CABBAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 35, 11 February 1935, Page 10

CABBAGES.

THEIR LOSS OF VALUE. People owning vegetable gardens have often wondered about"that "stale odour of boiled cabbage" so frequently met with in descriptions of town life, especially of boarding houses. That aroma seemed to be the hallmark of the genteel poverty that dwelt above basement kitchens in popular novels. This particular scent is unknown where people grow their own vegetables, for they usually cut only for the day's need. It is the cooking of stale vegetables, particularly cabbages, that causes the unpleasant smell.. Sir John Russell, the farming expert, declared a little time ago that the greatest problem of the market gardener is to persuade the woman in the kitchen to cook vegetables so that they can be eaten with pleasure and satisfaction. . The problem rather is how to persuade. the market gardener to bring fresh Vegetables daily, especially cabbage. For -the plain fact about cabbages is that they lose half their virtue when they have been cut for 10 hours. They are good for us because they contain mineral salts and the important vitamins A, B, and C, and it is the vitamins that make them really worth the trouble. The full value of the vitamins is retained for no more than eight hours after cutting. In another eight hours fifty per cent of the virtue goes., and so on until after 48 hours there is no vitamin value left. Thus two-day-old cabbages are devitalised. Housewives must insist on freshly cut cabbages, and, indeed, all green vegetables. necessary only to add that the pernicious habit of adding soda to the water destroys the vitamins in even freshly cut cabbages.