SPINACH.—­The chief difficulty to contend with in cooking spinach is the preliminary cleansing.  The best method of washing spinach is to take two buckets of water.  Wash it in one; the spinach will float on the top whilst the dirt settles at the bottom.  Lift the spinach from one pail, after you have allowed it to settle for a few minutes, into the other pail.  One or two rinsings will be sufficient.  Spinach should be picked if the stalks are large, and thrown into boiling water slightly salted.  Boil the spinach till it is tender, which will take about a quarter of an hour, then drain it off and cut it very small in a basin with a knife and fork, place it back in a saucepan with a little piece of butter to make it thoroughly hot, put it in a vegetable dish and serve.

Hard-boiled eggs cut in halves, or poached eggs, are usually served with spinach.  A little cream, nutmeg, and lemon-juice can be added.  Many cooks rub the spinach through a wire sieve.

VEGETABLE MARROW.—­Vegetable marrows must be first peeled, cut open, the pips removed, and then thrown into boiling water; small ones should be cut into quarters and large ones into pieces about as big as the palm of the hand.  They take from fifteen to twenty minutes to boil before they are tender.  They should be served directly they are cooked and placed on dry toast.  Butter sauce or white sauce can be served with them, but is best sent to table separate in a boat, as many persons prefer them plain.

VEGETABLE MARROWS, STUFFED.—­Young vegetable marrows are very nice stuffed.  They should be first peeled very slightly and then cut, long-ways, into three zigzag slices; the pips should be removed and the interior filled with either mushroom forcemeat (see MUSHROOM FORCEMEAT) or sage-and-onion stuffing made with rather an extra quantity of bread-crumbs.  The vegetable marrow should be tied up with two separate loops of tape about a quarter of the way from each end, and these two rings of tape tied together with two or three separate pieces of tape to prevent them slipping off at the ends.  The forcemeat or stuffing should be made hot before it is placed in the marrow.  The vegetable marrow should now be thrown into boiling water and boiled till it is tender, about twenty minutes to half an hour.  Take off the tape carefully, and be careful to place the marrow so that one half rests on the other half, or else it will slip.

N.B.—­If you place the stuffing inside cold, the vegetable marrow will break before the inside gets hot through.

TURNIPS, BOILED.—­When turnips are young they are best boiled whole.  Peel them first very thinly, and throw them into cold water till they are ready for the saucepan.  Throw them into boiling water slightly salted.  They will probably take about twenty minutes to boil.  They can be served quite plain or with any kind of white sauce, butter sauce, sauce Allemande, or Dutch sauce.  In vegetarian cookery they are perhaps best served with some other kind of vegetable.