BROCCOLI

Broccoli stalks
Salt
Toast (optional)

Set a pan of clean cold water on the table, and a sauce-pan on the fire with plenty of water, and a handful of salt in it.
Broccoli is prepared by stripping off all the side shoots, leaving the top; peel off the skin of the stalk with a knife; cut it close off at the bottom, and put it into the pan of cold water.
When the water in the stew-pan boils, and the broccoli is ready, put it in; let it boil briskly till the stalk feels tender, from ten to twenty minutes; take it up with a slice, that you may not break it; let it drain, and serve up.
If some of the heads of broccoli are much bigger than the others, put them on to boil first, so that they may get all done together.
Obs.-It makes a nice supper-dish, served upon a toast, like asparagus. It is a very delicate vegetable, and you must take it up the moment it is done, and send it to table hot.

From The Cook's Oracle by William Kitchiner, MD, New York, 1829

Comment: A "slice" in this usage is a strainer or slotted spoon. The fascinating part of this recipe is not the broccoli, the preparation and cooking of which does not seem to have changed from that day to this. The notion of serving vegetables on toast, though, would seem to have pretty well died out. It may have been an evolution from the medieval custom of the "trencher," essentially a dinner plate made of bread, onto which the other elements of the meal were piled and all eaten together. The pizza crust is another evolution from the same tradition. They were not so much for table manners in that time. It did save a lot of time on dishwashing, as well as storage space for the tableware itself as well as eating utensils. The fork, for instance, is a relatively new development as earlier times used only the knife and spoon.

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