an agreeable 
flavor as well as wholesome properties, 
and is used very much as onions and 
•chives in soups, salads and in combina¬ 
tion with other vegetables. Both the 
leaves and bulbs are used. And the cook 
who wishes to give zest to a dish and has 
neither onion nor leek at hand may go 
into the field and gather some wild garlic 
leaves and use them as a substitute. 
No French garden is complete without 
a. plot of sorrel or sour grass, but the 
American housewife need only look in 
the fence corners or on the front lawn 
and have all she can use. Besides mak¬ 
ing a most delicious salad, either alone or 
combined with other greens—if a little 
too sour by itself, leave the vinegar or 
lemon out of the dressing—it makes 
most delicious soup or puree, adds zest 
and flavor to vegetable stews, and fur¬ 
nishes a particularly fitting accompani¬ 
ment to tongue, liver, cutlets or lamb. A 
dish found in many German 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, pepper, and thicken with the yolks of two 
eggs beaten with half a cupful of cream and set in the oven to 
finish cooking. 
The wild pepper-grass is looked upon by the farmer as a most 
troublesome weed, but it can be used in place of lettuce or water¬ 
cress, and it contains just enough mustard flavor to be agreeable 
without the irritating effect of the ground mustard. It makes a 
savory addition to meat sandwiches. To most people it is known 
as wild mustard and often whole fields are seen yellow with its 
beautiful flower. 
The common mallow has proved upon experiment to be a most 
valuable vegetable. It grows in profusion in almost every back 
yard, and is known to children by the name of “cheeses” because 
its little pulpy seed-containers have a cheese flavor. It can be 
•eaten either cooked or as a salad. As the latter it is perhaps more 
palatable, the flavor being mild and mellow like that of lettuce, 
and it is more tasteless when cooked. The leaves are rich in 
nutrition, for the roots strike deep into the soil and therefore 
gather the most valuable mineral elements into the leaves, which 
are tender and crisp. They are excellent as a foundation for 
the various kinds of simple vegetable and fruit salads. 
A new and delicious salad can be made from the tender leaves 
of red clover and some of the blossoms, which should be pulled 
asunder and only the colored part used. It is particularly nutri¬ 
tious, as the clover is one of the richest of all nitrogenous plants, 
and nitrogen is one of the most strengthening elements, especially 
when taken into the system unfired. The leaves are strongly pep¬ 
pery, but the flavor of the flower is most delicate. 
Wayside cress or shepherd’s purse is found along the wayside, 
and the green seeds it furnishes, if strewn over tomatoes or let¬ 
tuce, add much piquancy to the salad. 
Lamb’s quarter, a weed common to both America and Europe, 
is always found in waste places where the ground is rich and 
moist and is a most nourishing vegetable. 
When cultivated in the garden it grows 
very large stems and succulent leaves. It 
may be cooked like spinach and other 
greens, and makes a novel salad if 
chopped after being boiled, pressed into 
small cups to mold, and when cold served 
with mayonnaise or French dressing. 
Common yarrow, sometimes called 
carpenters' grass, milfoil and old man’s 
pepper, is now used as a most wholesome 
salad plant. Eaten as a salad in the 
spring it not only serves as a very deli¬ 
cious and novel flavored dish, but as a 
tonic and stimulant as well. Only the 
very young and very tender first shoots 
should be used, for it becomes bitter 
when matured. It is well to mix the 
leaves with other green salad leaves, as it 
is so strong. 
In many foreign countries grapevine 
leaves, either wild or cultivated, are used 
for making many dishes. In Turkey, a 
wedding feast is not complete without 
little rolls of highly seasoned forcemeat 
wrapped in grape leaves and cooked until 
tender. The tiny leaf buds of the sassa¬ 
fras tree are found dried in the southern 
markets of this country. They are rich 
in mucilage and have a most dainty 
flavor, a teaspoonful added to gumbo 
soup or a Brunswick stew adds greatly to the flavor and appear¬ 
ance. In the tropics flowers are looked upon as important addi¬ 
tion to the table. The unopened buds of the cowslip, or marsh 
marigold, add much flavor to the dish if cooked with the leaves 
of this plant, while elder blossoms are used in Italy for making 
fritters. 
A new all-the-year-round vegetable — like carrots, turnips and 
other tubers — is the golden thistle root. If dug in September or 
early October these roots keep all the year. They have a flavor 
something like salsify and are cooked in the same ways. Even 
the wild thistle tubers are delicious and may be dug in any pas¬ 
ture or meadow, but those cultivated in gardens are much larger 
and finer flavored. Another tuberous root which is quite whole¬ 
some is that of the broad-leaved arrowhead, found on muddy 
shores and shallow waters. These 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. 
It is illogical to suppose that the weeds which have been crowd¬ 
ing the wilderness side of our gardens will suddenly spring into 
fame as vegetables suitable for every table. Popular prejudice 
must be overcome and the palate trained to appreciate the change 
in names. 
The tender leaves of red clover and some of the 
blossoms are particularly nutritious 
