Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1889 — Water Cresses in New Jersey. [ARTICLE]

Water Cresses in New Jersey.

“I have lived here for nearly forty years,” said an old resident of Belleville, N. J., and never in all that time have I eaten anything for my breakfast during the spring, summer, aad autumn season except bread and butter and water cresses.” The old gentleman’s practice is not exclusively his own. There are still persons who eat water cresses, and call them the healthiest herbs that grow. The streams that flow into the Passaic River, in the vicinitv of Belleville, are just now literally clfoked with water cresses, and although bushel baskets are filled with them every morning, they seem rather to increase than to diminish in numbers. Scores of persons, young and old,find a healthful recreation in picking them when the early dew is on the grass, and are willing to submit to the inevitable penalty of wet feet for the pleasure of the occupation and the flavor of the cress. Country maidens, wlio are by no means partial to early rising as a prelude to lighting the fire or milking the cow, are up with the lark when it becomes a question of wading in the cool streams and gathering water cresses. The water cress is a weed, pure and simple. It can never be anything else. Efforts to cultivate it and produce a better and more delicate species have been made, and signally failed. Under artificial treatment it loses the faint, piquant, mustard flavor that is its especial charm, and assumes much of the hot, pungent taste of the horse radish. It flourishes for nearly nine months in the year, and, as it is constantly renewing itself, the large, coarse leaves of the old plants may be left to wither, and only the young, delicate stems picked. It will not bear cooking of any kind, but eaten raw with a little salt, and fresh bread and butter, it is—well, try it.— New York Sun.