The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery, by Juliet Corson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery Author: Juliet Corson Release Date: March 13, 2011 [EBook #35567] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COURSE OF LECTURES *** Produced by Julia Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Transcriber’s Note
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. A list of these changes is found at the end of the text. Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been maintained. A list of inconsistently spelled and hyphenated words is found at the end of the text.
Delivered in the Farmers’ Lecture Course of the
College of Agriculture of the
University of Minnesota.
APPENDIX TO SUPPLEMENT I.
FOURTH BIENNIAL REPORT OF
Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota.
1886.
ST. PAUL, MINN.:
The Pioneer Press Company.
1887.
The following lectures were delivered in the “Farmers Lecture Course,” at the College of Agriculture, Minneapolis, during the session of 1884. The topics selected at previous sessions had been such as to especially interest the male members of the large classes in attendance, and it was considered no more than fair to the women of the State that attention should be given to such matters as would aid them in the conduct of home duties. Influenced by this desire, I secured the services of Miss Juliet Corson, the superintendent of the New York School of Cookery, and so widely known wherever the English language is spoken, by her publications and writings upon all topics relating to domestic economy. The interest manifested in this course of lectures by the ladies of Minnesota was shown by the crowded audiences present at each exercise, nearly 1,200 of whom registered their names and addresses, a list of which is appended to this report.
The lectures were familiar, extemporaneous discourses upon the topics under discussion, and the lecturer was surrounded by all the appointments of a well-ordered kitchen. The dishes as prepared were passed to the audience for examination and criticism, and full opportunity allowed for discussion. This statement is necessary to explain the colloquial character of the discourses.
In placing these lectures before the public the editor does but simple justice to Miss Corson in stating that circumstances have prevented the preparation by her of a finished report, and have compelled the publication of the notes taken at the “cooking lessons.” But if the form of the instruction is devoid of rhetorical style, the editor guarantees its accuracy.
Although Miss Corson is a steady worker, her usefulness is curtailed by serious illness. In this instance, therefore, indulgence is claimed for the method. Whatever graces of literature the reader seeks, may be found in the author’s other published works; here the public is entreated to accept a very plain record of the work done at the State University by Miss Corson.
A word of explanation is due to the members of the class, who were promised copies of these lectures. I had full reports taken at the time, by a stenographer. They were written out shortly after, and sent to Miss Corson, as by her request, for review; but owing to her protracted and nearly fatal illness and very slow recovery, these notes have only recently been returned to me. I hope this statement will relieve me from any charges of neglect, which the ladies might otherwise be disposed to make.
Edward D. Porter,
Professor in Charge.
This course of lectures is designed to meet the wants of two classes of persons:
First—Those who are experienced housekeepers, familiar with the principles and practice of cookery, but who desire information concerning the preparation of the finer dishes of the modern school.
Second—The young ladies in attendance at the University and others like them, who have had their time and attention so engrossed with studies and other duties that they have not had the opportunity to qualify themselves in this most important branch of a woman’s education.
To meet the wants of the first class, the morning exercises will be devoted to the preparation of palatable and nutritious dishes, suitable for every day use in families of moderate means, and some of the finer dishes will be introduced.
As the afternoons are the only times at which the young ladies of the University can be present, these sessions will be devoted to practical illustrations of the elementary principles of household management and cookery. As time permits, some of the salient points in the chemistry of food and the physiology of nutrition will be briefly discussed.
First Day.
Soup Stock.
Boiled Salmon, with Cream Sauce.
Potatoes, Stewed in Butter.
Quail, boned and broiled.
Omelettes.
Second Day.
Clear Soup.
Caramel for coloring Soups and Sauces.
Baked Whitefish.
Beefsteak, broiled and fried.
Baked Apple Dumplings.
Third Day.
Cream of Salmon.
Shoulder of Lamb, boned and roasted.
Forcemeat for Meats.
Potatoes, broiled and baked.
Cheese Crusts.
Fourth Day.
Pea Soup with Crusts.
Salt Codfish, stewed in Cream.
Venison with Currant Jelly.
Stewed Carrots.
Cabinet Pudding.
Fifth Day.
Tomato Soup.
Fried Pickerel.
Beef, a la mode Rolls.
Puree of Spinach.
Caramel Custard.
Sixth Day.
Oyster Soup.
Oysters, broiled and fried.
Oysters with Bacon.
Mobile Roast Oysters.
Welsh Rarebits.
AT 2 P. M. DAILY.
First Day—Soup Making, and Stews.
Second Day—Good Breads, Plain Pastry and Puddings.
Fourth Day—Meats and Vegetables.
Fifth Day—Cheap Dishes and Rewarmed Foods.
Sixth Day—Cookery for the Sick.
Tea, Coffee, Omelettes, Sauces, and various small dishes will be treated when the occasion offers.
The last half hour of each day will be devoted to the discussion of questions referring to the subject in hand, and to the testing of dishes cooked.
Our lesson this morning, ladies, will consist of the preparation of what is called soup stock, or beef broth, which is the basis of many kinds of soup; it is very easily made, simple in its composition, and exceedingly nutritious; the other dishes to be made are boiled salmon with cream sauce; potatoes, stewed in butter; and quail, boned and broiled. I give you the boned quail to show you what an exceedingly simple operation boning is. It is supposed to be very difficult, and it is done sometimes in curious ways; but the best way is the simplest and easiest. If we have time we will prepare a few omelettes.
As I shall begin with soup stock, you will take your receipt for that. For each quart of soup stock or broth which you intend to make, use one pound of meat and bone. By that I mean meat and bone weighed together. The cut which I have here is from the upper part of the leg, next to the round. You can use any cut of the leg, the shank, which is the lower part of the leg, or the neck; any of the cheaper parts of meat will answer for soup meat. First, cut the meat from the bone; the butcher will always do that for you; then have the bone broken in small pieces. The butcher, of course, will do that very much more easily than you can do it. Do not wash the meat; wipe it all over with a towel wet in cold water. Put the bones in the bottom of the soup kettle, laying the meat on the bones; then add cold water in the proportion of a quart to each pound of meat and bones. Set the soup kettle over the fire, and let the broth slowly heat and boil. As it boils a scum will rise to the surface, which is to be removed in case you are preparing stock for clear soup. The scum is composed of the blood and the albumen of the meat, and is only removed for the purpose of clarifying the soup. It is nutritious, and for that reason it should always be saved. In France, and in kitchens where French cooks are employed, this scum is used either in thick soup—for instance, in vegetable soup, such as I shall make this afternoon—or put into brown sauces or gravies. Remember, it is nothing that is to be thrown away; it is to be saved because it is both nutritious and savory. It adds flavor and nutriment[8] to any dish to which it is added. While the soup meat is being boiled for the first time, prepare the vegetables. For three or four pounds of meat, which will make as many quarts of soup, use one medium-size carrot, which is to be scraped, a turnip, which is to be peeled, and an onion, which is also to be peeled, in such a way as to prevent breaking apart; take off the outer dry skin of the onion without trimming it closely; do not cut it off at the top, because in that way you will cause the layers to break apart. After the onion is peeled stick a dozen whole cloves into it. The cloves are added to the soup for the purpose of flavoring it. You very often hear the remark made that the cookery of certain people has an indefinable taste, exceedingly nice, but something that you do not exactly understand. It is always produced by a combination of seasonings and flavorings. In this soup I shall use for seasoning not only the cloves in the onions, but a dozen peppercorns—that is, unground grains of pepper, instead of ground pepper, because I want the soup to be perfectly clear. I shall use also bay leaves, which may be new to some of you; they are the dried leaves of the laurel or bay tree, and can be bought at any drug store. You can buy five cents’ worth of them and they will last you a year or more. The seasoning is slightly aromatic; for four quarts of soup use only a little leaf, or a piece of a large leaf; use also a blade of mace, and a sprig of any dried herb except sage.
The peppercorns, the bay leaf, the blade of mace, and the sprig of sweet herb are tied in the midst of a little bunch of parsley, the stalk with all the leaves on, and if it is ever marketed here with the root on, use that as well; the root of the parsley has all the flavor of the leaf intensified, and you have only to thoroughly wash it, and then use it. All these dried herbs are to be gathered inside of the parsley and tied in a little bunch; tie the parsley by winding string around it, inclosing all the dried herbs; this little bunch is called in cooking books a fagot or bouquet of herbs; it is what gives soups and sauces that indefinable spicy, delicate flavor so much liked.
After the soup stock boils remove whatever scum has risen, put in the fagot, the turnip, the carrot, the onion stuck with cloves, and for the four quarts of soup a heaping tablespoonful of salt. Keep the soup stock covered as much as possible while it is heating; and after you have put in the vegetables keep it covered all the time. Let it boil very slowly. After all the vegetables are in set the kettle back so that the heat of the fire[9] strikes from one side; let it boil from one side and gently; in that way you begin the clarifying. You will find if you boil the stock from one side, and very gently, then when you strain it after it is done it already will be as clear as most clear soup. After it has been strained, to-morrow, we shall clarify it in order to show the process, which is very simple. Then it will be what is called on hotel bills of fare clear soup.
After the vegetables have been added let the stock boil for at least two hours. In that length of time the flavor of the vegetables and the nourishment from the meat will be extracted, but not the gelatine from the bones. It is the gelatine in the bones which makes broth or stock jelly when it is cold; in order to extract the gelatine it is necessary to boil the soup meat and bones at least five hours. The soup can be strained at the end of two hours, or boiled five or six hours, keeping it covered so that none of it wastes or evaporates. When the soup is boiled, strain it; use an earthen bowl or jar; set a colander in it, and lay a towel folded twice in the colander, having the colander either over the bowl or jar; pour the soup into the towel, and let it run through without squeezing, because if you squeeze the towel you will force small particles of scum through, and thus cloud the soup. After the soup has run through the towel let it cool; do not cover it while it is cooling unless you are afraid of flies or insects getting into it; in that case cover it with a sieve. If you cover it with a solid earthen cover or plate the steam arising from the soup will condense on the under part of the cover and fall back into the soup; if the weather is warm, or if it is a close, rainy day, the steam condensed falling back into the warm soup will cause it to sour. For this reason when you put away a dish of meat or vegetables after dinner do not cover them until they are cold.
In boiling a whole fish, or a large piece, use cold water. If you put a large piece of fish into boiling water, the outside will be cooked before it is done near the bone. Nothing is more disagreeable than a piece of fish half raw at the bone; it is uneatable. For a small piece of fish, such as I have here, use boiling salted water enough to cover it, and boil it until the flakes begin to separate, or until, by testing a fin, you can easily pull it out. That will probably be, if you use cold water, soon after the[10] water boils; if you put the fish into boiling water, it may be five or more minutes. Boil the fish, whether it is large or small, until you can pull out a fin, or until the flakes separate. Then drain it, and serve it with any nice sauce. To-day I will make a very simple one—cream sauce. Of course you would always make the sauce while you were boiling the fish, taking care to have both done at the same time. For a pint of sauce, use a heaping tablespoonful of butter and a tablespoonful of flour; put them in a saucepan over the fire, and stir them together until they are smoothly mixed; then begin to add hot milk, half a cupful at a time; when the first half cupful of milk is stirred in, put in another half cupful and again stir until it is smooth; continue to add milk until you have used a pint, or until the sauce is about the consistency of thick cream. There will always be a margin there for a little discretion, because some flour will thicken very much more than others. Flour that is very rich in gluten will thicken more than that which has most starch in it. But you have there about the right proportions—a tablespoonful of flour, a tablespoonful of butter, a pint of milk. Add more or less milk as is required to make the sauce the consistency of thick cream, or of a thickness which will coat the spoon; that is, if you dip a spoon in and hold it up, the sauce will not all run off like water; when all the milk has been used, season the sauce with a level teaspoonful of salt and about a quarter of a salt spoon of white pepper. I speak of white pepper particularly because in making a white sauce, if you use the ordinary black pepper, the sauce will be full of little black specks. The white pepper is quite as cheap, quite as plentiful as the black pepper; all the grocers keep it, and its flavor is nicer, rather more delicate, scarcely as pungent as the black pepper; there is a certain biting, acrid flavor in the black pepper which does not exist in the white pepper; the latter contains all the stimulating property and all the aromatic flavor.
After the same is finished, keep it hot by setting the sauce pan containing it in a pan of hot water, on the back of the stove. A perfectly plain white sauce (which can be made the basis of an infinite variety of other sauces) is made by substituting water for milk; by leaving out the pepper and salt, and using sugar for sweetening, you can make a nice pudding sauce. If you add a tablespoonful of chopped parsley to a pint of white sauce, you make parsley sauce. Putting a few capers into it, makes caper sauce. A teaspoonful of anchovies dissolved in it[11] makes anchovy sauce. It is easily made the basis of a great many sauces, the name of which depends on preferred addition to the white sauce. Egg sauce is made by adding chopped hard boiled eggs to white sauce.
Question by a Lady. Would you ever substitute cornstarch for flour?
Miss Corson. You can if you wish. You must use your own discretion about the quantities. Simply get the thickness of thick cream.
Question. Is it better to use a porcelain vessel, or will tin do?
Miss Corson. Use any saucepan made of material thick enough to prevent burning.
Question. Do you put the fish right into the water, or have you a fish kettle?
Miss Corson. If you are using a fish kettle you will have a little wire frame. You can lay the fish on that, or you can tie it up in a cloth, if you wish to.
Question. Then how can you tell when it is done?
Miss Corson. If you tie it in a cloth you must leave a little space so that you can test it.
Question. How much pepper did you say to put in the sauce?
Miss Corson. About a quarter of a salt spoon; that is, a good pinch of pepper. One of the ladies asked me about using a thick sauce pan—porcelain-lined sauce pan; you will find the advantage of thick sauce pans of all kinds is that they are less likely to burn than thin ones. The thinner the metal the sauce pan is made of, the more likely it is to burn. There are so many different kinds of utensils that every lady can take her own choice. Black sauce pans, lined with tin or with porcelain; tin sauce pans, thin ones, and thick ones made of block tin. You notice that I use copper sauce pans. Coppers are the most durable; they are lined with tin, and they have to be relined about once a year; the cost of relining is very little—comparatively little; I think it costs me about three cents a foot to have them relined, and the copper never wears out. If you buy a copper sauce pan you have got something that lasts you all your life, and you can leave it as an heirloom; if you don’t want to do that, you can sell it for old copper for nearly as much as you paid for it. In using copper, you must never let them become bare on the inside. If the tin wears off and the copper is exposed to any acid in the food cooked, it is apt to form a poisonous combination. But with proper care and cleanliness, copper sauce pans are perfectly safe.
Question. Do you prefer them to the galvanized iron?
Miss Corson. Yes, I do, on the score of cleanliness, economy and ease in cooking.
Question. Do you use a wooden spoon from choice?
Miss Corson. Yes; of course you can understand, ladies, that I could very soon scrape the tin off of the inside of a sauce pan with a metal spoon, a knife, or anything of that sort. Copper sauce pans should be cleaned with a rag, a little Sapolio and hot water. If they are cleaned as fast as they are used they are no more trouble to keep clean than any other sauce pan. I use in stirring simply a small pudding stick—an old-fashioned wooden pudding stick. It does not scrape the sauce pans, and there is no danger of uncooked flour accumulating on the sticks, as it does in the bowl of a spoon. If you are stirring with a spoon, some of the half-cooked flour might get in the bowl of the spoon, and then your sauce would have the taste of the raw flour. I will leave the stick in the sauce pan and pass it about so that you can see what I mean. Anyone can whittle these little sticks out, using any kind of hard wood. Do not use soft wood. You will have noticed, ladies, if you have ever put sauce of this kind, thick sauce, to keep hot, it may have grown very much thicker by standing; in such case add a little more milk or water, and a little more seasoning when you are ready to use it.
Question. How do you make perfectly clear sauce?
Miss Corson. You can make a nearly clear thick sauce by using arrow root. Of course, a clear thin sauce is simply sugar dissolved in water, with butter or flavoring as you like.
The potatoes are peeled and sliced in rather small slices of even size; put them over the fire in enough salted boiling water to cover them, boil them until they begin to grow tender; not till they break, but just till they begin to grow tender; after the potatoes are boiled tender drain them, and suppose you have a pint bowl full of potatoes, use about two heaping tablespoonfuls of butter; melt the butter in a scant half cupful of milk. When the butter is melted put the potatoes into it, and with a spoon lift them very carefully from the bottom, always without breaking them, until they have absorbed the milk and butter; then season them with salt and white pepper, and they will be ready to serve. Season them palatably; I could not give you[13] the quantity of seasoning because it would depend upon the salt that the potatoes had absorbed from the water. You should taste them first before seasoning at all, and then if they need any more salt add a very little at a time. If you simply want the potatoes nicely stewed you don’t add so much butter, a scant tablespoonful, and milk enough to moisten them; but this receipt is an exceedingly nice one—rather rich, but very nice.
(At this point the fish was done, and Miss Corson continued.)
You notice, ladies, that I take off the skin of the fish before taking it up. That is very easy; it slips off easily, and without it the fish is much nicer to serve at the table. In serving sauce with fish you pour some around it, not over it; or you serve the fish on a napkin, and the sauce in a dish, as you prefer. If you serve the fish in a folded napkin garnish it with a few sprigs of parsley, if you can get them, or with a lemon sliced, if you do not live—as some unfortunate people do—“fifty miles from a lemon.” Lemons are very nice always with any kind of fish. Parsley can be bought here all winter long. I have learned that from the advertisements in the papers already; and a little of it makes a great difference in the appearance of a dish.
Question. Can you tell us how we can tell whether a frozen fish is stale or fresh?
Miss Corson. You can after you have thawed it in cold water; you can tell by the smell. (Laughter.) The way to thaw frozen fish is to put it into perfectly cold water and keep it in a cold place until all the frost is drawn out. Of course the most of the fish in this market would be frozen in the winter. This one has been frozen.
Question. Can you tell us how to carve a whole fish?
Miss Corson. You would have a rather sharp knife and spoon; a fish knife, though it looks pretty, is not good to serve fish with because it is apt to be dull; you want a knife that will cut down through the fish without tearing it, without attempting to cut down through the bone, unless you know where the joints are located.
Question. Would you cook a fish with the fins?
Miss Corson. The latest fancy of fish lovers in New York, the members of the Ichthyophagous Club, who are supposed to be the leaders in the fashions of fish, is to have the fish served with the fins, head and tail on; and with some fish they want even the scales; and then they simply lift off the skin, the entire skin, before they begin to serve it. They have the fish [14]thoroughly washed and drawn, and then cooked with the scales and fins on. You can judge how easy it would be to do that, because you saw how easily that skin came off this fish. The skin comes off-easily if the fish is properly cooked—cooked enough.
Question. What kind of fish can be cooked with the scales on?
Miss Corson. I think the black bass, and some kinds of sea fish. The idea is that if the fish are not scaled they will keep their flavor; a fish properly dressed retains enough of its flavor even if it is scalded before it is cooked.
First, I will make a plain breakfast omelette. Use for two or three people not more than three eggs. You can not very well manage more than three in an ordinary pan. It is better to make several omelettes, especially because people are not apt to come to the table all at once, and an omelette to be nice must be eaten directly it is cooked. Say three eggs; break them into a cup or bowl; add to them a saltspoonful of salt, quarter of a saltspoonful of pepper, and mix them just enough to thoroughly break the whites and yolks together. Put over the fire a frying pan with a heaping teaspoonful of butter in it. Let the butter get hot. If you like an omelette brown let the butter begin to brown. After pouring the eggs into the hot frying pan break the omelette on the bottom of the pan with a fork, just a little, so that you let the uncooked part run down on the bottom of the pan. I do not mean to stir the omelette as you would scrambled eggs, but just break it a little until it is cooked as much as you want it. French breakfast omelettes are always cooked so that they are slightly juicy in the middle; in order to accomplish that result of course you have them still liquid before you begin to turn them. When the omelette is done as much as you want it run a fork under one side of it and fold it half over, then fold it again; loosen it from the pan; have a platter hot, and turn the omelette out. Serve it the moment it is done.
Next I will make a light omelette. The same rule—three eggs, whites and yolks separate; beat the whites to a stiff froth; add seasoning to the yolks in the same proportion as before; mix the yolks slightly with the seasoning; after the white has been beaten quite stiff and the yolk seasoned, mix them very lightly together; have a heaping tablespoonful of butter in the frying pan over the fire, hot, just as for the plain omelette; mix the[15] whites and the yolks together, without breaking down the white. Of course the lightness of the omelette depends on keeping all the air in the white of the egg that you have beaten into it. Put the eggs into the hot frying pan; run the fork under the omelette and lift it from the pan as it cooks; lift the cooked portions from the pan, and let them fall back on the top of the omelette, taking care not to pat the omelette down at all; but just lift the cooked portions and let them fall back on the top of the omelette, until it is done as much as you like. Usually this omelette is served soft—as soft as ice cream. When it is done as much as you want it, push it to the side of the pan, gently, and then turn it out on a hot platter. Always remember that the success of an omelette depends upon the quickness with which it is made and served; because, in the first place, you make it light by beating air into it; then, of course, the heat expands the air, and that makes the omelette still lighter; and you must get it served before the hot air escapes.
After the quail have been picked, cut the wings off at the first joint, cut the legs just above the joint of the drum-stick. Cut off the head, take out the crop, cut the quail down the back bone; from the inside, cut the joint where the wing joins the body; and having cut that wing joint, begin and cut close to the carcass of the bird till you get down to the leg joint, where the second joint of the leg unites with the body; break that joint, and keep on cutting the flesh from the carcass, taking care not to cut through the carcass so that you strike the intestines until you reach the ridge of the breast bone; close to the breast bone you will find that little division in the flesh of the breast which you have noticed in carving chickens and turkeys; it is called the little filet, and lies close to the breast bone; separate this natural division from the outside of the breast. Then beginning again on the other side, cut close to the carcass of the bird until you have reached the breast, as on the other side. Now the flesh is loose on both sides of the bird, and needs only to be taken off without breaking the skin of the breast. You would bone chickens and turkeys in the same way. Take the carcass out entire. Now take out the wing and leg bones from the inside. Do not tear the skin of the bird any more than you can help. Now lay the flesh on the table, with the skin down, and straighten[16] it out a little, distributing the flesh evenly over the skin, and it is ready to stuff. If I were making boned turkey I should have it all ready, just like this, and then put the force meat in, draw the bird up over the force meat, and sew it down the back. This bird is simply going to be broiled. Season with salt and pepper. In preparing boned birds you can use any kind of force meat—a layer of sausage meat, or any kind of chopped cold meat; season it with salt and pepper. Put the birds between the bars of the wire gridiron, and broil them with a very hot fire. The gridiron should be well buttered, so that the birds can not stick. By the time the bird is broiled brown on both sides it will be done. Of course you do half a dozen or a dozen in the same way precisely. Remember, ladies, always, that to broil you should use the hottest fire you can get—the hottest and the clearest fire, because part of the success of broiling depends upon quickly cooking the outside, while the inside of anything you are broiling still remains juicy. If you had a wood fire you would broil over the fire. If you broil over the fire you must expect the blaze to rise, and you must naturally suppose the meat will be smoked; but you can make your fire clear—that is, have it alive; do not have it smoky and full of unburnt wood or coal; have a clear bed of coals if you are going to broil over the fire.
Question. Do you never wash the birds before boiling?
Answer. No; you will find that I am very un-neat about that. In the first place, I would not use a piece of meat or a bird of any kind that was really dirty enough to need washing. If it had anything on it that I could not get off by wiping with a wet cloth, I simply wouldn’t use it. If you wash meat or poultry you destroy a certain amount of its flavoring and take away some of its nourishment.
Question. Sometimes a bird shot will have a great deal of the blood settle in the breast or in the flesh.
Miss Corson. Yes; you want the blood; you want to keep the blood there. The blood is a part of the nourishment. The idea of washing meat comes from the old Hebrew prohibition which involved the removal of every particle of blood. You know that the Hebrews believed that the blood was the life and even to this day every particle of blood is taken away from their meat, not only by washing after it comes into the house, but before that by the treatment it receives from the butcher. The blood is a part of the nourishment, and you want to keep as much of[17] it as you can; in some cooking it forms a very important part; for instance, in cooking a hare or rabbit, the blood which escapes in the dressing is saved and used.
Question. Would you treat prairie chicken, grouse or partridge in this way?
Miss Corson. Yes, in the same way.
Question. Not if you were going to roast turkey?
Miss Corson. One of my good friends in the far Northwest several years ago sent me a nice recipe for making a fricassee of chicken which I will tell you. The recipe said that after the chicken was picked you might wash it thoroughly with nice soap, then rinse it. (Laughter.) Now if you like you can prepare it that way. No, you will find, ladies, that if you use a cloth well wet in cold water you can remove all objectionable matter from the outside of meat or poultry. Indeed, if a piece of meat or poultry can not be cleaned with a wet cloth, it is not clean enough to use. One lady asks me about keeping meat for a long time. Of course that is a question of taste entirely, whether you like meat hung a long time or whether you like it fresh. All meat, when it is first killed, whether it is poultry, or game, or the ordinary domestic meat, is very tender. It is tender until the flesh begins to grow cold, until the animal heat, etc., parts from the flesh. Then it becomes tough, rigid and hard, and remains so until the process of decomposition begins. I do not mean until it begins to taint, but until it begins to decompose; at that point it begins to grow tender; it is still fresh and good enough for food. Remember that the hanging of meat is for the purpose of allowing it to begin to decompose.
Our lesson this afternoon will consist of some plain soups and stews of meat. I shall begin with a soup,—of yellow split peas. For four quarts of soup use an ordinary cupful of yellow split peas; pick them over and wash them in cold water, put them in a saucepan or a soup kettle with two quarts of cold water. Set the saucepan or soup kettle over the fire and let the water very gradually heat. When it boils put in some cold water,—part of a cupful, let them boil again; keep on putting in cold water every fifteen or twenty minutes, until you have used two quarts[18] of cold water besides the first two quarts. The object of adding cold water slowly is this: You soften the peas by the gradual heating of the cold water. After the first boiling the addition of a little cold water lowers the temperature, and as the water heats again the peas are gradually softening; so that within an hour and a half or two hours you will find them quite tender enough. You will notice that I have used no salt; the salt would tend to harden the peas. You add salt after the soup is nearly finished. The old way of soaking the peas over night is a very good one, but this is rather better, for this reason: If you soak the peas over night you destroy a small portion of their nutritive properties; especially if you make the soup in warm water, there will be a slight fermentation. The object of soaking them over night is simply to soften them, and as you can soften them in this way you accomplish the same purpose by adding cold water gradually. You will notice that this is for perfectly plain pea soup. You can vary it by adding bones of cold ham, or of cold roast beef; you can boil the bones with the peas. In that way you get the flavor of whatever meat you add. A very nice soup is made simply with the peas without any meat, by the addition of a fried onion, for that soup you would peel and slice an onion and put it in the bottom of the soup kettle with a tablespoonful of butter or drippings,—beef drippings or poultry drippings,—and fry it light brown; then put on the peas and cold water and proceed just as we do to-day for a plain pea soup, without any addition except a seasoning of salt and pepper, and by and by a little flour and butter, which I shall put in at the close, the object of which I will explain to you then.
For four quarts of soup use one cupful each of the ingredients which I shall name: lean beef cut in half-inch pieces; carrot, which must first be scraped and then cut in half-inch bits; turnip, which must be peeled and then cut in small pieces; rice, picked over, washed in cold water; tomatoes, peeled and sliced if they are fresh; but if you use canned tomatoes simply cut them in small pieces; half a cupful of onion, peeled and chopped rather fine; and four quarts of cold water. First put the water over the fire with the beef in it, and let it gradually heat; while it is heating get ready all the other ingredients that I have spoken of, and add them when the water is hot. Don’t[19] add salt for seasoning until after the soup has been cooking for a little while, because it would tend to harden the meat. When the soup is boiling, put in all the other ingredients; and after the soup has cooked for an hour, season it with salt and pepper. Cook it slowly for about two hours, or until the vegetables are tender. The length of time will depend somewhat on the season of the year. You will find that carrots and turnips, like all vegetables which have woody fibre in them, will cook more quickly early in the winter while they still have their natural moisture in them. The later in the winter it grows the drier they get, the harder the woody fibre is, and the longer it will take to cook them tender. So you will cook the soup until the vegetables are tender; and then, having seen that it is palatably seasoned, serve it with all the vegetables in it. You notice that this is a thick soup, made in an entirely different way from that which I made this morning. I think some of the ladies are here who were here this morning. Then we were making clear soup which is to be served without any vegetables in it. This is a good hearty soup for every-day use; in fact it is so hearty that you can make the bulk of a meal using this and bread or potatoes. When all the vegetables are quite tender then the soup simply is to be served.
Now, while I am preparing the soup, I want to say a little about the value of soup as a food. This comes properly into our afternoon course of instruction. Many of the ladies may not have thought of it in precisely the connection in which I am going to speak of it. Habitually, Americans do not use soup. Some have grown gradually accustomed to have soup as a part of their every-day dinner, but as a rule people have it once or twice a week. I am speaking now of average families. As a matter of fact, it ought to be used every day, because it is not only a very easy form in which to obtain nourishment, but you obtain from soup that which you would not get from any other dish; that is, you get every particle of the nourishment there is in the ingredients which you put into the soup. You can make a perfectly nutritious and palatable meal with soup at about one-half the cost of a meal without soup, because the soup, if it is savory, will be eaten with a relish; and it will satisfy the appetite for two reasons; the first I have already spoken of—because you get every particle of nourishment there is in the ingredients; and second, because directly you eat it—that is, directly it reaches the stomach, some of its nutritious liquid properties[20] will begin to be absorbed at once. They pass directly into the system, by the process which is known in physiology as osmosis—that is, absorption by the coats of the stomach; so that the liquid part of the food is actually absorbed and passes into the circulation in less than five minutes after you have eaten it. A very familiar illustration of that fact was made by Sir Henry Thompson several years ago, in his exceedingly valuable article called “Food and Feeding,” where he said that a hungry man eating clear soup for his dinner would feel a sense of refreshment in less than three minutes; that is, he would feel the effect of his plate of clear soup almost as soon as he would feel the stimulus which he would receive from a glass of wine. He would feel refreshed at once; his sense of hunger, which is the indication that his system needs food, would be practically appeased within three minutes from the time he had taken his soup.
Then there is another very important question; and that is the effect of soups and liquid foods on the appetite for stimulants. I am not a temperance advocate in the sense in which the word is usually understood. That is, I neither believe in nor advocate total abstinence; but I do believe in temperance—in the temperate use of everything; no matter whether it is drink, or food, or pleasure, in a life of work, so that I speak solely from the standpoint of an advocate of the moderate use of everything. The system requires a certain amount of liquid nourishment. We have to get that in the form of liquid, and many people take it by using water to excess—drinking quantities of water. On the other hand, there are some people who never drink more than a glass of water all day long. They must drink something—some kind of liquid—to make up the quantity of water that is absolutely required by the system in the course of twenty-four hours. Some persons take it in the form of tea and coffee; others drink beer and wine; but a certain amount of liquid the system must have. Now, you can easily see that you can supply a part of that liquid in the form of soups and stews. It is not possible for many people to drink much cold water: it does not seem to agree with them. The advocates of the latest craze, for hot water, will get their quantity of liquid, but they will get it in a form that by and by will make serious trouble for them; because, while under certain conditions the entire mucous membrane or lining of the digestive tract, warm water may be desirable, still the excessive use of it is very apt in time to produces a serious congestion. Now, the fact once admitted that[21] we must have a certain amount of liquid supplied to the system every day, then the question comes of giving it in a form that will be the least injurious to the system. I think I have shown you one or two good reasons why soup supplies it well. On the score of economy there is no food which can be as cheaply prepared as soup—that is, no palatable, enjoyable, nutritious food. It is possible to make this soup, this thick soup which I am making now, in New York, and here also, I suppose, for less than ten cents a gallon, buying the materials at retail; and I am sure a gallon of this soup will go very far towards satisfying one’s hunger. I presume, from what I have seen of the market reports in the papers, that it can be made here quite as cheaply as it can in New York.
Question. Does that make very strong soup—does it give a very good rich flavor of the meat, with one cupful of meat to a gallon of water?
Miss Corson. That gives a perfectly nutritious soup. It gives as much nutriment from the meat as is needed by the system.
Question. Wouldn’t a bone or two thrown in be a good thing?
Miss Corson. You can put in bones if you want to. But I am giving you a recipe for a perfectly nutritious soup, made upon the most economical principles. The proportion of meat which I use here is all that is required by the system in connection with the other ingredients. We Americans have, as a rule, the idea that there is no nutritious food except meat. We think that we get all our nourishment from meat; and the other things—the vegetables and bread, and all those other articles of food that we eat, are what the dressmakers would call “trimmings.” We do not regard them as real nourishing food, when in reality there are some vegetables which are nearly as nutritious as meat. Take for instance, lentils; I do not know if you are familiar with them. They are a variety of vetch or field pea, little flat, dried peas, that grow very abundantly; in fact, if they are once planted in a field it is almost impossible to root them out. They have been for ages used in all older countries, in Egypt, in Asia, all through Europe, especially in Germany. Within the last ten years they have become known in this country. Lentils, with the addition of a very little fat in the form of fat meat, suet drippings or butter, are quite as nutritious as meat; that is, they sustain strength, and enable people to work just as well as meat. So, you see, that so far as actual nourishment is concerned, [22]vegetables approach closely to meat. Next to lentils come peas and beans, dried peas and beans. I have not graded the different articles of food, but some day when we have more time I will give you a table of nutritive values of different articles of food so that you can form some comparison in your own mind. Remember this, that meat is not the only nutritious article of food in use, and we only need a certain quantity of it. For instance, for the purpose of health meat once a day will answer. It is very nice to have it two or even three times if we want it, or if we can afford it; but if we have it once a day we answer all the requirements of health, and in communities where it is not possible to have an abundant supply of fresh meat, a very small proportion of salt meat used in connection with the most nutritious vegetables keeps the health and strength of the really active laborers up to the working point.
For a brown stew, use any kind of dark meat. To-day I am going to use some of the cooked round of beef; but you can use fresh beef; you can use raw beef, rare roast beef, or any of the dark meats; always use white meats for white stews. Presently we will make a white stew of veal; but for a brown stew use dark meats. Cut the meat in pieces about an inch and a half square, put it over the fire with enough fat of some kind to keep it from burning; use the fat of the meat, or drippings, or butter, and brown it as fast as possible. If you make a stew large enough for four or five people, use about three pounds of beef. As soon as the meat is brown, sprinkle a heaping tablespoonful of flour over it; then add enough boiling water to cover the meat, and three teaspoons of vinegar. The vinegar is used for the purpose of softening the fibres of the meat and making it tender. You will find that by adding vinegar to meat in cooking, you can always make it tender. When we come to treat of steak, I shall explain that. After the vinegar has been used, season the meat palatably with salt and pepper, cover it, and let it cook very gently for at least an hour, or until it is tender. To the stew add any vegetable you wish, or cook it perfectly plain, having only the meat and the gravy. To-day I am going to use carrots with it. For three pounds of beef use carrots enough to fill a pint bowl after they are cut in little slices, or in little quarters. Of course, if you add vegetables of any kind,[23] carrots, turnips, or potatoes, you want to put them in long enough before the meat is done to insure their being perfectly cooked. For instance, carrots take from one to two hours to cook; I shall put the carrots in directly I make the gravy. Turnips, if they are fresh, will cook in about half an hour. Potatoes will cook in twenty minutes; small onions will cook in from half to three-quarters of an hour. The meat usually needs to cook about two hours. The meat being brown, I shall put in a tablespoonful of flour, stirring it, and then send it down to you so that you can see what it is like. The question naturally would arise about the color of this stew, throwing in raw flour, the white, uncooked flour. You can see for yourselves what the effect is.
Question. Does cold meat cook as long as raw?
Miss Corson. If you use cold meat, brown it just in the same way, just exactly as we browned this, first in drippings or butter and then putting in the flour; only if you use meat which already has been cooked, it will not take it so long to cook as it does this raw meat.
For a white stew, use any kind of white meat—veal, pork, poultry, or lamb. To-day I shall use veal. To go back to the question which was debated this morning about washing meat: first, wipe the meat all over with a wet towel. It is important to have the towel clean. Wet the towel in cold water and wipe the meat, then cut it in little pieces about two inches square. The butcher will crack all the bones, and if you wish he will cut the meat for you. At least he will crack the bones so that the meat can be easily cut in pieces about two inches square. Put it over the fire; suppose you have three pounds of meat; put it in cold water enough to cover it. Let it slowly boil; when it boils, add about a tablespoonful of salt and a dozen grains of peppercorns, or a small red pepper, or if you have not either of those seasonings, about half a saltspoonful of ordinary pepper; and let the meat boil slowly until it is tender. That will be in from an hour to two hours, according to the tenderness of the meat in the beginning. When the meat is tender lay a clean towel in a colander, set over a bowl or an earthen jar, and pour the meat and broth directly into the colander. Let the broth run through the towel. If the meat has any particles of scum on it, wipe the pieces with a wet towel to remove the scum. You can, in making the stew, remove the scum as you would from clear soup, but in that case you have not quite so[24] richly flavored a stew. The better way is to wipe off the little particles after you have taken up the meat. Now you have the meat cooked quite tender and the broth strained. Then you make the sauce. Any of the ladies who were at the lesson this morning and saw the white sauce made, will understand the principle upon which the sauce is made for the stew. Put a heaping tablespoonful of butter and a heaping tablespoonful of flour into a saucepan for the quantity of broth which you would be likely to have from about three pounds of meat; that would be broth enough to cover it. Stir the butter and flour until they are smoothly mixed; then begin to add the meat broth gradually until you have used enough of the broth to make the sauce like thick cream. If you find that you have not enough broth from the meat, add a little hot water, to make the sauce or gravy like thick cream; then put the meat into it. Season it palatably with salt and pepper, remembering that you already have some seasoning in it. Stir the meat in the saucepan over the fire until it is hot, and then serve it. That gives you a plain white stew of meat. You can transform that into a dish called in French cookery books blanquette, or white stew of meat, by adding to it just before you take it off the fire a tablespoonful of chopped parsley and the yolk of one egg. You will add the egg by separating the yolk from the white, putting the yolk in a cup with two or three tablespoonfuls of gravy from the meat and mix it well; then turn it all among the meat, stir it and dish it at once. Don’t let the stew go back on the fire after you put in the yolk of egg; it may curdle the egg if the sauce or the stew boils after the egg is added. So you see you have a plain white stew, or a stew with the addition of chopped parsley, or chopped parsley and the yolk of an egg. Do not use the white of the egg.
Question. Why is not the fat meat as good as the lean?
Miss Corson. Do you mean why is it not as nutritious? Lean meat nourishes muscle and flesh. Fat meat affords heat to the system. That is the reason why we naturally crave more fat meat in cold weather. It is not so strengthening; it is heating and in that nutritious. A great deal of its substance, of course, is wasted in the cooking. That is another reason why, weight for weight, fat meat is not so nutritious as lean.
Question. In making this stew brown or white do you use bones?
Miss Corson. You can use bones. In making the soup to-day I used cooked lean meat that was on hand over from the soup[25] this morning. You can use the breast of any kind of brown meat; you can use the ends of the ribs of roast beef; you remember the rather fat ends of the ribs of roast beef? After cooking the beef have these cut up in small pieces; after you have cooked them in the stew if there is any excess of fat, as there probably will be, skim that off and put it by to add to any brown stew or gravy; the fat replaces drippings in that case. That is a very good way to use ends of ribs of beef. Cold beefsteak makes a nice brown stew, treated in this same way.
Question. Do you skim the stew?
Miss Corson. No. Not unless you are going to make a perfectly clear soup need you ever skim; because, as I explained this morning, the scum which rises on the surface in boiling meat is not dirt, it is albumen and blood, with the same nutritious properties as the meat itself, and you do not want to remove them. If the water boils away in cooking soups and stews always add a little more; it will save time if you add boiling water, unless as in the case of peas, you add cold water for the purpose of softening them. You will find, if you are trying to cook dried beans, that it will be well to add cold water, and boil them gradually.
Question. In cooking beans isn’t it a good way to let the beans come to a boil and then pour off the water and put on more cold?
Miss Corson. That is simply a question of taste. It is not necessary to do it. If you pour away the first water in which they come to a boil, you pour away a certain amount of their nourishment, which already has escaped in the water. Some people say that they like to pour away that first water, because it carries off the strong taste of the beans. That is a question for any one to settle individually. The water would not have the strong taste of the beans if there were not some of the nourishment of the beans in it. While we are on the subject of beans I might tell you a good way to cook beans plainly, a favorite way in the south of France, the beans to be served with roast mutton. Cook them in just water enough to cover them, after having first washed them, adding only water enough to keep them covered all the time. They are dried white beans. Then at the last, when the beans are tender, leave off the cover of the sauce pan and let the beans cook, so that nearly all the water is evaporated, and the beans have about them simply water enough to form a very thick sauce, just enough to moisten[26] them. Then they are seasoned with salt and pepper. In that way they are served as stewed beans, with roast mutton or roast lamb.
In regard to the lentils that I was talking to you about, I think you may be able to learn something more about them from Prof. Porter. He probably would know. You long ago have made their acquaintance in the form of the tares that the enemy sowed among the wheat. Lentils are really a species of tare or vetch. If you do not know about them—if they are not known in the market—it really would be worth while to make some inquiry which would lead to the introduction of them; but very likely if there are German people here, as I suppose there are,—there are always German people in every thriving city,—they will already have had them for sale in their special groceries; you can get them in that way, and they make a very good winter vegetable to use alternately with others. You cook them either by soaking them over night, or boil them just as we boiled the peas, until they are tender, and then drain them, and either heat them, with a little salt and pepper and butter, after they are drained, or fry them. They are exceedingly nice fried with a little chopped onion or parsley. If you have a pint bowl full of lentils, use a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, a tablespoonful of onion, very finely chopped; put the onion in the frying pan with a tablespoonful of butter or drippings, and let it brown; then put in the lentils and chopped parsley, a little salt and pepper, stir them till you have them hot, and serve them. They are exceedingly good.
Prof. Porter. I may say that the first cousin of the lentils is well known among our Minnesota farmers in our wheat fields, and they are such an intolerable pest that we prefer paying the duties on the German article and importing them.
(The pea soap being now about ready to take up, Miss Corson continued:)
You know how the flour of the peas settles to the bottom of the soup tureen or plate, and leaves the top clear? Prevent that by adding to the soup, just before it is dished, a little paste made of flour and butter. For four quarts of soup a tablespoonful of flour and a tablespoonful of butter; mix the flour and butter to a smooth paste just before the soup is done. After the peas are soft pour them into a fine sieve and rub them through the sieve[27] with a potato masher; just a stout wire sieve. After you have rubbed them through the sieve put them back into the soup kettle with the soup, and mix the flour and butter in with them over the fire; stir them until they come to a boil, then season palatably with salt and pepper, and the soup is ready to serve. Remember this is a perfectly plain soup I am making to-day, without the addition of meat of any kind; but of course you will vary the flavor of the soup by adding the bones of ham or other meat, or a very little fried onion. Now, you can count for yourselves how cheap a soup that is.
Question. Can you give us your experience with regard to pea meal for soup?
Miss Corson. I have used one form that has been put on the New York market. It was made of dried green peas. I do not know whether there is on this market a meal made of the yellow peas. There is a German preparation which is admirable. In New York it is for sale at the German stores; but the meal of which I speak, the meal made of dried green peas, was not at all satisfactory to me. Of course the meal of the green peas has not the flavor of the split peas. You will find in rubbing the peas through the sieve that if you moisten them a little once in a while they will go through more readily.
I have left the brown stew with all the fat on. It is a question not only of taste but of economy whether you leave on the fat in addition to the first butter in which you browned the meat, a question of economy and nourishment. If the people you are cooking for have good strong digestions you do not need to remove the fat. The bread or potatoes which are eaten with the stew will absorb it and will render it perfectly digestible; and, of course, as I have already told you, the fat serves certain purposes in nutrition. If you are cooking for people having weak digestions then you would take the fat off the stew. The white stew I am going to finish plain, without any parsley or egg—simply seasoned with salt and pepper.
Our lesson this morning is the clarifying of soup, or the soup stock that we made yesterday; caramel for coloring soup, gravy and sauces; baked whitefish, after a very nice Western fashion; beefsteak, broiled and fried; and baked apple dumplings.
The first thing I prepare will be the whitefish, after a method which I learned from one of my Cleveland friends, who, by the way, is one of the nicest cooks I know of. I shall use only a little butter, and tell you about the wine which the recipe calls for. When the fish is prepared especially for gentlemen, wine is considered exceedingly nice, but that, as in all other cookery, is a matter of choice. We to-day will use some butter, pepper and salt. I will tell you the kind of wine, and the quantity that is used, when I come to cook the fish. In the winter, of course, all the fish is frozen. We were speaking of that yesterday, how to prepare frozen fish. In the first place, thaw it in plenty of cold water. Put it in a large pan of cold water and let it stay till it is perfectly thawed. Then cut it from the bone and take off the skin. Now, please write down the directions, and then watch and see how I do it. The fish simply has been scaled; to cut it from the bone, make one cut down to the bone through the middle of the side of the fish, lengthwise; having made that line, cut round under the head, to the bone; now lay the knife against the bone of the fish, and turn it until you have the blade cutting against the bone, holding the knife flat; it will take that entire piece of the fish off; cut two pieces from one side of the fish. Now I am going to cut from the other side in the same way, and then I shall take the skin off. First take the four pieces of fish off the bone; you will not find this at all difficult to do, ladies; after you have done it once or twice it will be very easy, and if you have fish that has not been frozen it will be much more easy to do than if you have frozen fish, which, of course, will break a little. It is not possible to keep the pieces entire, cutting from a frozen fish. One of the ladies asks if this can be done as well if the fish has been dressed by the fishmonger; that is, if the entrails have been taken out. Yes, quite as well. This is not dressed simply because it had been sent from market without being dressed. I did not take the trouble to have it dressed here, as I am not going to use the bone of[29] the fish. After I have finished giving you the direction for taking off the skin, I am going to tell you how you could use the bone of the fish. To cut the skin off the fish, lay the pieces of fish skin down on the board; then, holding the knife down straight, cut through the fish until you feel the skin under the knife; as soon as you feel the skin under the knife, flatten the knife out so that it lies against the skin; cut away from you, holding the knife perfectly level, leaving the skin between the board and the knife. Hold the piece of fish in your fingers; lay it flat on the board, skin down, keeping hold of the skin all the time. That takes the skin off, and none of the fish; there is no waste there, and it certainly is very much easier to eat fish in this shape than it is if you have the skin and bone on it. Now, I assure you, ladies, if you only hold the knife flat, you will have no trouble whatever in taking the skin off. If you slant it you will cut through the skin of the fish, but if you hold it perfectly flat you will have no trouble. Of course, with certain kinds of fish there are bones that run transversely from the spine out through the sides of the fish. You do not take these bones out by this operation, but you take out the large back bone. It comes out every time, and I assure you it is a very easy operation.
After you have taken all the skin and bones from the fish, then, for this special dish, cut it in small slices three inches long and a couple of inches wide. Use two soup plates, or two dishes of the same size, deep dishes that you can send to the table. Butter them very thickly, both of them. Lay the fish in one of the dishes, season the layers with salt and pepper, and put a very little butter between each layer, and plenty of butter on the top. Turn the second plate over the first one, upside down on it. Put the dishes with the fish between them into the oven to bake for about twenty minutes, or until the fish flakes. You can tell about that by opening the oven at the end of twenty minutes, and lifting off the top plate; then you can see whether the fish is done or not. Now, in the recipe of which I spoke to you first, the addition of Sauterne wine is made. After the fish is put into the dish, being seasoned as I have told you, using less butter than you would without the wine, with half as much butter on the layers, pour on Sauterne wine,—that is a light, rather acid wine,—just enough to moisten the fish. In placing the fish into the dish it does not make any difference which side you put down. You simply want to put the pieces nicely [30]together so that when you come to help them you can lift each piece out with a spoon. There is no acid that will take the place of the wine and give the same taste. The fish is very nice cooked simply with the butter, pepper and salt. You do not need the wine to make a nice dish, only wine is used by the lady of whom I speak. That is her special preparation of the dish. The wine is put in after the fish is in the dish, just enough wine to moisten it. You will notice that often I will make dishes that have no wine in them; if I make dishes that require wine, I of course put it in, saying that you may use the wine or not, as you please. In this instance I use butter, pepper and salt because it makes a very nice dish, a very nice plain dish, but it is a distinct dish, entirely different to the dish cooked with wine; simply two ways of cooking fish, making two different dishes. For a fish of this size—which probably weighed nearly three pounds—you may use about a heaping tablespoonful of butter in all; that is, besides what you put on the plates. You will butter the plates, and distribute butter throughout the dish. The oven should be moderately hot, not hot enough to brown it—hot enough to heat the plates, which are very thick, and to cook the fish within twenty or twenty-five minutes.
If you wash the board on which the fish is cut, at once, in plenty of hot water, with soap and a little soda or borax all the odor of the fish will be removed. Don’t let any of the utensils stand with the fish drying on them, because if you do it will be very much harder to destroy the odor. And, by the way, ladies, the odor of onions is another thing that troubles some persons. The odor of onions on boards, knives and dishes you can do away with entirely by using parsley. If you take a knife with which you have cut onions, and chop a little parsley with it, or draw the knife through the root of parsley two or three times, it entirely destroys the odor of the onion. So that you see you never need have any trouble in that way in the kitchen.
One of the ladies asks me how to prevent the odor of onions going through the house when you are cooking them. What makes onions, cabbage and turnips smell when you are cooking them is the escape of an exceedingly volatile oil which they all contain; in all of them it has the same characteristics; it does not begin to escape until they are tender. The oil does not begin to escape until the vegetables are tender; if you continue to boil them after that, it will escape. If you take up cabbage or turnips as soon as they are tender, that is, as soon as their [31]substance begins to grow tender, you will notice there will be comparatively little odor; but if you keep on boiling them, according to the old-fashioned rules, for an hour, two hours, or three hours,—you know you sometimes boil cabbage all day long,—you will be sure to have a nice odor through the house. In cutting the onions, of course, if you bend over them, that same oil rising from them escapes as you cut into their substance, and will be sure to make you cry; but if you hold them a little away from you in peeling them, or under water, or if you stand where there is a draught blowing over your hands, it will blow that oil away. In eating onions at the table, if you will subsequently eat parsley dipped in vinegar, you will find that there will be very little odor of the onion remaining in the breath.
Now to return to our fish. After you have taken the flesh of the fish off the bone, you still would see a little of the fish remaining, even if you cut closely. Then draw the fish, and trim the bone; that is, cut off the head, and the fins, and the tail, and take out the entrails of the fish; then make a paste of dry mustard, salt, and a dust of Cayenne pepper. For a bone the size we have here, a long bone like that, use two heaping tablespoonfuls of mustard, a dust of Cayenne pepper and enough vinegar, or Worcestershire sauce, to moisten the mustard to make a paste, which is to be spread over the fishbone. Have the double wire gridiron very thickly buttered, put the bone into the gridiron, brown it quickly at a hot fire, and serve it simply as a relish. A sort of Barmecide feast, but I assure you it is very nice with bread or crackers and butter. It makes a very nice little relish. I might say, ladies, that you can treat any kind of bones in this way. Cold roast beef bones are exceedingly nice. Of course there will be more flesh on the beef bones than on the fish bones.
Use butter, or lard, or very finely chopped suet. If you can get good lard it makes nice pastry; by that I mean lard which has a very little water in it. A good deal of the lard that you buy in the stores has a large proportion of water in it, and I believe in these days it is apt to be sophisticated with several articles which are not exactly lard, so that home-made lard is decidedly the best; that which you try out yourself. First take the butter, or whatever shortening you use,—butter, lard, or[32] suet,—and mix it with twice the quantity of flour. For instance, if you are going to use a pound of flour allow half a pound of shortening. Take half the shortening and mix it with the flour, using a knife. Then wet the mixed flour and butter with just enough cold water to form a paste which you can roll out. If you mix with a knife or spoon you avoid heating the pastry. After the flour and the first half of the shortening have been mixed to a paste roll it out, about half an inch thick, and put the rest of the shortening in flakes on it. One of the ladies asks about putting flour on the pastry board: Extra flour, of course, besides the quantity that you put in the pastry. The only object in washing the butter is to get out any buttermilk that there may be in it. After putting the butter—the second half of the butter—over the pastry in rather large pieces, put just a little flour over it, fold the pastry in such a way that the edge is turned up all round to inclose the butter; that is about an inch and a half all round. Fold the pastry together thin, and roll it out, and fold it several times. Remember that the oftener you fold it and roll it the more flakes you will have in the cooked pastry. Take care to use flour enough to keep it from sticking to the board or the roller. You will remember the pastry is not salted and unless the shortening has enough salt in it to salt the flour, you must add it. Good lard makes a more tender pastry than butter.
Question. Do you ever mix them?
Miss Corson. Yes, you can mix them if you like, using part lard and part butter. To roll out the pastry, roll it in a rather long strip, that is, a strip about three times as long as it is wide. That enables you then to fold it and keep it in a nice shape. It does not make any difference whether you roll it from you or towards you. As many times as you roll and fold it you give it three additional layers. Now I might keep on rolling and folding indefinitely, and I simply should make the pastry have more layers than this has, but I think you thoroughly understand that, so that I will roll it out, and make our dumplings now. Only remember that the more times you roll it the more folds you make, the more layers you have in the pastry. Keep it as cool as possible all the time. If you roll and fold it three times remember that you have nine layers of butter and pastry. You can roll it out more than that if you want to. Puff paste, which is rolled and folded in this way, has what is called nine turns. Rolling and folding it three times makes a turn. The object of using marble or stone pastry slabs is to keep the pastry cool.[33] If you make more pastry than you want to use, wrap it in a floured towel and put it in a very cool place; then when you are ready to use it roll and fold it two or three times, and it will be very much better than when first made. I am going to roll up a strip of the pastry that I cut off the edge in such a way that you will see how the layers are formed, and you can pass it about. One of the ladies has asked me about heating the flour. It is not necessary to heat the flour for pastry, on the contrary, it would rather tend to spoil it. You want to keep it as cool as possible. But in the winter when you are going to make bread, if you heat the flour it facilitates the rising of the bread; there you need the heat.
For apple dumplings, after the pastry is made, cut it in pieces about four inches square and about a quarter of an inch thick. One of the ladies asks about sifting the flour. That is necessary, always. For apple dumplings, peel the apples and take out the cores, leaving the apples as whole as possible. The corer that I have here is nothing but a round tin cylinder. Use any apple corer that will take the core out without breaking the apple. For this purpose Greening apples are the nicest. These are table apples. Put an apple on each piece of pastry. In the core of the apple put as much sugar as it will hold, and a very small pinch of powdered cinnamon—about a quarter of a saltspoonful of powdered cinnamon, or any powdered spice you prefer. Then fold the corners of the square pieces of pastry up over the apple so that they will lap over on the top of the apple. Fasten the corners by moistening them a little with cold water. After the dumplings are all made, brush them over the top with water, or with melted butter, or with egg, beaten; the entire egg, or if you have the white or the yolk, you can beat that up; of course if you use just the yolk you make them a little yellower. If you use the yolk of an egg, beat it with a little water. Ladies are asking me about that little rolling pin. It is like that little knife, it is bewitched, but the magic consists simply in keeping the rolling pin perfectly smooth, and the knife sharp. That is made of hard wood, and is polished so that it is perfectly smooth, and of course I keep it so by not having it soaked in water. Instead of putting water and soap on to clean it, it simply will be wiped with a wet cloth, and then with a dry one. The thousand dents it has in it it has got by travel; it has been[34] knocked around in my traveling trunk for the last five years. The dents did not get in it by using it. It may be made of any hard wood. One of the ladies asks me why I leave the corners of the dumpling open. I could pat the crust around and bring it right up close to the apple, but it would not be so light in the first place. The crust will hold together, it will not break apart in baking, and you leave the ends nice and light; and it makes a nicer-looking dumpling. The idea seems to be that if I should close up the corners the juice of the apples would stay in. It won’t boil out much, anyway.
Now, ladies, I am going to take a little of the soup stock that we made yesterday out in a cup and pass it, so you can see what it looks like before it is clarified. That is the soup stock or broth that we made yesterday. You will remember where your recipe ended yesterday, about the soup stock being poured into a bowl and allowed to cool. That is the condition in which the stock is now. After a little, I am going to tell you about the clarifying of it, but now I want to finish telling you about dumplings, so you will have all your dumpling recipes in one place.
The question was asked, I believe, about the temperature of the oven. About the same as for the fish—a moderate oven, so you can put your hand in and count, say fifteen, quickly. It takes from half an hour to three-quarters to bake the dumplings. Be careful not to brown them. If the pastry seems to be browning before the apples get done,—and something will depend upon the kind of apples you use,—cover the pastry with a buttered paper. The object of the egg on the dumplings is to make them a little glossy. Use either butter, or egg, or water for brushing over the tops.
For steamed dumplings usually a suet crust is used. You could use this crust if you wanted to, but it would not be sure to be light. It might possibly absorb a little of the steam. For suet crust you would use half a pound of suet chopped very fine, a teaspoonful of salt and a pound of flour. Mix carefully the flour and suet and salt with enough cold water to make a pastry just soft enough to roll out. Roll it out about a quarter of an inch thick, and then cut it in little squares; prepare the apples just as I prepare them for the baked dumpling; instead of folding the crust up and leaving the corners open, pat it with your hands so that you entirely inclose the apple. Just roll the[35] pastry out once and then inclose the apples in it, and put the dumpling into the steamer; that is, an ordinary tin steamer; set over a pot of boiling water and steam the dumplings until they are done. You must decide that by running a trussing needle or knitting needle through the pastry into the apple. It may take an hour and a half to steam the dumplings; be sure they are done.
For another kind of pastry that has been described to me by enthusiastic gentlemen who used to have mothers, a kind of pastry “that melted in your mouth;” it is very easy to make that; not a flaky pastry, but a soft, exceedingly tender pastry that really crumbles. To do that you simply rub all of the shortening into the flour. Half a pound of shortening and a pound of flour; put the shortening into the flour with the salt; rub them with your hands till you have the shortening thoroughly mixed with the flour. It looks like meal; the ingredients must be thoroughly mixed, but not melted together; then use just enough cold water to make the pastry, and roll it out just once, and use it; be sure to keep it cool.
Question. Did you say an hour and a half for steamed dumpling?
Miss Corson. It will take nearly that, but you must try them; try them at the end of an hour. For the dumpling you can use one of the sauces I told you of yesterday morning, white cream sauce, or you can use simply powdered sugar, or powdered sugar mixed with a little cinnamon. You can use a hard sauce, which is butter and sugar mixed together in equal quantities, with any flavoring you like.
That is supposed to be the great abomination of American cooking, so that we are going now to see whether it can not be nearly as nicely fried as broiled. It seems a heresy, but it is true, and there are very many occasions where it is not possible to broil in an ordinary kitchen; the fire may not be good, or uncovering it may cool the oven. There is a very important secret in frying beefsteak, or chops, and that is to have the pan hot before you put the meat into it. It doesn’t make any difference what kind of a pan you use. Use the ordinary iron frying pan, the old-fashioned spider, or dripping pan, if you wish to; but have the pan hot; have the pan hot enough to sear the[36] outside of the meat directly it touches it; after the pan is hot put the beefsteak, or chops—because they are both cooked in the same way—into the hot pan. If the meat is entirely lean, if there is not a particle of fat on it, you may put not more than half a teaspoonful of butter in the pan; run it quickly over the bottom of the pan. But I never saw meat yet so lean, unless the fat was all trimmed off, that there was not fat enough to cook any chop or steak. The portion of fat you will usually find on meat is about one-third, unless you take the meat from the short loin; that is called the porterhouse, or tenderloin steak. In that case you have an excess of fat; there is more than one-third, reckoning in the kidney fat, or suet. You may cut away some of the fat, unless the butchers have cut it away. The butcher has already cut it away from this piece, and, by the way, I notice that Minneapolis butchers cut a very long and thin steak. Now I would not advise the cooking, broiling or frying of that thin end. I would rather buy two steaks of that kind and cut off that and use it for stewing, because it would stew very nicely; broiled it will be rather tough.
As my frying pan is small I am going to cut the steak short. These steaks are cut too thin. A beefsteak to be nice should be over an inch thick—an inch and a half thick. You can easily economise on a thick steak by simply cutting it in halves, and using only as much of it as you want at once, because in almost any weather steak will keep at least over night. Have it too thick rather than too thin. Have it just the thickness you want and then cut it in two, using part only if you only need part of it. Trim off the outside skin, the tough skin; scrape the steak to make sure that there are no particles of bone on it. That bone, of course, comes in sawing the steak. Cut off the cartilage at the top of the steak, otherwise the steak may curl up. Have your pan hot enough to make it sear. Put the steak in and brown it quickly, first on one side and then on the other. In turning the steak run a knife or fork under it and lift it. Don’t stick a fork into it, because by doing that you make little holes in the fibre of the steak and so let the juice escape.
Question. Will you pound your steak?
Miss Corson. No, decidedly not; that lets out the juice. You make little holes in the steak if you stick a fork into it, and by pounding you let the juice out. Now, you want to keep all the juice in the steak, all the juice that you can; so that, in turning the steak simply lift it with a fork or knife and turn it over;[37] when it is brown on both sides push the frying pan back toward the back part of the fire, and finish cooking it until it is done to your taste. After it is brown on one side, turn it over; and then, after that, you can turn it once or twice; the frequent turning does not make any difference after you have got it browned on both sides and you can keep all the juice in. Turn it as soon as it is brown at first; have the hottest kind of a fire; get it brown on the under side as fast as you can; don’t be afraid of burning it; then turn it over and brown it on the other side; after that you can turn it as often as you please. Some people like their steak rare, some medium rare, and some well done. To test steak, do not cut into it to see if it is done, but press your finger on it, on the substance of the steak. If you do that quickly you won’t burn your finger. As long as the steak is very rare the fibre of the meat will be elastic, and directly you take your finger up the fibre will press up again; there will be no dent there. When it is medium rare just a little dent will remain from the pressure, because the fibre is less elastic. When it is well done you can press on it and make a little hollow that will stay there. Do not season the meat until after it is done; don’t put salt on any meat before cooking; you draw out the juice by salting it.
Now for the seasoning of the steak. I have already said that to apply salt to the cut fibre of meat will be sure to draw out the juice, so that you do not want to season a steak until it is done. When it is done season it with salt, pepper and butter. The quantities you use depend upon the taste. That rule applies whether steak is broiled or fried. On that plate you will see the drippings, all that was in the frying pan. There is no juice of the meat there; it is simply browned fat. Whatever juice there was in the meat is still there. Broiled steak is cooked on precisely the same principle. It is to be put just as near the fire as you can get it. After the broiled steak is browned on one side and then on the other, just as fast as you can brown it; don’t be afraid of burning it; you need to watch it; then move it away from the fire, and let it cook as much as you like. Test it in the same way I told you to test fried steak. When it is done put it on a hot dish; put butter, pepper and salt on it, and serve it hot.
Question. What do you do when the fat drops in the fire and blazes?
Miss Corson. Of course it will do that, but that will help[38] brown the steak. If it is possible to broil under the fire it is very much nicer. Sometimes the front of the stove is so arranged that you can let it down and run the gridiron under it; before you begin to broil over the fire you can get the top of the fire very red and clear by throwing a little salt upon it; that will help to destroy the odor. If the meat is frozen you should put it in cold water to thaw before cooking it; you can not avoid in that case washing the meat. To return to the matter of pounding steak: If you pound or break the fibre of meat in any way you let the juice escape; that makes the meat dry.
Question. What do you say to the notion that so many have, that pounding the meat makes it tender?
Miss Corson. You do nothing but break the fibre and save yourself the trouble of chewing the steak. To encourage laziness it is a very good idea. But remember, if you drive the juice out of the steak by pounding you destroy its nutriment. You need the juice in the steak. Now, there is a remedy for the toughness of steak, which I can give you, depending upon whether you like salad oil. If you do not, you ought to learn to, because it is one of the most nutritious and purest of the fats when it is perfectly good. Good sweet salad oil is preferable to any animal or vegetable fat for purposes of nutriment. There is no reason why you should not use salad oil on the score of health. A great many people object to it; they do not like the idea; they think it is rather foreign, and to some people it is distasteful, but they have very strong memories of childhood and another kind of oil. You know even that kind of oil in these days does not taste badly. Olive oil, the peanut oil, or lard oil, when they are fresh and sweet, are very desirable. To soften the fibre of the meat with vinegar and salad oil put on the platter about three tablespoonfuls of salad oil, and half a teacupful of vinegar and a pinch of pepper; no salt. Put these on the platter; then lay the raw steak on the platter, and let it stand at least an hour; then turn it over and let it stand another hour. The longer you can let it stand, if it is in the daytime, turning it over every hour, the tenderer you will make it. The vinegar makes the fibre of the meat tender, and the oil keeps it so. That is, the vinegar softens the fibre of the meat and the oil keeps it soft. If you want to prepare it for over night put it in the oil and vinegar about 6 o’clock, about supper time, and let it stand till bed time, then turn it over, and let it stand till morning. When you come to cook the steak do not wipe the oil and vinegar off; simply let[39] what will run off, and then lay the meat on the gridiron and broil it, or fry it; there will be no taste perceptible if the oil is good.
A heaping tablespoonful of common brown sugar if you have it; if not, use any kind of sugar; put it in the frying pan and stir it until it is dark brown; that is, until it is on the point of burning; see that it browns evenly. Then put in a tablespoonful of water, either hot or cold—it does not make any difference; stir that until it is mixed with the sugar; then another tablespoonful, until you have used about half a cupful of water. If you should pour the water all in at once the sugar would simply boil over and burn you. Use about half a cupful of water, adding it gradually, and stirring until the burnt sugar is dissolved. That gives you the caramel. Now, while I am making the caramel, I will describe to you the clarifying of the soup.
To clarify soup stock: For each quart use the white and shell of one egg and one tablespoonful of cold water. Put the white and shell of the egg and the cold water into the bottom of the saucepan, and mix them together. Then put in the soup stock. Set the saucepan over the fire and let it boil gradually, stirring it every minute to mix the egg thoroughly so that it will not cake on the bottom of the pan before it begins to boil. When you have the stock made quite hot, when it begins to boil, then you do not need to stir it; but let it boil until the egg rises to the surface in the form of a thick, white scum, and the soup underneath looks perfectly clear, like sherry wine. Then strain it. When the egg is thick and white, as you see this, and the soup is clear underneath, set a colander in an earthen bowl, put a folded towel, doubled, in it, pour the soup into the bowl, and let it run through the colander without squeezing the towel. You see that is a repetition of the direction I gave you for straining the soup in the first place. The egg is in the towel. Now, I am going to put some of the soup into a goblet before coloring it, so that you can see the natural color. A light straw-color is the proper color for clear soup. You will very often find clear soup[40] served to you, even at nice hotels, much darker than that; as dark as what I am going to make now, which is the proper color for the luncheon soups called bouillon. The coloring is a matter of taste. The clear soup, or consomme, is to be served plain like that, or with the addition of any macaroni paste, or poached eggs, and then it takes its name from the additional ingredient which goes into the clear soup. Julienne soup is served with strips of vegetables in it, as I may tell you in some subsequent lesson.
Half a pound of shortening to a pound of flour, the shortening to be rubbed into the flour with the hands until it is so thoroughly mixed that it seems like meal, but not at all melted or softened; then just enough cold water to make a pastry which will roll out. Roll out the pastry and use it at once to line the pie plates. Fill the plates with sliced apples, or with any fruit or mince meat. To-day I shall use sliced apples. Sprinkle flour over the pastry, and then roll it out and line the plates; wet the lower crust to make the upper crust stick to it. Cut two or three little slits in the upper crust. Take care not to press the outer edges of the crust together. After the upper crust has been put on the pie brush it with beaten egg, if you wish it to be glossy when it is done. Then put it in a moderate oven and bake it for three-quarters of an hour, until you are very sure that the apple is done. You can tell that by trying the apple through the little cuts that you make in the pastry. This morning, in making pastry, you remember that we rolled and folded it a number of times. I simply roll this out once, just enough to get it thin enough to use for my pie. First roll out the pastry, and cut off the cover for the top of the pie. Lay it one side, and then roll out the rest and use it for the pie, as I have already directed. Use Greening apples if you can get them. These are table apples. They are not so good for pies for two or three reasons. They will not keep their form when they are baked in the pie, and they may not be perfectly tender. These will break and grow very soft as soon as they begin to cook.
I might, while I am making our pie, say a little about flour in general use in the family. As a rule I use what is called pastry flour, best for pie crusts. Pastry flour has more starch in it than ordinary family flour, or bread flour. The starch is the interior of the grain. The family flour is the grain ground entire, only the husk being removed. From grain ground in that way none of the nutritious elements are removed. You get a greater proportion of gluten, and some of the mineral elements of the grain that lie close to the husk; the flour that has an excess of gluten in it will absorb more water than pastry flour, or flour composed chiefly of starch, and it will make a tougher dough, either in the form of pie crust or bread than a flour which has the most starch in it. It is more nutritious than starchy flour, so that if you want tender, rather white pastry and bread, you must make up your minds to sacrifice some of the nutritious elements of the flour. All through the West the flour which is marketed is made, I think, from the entire wheat, and that is more thoroughly good, and more nutritious, than the so-called choice pastry flour. In the West you have a better flour than we at the East do, if we depend upon the Eastern mills. There are some very good brands of flour made in New York State, but as a rule they are not so full of gluten and not so nutritious as the Western flours. Where flour is made from winter wheat, which lies in the ground all winter long and gathers more of the mineral elements of the soil than spring wheat does, the flour is superior.
The pie is now heaped full of sliced apples by using about half a dozen rather small apples. I suppose you think this is a rather extravagant way to make a pie, but you do not need to put so many apples in unless you want to; we want a nice thick pie. This is cinnamon that I am using for flavoring. Put two heaping tablespoonfuls of sugar on top of the apples in the pie. Finally brush the top of the pie, either with beaten egg or with a little sugar and water dissolved, and put it into the oven to bake.
Now take your recipe for bread making. Use the compressed yeast which you buy at the grocery store. For two small loaves of bread or a large pan of biscuit use a whole cake of yeast. Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water, a cupful of lukewarm water. Then add enough flour to form a thick batter; that will be about a cupful of flour; a thick batter which will cling to the mixing[42] spoon when you lift the spoon and let a drop fall on the surface. Cover the bowl with a towel folded several times, or a thick cloth, so that all the heat can be retained. Then set the bowl somewhere near the fire, in a place not too hot to bear your hand, and let it stand for about half an hour, or until the batter is light and foamy. Keep the bowl covered all the time, and take care that you do not have it in too hot a place. Don’t have it in a place where you can not bear your hand. After the sponge—as the batter is called—is light and foaming, mix in another cupful of lukewarm water in which a teaspoonful of salt is dissolved. After the second cupful of lukewarm water with the teaspoonful of salt dissolved in it, add enough flour to form a dough stiff enough to knead with the hands. Knead the dough on the board for just five minutes. Some good housekeepers would declare that just five minutes’ kneading is flying in the face of Providence in the way of bread making, but I assure you it is enough. That is, it is enough to give you bread of a firm, fine grain, perfectly even in its consistency. It won’t be full of large, uneven holes; it will be firm, fine bread. After you have kneaded the bread five minutes make it up in a little loaf, or two loaves, as you like; put them in small iron pans, buttered—black iron bread pans—and set them again by the fire, where you can bear your hand, and let the little loaves of dough rise until they are just twice as large as when you put them down. That generally will take about half an hour if the yeast is good. Brush the loaves over the top with a little melted butter, or with a teaspoonful of sugar dissolved in water. Put them in the oven and bake them. The bread is to be baked until you can run a sharp knife or trussing needle in through the thickest part of the loaf without the bread sticking in any way. If the needle or knife comes out clean and bright the bread is done. It may take from half an hour to an hour to bake the bread. In the stove that I used the first morning over in the other building I have baked a loaf of bread, the size of those I am going to show you, in eleven minutes. I had not realized that bread could be baked thoroughly in so short a time, but one day in Northampton, Mass., one of my class timed the baking of the bread. A loaf of bread of that size was baked in eleven minutes. This same bread dough you can make up in the form of little rolls. I will make part of it up in rolls. Of course you will understand that the smaller the piece of dough the more rapidly it will rise the second time, and the quicker[43] you will be enabled to bake it. So if you are in a hurry, and want bread baked quickly, you will make it in the form of little rolls; when I make the rolls I will describe the process.
Question. Should bread be baked a long or a short time?
Miss Corson. The sooner it can be baked the better. There is no special object to be gained in the baking of bread except to thoroughly cook the dough. It can not affect the nutriment of the flour very much whether it takes a longer or a shorter time. The nutriment of the flour might be slightly wasted if it took a very long time. There is no objection to baking bread as quickly as it can be done.
Now before I begin to make the pudding I will answer a question that has been asked about the best yeast and the quick rising of bread. The object of raising bread is simply to make it digestible by separating the mass of the dough. If it is firm and solid, that is, if the bread is heavy, it can not be easily penetrated by the gastric juice, and consequently is indigestible. So that the most healthy bread is that which is sufficiently light and porous to allow the gastric juice to penetrate it easily. Only a mechanical operation is required to make the bread light. Now that process which will most quickly make the bread dough light is the most desirable. The longer you take to raise bread, the more slowly you raise, the more of the nutriment of the flour you destroy by the process of fermentation that lightens the bread. The yeast combining with water at a certain temperature causes fermentation, and from that fermentation carbolic acid gas is evolved, which forces its way up through the dough and fills it with little bubbles,—in other words, makes it light. Now the more quickly you can accomplish that fermentation, or rather lightening of the dough by the formation of little air cells, the more you will preserve the nutriment of the flour.
The idea prevails to some extent that if ladies use as much yeast as I have to-day the bread will taste of the yeast. It will not if the yeast is fresh. If the yeast is old or sour it will taste. But you can use as much as I have shown you and not have the bread taste after it is done. You see my object in using a great deal of yeast, proportionately, is to accomplish the lightening of the dough in a very short time. The best bread that ever was made or that ever was put on the market was raised mechanically, without the action of yeast; it was called aerated bread. It was bread dough lightened by a mechanical process. Carbonic acid gas was driven into the dough by machinery after the[44] flour was mixed with salt water; and the bread made was very light and every particle of the nourishment preserved in that way.
Question. Do you ever put sugar in bread?
Miss Corson. You can put in anything you like. You can put sugar, or milk, or anything you like in the bread to vary it. I will use nothing to-day but yeast, flour, water, and salt. This is perfectly plain, wholesome bread. You put milk in bread and it makes it dry quicker. Vienna bread, which is made partly of milk, dries more quickly than any other bread that is made. You can make any variation you like from the recipe I have given you. I have given you a perfectly plain home-made bread.
Question. Do you ever scald the flour for bread?
Miss Corson. You can scald the flour if you wish, but you do not accomplish any special purpose by it. In the winter time, if you heat the flour before you mix it with yeast and warm water, you increase the rapidity with which the bread dough rises.
Question. How would you make brown bread—ordinary graham bread?
Miss Corson. Use graham flour; mix your white flour with it, if it is for graham bread proper; if it is for graham gems use simply graham flour, water and salt, beaten together. Graham flour, salt and water beaten together into a form and baked in little buttered tins is the graham bread pure and simple of the Grahamites. It is not necessary to knead bread more than once to secure lightness. I have already said that the longer you prolong the process of bread making the more of the nourishment of the flour you destroy. You will see when the bread is baked to-day, if we are fortunate in our baking, that the bread is perfectly light and of even grain.
Stale bread cut in slices or small pieces, fill a pudding dish of medium size, only three eggs, or if eggs are very dear, four tablespoonfuls of sugar, and a pint of milk, or enough more milk to saturate the bread. If the bread is very stale and dry you will have to use a pint and a half of milk. Three eggs, a pint of milk, four tablespoons of sugar, will make about a quart of liquid. The custard you pour over the bread; let the custard[45] soak into the bread; then on the top of the pudding put a layer of fruit about an inch thick. You may vary the fruit, using sliced apples, or dried apples which have been soaked over night, and then stewed tender, dried peaches treated in the same way, or canned peaches, canned pears—any fruit you like. In the summer, in berry season, use berries. If the fruit is sour sprinkle it with sugar; then put the pudding in the oven and bake it. You can use dried fruit with this pudding, such as raisins or currants, but you put the fruit in through the pudding instead of on top. If you want to make the pudding particularly good you will separate the white and yolks of the eggs, mix the yolks of the eggs with the milk and sugar; save the whites until the pudding is done; in that case you have to use a little more milk proportionately. Save the whites until the pudding is done, then beat them to a stiff froth and add to it three heaping tablespoons of powdered sugar, very gently mixing them, just as I mixed that light omelette yesterday. That makes what is called a meringue. Put the meringue over the top of the pudding after it is done; run it through the oven for about a minute, just long enough to color it slightly, and then serve the pudding.
If you want the pudding entirely smooth when it is done, you must break the bread up in the custard before you bake it. My way is simply to saturate the bread with the custard. You can beat it if you wish. The pudding will be slightly liquid, like bread pudding, and then the fruit, if it is juicy, makes it still more liquid, and if you add the meringue, that of itself is a sauce. You will notice, as a rule, that I make everything as plain as possible, because I wish to demonstrate that plain dishes cooked with simple and few materials, can be very good. Perforated tin pie plates bake very nicely. Of course you want to take care to have the bottom crust thick enough, so that none of the juice from fruit pies will run through. If the oven is very hot on the bottom, it will not do to set a pie on the very bottom; a grating must be used. You will have to use your judgment about baking, watching the pie, and taking care that it does not get burnt.
(Returning to the bread making, Miss Corson continued:)
Now I am going to put the second cup of water and flour into the dough. You want to remember, in raising bread, to keep it always at the same temperature until you get it light. It should be set where you can put your hand without burning. Keep the bowl, containing the sponge, just warm. You don’t[46] want it anywhere where it will get so hot as to scald the sponge. You can set the bowl in winter over boiling water to keep the temperature equal.
(A question was asked in regard to rhubarb pie.)
Miss Corson. Some ladies put the rhubarb raw into the pies when they make rhubarb pies, trusting to its cooking while the crust is baking; others stew it with sugar before they put it in the pies. When it comes in from the market it should be cut in little pieces about half an inch long, and the outside, or thin skin, stripped off. It requires a great deal of sugar, whether you put it into the pie uncooked, or you first cook it. It makes an exceedingly nice acid pie. Usually the best way is to stew it first before you put it in the pie. That gives it to you in the form of a pulp. If you put it raw into the pie, to a certain extent the form is perfect, that is, it retains its little block-like shape after it is cooked.
(The bread now being ready to knead, Miss Corson recurred to that subject.)
I will take for the dough three cups of flour, about three heaping cupfuls besides the first one. There was an old adage to the effect that some imaginary substance called “elbow grease” was necessary in kneading bread. I presume that is another name for force. But there is no special strength necessary. The bread is kneaded for the purpose of entangling a little more air in it, and you accomplish that by folding and refolding it, as I am doing; just using enough flour to keep it from sticking to your hands. In five minutes you will find that you have a rather smooth, soft dough, that does not stick to your hands. That is all you want. You will always find perfectly good yeast in any town, or you can make the yeast yourself.
Question. If you use twice as much flour would you use twice as much yeast?
Miss Corson. If you want to raise the bread quickly you can increase the quantity of yeast in the same proportion that I have given it you here to-day, until you reach as much as six or seven pounds of flour, and then you would not need to use proportionately as much yeast. You could diminish the quantity a little. You see, the object of using plenty of yeast is to get the bread raised quickly.
Question. Doesn’t home-made yeast make heartier bread than the other?
Miss Corson. It makes bread less digestible—it may be[47] heartier in that sense; the Irishman does not like his potatoes quite done; he thinks them heartier when they are somewhat indigestible. There could not be more nutritious or wholesome bread than this quickly raised bread. I have given you several very good reasons for raising bread as quickly as possible. Bread raised more slowly is not so nutritious, because some of the nutritive elements are destroyed in the fermentation which goes on in the slow process.
To make rolls, take small pieces of dough and make them round, and cut them nearly through the centre. Put the rolls in a buttered pan; cover them up with a cloth and let them rise double their original size, where you can bear your hand. Then bake them. Let the dough always rise until it is twice its size before baking. I think I have already explained to you that if you want the bread or roll glossy you can brush it with sugar and water, or melted butter. These rolls will be set on the top of the stove to rise, just like bread. As soon as they are twice their size they go into the oven to bake.
Question. Do you ever use any shortening in the rolls?
Miss Corson. You can use it if you want to. Knead butter in the part of the dough that is designed for rolls—say a tablespoonful of butter; put it in when you are doing the five minutes’ kneading. There is no reason why you should not knead in anything that your fancy calls for, providing it is edible.
Now I will show you how you can prevent the juice running out of fruit pies. For fruit pies—pies made in the summer time, of juicy fruits—better use no under crust. Take a deep dish; put the fruit into the dish, heaping it a little, just as I heaped the apples; wet the edges of the dish with cold water; lay the pastry on the dish and press it very slightly, not on the edge itself, because that makes the pastry heavy, but just inside of the edge. As I press it I leave the edge intact; press the pastry against the dish all the way round; then with your finger make a little groove all the way round your pie, inside the edge of the crust; then, with a little knife, cut holes in the groove. Now, when the juice of the fruit boils out, as it will, instead of forcing its way out of the edges, the crust will be held upon the wet dish, and the fruit juice will boil out in the little groove and stay there. To serve the pie, you cut the upper crust with a sharp knife, and serve with a spoon, taking a piece of crust and plenty of fruit out on each plate. No under crust is there. If you have an under crust with very juicy pie it will be pretty[48] sure to be soggy and heavy. The English way of serving these pies is a very nice one, and is, as I have described, with whipped cream. Serve whipped cream with a fruit pie. Among other nice things that we can not get in this country is Devonshire cream, which is a cream almost as thick as the hard sauce you make by mixing powdered sugar and egg together; it is thick enough almost to cut. We can not get that cream here, but use thick, nice cream, sweetened or not, as you like. One of my English friends, who first taught me this way of serving pie, said that at her home they never sweetened the cream; they simply whipped it to a froth and served it piled up on a dish by the side of the pie. The pie was taken out on a plate, and then two or three spoonfuls of this whipped cream laid on the plate by the side of the pie. You can sweeten it if you like.
I will next make a meringue. I have already told you to use the whites of three eggs, three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar—and that really must be pulverized very fine and sifted. In beating the eggs you can always get them light very quickly, if they are reasonably cold in the beginning, by beating with a change of movement. Beat until your hand grows tired, and then simply change the way you hold the beater. Don’t stop beating. Of course you can use any kind of an egg-whip you like. This which I use is made of twisted wire. Only take care to have the egg beaten entirely stiff. Do not have any liquid egg in the bottom of the bowl. In the summer time you can cool the egg by putting in a little pinch of salt if it does not beat stiff at once. I would not advise using an egg that had the least odor about it. As soon as the custard in the pudding is done we are going to take the pudding out of the oven, and put the meringue on the top, whether the apples are done or not. It does not do any harm to stop beating for awhile. Mix this, using a cutting motion, not a stirring motion. Mix until the sugar and egg are smoothly blended, and the meringue is ready to use.
Our lesson this morning is cream of salmon; shoulder of lamb, boned and roasted; force meat or stuffing for roast meats; potatoes, boiled and baked; and cheese crusts. I shall begin with the lamb or mutton.
Remove the bone first, then stuff and bake the meat, as I have no facilities for roasting with this stove; but I will have something to say about the process of roasting in the course of the lesson. A great many of the ladies think that the shoulder or fore quarters of meat is not so desirable a piece for use as the loin or hind quarter, but that is a mistake. In the first place the proportion of bone in the fore quarter is very much less than in the hind quarter. In one lesson that I gave, about a week ago, at Cleveland, I had a butcher remove all the bones from a fore quarter weighing between five and six pounds, and then weighed the bones: They weighed a pound and a quarter. I also had him remove the bones from the hind quarters and weighed them, and they weighed more. The meat of the fore quarter is sweeter, and quite as nutritious as the meat of the hind quarter, and the fore quarter is always cheaper. So that, you see, on the score of flavor and economy, the fore quarter is more desirable for use than the hind quarter. In England, where mutton is always in perfection, it is the fore quarter or shoulder of mutton that is served to guests, and the hind quarter is the one that is used for the family dinner.
To make the dish which I am going to prepare this morning, I have had the whole quarter brought in so that I can show you how the shoulder should be cut off. Simply with a large piece of the outside skin attached. Usually the butcher might cut the shoulder square off close, but I want this large piece of skin for stuffing. There is a natural division between the shoulder and the ribs, so that the shoulder comes off with perfect ease. If you buy an entire fore quarter like that you will have the butcher cut off the shoulder for roasting or baking, then let him cut the neck in rather small pieces for stews or mutton broth. What is called the rack or ribs would be cut into chops for broiling or frying, and the breast would be cut off entire to be stewed or roasted or baked. A very nice way to prepare the breast is to have the bones all taken out, spread a layer of nice force[50] meat or stuffing over it, roll it up, and tie it. Then it can be baked, or roasted, or stewed. Another nice way to cook the breast is to boil it until it is tender enough to enable you to pull the bones out without any difficulty; then take out all the bones, put it on a platter, set another platter on top of it with a heavy weight on the top platter, and press it until it is cold. Then cut it in rather small pieces, about two or three inches square, and bread and fry it. The process of breading and frying is accomplished in this way. You have cracker crumbs—cracker crumbs rolled and sifted—or bread crumbs, stale bread, dried in the oven and rolled and sifted, in a large dish. In another dish beat a couple of eggs until they are liquid. It does not need to be frothy, but simply to have the substance of the egg well broken; then dip the little pieces of boiled lamb, first in the cracker dust, then in the beaten egg, then again in the cracker dust. That is called breading. To fry properly, so that you have no grease, you want the frying kettle half full of fat. You don’t want a little fat in a frying pan, but a frying kettle like that which you use in frying doughnuts. Put the kettle over the fire and let the fat get hot, that is, let it get so hot that it begins to smoke. When the fat begins to smoke you plunge whatever article you wish to fry into it. If you take the precaution to do that, have plenty of fat and let it get smoking hot and then fry in it, you will never have anything greasy. The action of the hot fat at once so carbonizes the surface of what you wish to fry, and prevents the soaking of the fat. Fry whatever article you are treating until it is a light brown, then take it out of the fat with a skimmer, and lay it on brown paper for a moment—coarse brown paper—and that will absorb the very little fat on the surface. It will be perfectly free from grease. You can season before you bread an article, or you can season the bread crumbs or cracker dust which you use in breading, just as you like. Or, after the article is fried you can season it with salt and pepper. Some things are seasoned after the frying—for instance, Saratoga potatoes—they are always salted after frying. You can make bread crumbs very fine by using a fine sieve and sifting. If you have cracker meal already prepared you will see that it is as fine as Indian meal; it is sold in the grocery stores and at the cracker factories, and it is cheaper to buy cracker dust or cracker meal than it is to make it at home, if you buy the whole crackers, because, of course the manufacturers can afford to use their broken crackers—they are all [51]perfectly good—in making cracker meal and sell that very much cheaper than they can sell the whole crackers. The question of the digestibility of fried articles of food is very often raised. You understand that the hard fried surface is less digestible than any soft surface, and many fried articles are indigestible because of the quantity of grease they contain. If you fry in the way I have told you, you will not have that excess of grease.
To take the bone from the shoulder, first cut from the inside and take out the shoulder blade, cutting from the inside, avoiding as far as possible cutting through the skin on the outside. The butcher will always do this for you probably, if you tell him about what you want done. First, the shoulder blade is taken out, then the bone which follows down along the leg. After the shoulder blade is taken out put it into a kettle of water, over the fire, and boil it for awhile until you can scrape all the meat off of it. You will have to use it in finishing the dish. After taking out the shoulder blade the cutting must all be done from the inside. There will be two or three places where you may possibly cut through the skin, where it is drawn very close over the bone, but cut as little as possible. When the meat is freshly killed before the skin is dried, you may not always cut through there, but where the skin is dried fast to the bone you will have to. This may seem a slight waste of time, but this dish is desirable for several reasons. In the first place, the bone being entirely taken out you can carve it without any waste whatever and with a great deal of ease. In the next place it gives you a very ornamental dish. In fact, I am going to show you how to make a duck out of it. And as I say, if you get the butcher to do it, it will not make any difference to you if it does take time.
Always in sewing meat or poultry, ladies, take very large stitches, not with fine thread. Use cord, so that you can see where the threads are when the meat is done. Any kind of a large needle will answer for sewing, large enough to carry your cord. Always leave long ends too.
To stuff the meat, season it nicely with pepper and salt and any herb that you are going to use in making stuffing. Sage, of course, would be very good with fat meat; put onion in the stuffing to make it imitate duck. For a force meat of bread, a teaspoonful of chopped onion; fry it in a tablespoonful of butter until it is light brown. While the onion is frying soak a cupful of stale bread in cold water until it is soft, then squeeze out the water. Put the soaked bread with the fried onion, add a [52]teaspoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of any herb that you decide for seasoning, any dried sweet herb, half a saltspoonful of pepper, and stir all these ingredients over the fire until they are scalding hot. Use that force meat for stuffing any kind of meat or poultry. Of course there are a great many ways of making force meats; this is only one, and a very simple one. Another good stuffing for duck or for this dish, if you wish it more closely to imitate duck, would be to increase the quantity of onion—use much more onion, half a cupful of onion, or even more when you want to make onion stuffing. Another way is to use dry bread without cooking, a chopped onion, herbs, butter; some ladies like to put an egg in stuffing. There are a great many different methods of making it. Cold, chopped meat is very nice added to stuffing or dressing.
After the shoulder is stuffed thus, run a needle entirely round the edge in a large, over-hand stitch, so that you can draw it up like a purse; stitches at least an inch and a half long. That draws the edge up. Then take two or three stitches in such a way as to hold the stuffing in. Remember always to leave long ends in tying the cord used in sewing. Then curl the leg up like the neck of a duck and fasten with a cord. After it is prepared like that it is to be put into a pan in the oven, or before a hot fire, and browned quickly on the outside. It may be seasoned after it is browned. There will be a little drippings in the pan; baste it with the drippings; bake it or roast it, allowing, if you want it well done, about twenty minutes to the pound. A shoulder like that will weigh about two pounds and a half or three pounds. It will do in an hour’s time in a pretty quick oven; in an hour and a half in a moderate one. Use no water in the baking pan, because water never can get as hot as the fat outside of the meat. The temperature of the hot fat is higher than the temperature of hot water, and the result of putting water around meat in a baking pan is to draw out the juice. The object is to keep all the juice in the meat. You will always find that there will be drippings enough from any ordinary cut of meat for the purpose of basting. If you have an absolutely lean piece of meat pour about a couple of tablespoonfuls of drippings, or butter, in the baking pan, but no water, and use the drippings for basting. A nice gravy is very easily made from the drippings in the pan. I will tell you about that later. If the meat appears to be baking too quickly, if there is any danger of its burning, put a sheet of buttered paper over it.[53] Baste the meat every fifteen or twenty minutes. You can drench it with flour, just before basting, if you want to. That gives it a rough surface. The flour browns with the fat. If you are basting with water of course the flour would not brown so quickly. I think I have given you good reasons for not basting it with water.
A cupful of boiled salmon separated from the skin and bone and rubbed through a sieve with a potato masher, mixed with a quart of cream soup, gives you cream of salmon. Any of the ladies who have seen cream sauce made will understand the making of the cream soup. Put a slice of salmon that will make a cupful, over the fire in enough boiling water to cover it, with a heaping tablespoonful of salt, and boil it until the flakes separate. That will be perhaps ten minutes. Watch it a little. When the flakes separate drain it, take away the skin and bones and put it into a fine colander or stout wire sieve, and rub it through with a potato masher.
Question. Do you use canned salmon?
Miss Corson. Yes, you can use canned salmon. That is already cooked, and you simply would rub it through the sieve. The fresh salmon is to be boiled in salted water. If you use canned salmon you do not need to boil it. After the salmon is rubbed through the sieve it is called puree or pulp of salmon.
Now to make a quart of cream soup: For each quart of soup put in the sauce pan a heaping tablespoonful of butter, a heaping tablespoonful of flour; put them over the fire and stir them until they are quite smooth. Then begin to add hot milk, half a cupful at a time, stirring each half cupful smoothly with the butter and flour before you add any more, till you have added a quart, or if milk is scarce a pint of milk and a pint of water. If you haven’t any milk at all, a quart of water. That gives you a white soup, if you add simply water; if you add milk it is called cream soup. If you are very fortunate and have lots of cream, in place of some of the milk, use cream, and then you will have genuine cream soup. After the milk or water is all added, then season the soup palatably with salt and pepper—white pepper. I have told you about white pepper. It is to be had at all the grocery stores; it costs no more than black pepper and is very much nicer for any white soup or white sauce. Salt and pepper[54] to taste, and a very little grated nutmeg; a quarter of a saltspoonful, a little pinch of grated nutmeg. After the soup is seasoned stir in the salmon. I have told you already how to prepare the salmon. Stir the soup constantly until it boils for a couple of minutes. By that time you will find that the salmon is stirred smoothly all through it. Then it will be ready to serve, and it is very good. You can use any other kind of fish in the same way, and your soup will take its name from the fish that you use. Halibut or codfish, trout or any fish. Only remember if you want the soup to be white you must use the white part of the fish. For instance, if you had a large dark fish you would want to take off the brown parts and use only the white parts. Otherwise the brown parts of the fish will color the soup. You can use cream soup as the basis for vegetable soups that are very nice. Prepare the vegetables in the same way; boil them, and rub them through a sieve with a potato masher. Then stir them into the cream soup. Use asparagus, celery, cucumbers, green peas, string beans, Jerusalem artichokes,—those little root artichokes,—any vegetable, in fact, varying the quantity of vegetable in this way. You will find that some vegetables will give a much more decided flavor than others. For instance, celery has a very strong flavor, and cucumbers have rather a decided flavor. You want to use enough vegetables to flavor the soup, if it is a white vegetable. If it is a vegetable that has a decided color like carrots, for instance, or beets,—by the way, beets make a delicious soup, and a very pretty one is made with spinach,—you want to use enough to color the soup. The beets, boiled so that all the color is preserved, and then rubbed through a sieve, make a very pretty soup. One of our New York pupils calls it a “pink velvet soup.” Spinach makes a very nice green soup if it is properly boiled. We shall try to get some spinach for one of the lessons. We have puree of spinach on our list, and if we can get any spinach I will show you how to boil it so as to keep its color.
The boiling of potatoes is a very simple operation, but there is a good deal of talking to be done in connection with it. It does not make any difference whether you use hot water or cold in boiling potatoes. What you want to watch is the stage at which you take the potatoes out of the water. That is what determines whether they are to be mealy or not. The cause of[55] the potatoes being mealy is the rupture of the starch cells and the escape of the steam just at the right moment, just when the potatoes are tender; and if you leave them in the water after they are tender, then the membrane of the starch cells being broken permits the water to penetrate; even if the skins are not cut or broken, the moisture in the starch cells themselves will condense and make the potato heavy, so that you want to give the steam a chance to escape as soon as the potatoes are tender. If you will do that you are sure of mealy potatoes, provided the potatoes are ripe. Unripe potatoes, or new potatoes, or sprouted or frosted potatoes, you cannot well make mealy, because the starch cells in the new potatoes are not fully matured, in the old sprouted potatoes they are disorganized, especially as the little sprouts take up the nutritive properties which enable them to grow. But if you use ripe potatoes, before they are beginning to sprout, and pour the water off of them when they are tender and allow the steam to escape, you will be sure to have the potatoes mealy, unless they are watery potatoes; the ordinary market potatoes will be sure to be mealy. Now you can insure the escape of the steam by draining the potatoes and covering them with a towel folded several times; that is, draining off all the water as soon as the potatoes are tender enough to enable you to run a fork through them. Do not wait until they begin to break apart, because by that time the starch cells are being broken up, and the water will have begun to penetrate to the interior of the potato.
After boiling the potatoes, either in cold or hot water, until they are tender, drain them and put a folded towel over them in the sauce pan. Set the sauce pan on the back part of the stove where the potatoes can not burn, or put it up on a brick on the back part of the stove. The potatoes may be peeled or not, as you choose; if you peel the potatoes in the most careful way, that is, cutting the thinnest possible skin off, you will waste at least an ounce in every pound. A very good way to peel potatoes is to take off just a little rim of the skin all around them and boil them; then if you want to peel them before they go to the table, it will be easy to strip off the two pieces of skin remaining. In order to save time I shall put the potatoes into boiling water enough to cover them, with a tablespoonful of salt. Take about a quart of water and a tablespoonful of salt. I have already said that as soon as the potatoes are tender enough to pierce with a fork, not when they are beginning to[56] break, and they are drained, cover them with a cloth and keep them hot as long as you like. In about three or four minutes after they have been covered with the cloth they will begin to grow mealy, as the steam escapes; and you can keep them hot and mealy for three or four hours. It makes very little difference with potatoes, although with some kinds of vegetables it makes a decided difference, whether you boil them in hard or soft water. But as a rule soft water is best for boiling vegetables. You can always soften the water by putting a very little carbonate of soda in it, to counteract the extreme hardness of the water, which is caused by lime or mineral elements. The hardness of water slightly hardens the surface of vegetables, but it has an entirely different action on meats. It slightly hardens the surface—not enough to make the vegetable tough, by any means, but enough to retain all the juices and all the flavors. Do not have the potatoes tightly covered after they are cooked, because the steam will condense on the inside of the cover and fall back on the potatoes, thus making them watery. In serving potatoes on the table after they are cooked, do not put a cover on the dish; put a folded napkin over the potatoes. Do not put the dish cover on—it will have the same effect that it would have if you put the cover on the pot. The steam arising would condense, and fall back on the potatoes in the form of moisture, and make the potatoes watery.
In baking potatoes, the same general principles apply. That is, at the moment when the potatoes are tender—and that of course depends upon the oven in which you bake them—the starch cells are ruptured and the moisture is at the point of escaping if you give it vent by slightly breaking the potato, then the potatoes will keep mealy for a little while. But baked potatoes deteriorate every moment they stand after they are tender. You should serve baked potatoes just the moment they are done, if you want them to be perfect. If you wrap them up in a napkin it keeps in the steam. The longer they stand, the more of the hard skin forms on them, and if you let them stand for half an hour or more you find the skin sometimes a sixteenth of an inch thick. You can take a little slice off the end without breaking them, to permit the escape of the steam. But serve them just as quick as you can. In sending them to the table do not put the dish cover on them. Throw a napkin over them to keep the heat in. I have found that in baking potatoes that the hotter the oven the better the potatoes would be; that is, the[57] more quickly they would be baked. I have been able to bake them sometimes in twenty minutes.
To soak potatoes in cold water restores a little of their moisture that may have been lost by the natural evaporation. For instance, late in the winter you will find potatoes slightly shriveled. That is caused by the escape of the moisture. If you had weighed them in the fall, and weighed them again at that time you would find they weighed less. To soak them for an hour or more before you cook them is to restore that wasted water and to increase the substance of the potato. There is very little nutriment lost in the waste of the moisture; it is only the bulk of the potato. You do not need to salt the water in which the potatoes are soaked. The only effect of salting water would be to make it colder. In soaking green vegetables it is well to salt the water, because if there are any insects in the vegetables they are killed by the action of the salt. In lettuce, or cabbage, or cauliflower, there are insects that hide away among the leaves, and salt kills them. In regard to the soaking of the green vegetables, of course, directly the insects are dead they naturally fall of their own weight from among the leaves. But if the leaves are closely packed, as sometimes they are in cabbage or lettuce; you want to hold the vegetable by the root and turn it up and with your hands separate the leaves without tearing; if lettuce is used, take care not to tear them; if cauliflower is being washed, take hold of the root and shake it well through the water, so that the motion will dislodge the little creatures.
For cheese crusts use bread that is a day or two old, baker’s bread or home-made bread; baker’s bread is the best for toast of all kinds, and this is a sort of toast. Cut the bread in even slices, rather small, cutting off the crusts. There is no waste in doing that, for I have already told you how to use up pieces of stale bread by making them into crumbs. Grate some cheese so that you have a tablespoonful of cheese for each little slice of bread. On each of the little pieces of bread put a tablespoonful of the grated cheese, a very little dust of pepper and salt and a small piece of butter not larger than a white dried bean. Put the pieces of bread in a pan, set the pan in a rather quick oven, and just brown the cheese crusts. If the oven is in a good condition it will toast the bread and brown the cheese in about ten minutes, or[58] even less; they are very good, those little cheese crusts. You can use them either hot or cold. They are a very nice supper dish. They are very good with salad at dinner, with any green salad. Of course, if you serve them hot the cheese is a little more tender. Any kind of cheese will answer for making the crusts. I think that the ordinary American factory cheese is about as good as any other cheese. You do not want a rich expensive cheese for cheese crusts.
(At this point the stuffed shoulder of mutton was brought forth, done, the fan-shaped shoulder blade being stuck in to represent the tail of the duck, which the whole dish strongly resembled.)
There are about two tablespoonfuls of drippings in the pan. I am going to put a heaping tablespoonful of flour with it and stir until it is brown; then I am going to stir in gradually about a pint of boiling water, and season it with salt and pepper, and then I will send it down and show it to you. Make gravy in this way for any baked meat.
Our first dish this afternoon, ladies, will be roast chicken. The lesson will include fish and poultry. First, to choose a tender chicken, examine the tip end of the breastbone—the lower end of the breast bone, to see if it is soft; if it bends without breaking under pressure; in other words, if the cartilage has not hardened into bone, you may be sure that the chicken is young, and consequently probably tender. The market people have a favorite way of showing you that the chicken is tender by taking hold of the wing and giving the joint a twist. They say, “You see how tender it is!” But that is no test except of strength. But there is no ingenuity which can simulate that soft cartilage on the end of the breast bone. That is always a sure test. After choosing the chicken—of course now I am speaking of dressed chicken, or chickens that are killed—after choosing the chicken, have it carefully picked and singed; then, if it is undrawn, wipe it with a wet towel, and proceed to draw it carefully without breaking the intestines. If it is drawn [59]already the chances are that it will be imperfectly drawn and you will have to wash it. There is the disadvantage of having poultry drawn before it goes to the market, because where people draw poultry in large quantities they are very apt to do it carelessly. In that case it is necessary to wash it, but if you draw it carefully yourself you will not have to do that. By washing, you of course take away the flavor, as I told you the other day, because you lose more or less of the blood.
Cut the skin of the back of the neck and take out the crop, then out off the neck close to the body, that leaves the skin so that you can draw it up and fasten it back. If this chicken was not already cut for drawing I should cut it at one side under one of the legs, so that when I came to sew it up and dress it I could hide the cut. This chicken has been drawn carefully and does not seem to need washing. The liver and gizzard have been laid back inside. The entrails are all taken away. You can always tell by looking at the chicken whether the entrails are broken and whether it needs washing. After you have drawn the chicken very carefully separate the gall from the liver. The gall is that little greenish bag that lies on one side of the liver; and you want to cut it off without breaking, because if you break it it will make bitter everything that it touches. Save whatever fat there is about the entrails, and put it in the baking pan with the chicken. The gizzard has been cut open from one side and the inside bag which contains gravel and straw taken out. But a very much easier way to dress the gizzard instead of opening it, is to cut away the bluish skin which lies on the outside, on both sides, without opening the gizzard at all, and cut out that piece of flesh. That is the only valuable portion of the gizzard; if you dress the gizzard in this way when it is not already opened you save yourself a great deal of trouble, for it is a very hard matter to open a gizzard like that and take away the bag which contains the gravel, especially if the poultry has been frozen, as the bag is apt to break and let out the gravel. Use the gizzard and liver for making gravy, and the neck also. Cut out the oil sac or bag which lies at the back of the tail. Then the chicken is ready for stuffing. In cutting off the feet cut them below the joint, not just at the joint. If you cut them just at the joint the skin and flesh will draw up in cooking. But if you cut them just below the joint you will find that they do not draw up. After cutting off the feet scrape the skin all round to make sure that there are no bits of feather or anything of that sort, and[60] wipe it with a wet towel and you have the chicken in readiness to stuff.
Stuff it with any force meat that you like. You remember this morning that we made force meat by chopping a teaspoonful of onion and frying it in a tablespoonful of butter, then putting in with the fried onion a cupful of stale bread soaked in cold water, seasoning with salt and pepper and sweet herbs. I said also that you could add chopped meat, cold meat or eggs, or to make any desired addition to the force meat in the way of seasoning. A little grated cheese in stuffing is very nice. You scarcely will realize what the seasoning is. I will use a little grated cheese this afternoon to make a force meat—very like what I made this morning, except in addition to the chopped onion, fried in a tablespoonful of butter, seasoned with salt and pepper, I shall put in half a cupful of grated cheese. You may like to know my way of chopping onion. In the first place, I make a lot of little cuts in one direction as far down as I think I shall need in order to get my teaspoonful; then I make little cuts in the other direction, and then by slicing it across you get your chopped onion. A very nice addition to force meat is chestnuts, either our ordinary American chestnut, or French or Italian chestnuts. These are quite large. I presume they are for sale at the fruit stores here. Our ordinary American chestnut is very good. Choose rather large chestnuts and either roast or boil them; take off the husks and skins and thus use them to stuff the chicken with, either simply using the chestnuts seasoned with salt, pepper and butter, or if you have boiled or roasted and skinned them, mix them with bread and seasoning. Then, after having prepared the force meat, you put it into the chicken, sew it up and truss it into shape. I will show you directly how to do that so as to keep the chicken plump, and so that it does not, in roasting, spread apart. I shall sew it with a trussing needle and a cord, or you might accomplish the same purpose, by using skewers, putting the skewers just where I put the cords. In sewing up a chicken after it is stuffed, remember what I said this morning; take large stitches with coarse cord so that you can easily see where to take the threads out when the chicken is done. After the chicken is trussed, if you are going to bake it, put it into a pan without any water, for the same reason that I gave you this morning. The water will soak it, half simmer it; you do not need water to keep it from burning, because a little drippings will soon come from the chicken; brown[61] it and then dredge it with flour, and baste it every fifteen minutes or so. Bake it until it is tender and nicely brown; the time of course depends upon the heat of the oven. Truss the chicken first, pushing the legs as far up as you can towards the breast, and run the trussing needle, which is simply a long needle, through so as to hold the legs fast. Then either bend the wings back in turning them, or simply fold them together and secure them with the same string. By drawing the string tight, you keep the bird plump; keep it drawn together, and when the bird is done all you have to do is to take these two ends of string in one hand, make one cut and pull the string out.
The liver, the gizzard, the heart, the neck and the feet, use in making gravy. Of course the gizzard, liver and heart are all right as they are now prepared. If you wish to add the feet, you will scald them and scrape off the skin. Then cut off the ends of the claws, and you have the feet perfectly clean; put them with the gizzard, liver and heart to boil as the basis of your gravy. The French people always save all the feet of all kinds of poultry. They prepare them in this way and put them into soups; sometimes they cook them till the bones grow gelatinous, till they are very soft and tender; they dress them with sauce and serve them as what they call an entree or side dish. They make a dish which is more delicate than pigs’ feet. Of course in a large kitchen where a great deal of poultry is used it is possible to make a very good-sized dish of them.
I shall use this chicken for fricassee; it has been singed, picked and wiped with a wet towel.
First, cut the skin down back of the neck, and cut off the neck. I shall talk about this chicken as if it was not drawn at all. Showing you how to cut it up and draw it at the same time. Cut off the neck and take out the crop, as I showed you with the other chicken. Then cut off the wings, taking a little of the breast with the wings. Find the joint where the wings join the body, cut at that joint; then, instead of cutting the wing right off short, take a little piece of the breast with it. That gives you a nice piece. Then cut the wing in two, and cut off the tip, which is dry; that you can cook in the fricassee, or not, as you please. It flavors, but there is very little meat on it. The other part of the wing you want, of course, to use. Put the pieces of[62] chicken on two plates, putting the good pieces on one plate and the inferior pieces on the other. Having taken off the wing, take off what is called the wing side bone. Then cut forward and break off the shoulder bone. The idea is to cut the breast into several good-sized pieces. Cutting in this way you sacrifice what is called the merry-thought or wishbone. You either can cut off the side bone or not. Cut off the other wing in the same way. Then cut off the leg and second joint together. Instead of cutting the leg in two pieces at both joints, cut it in three pieces, that gives you two pieces of the second joint. In cooking chicken for fricassee you want to have the pieces about one size, so that they will cook easily. Then if they are one size they are much easier to help.
Next, to separate the breast from the back bone, cut down through the ribs on each side. If the chicken has not been drawn be careful with your knife, not to cut into the entrails. Then you can take the breast off, and if the chicken is not drawn, all the entrails will be exposed, and you can draw it with perfect ease. The lungs of the chicken, which are those light red organs on the side of the back bone, are always used by the French in cookery, not only those organs in chicken but in the larger carcasses of meat. They are quite as much food as the heart or liver. I am not in the habit of using them, but they are quite as available. After the breast has been taken off, cut it up in several pieces. First, cut off the entire tip, leaving that in one piece. Then cut the remainder in two or four pieces, according to its size. Next cut the back bone. There is a natural division in the upper part of the back bone that breaks there; cut that off and trim off the ribs. In cutting the lower part of the back bone, instead of cutting it just in two, making rather queer pieces to help, cut off the upper part of it leaving it entire, not splitting that part of it. In that way, cut off the portion called the “oysters,”—two little pieces of flesh in the upper part of the back bone, that are considered very nice. On one plate we have the inferior parts, on the other the nice parts of the chicken, being all cut in pieces of one size. It is easy to help, it cooks more evenly, and is rather nicer than if you had it in two or three sizes. Part of the chicken I am going to make into a brown fricassee, and part of it I am going to fry. There would be thirteen pieces if we counted the two pieces of the back bone. There are half a dozen of the poor pieces, not counting the wing pieces or neck. The question is asked whether[63] the cords or sinews should be drawn from the legs. You can do that with old poultry if you want to, because those cords never get very tender. It is not necessary to do it with medium tender poultry.
First brown the chicken, using either some of the chicken fat, or butter, or salad oil for browning it. Now, since the question of using salad oil in cooking has come up, suppose I cook this chicken with salad oil so that you can taste it. After all, that is the best test you possibly can have as to whether you like salad oil in cooking. I shall put in just salad oil enough to cover the bottom of the sauce pan. That is enough to prevent sticking. For a chicken of three pounds take about three or four tablespoonfuls of salad oil; just enough to cover the bottom of the sauce pan. First put the sauce pan containing the salad oil over the fire and let it get hot; then put in the chicken and brown it. Now, can you notice the slightly aromatic odor? That is the oil, and directly you notice that odor, and the oil begins to smoke, it is hot enough. As soon as the chicken is brown,—and you can brown it just as fast as you want to,—then put a heaping tablespoonful of flour over it—some of the ladies will have seen the same process in making the brown stew of meat the other day—and stir the chicken until the flour is brown. When the flour is brown on the chicken,—and that will be by the time you get it well stirred up,—then add boiling water enough to cover it. When the flour is brown among the chicken, put in boiling water enough to cover it, season it with pepper and salt, palatably, and let it cook until it is tender. That will take from half an hour to two hours, according to the toughness of the chicken. Remember the more slowly you cook it after it once begins to cook, the nicer it will be. Cover up the sauce pan after the fricassee is seasoned, and cook it until it is tender. In the cooking of chicken the gravy that you make by putting boiling water on seems to boil away, and you may want to add a little more; just keep enough gravy over it to cover it, and when it is tender it is ready to serve. The odor you notice now is the aromatic odor of that salad oil, and is all that you will get in cooking with olive oil.
Next the fried chicken, Maryland style, will be prepared. We will fry the chicken, and then I will tell you about hominy. The Southern cooks use lard for frying, either lard entirely or[64] half lard and half butter; enough to cover the bottom of the frying pan about half an inch. Let the fat get hot, put some flour on a plate, season it with salt and pepper, and roll the pieces of chicken in it. When the fat is hot in the pan and the chicken has been rolled in the flour, put it into the hot fat and fry it brown, first on one side and then on the other. Of course tender chicken is generally used for this dish so that by the time it is fried brown it is done. Fry the chicken until it is tender and brown. Take up the chicken when it is brown, put it on a hot dish; in the frying pan where it was fried, put enough cream to make a good gravy, stirring it constantly. You see there will be flour on the pan off the fried chicken that will thicken the gravy. Season the gravy with salt and pepper, pour it over the chicken and serve it. Some of the colored cooks whom I have seen prepare this dish first dip their chicken in water before rolling it in the butter and flour. That is for the purpose of making more flour stick to it; but there is always this disadvantage, if you do that there will be some particles of water remaining, and when you put it in the hot fat it will sputter very much. You can do that or not as you like. While the chicken is being browned I will tell you how to prepare the hominy. Of course the chicken is to be seasoned with more pepper and salt if you wish, in addition to what you put on in the first place with the flour.
First pick the hominy over and wash it. Fine hominy is generally used for this dish. Put it over the fire in cold water, a cupful of hominy to about four cupfuls of water. Boil it and stir it often enough to prevent sticking, until it begins to be tender. Boil it for an hour, until it begins to grow tender. Then place it where there is no danger of burning, pour off the water, or leave off the cover of the sauce pan so that the water will evaporate. The hominy will need to cook pretty nearly an hour, and when it is done or nearly done it should be as thick as hasty pudding. If you have a double boiler you can put in very much less water, for there is no danger of burning. I think you would need only about half or a little more than half as much water. Only take care to leave the cover off the kettle if you find that the hominy is going to be thinner than hasty pudding when it is nearly done. If the hominy is used rather coarse, about five minutes before it is done mix a tablespoonful of flour with just[65] enough water or milk to make it a thin liquid, and stir it into the hominy. That will hold it together when it is cold, so that it can be cut into slices. In making hasty pudding you can put that tablespoonful of flour in to hold it together when it is cold. You want to allow long enough for the flour to boil thoroughly; before dishing the hominy when it is tender pour it into an earthen dish or shallow tin pan wet with cold water, and let it get cold and hard. Always make this in advance of your fried chicken. You want the hominy cold and solid so that you can cut it. Cut it in little cakes about an inch thick and two inches square. These little cakes of hominy are to be fried either in the pan with the chicken or in another pan by the side of the chicken, and served on a dish with the chicken.
I have here some fish which I shall fry. We will not try broiled fish, because this has been frozen; we will do that some other day. In frying fish use either Indian meal or flour, seasoned with salt and pepper, to roll the fish in. Fry the fish in lard or the drippings from salt pork. In case you use salt pork, fry it brown. Olive oil is one of the nicest fats for frying fish. You may have your choice whether I fry with lard or oil. We will fry in oil. If you use lard at all you want it to be very nice. In the frying pan I shall put about half an inch of oil; that is less than half a cupful. Put it over the fire and let it get hot, just as I did for the chicken. This is frozen fish that has been thawed. Cut the fish in pieces about two inches square and roll them either in flour seasoned with pepper and salt, or Indian meal, as I told you; put them into the oil when the oil is hot. As soon as the fish is browned nicely it will be done. You can add more seasoning than there is in the flour. Use Indian meal with pork; it is particularly nice.
Our lesson this morning, ladies, will begin with pea soup with crusts. This soup I shall make with the addition of a little onion. You remember the other day we made pea soup perfectly plain. We shall cook salt codfish stewed in cream, venison with currant jelly, stewed carrots, and cabinet pudding. First the peas will be put on the fire to boil, and I shall begin to make the pudding.
The cabinet pudding as I shall make it to-day will be rather elaborate. You can make it more plainly. It is made of cake,—sponge cake is the best,—French candied fruit, eggs and milk. So that, first, I shall give you the recipe for the pudding as I make it to-day, and then I will give you the recipe for the plainer form. For the pudding use a pudding mould of the size I have in my hand (holding about a quart), about half a pound of French candied fruit, which you can get at the confectionaries here; I have to-day candied cherries, a little candied pear, a green lime candied, a small orange, and an apricot. I shall also use a very little citron, about an ounce of citron. That I want simply for the effect of the green part of the citron. Put the citron in the form of small leaves. The large fruits cut in slices, which you may leave round or cut in the form of stars or to imitate a flower bud. After you have cut the fruit, butter a perfectly plain tin pudding mould thickly with cold butter,—quite thickly. Have the butter cold; lay the fruit against the mould in the form of a wreath, or a star, or any fanciful form you like, some on the bottom of the mould and some on the sides. The cold butter will hold the fruit in place. After part of the fruit is laid against the sides and bottom of the mould, then cut the sponge cake in large slices about half an inch thick, one slice the size and shape of the bottom of the mould, and either one long slice that will go round the sides of the mould inside; or two or three pieces, according to the size of your cake. Generally, in cities where there are confectionaries, you can buy sponge cake baked in large thin sheets. You know the form in which it is used for the bakers’ charlotte russe. This is baked in large sheets; cut it in[67] small sheets and fit it into the moulds. Because it is very thin you can work with it very much better than you can with that which is thicker. This will be very apt to break, because it is very stiff. If you are to shape the cake to your mould the cake should be perfectly soft and flexible.
After the first layer of cake is put against the mould, then use the rest of the cake cut in small pieces, or broken, and put into the mould in layers with the rest of the fruit. You see, first you use some of the fruit to ornament the inside of the mould, then some of the cake to line the inside of the mould. That gives you what will be the outside of your pudding when it is done. Then when the mould is decorated with fruit and lined with cake, put the rest of the cake and fruit into the mould in layers. Make a custard of a pint of milk and six eggs, because for this pudding the custard must be firm enough to hold the pudding in shape so that it can be turned out of the mould; also a quarter of a pound of sugar; that is about four heaping tablespoonfuls of sugar.
After the custard is made, pour it into the mould which you have filled with cake and fruit, and let it stand so that all the custard may be absorbed by the cake. When the custard has been entirely absorbed by the cake, set the mould in the steamer or in the sauce pan with water to reach two-thirds up the side of the mould. Put the cover on the steamer, or sauce pan, and steam it until the custard is firm. That will generally take about an hour and a half. It may take a little longer, but be quite sure that the custard is firm. Do not cook the custard first, just mix it up. In order to be sure that the custard is firm before you attempt to turn the pudding out, you want to run a fork or a small knife down through the thickest part in the middle of the pudding; move it backward and forward; look into the pudding to make sure that the custard is done. As long as the custard looks liquid at all, you must keep on cooking. When the pudding is done take the mould out of the steamer, using a towel, because the mould will be hot. Take a dish or platter that fits just over the top of the mould; have the inside of the platter the size of the top of the mould; put the platter over the mould and turn it upside down; then you will find that you can lift the mould from the pudding without any trouble, and the pudding will remain there on the platter. This pudding I shall serve with-powdered sugar. It is exceedingly rich. It is not necessary to have a sauce with it because it is so rich. But you can use, if[68] you wish, any of the nice pudding sauces that I have told you of. This is a pudding which in Europe is served as the greatest luxury. It takes its name “cabinet” pudding from the fact that it is served in the little rooms, or cabinets, that is, the private rooms where special dinners or suppers are given in the European restaurants. What is called cabinet pudding in the restaurants and hotels in this country is usually a nice bread pudding made with fruit, and it is not decorated in this way. Trouble is not taken to decorate the mould. It is simply a nice bread pudding made with custard, with some raisins or currants in it. That is what is called cabinet pudding in this country in the restaurants and hotels. So you can make the memorandum that you can use instead of the cake, bread; and instead of the French fruit, simply raisins, currants and citron. You can spend as much time and ingenuity decorating the pudding as you like, but I have done this very quickly and very simply. The pudding can be served hot, or it can be cooled and then put on the ice and made very cold. You noticed that in filling the mould I pressed the cake down on the inside, because, as it is saturated with the custard, of course it would sink down. You want to press the cake well down in the mould, and have a layer of cake on top, the last layer of cake.
Question. If you made it of bread wouldn’t you have to use more sugar in it?
Miss Corson. Yes, if you use bread you would have to use more sugar.
Question. Do you have any salt in it?
Miss Corson. You don’t need to put any salt in it. You can if you want to. There is no necessity for it, because there will be salt both in your bread and in your cake.
Question. Do you flavor the custard?
Miss Corson. No, just the plainest custard. You will find that the French fruit will give the custard all the flavor you require. You will find that if you put the custard into a pitcher after it is made you can pour it into the pudding very much more readily than if you try to pour it from the bowl. Either put it into a pitcher or use a cup, because you will have to pour it slowly in order to let it thoroughly absorb.
Next take the recipe for pea soup. Some of the ladies who were at the Monday afternoon lesson will need only to make one[69] or two notes, and the others will take the full recipe. For pea soup, four quarts, use a cupful of dried peas, yellow split peas. Pick them over, wash them in cold water, put them over the fire in two quarts of cold water and let them heat slowly. As the water heats it softens the peas. When it is boiling add half a cupful more of cold water and let that heat; then add more cold water; continue to add cold water, half a cupful at a time, until you have used two quarts more of cold water in addition to the first two quarts. The object of adding cold water slowly is to soften the peas, by reducing the heat of the water and then gradually increasing it again you soften the peas so that you can cook them in from an hour and a half to two hours. Boil them very slowly without the addition of salt until they are soft enough to rub through a sieve with a potato masher. After they are rubbed through the sieve put them again into the soup kettle with a tablespoonful of butter and a tablespoonful of flour rubbed to a smooth paste. Stir the soup over the fire until the butter and flour are entirely dissolved; then season the soup palatably with salt and pepper and let it boil for two or three minutes. While it is boiling cut two slices of stale bread—bakers’ bread is the best, or very light home-made bread—in little dice about half an inch square. Put a couple of tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying pan over the fire and let the butter begin to brown, then throw the dice of stale bread into the butter and stir the bread until it is brown. Take it out of the butter with a skimmer, if it has not absorbed all the butter, and lay it for a moment on brown paper, and then put it on a hot dish to send to the table with the soup. Do not put the bread into the soup unless you are going to serve at once, because it will soften a little; but you will find that fried bread will soften less quickly than toasted bread. A great many people put small squares of toast in the pea soup, but that softens at once. If you have a frying kettle which you use for doughnuts or fritters, or anything of that sort, partly full of frying fat, you can heat it and fry the bread in that instead of frying it with the butter in a frying pan. Have the fat smoking hot; the bread browns very quickly; take it out on a skimmer and lay it on a brown paper for a moment; then it is ready for the soup. These little fried crusts of bread are called croutons or crusts in the cookery books. I am going to add an onion fried in butter to the soup to-day. Put that in, if you use it, when you first begin to cook the soup. One onion, peeled, sliced, and fried light[70] brown in a tablespoonful of butter. You could also use the bones from ham, cold roast ham, cold boiled ham, or the bones of beef either raw or cooked, in the place of the onion, or in addition to the onion, as you like. Remember all those things give distinct flavors to the pea soup. If you put any kind of bones in, put them in with the peas at the beginning and boil them with the peas.
Next take the recipe for salt codfish, stewed in cream. First, to freshen salt codfish; that, of course, is always the first thing you do with salt codfish, no matter how you finish. You can do that by soaking it over night in cold water; if it has any skin on it be sure to have the skin side up. If you put it in the water with the skin side down, the salt which soaks out of the fibre of the fish simply falls against the skin and stays there. The fish does not get any fresher. A great deal of codfish in these days is sent to the market without either skin or bone. Supposing we have the regulation dried codfish, we skin and bone it, then soak it over night in cold water, and next morning put it over the fire in more cold water, plenty of it, and put the kettle or pan containing the fish and the cold water on the back part of the stove, where it will heat very gradually. Do not let it boil at all, but keep it at a scalding heat. Do not more than let it simmer. The effect of the boiling on any salted fibre, whether it is fish or meat, is simply to harden it. Keep it at a scalding heat until the fish is tender. Of course that will depend upon the dryness of the fish. It may take a half hour, it may take an hour. That is one way to freshen fish. Another way—the way I am doing now—is accomplished more quickly by putting the fish over the fire in plenty of cold water, enough to cover it; set it on the stove where it will heat gradually. When the water is nearly hot on the fish pour it off and put more cold water on. Let that get scalding hot; do not let it boil at all; simply let it get scalding hot—that is, let the steam begin to rise from it. Change the water as often as it gets scalding hot, until the fish is tender. If you are careful to change the water often enough, that is, if you do not let it begin to boil, probably the fish will be tender in half an hour—from half to three-quarters of an hour. The time will depend upon the dryness of the fibre of the fish. Generally in about half an hour it will be tender. As soon as the fish is [71]tender drain it, and then it is ready to dress in any way you wish to use it. To-day I shall make a little cream sauce, and heat the fish in it. That will be codfish stewed in cream sauce. Boiled codfish you would serve with boiled potatoes, and the white sauce is made either with water or milk and hard-boiled eggs. That is the old New England salt fish dinner. Usually, with a salt codfish dinner there were boiled parsnips and sometimes boiled beets; and it is very nice if you like codfish. For codfish hash, the old-fashioned codfish hash, use simply boiled codfish torn apart, forked in little fine flakes or chopped in fine flakes; of course all the skin and bone is taken off, mixed with an equal quantity of boiled potatoes, either mashed or chopped fine, palatably seasoned with pepper; of course the fish would be salt enough, usually; for a pint bowl full of fish and potatoes, use a tablespoonful of butter. The fish and potatoes are thoroughly mixed, then put into a frying pan, with just enough butter or drippings to keep it from burning. You may put, for the quantity I have given you, a heaping tablespoonful of butter in the frying pan, and let it melt; then put in the fish, and continue stirring it. Remember there is some butter in the hash already, and that will melt with the heat and probably be enough; but if you need any more to prevent its burning, add a tablespoonful. Stir the hash until it is scalding hot; then push it to one side of the frying pan with the knife you are stirring it with, and form it into a little oval cake at one side of the frying pan. When the hash is thoroughly hot, the butter in it will begin to fry out of it, and there probably will be butter enough to prevent its burning. Let it stand in the little cake at the side of the pan until it is browned on the bottom. You want to watch it a little, and now and then run a knife under it and loosen it from the pan, to make sure that it is not burning. Then, when the bottom is browned, hold a plate in one hand and the frying pan in the other, and turn the fish out in a little cake on the plate or dish.
To make codfish cakes, first make the fish fine; after freshening it and taking off the skin and bone, chop it or tear it in fine flakes; mix it with an equal quantity of potato either mashed or chopped—mashed potato is rather better for codfish cakes because you can pack it a little more closely in the form of cakes. To a pint bowlful of codfish hash add a tablespoonful of butter, a palatable seasoning of pepper and the yolk of one raw egg. That is, half[72] codfish, half potato, a tablespoonful of butter and the yolk of one raw egg, and a palatable seasoning of pepper. Then dust your hands, with dry flour; take a tablespoonful of this mixture up in your hand and either form it in the shape of a round ball or flat cake, as you like. Have ready a frying kettle or deep frying pan with enough fat or drippings, or lard, in it to cover three or four of the codfish cakes or balls, when you drop them into it. So that if you use a frying pan you must have a deep frying pan. You may make in that case codfish cakes, not balls. If you have a frying kettle you can make little round balls. When the fat is smoking hot drop the codfish cakes or balls into it and fry them just a golden brown, light brown. Take them out of the fat with a skimmer and lay them on brown paper for a moment to free them from grease, then serve them hot.
You will notice that I always tell you in frying everything to take it out of the fat and lay it for a moment on brown paper, because then you are sure to free it from grease. Not necessarily very coarse paper; just ordinary brown wrapping paper. I do not mean manila paper, but the common brown wrapping paper that comes around groceries and meat, that tradesmen generally use. The paper must be porous so that the grease will be easily absorbed. That is the only point you have to remember. The usual way of frying codfish cakes is simply to put fat enough in the pan to keep them from sticking, and in that way they are not browned all over, that is, they are not browned on the sides. They are simply browned on the top and on the bottom, and the fat has, of course, generally soaked into them so that you get them thoroughly greasy unless you have fat enough to cover them and have the fat smoking hot when you put them in. In frying it is very easy to use the fat repeatedly, if you only remember one thing. The fat you fry fish in you want to keep always for fish; then you can fry anything else, meat, chicken, fritters or doughnuts, in the other fat. Generally keep two jars or crocks of fat, and take care only to let the fat get smoking hot in frying, and as soon as you have done frying set the kettle off the stove so that the fat does not burn; let it cool a very little, then strain it through a cloth into an earthen bowl and let it get cold. Wash the frying kettle out and clean it thoroughly, and then you can put the fat back in it, and it will be ready for the next time, if you use a porcelain-lined kettle; if you use a metal kettle for frying, tin or anything of that sort, do not put the fat in it till you are ready to use it again, because it might rust it a little. If you[73] strain it through an ordinarily thick towel there will be no sediment. If you strain it through a sieve there will be a little sediment that will settle to the bottom of the fat, and you can turn the cake of fat out of the bowl when it is cold and scrape that off. The best way is to strain through a cloth in the first place. If you are careful with the fat you can use it repeatedly,—use it a dozen times or more, until it really is nearly used up. But if you are careless and let it burn, of course you very soon get it so dark in color that it colors anything directly you put it in, before it is cooked, and it has a burnt taste. But if you use it at the heat I tell you, just smoking hot, and do not let it burn, you can use it repeatedly. Sometimes you can lift it out in one solid cake when it is cold; sometimes you will have to break it and take it off in more than one piece. On the bottom of the cake you will find a little brownish sediment which you must scrape off. Then you have the fat clarified and ready for use. For ordinary frying purposes the straining through the towel will answer. An earthen bowl is the best for keeping the fat in the kitchen, very much better than metal of any kind.
Next take the recipe for stewed carrots. Carrots, peeled, as many as you wish to make a dishful; cut them in rather small slices, a quarter of an inch thick, put them over the fire in salted boiling water enough to cover them; boil them steadily until they are tender. That will be in perhaps half or three-quarters of an hour; if the carrots are young and fresh they will boil in half an hour; longer as the season advances and the carrots grow denser in their fibre. Late in the winter it may take an hour or even an hour and a half if they are very large and woody. Boil them until they are tender. Then drain them and throw them into plenty of cold water, and let them get thoroughly cold. While they are cooling make a sauce of water or of milk, as you like. If you have an ordinary vegetable dish full of carrots you want about a pint of sauce. In that case you will make the sauce as I have told you several times: a tablespoonful of butter, and a tablespoonful of flour for a pint of sauce; melt the butter and flour together over the fire, stirring them constantly until they bubble and are smoothly mixed; then begin to add half a cupful at a time the milk or water that you are going to use in making the sauce; stir each half cupful in smooth before you[74] add any more water. If the milk or water is hot, of course the sauce will be cooked all the more quickly. Let the sauce boil for a minute, stirring all the time, then season with a level teaspoonful of salt for a pint of sauce, a quarter of a saltspoonful of pepper, remembering what I have said about using white pepper. Drain the carrots from the cold water and put them into the sauce to heat. While they are heating—and that will only take three or four minutes—chop a tablespoonful of parsley fine, and stir it among the carrots; then serve them as soon as they are hot. You may make the addition of parsley or not, as you like, but it is very nice. In some seasons of the year you can not have the parsley. If you have not parsley, and have made the sauce of water, you will improve the dish very much if you stir the yolk of a raw egg into the sauce and carrots when you take them off the fire, just before you dish them. I will do that to-day. I will make a sauce of water and add the yolk of an egg. You had better put two or three tablespoons of sauce into a cup with the egg and mix it, and then pour that into the sauce and stir it well. In chopping parsley use just the leaves, not the stalks; put them in the chopping bowl and chop them fine. If you chop on a board steady the point of a knife with one hand and use an up-and-down motion with the other hand. Of course you can understand that using a long knife in chopping you can chop very much more quickly than you could in a chopping bowl, where you only get a circular cut. One of the ladies asks me the object of putting the carrots in cold water. They are put first in boiling salted water-to set their color. The action of the salt in the boiling water slightly hardens the surface so that the color does not boil out. Then if you take them at the point when they are tender you check the boiling at once by the cold water and secure the color entirely. Of course you will understand that by draining them and throwing them into cold water you check the heat at once. If you simply let them stand in the water and gradually soften and soak, letting the water keep warm, you would soak the color out. That follows with all boiled vegetables. Where we want to preserve the color this is the simplest and easiest way to do it.
Question. Can the color of beets be preserved in the way you speak of?
Miss Corson. No, beets have to be boiled differently from any other vegetable. If you break the skin of beets, or cut them in any way, the color escapes in the water. So that to[75] prepare the beets for boiling, wash them very carefully without breaking the skin. Do not cut off the roots or the tops of the beets close; leave some of the roots and three or four inches of the stalk. Do not trim them off close, because if you cut the roots or stalks close to the beet you make a cut whence the color can escape; wash them very carefully without breaking the skin. Put them over the fire in boiling water. You do not need to salt it, in fact, it is better not to salt it. Boil them until they grow tender to the touch. If you puncture the beet with a fork or knife, to try it, you let the color out, but you can take one of the beets up on a skimmer and use a thick towel and hold it in your hand and squeeze it to see if it is growing soft. Do not break the skin, always remember that. When the beet is tender you will find that it will yield a little, between your fingers, and the length of time required for cooking them will be from half an hour to two hours and a half, perhaps even longer than that. Young, tender, juicy beets may be cooked in half an hour. The older they are, the later it is in the season, the harder the woody fibre will be, and the longer it will take to cook them. After they are cooked really tender, then throw them into a bowl of cold water and rub off the skin with a wet towel. Do not leave them soaking in cold water.
Take the recipe for venison now, ladies. Enough butter to cover the bottom of the pan about a quarter of an inch. Let it get smoking hot, then put in the venison. You must have the pan large enough to hold the venison. As soon as the venison is brown on one side turn it and brown it on the other. Brown it very fast. As soon as the venison is browned put with it the currant jelly. For every pound of venison use two tablespoonfuls of currant jelly—not heaping spoonfuls; or you might put one heaping tablespoonful for every pound of venison. As soon as the venison is brown put the currant jelly in with it. Put the pan back where it will not be too hot, and finish cooking the venison until it is done to suit your taste. It will cook, if it is an inch thick, pretty well done in about twenty minutes. Season it with salt and pepper, and when it is done put it on the platter and pour the currant jelly and butter over it. The cooking of the jelly with the venison makes it a nice sauce or gravy.
Question. Wouldn’t this be a nice way to cook buffalo or any other kind of game?
Miss Corson. Yes, it is a very good way.
We will begin to-day with so-called roast beef, it is really baked. This is what is called a shoulder cut of beef, and is just as the butcher has sent it home, that is, without any of the bones being taken out. This thin part of the beef can be either roasted with the rest or cut off and used as a stew. It is not very available at the table. It almost always is tough, and there is a great deal of fat proportionately. The lean that is there is very apt to dry and harden in the baking. So that the best way to use the part is to cut it off and cook it separately. Have the beef cut large enough to give a roast from the thickest part. The white line of cartilage will be sure to bother in carving, and the best way is to cut it out before you cook the meat. You can cut it out without any difficulty. You can also cut off the bone entirely. You will not find that doing this will make the meat waste if you bake it or roast it properly, and you can carve it more easily and more economically. Carving when the bone is in the meat you are sure to leave more meat on than you really want to, and it is quite a difficult matter to carve even slices when the bone is in the meat. It is a very easy matter to take the bone out, and then either use the bone for soup meat or put it in the pan with the meat and let it bake as the basis for gravy. You will notice both in cutting the cartilage and the bone, I do not take off any meat. I simply cut close, and take away the parts I wish to remove without wasting any of the meat. That leaves a solid piece of meat which offers no difficulty in carving; you can either fasten it in shape by tying a string around it or by running a few skewers through it. The better way is to tie it with a string, because the skewers will make holes and permit the juice to escape. You can either take off the thin, outside skin of the beef or wipe it as I have already said, with a wet towel. With good beef the skin is so exceedingly thin that it is not objectionable in carving or to the taste. With poor beef, the skin is decidedly leathery, and then it is advisable to take it off.
Question. How many pounds were there in your piece altogether, before you began to cut it?
Miss Corson. Oh, I fancy it weighed five or six pounds. Of course you use the number of pounds that your family requires. I am speaking of dividing the meat so as to cook it in the most economical manner. You would buy a sufficiently large piece in weight to give you the thick part—large enough for your family for the roast, and the other part you use for the stew subsequently. We made a beef stew one day, here, I think. Roasting is cooking meat before the direct blaze of the open fire. Baking is cooking it in the oven. Nearly all the so-called roast beef that we get is baked beef. It is not quite so delicate as real roast beef. You can accomplish the roasting of beef with any range or kitchen stove that has a large grate, that is, a grate where you can have a clear surface of coals against the grate, by using what is called a Dutch oven. This is a tin box, with one side open and a little hook in the top of the box, from which you can hang the meat. Then in the bottom part of the tin case there is a pan that catches the drippings. After you have got the meat all ready, you put the Dutch oven in front of the grate, standing it so that the open side of the Dutch oven is directly in front of the grate of your stove or range. You will find that the bright tin of the oven will reflect heat enough to cook the meat nicely. There you get a genuine roast. You do not get an old-fashioned roast on a spit before the open fire, but you get a nice roast. Generally those little hooks are so arranged that the meat swings a little—swings and turns, and if the hooks are not so arranged, once in a while, say once in half an hour, you want to turn it.
Now, suppose you have not that oven, but still have an open fire, you can roast. I have roasted a chicken before a grate fire in the sitting room. You can roast small birds of any kind in that way, by putting something on the mantel piece heavy enough to support the weight of the bird. Tie a string around the bird or around the piece of beef and let it hang down in front of the fire. Put a platter under it or a dripping pan, and put the blower up in front of it. You might be amused at the idea of doing that as an experiment. I have made coffee in an old tomato can as an experiment, to see whether it can be done, and it is just as nice as any you could possibly make in the finest French coffee pot. After all there are many expedients that you can resort to in cooking with good results.
After the meat is browned on the outside, whether you are roasting or baking, season it. Get it browned first on the outside very quickly, then season it with salt and pepper, and after[78] that moderate the heat of the oven, or draw the Dutch oven a little away from the fire, and finish cooking till the meat is done, allowing fifteen minutes to the pound if you want it medium rare, about twenty minutes to the pound if you want it very well done. If you are baking the meat put it in the hottest oven, without any seasoning at all, without any water in the pan. You will find that the meat will yield drippings enough for basting. Our chicken that we basted yesterday,—do you remember how nice and brown that was? Pretty well basted, wasn’t it? That had nothing in the pan for basting except the drippings which flowed from the chicken itself. Put the meat in the hottest oven until it is browned, and then moderate the heat and cook the meat fifteen minutes to the pound. We might do what the French call braise the end of the roast, if you like to see the effect of slow cooking. One difficulty that we labor under here is that we have to use a very intense heat, otherwise the flame of this vapor stove goes out. In order to braise successfully you want a very gentle and continuous heat,—such as you would get on the back part of a cooking stove,—just heat enough to keep the meat simmering. We will do as well as we can by keeping the sauce pan at one side of the fire, and then I will describe the braising process, so that you can do it perfectly at home. If we have any cabbage we will braise the meat with it. That makes a dish that is used very much in the north of Europe, in Poland and Sweden. I think I will give you the recipe, whether we have our cabbage or not.
Use a large pot or sauce pan, large enough to allow you to lay the piece of meat on the bottom; or, you can use a thick, deep, iron pan. I remember, several days ago, seeing in the hardware stores pans about ten inches high, pans made of Russia iron, oval. You can use that for quite a large piece of meat if you have not a sauce pan. You want a pan deep enough to allow the water to come just over the beef. Put water in the pan, enough to cover the beef, and let it get boiling hot. I will give you two methods of braising. When the water is boiling hot, put the beef in it; watch it carefully until it just begins to boil again. The moment it boils, push back the pot or pan in which it is far enough away from the hot part of the stove to keep the water only simmering, only bubbling, not boiling. Put in whatever seasoning you like. If you use spice, cloves for instance, or mace, use it whole. If you use simply salt and pepper, of course use them in the powder. Keep the cover very[79] tightly over the pot or sauce pan, and cook the meat in that slow, gentle way, for at least two hours. A piece weighing not more than four or five pounds you want to cook at least two hours, or until it is tender. Remember to cook very, very slowly. That is a very simple and easy way of braising, which any one can accomplish.
Now I am going to give you the French method of braising. Cut part of the fat off the meat, about half the fat off the meat. Put the part that you cut off in the bottom of the pot. Lay the meat on the fat. That is the way we will cook our meat to-day, because I have decided to cook the cabbage in another way. After you have put the fat in the bottom of the sauce pan, lay the meat on it, with the fat part up, so that, you see, you have fat under and over the meat. On top or by the side of the meat put an onion of medium size, peeled and stuck with about a dozen cloves. Put parsley, if you have it, about a tablespoonful of leaves, or some stalks, or parsley root; but remember that the flavor of parsley root is very much stronger than the leaf, so that you will use proportionately less root. One bay leaf, a tablespoonful of carrot, sliced, about a tablespoonful of turnip, sliced, and a level teaspoonful of peppercorns—unground pepper—or a small red pepper. Then boiling water enough just to cover the meat. Then put on the cover of the sauce pan, and put the meat where it will simmer very gently until it is quite tender. The French always braise in what is called a braising pan; that is, two oval pans made in such a way that one sets into the other, and goes about a third of the way down. They put the article that is to be braised in the bottom pan, and then in the top pan they put hot ashes, or coals of wood or charcoal, mixed with ashes; so that there is heat top and bottom; then they put their braising pan by the side of the fire or at the back of the stove, where it will have a gentle heat, and cook it for a very long time. They braise it four or five hours, and it makes the toughest meat tender. After you once bring the meat to the boiling point you must not boil it fast; if you boil it fast you will make it very much tougher. After you get it to the boiling point keep it there, and cook it slowly, and long enough so that it will be sure to be tender. If you are sure the meat is tough in the beginning, put half a cupful of vinegar into the water with it. You won’t notice the vinegar when you come to eat the meat, and it will help to make the meat tender. The French, of course, use the ordinary wine of the country,—a sour wine,—it[80] has the same effect; it is about as sour as vinegar, and has about the same effect. I think, indeed, that is the reason why the French use so much wine in cooking meat. They use a very acid wine always, and probably use it for the purpose of making the meat tender in many instances. Put in salt, but not too much, for the effect of salt, while the meat is boiling, would be to harden it. Just a little salt, and then in seasoning your gravy you can add more salt. After the meat is braised French fashion, it is taken out of the broth, and the broth is strained and then used as a broth or soup, or made into a gravy.
To make the gravy, for each pint of gravy that you wish to make, use a tablespoonful of butter or beef drippings and a tablespoonful of flour. Stir the drippings and flour over the fire in a sauce pan until they are brown. Then begin to add the seasoned broth in which the meat was cooked, half a cupful at a time, stirring it until it is smooth each time, until it boils; then season it with salt and pepper, remembering that the broth is already seasoned, so that you have to taste it. That makes a very nice gravy or sauce. Of course, you have plenty of broth, so you can make as much of it as you like.
Take now a recipe for cooking cabbage to serve with braised meat. For a cabbage of medium size,—that is, a cabbage about as large as a breakfast plate,—first wash the cabbage thoroughly, cutting away any part of the stalk that seems woody. Then cut the cabbage in rather thin slices. That is very easy. Lay it on the board and cut it down through. You would need a large sauce pan to cook a cabbage as large as a breakfast plate, because remember when it is cut up it takes up more space. Put in the bottom of the sauce pan a tablespoonful of butter or drippings. If you are braising your meat you can open the pot and dip some of the drippings out of it. A tablespoonful of butter or drippings, half a cupful of vinegar, a tablespoonful of cloves, a teaspoonful of peppercorns and a tablespoonful of brown sugar. Then put in the cabbage on top of these things. Put the cover on the sauce pan, set it over the fire where it will steam. Be very careful not to let it burn. Keep it on the back part of the fire where it will simmer. Keep it covered. Every fifteen minutes take off the cover, and with a large fork or spoon lift the cabbage from the bottom so that the top uncooked part goes down to the bottom. In about an hour the cabbage will be tender. You do not need to begin to cook that until within, say an hour and a quarter of the time the beef is likely to be done. To[81] serve it, turn it on a dish, leaving the spice, cloves and pepper in with it, and lay the beef on it. Just moisten the cabbage with a little gravy or broth from the beef, and serve the rest of the gravy in a bowl; remember that the broth from the meat is salted, and that in moistening the cabbage it seasons it, or if you like very much salt you can put a little with the cabbage in cooking.
Now, to boil cabbage quickly, and without odor: After thoroughly washing it take off the decayed leaves, cut it in rather small pieces, but do not use the stalk of the cabbage—avoid that. Put over the fire a sauce pan large enough to hold the cabbage twice over. Have plenty of space in your sauce pan or kettle, fill it half full of water, put plenty of salt in the water,—that is, a level tablespoonful of salt to about a quart of water,—let the water boil; be sure that it is boiling fast. Then put in the cabbage; get it boiling again just as fast as you can, and continue to boil it just as fast as you can until it is tender. That will be in from ten to twenty-five minutes, according to the age of the cabbage. Young cabbage, early in the season, will boil tender in ten minutes; or it may take 15, 20 or 25. It never takes over a half hour unless the cabbage is very old or dry. The cabbage is done the moment the stalk is tender. A great many people have the idea that they must boil the cabbage until the leaf is almost dissolved. It needs only to be boiled as tender as you boil the stalks of cauliflower, and you would try, of course, the thickest part, which would be near the stalk. Remember, in the first place you would cut out any tough, woody stalk, but the tender stalk you would leave in, and that is the part you would try. If you boil it fast it will not take over thirty or thirty-five minutes at the outside, probably not more than twenty. Just as soon as the cabbage is tender drain it and put with it whatever sauce or dressing you are going to serve with it. That sometimes is vinegar, butter, pepper, and salt. Sometimes a little milk, butter, pepper, and salt. In that case it is called cabbage stewed with cream. Sometimes you would simply serve it without any further seasoning, only remember that the moment it is tender, drain it and serve. As I told you the other day, the odor of the cabbage comes from letting it boil until after the substance of the cabbage is so soft that the oil begins to escape from it, the volatile oil. That makes a strong odor in the room. As soon as the cabbage is tender it is ready to eat, and should be taken from the fire.
To bake turnips, peel the turnips, either white or yellow ones, cut them in rather small slices, a quarter of an inch thick; put them over the fire in salted boiling water enough to cover them, and boil them fast until they are tender. It may take ten or fifteen minutes, possibly twenty minutes, according to the age of the turnips. Of course you will understand that if the turnips are old and corky they will not be as nice when they are done as if they are in good condition. But as soon as the turnips are tender, drain them, put them in an earthen pudding dish, make a little white sauce, either with milk or water,—for a pint, a tablespoonful of butter, tablespoonful of flour; stir over the fire; then milk added gradually and stirred smooth; seasoned with salt and pepper,—make enough of the white sauce just to moisten the turnips; pour it over the turnips; dust over the top some cracker dust or bread crumbs, just enough to cover the top of the turnips; put a little salt and pepper over the crumbs, and a scant tablespoonful of butter over the top of the crumbs. Then put the dish into the hot oven, and just brown the crumbs on the top of the dish. Serve it as soon as the bread crumbs are brown. That is a very nice and easy dish. If you have cold boiled turnips, slice them, cover them with white sauce and bread crumbs, and cook them just in the same way.
(At this point Miss Corson announced that the cabbage was done, after being in between nine and ten minutes, and no smell was perceptible in the room.)
I am going to moisten the cabbage with cream sauce,—that is white sauce made with milk,—and heat it for a moment and then it will be done.
I will now answer a question that has been asked about cooking corned beef. The same principle applies to the cooking of corned beef that applies to the cooking of salted fish. You remember this morning in talking about codfish I said, if you boil the salted fibre hard and fast, you make it hard and toughen it. That holds good in relation to salted meat or corned meat. You want to boil it very gently. There is comparatively little juice left in corned beef, so that the action of cold water is not so disastrous to it as it would be to fresh meat. Sometimes the beef is so very salt that it is desirable to change the water upon it. Put it over the fire in cold water. Let it slowly reach the boiling[83] point, and then try and see if it is too salt. If the water itself seems very salt, change it. Put fresh water in, let it gradually heat, and boil very gently always. As soon as the meat reaches the boiling point, push it to the back part of the stove and boil it very gently until it is tender. It usually takes about twenty minutes to a pound, but boil it very gently and slowly. Then it will be tender. If you boil it fast it will be hard and tough. If you put a whole dried red pepper in with the beef in boiling, you will find that it will improve the flavor very much. If you intend to use the beef cold, leave it in the water in which it is boiled; take the pot off the stove and let it cool in the water in which it was boiled. Those same directions apply to boiling smoked or salted tongue.
The turnips were just fifteen minutes in boiling.
Nice points about boiled dinners are asked for. I think I have given you the nicest point in cooking beef, so that you will be sure to get it tender, and to cook cabbage so that it is tender and does not smell. Cabbage always goes with a New England boiled dinner, potatoes, onions, parsnips and squash. I told you about cooking beets this morning. All the other vegetables you may cook in boiling water, and salt to suit the taste. The old-fashioned way was to boil all the vegetables in the pot with the beef, adding the vegetables in succession, so that each one was put in just long enough before the beef was done to have it done at the time the beef was done; each one except the squash. The squash is best peeled and cut in small pieces and steamed. If you boil it you want to put it in boiling salted water until it is tender, and then put it into a towel and squeeze it, so as to get out the water; then season it with butter, salt and pepper, and serve it.
I made gravy yesterday; I think if I give you the recipe to-day it will answer. Pour the drippings out of the pan, all except about a tablespoonful; put a tablespoonful of flour in with the brown drippings; set the pan over the fire; stir the drippings and flour together until they are quite brown; then begin to put in boiling water, a little at a time, not more than half a cupful, and stir until the gravy is smooth; then season it palatably with salt and pepper. Onions are very nice cooked precisely as I have cooked cabbage to-day; that is, cooked until they are tender, and dressed with the white sauce that I used in dressing the carrot.
For pressed corn beef the nicest cut is the brisket. Have the[84] cut rather long and narrow, and not a short chunk or piece. Take a long piece of meat, a foot long, or more; have all the bones cut out and roll it up tight. Tie it compactly, in the same way that I tied this meat. Tie it so that you have it in a tight bundle. Then boil it according to the directions I have already given you. After it is done let it partly cool in the liquor; then take it out and lay it on the platter; lay another platter on top of it, and put a heavy weight on the platter, and press it with the string still on until it is cold; then cut off the string and you have it in nice shape. If you want to use part of it hot for dinner, and then have it cold, you would have to boil it, and when it is done cut off enough for your dinner; then press the rest of it between two platters. You could double it over, but you could not press it so very well in shape. Cut it in slices; put it into a tin mould or tin pan and boil down the broth in which you have cooked it until it begins to look thick. Or, you could dissolve a little gelatine in the broth to thicken it, and pour it over the slices of corned beef in the mould. In that case you would depend upon the gelatine to thicken the broth, without boiling it down.
Our lesson this morning will begin with beef a la mode rolls. Use the round of the beef or the end of sirloin steak. I have here a piece of round of beef. Cut the beef in pieces about two inches wide and five long; lay these strips of meat on the cutting board and season them with salt and pepper. In the middle of each one put a little piece of salt pork about a quarter of an inch thick. Roll the meat up in such a way that the pork is inclosed in the middle of the little roll. Tie the roll to keep it in shape. You can use instead of salt pork pieces of fat from the meat. After all the little rolls are tied up put a very small quantity of beef drippings or butter in the bottom of the saucepan or kettle. Put the saucepan over the fire with the drippings or butter in it and let the fat get hot. As soon as it is hot put the little rolls of meat in it and let them brown. As soon as the little rolls of meat are brown sprinkle flour over them, a tablespoonful of dry flour to half a dozen little rolls of meat. Let the flour brown.[85] As soon as the flour is brown pour in boiling water enough to cover the rolls; add salt. Then put the cover on the sauce pan and set the meat where it will cook very gently. Remember what I have told you about cooking meat slowly if you want it to be tender. When the meat is quite tender—and that will be in from half an hour to an hour and a half—the time will depend, of course, upon the fibre of the meat, then take off the strings and serve the rolls in the gravy in which they have been cooking. You see the brown flour and water and butter will have make a nice gravy for the rolls. Now if the meat is very tough remember what I have told you about the action of the vinegar on the meat fibre. For a pound of meat add about two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, when you begin to stew the meat, and let it cook with the meat; that will make it tender. You can vary the dish by cooking with it vegetables of any kind that you like to use. Add potatoes when it is within half an hour of being done, turnips peeled, cut in small pieces; carrots peeled and sliced.
I will make a caramel custard next. For caramel custard use a plain tin mould, oval or square in shape, that will hold about three pints. Put a teaspoonful of sugar in the bottom of the mould and set the mould on the top of the stove where the sugar will brown. You may want to shake the mould a little to scatter the sugar evenly over the bottom. When the sugar is brown set the mould off the fire on the table where the burnt sugar will get cold; that forms what is called a caramel or coat of burnt sugar on the bottom of the mould. Make a custard by beating together six eggs, a quarter of a pound of sugar and a pint of milk. After the custard is made pour it into the mould and set the mould in a sauce pan with boiling water that will come half way up the sides of the mould, and steam the custard until it is firm. When the custard is firm you can turn it out of the mold and use it hot or leave it until it is quite cold and use it cold. I have used granulated sugar this time. You can make the same custard, preparing it just exactly as for steaming, but bake it, if you like, only you would set the mould in the dripping pan with water in it, baking it just until it is firm, in a moderate oven. You could make it in teacups; in that case you would burn the sugar in an iron-spoon or in the frying pan and while it still is liquid put[86] just a little in the bottom of each cup, because you remember it hardens directly. Then bake the cups of custard in a pan of water. Use the custard in the cups either hot or cold. If the custard is to be used cold leave it in the mould; it will stand better than if it is turned out hot. But it is stiff enough to retain its form even when it is hot. And the sugar that is in the mould forms a little sauce around it on the dish.
Next take a recipe for tomato soup. A can of tomatoes; put them over the fire. In the summer use about two quarts of fresh tomatoes. You will find that about two quarts will be sufficient. After the fresh tomatoes are peeled and sliced (you will remember canned tomatoes are already peeled), put them over the fire and stew them gently for about half an hour, or until they are tender. If the canned tomatoes are entirely solid you may need to add a little liquid, but I find there is generally more liquid in the can than you need. When the tomatoes are tender enough to rub through a sieve, put them through the sieve with a potato masher. That gives you pulp, or puree, of tomatoes. And you will add to the tomatoes, after they have been passed through the sieve, half a salt spoon of baking soda, and then milk enough to thin them to the proper consistency of soup. Season with salt and pepper, and let them boil, and serve the soup. If you want a thick soup, add to the tomatoes a quart of milk, and thicken the soup with cracker dust, very finely powdered and sifted. Thicken as much as you like, beginning with two heaping tablespoonfuls; add more if you want it. Of course you can put butter in either of these soups, but it is not necessary. The way I shall make the soup to-day will be to thicken it with butter and flour after the tomatoes have been passed through the sieve. Do not confuse these two recipes. You have got one of thin soup; you have got another with milk, salt and pepper, thickened with cracker dust. Now a third: Put a tablespoonful of butter and a tablespoonful of flour in a saucepan. Stir them over the fire until they are melted together, then put in a pint of water gradually—a pint of hot water—stirring it smooth; and the tomato pulp. If that does not make the soup as thin as you desire—and it should be about the consistency of good cream—add a little more boiling water. Season with salt and pepper, and stir it until it boils, and then it is ready to use.
Next take directions for boiling vegetables, so that the color is perfectly kept. I told you yesterday that we should have spinach if we could get it, if not, that we would use lettuce. I think that next week, in the course of the lessons, I shall succeed in having some spinach from Cleveland. However, I shall use lettuce to-day. First, thoroughly wash it in salted water. For a quart of water use a tablespoonful of salt. As I told you the other day, the salt in the water is for the purpose of killing any little insects that are in the leaves, especially of the lettuce. You know that it is very troublesome to dislodge them, but the salt kills them, and of course you can wash them out. As long as they are alive they cling there. If you sprinkle salt on the leaves it will wither them, but if you put it in the water it will not. Salted water is intensely cold, you know, and it would restore the freshness of the leaves of lettuce, even if they were wilted, unless they were really on the verge of decay. If you will remind me, after I have finished giving the recipe for cooking the vegetables, I will tell you how to keep lettuce fresh. After your vegetables, whatever they may be, whether lettuce, or spinach, or asparagus, or string beans, are washed perfectly clean—I do not say wash peas, and I will tell you after a little the reason why—after they are thoroughly washed put them over the fire in enough boiling salted water to more than cover them—plenty of water, so that they can float about—the water to be salted with a tablespoonful of salt in a quart of water, and to be actually boiling when you put in the vegetables. This same rule applies to the cooking of peas, only that the peas are treated a little differently in the cleaning, but they are cooked in the same way. Boil the vegetable (whatever it is) in salted water, fast, just till they are tender. Remember what I said about boiling carrots yesterday. As soon as the vegetables are tender, drain them and throw them into plenty of cold water. Leave them in the cold water until you want to use them. Then, if peas or beans, drain them, heat them quickly, with a little salt and pepper and butter, very quickly, or any sauce or gravy you wish to serve them in, and serve them hot. If lettuce or spinach, to make a puree, after having boiled in boiling salted water and then put in cold water, rub them through a sieve with a potato masher. After they are rubbed through the sieve they are ready to be used in different ways. In Europe the puree of lettuce is served as a vegetable, just as the puree of spinach is. We do not often cook it in that way, but it is very nice; it is such an[88] exceedingly tender vegetable that it takes proportionately more than of spinach. After the lettuce or spinach is rubbed through the colander or sieve with a potato masher it is ready to be seasoned with salt, pepper and vinegar, or any sauce you like, and used as a vegetable, or used in soup. You remember what I told you about spinach soup yesterday—puree of spinach with cream soup, colored green with spinach. Put in just enough spinach to cover it. If I succeed in getting spinach next week I shall make, at one of the lessons, spinach soup, and also boil and serve some as a vegetable.
Now about peas. I spoke about washing string beans but not washing peas. If the shells of the peas are at all dirty, and sometimes they are so that they blacken your fingers in shelling, wash the shells of the peas before you begin to shell them, but do not wash the peas after they are shelled. Of course the inside of the pod is perfectly clean, and if your hands are clean and the shells are clean, you do not need to wash them. In using green peas in summer time it is well to have a quantity of them, perhaps twice as many as you are likely to use for one meal, and shell them, because you know they are of different sizes always. Shell them and separate them into two different sizes, the smallest and the largest, and then cook one size for one day, putting the others in a very cool place, or refrigerator, and cook them the next day, because if you have the large and small ones mixed they do not cook evenly. You will find them very much nicer; if you keep them in a cool place it will not hurt to keep them.
The length of time that it takes to boil lettuce or spinach depends somewhat on the time of the year. The tenderer the spinach is, of course, the quicker it will boil; when it is very young and tender it will boil in two or three minutes; when it is older it may take as long as ten minutes. Ladies very often make the mistake in boiling spinach that they do in boiling cabbage. They boil it sometimes until the leaves are destroyed, in order to soften the stalk. The better way is to tear away the stalk and use only the leaf. Of course, that gives you a smaller quantity of spinach than if you use the stalk, but when you use the tough, woody stalk you waste the leaf in boiling. Lettuce usually boils in a couple of minutes. One of the ladies speaks about cooking spinach without any water. You can do that if you wish. Just put in a sauce pan, after having carefully picked it over and washed it; stir it a little once in a while to be sure[89] that the uncooked top goes down to the bottom. There is no special advantage in it, because if you boil it as I tell you, only until it is tender, the water has no effect upon it except to cook it more quickly. It is the English way to cook it without water. If you use boiling salted water, as I told you, it cannot possibly affect the nutriment of the vegetable. It is when you boil vegetables a long time, and boil them away before you take up the dish, that you waste the nutriment. These rules apply to every vegetable that has color in it except beets. Beets have to be cooked without cutting the skin or trimming them in any way, in order to keep the color.
Now to keep lettuce fresh. I have kept it fresh, even in the summer time, for two or three days in this way: When it first comes in from the market wash it thoroughly in plenty of cold salted water. You do not need to tear it apart. You know I told you the other day about separating the leaves slightly from the head of the lettuce and shaking it in cold salted water. Trim off the outside wilted leaves. Wash it thoroughly in cold salted water, then wet a towel and lay the lettuce in it, fold it loosely up over the roots and if you have ice lay the towel on the cake of ice in the refrigerator or by the side of the cake of ice. If you haven’t any ice and have a cold cellar, after you have washed the lettuce and wrapped it in the wet towel, put it in a box; a tight wooden box is the best, or a thick pasteboard box if it is not broken; and put it in the cellar in the coldest place you can find. If you wrap it in a wet towel and put it on the ice you do not want to look at it. It will keep fresh at least two days, and sometimes longer; but if you put it in the cellar you will have to wet the towel thoroughly twice a day, morning and night; and you will find that you will have to take away some of the leaves that have wilted, but if you have it upon the ice the chances are that you will not lose any leaves. And it is very much nicer than it is to let it wilt and then try to restore it by soaking it in water.
Next take a recipe for fried pickerel. Some of the ladies will remember that a few days ago we were talking about frying fish in this way with salt pork. If any of the ladies have the recipe, of course they do not need to take it again. For fried fish of any kind, enough salt pork to cover the bottom of the frying pan that you are going to use for the fish. You find you have three or four[90] pounds of fish; you will need at least half a pound of salt pork. Cut the pork in very thin slices; fat salt pork is the best. Put it in the frying pan and fry it until it is light brown. While the pork is being fried get ready the fish, having it thoroughly cleaned by washing it in cold water. If the fish is small you do not need to cut it; if it is large, cut it in pieces about three or four inches square. After the fish has been cleaned dry it in a towel; season some Indian meal with salt and pepper, roll the fish in the Indian meal. When the pork is brown take it out of the fat and put the fish into the drippings and fry the fish brown, first on one side and then on the other. When the fish is browned nicely serve it in a dish with the pork—fried pork and fish in one dish. This fish will not get very brown to-day, because it is still frozen. It did not come in long enough ago for us to get it thawed out, so, of course, there will be a little water in the fat, and it will not get quite so brown.
We begin our lesson this afternoon with a dish of rice,—piloff of rice,—any cold meat cut in small squares, an onion peeled and chopped fine, and if you have tomatoes, either canned, fresh, or cold stewed tomatoes, a cupful. Sometimes the dish is made with tomatoes, sometimes without. Put the onion in the sauce pan with a tablespoonful of drippings; set it over the fire and let it get light brown. When it is light brown put with it a cupful of rice, picked over and washed and dried by the fire. After the onion begins to brown put the rice with it and stir until the rice is light brown; then put in a quart of hot water, the meat and tomatoes and a palatable seasoning of salt and pepper. Of course, the quantity of salt and pepper that you use will depend on the seasoning of the meat, and this may be any kind of meat. Then cover the sauce pan in which you have all these things and let the rice, meat, tomatoes and water all cook together gently. Every ten minutes you must look to see whether the rice has absorbed all the water. If it has you must add a little more water, not more than half a cupful at a time, keeping the rice just moist until it is tender. You will find that probably in about half an hour the rice will be tender, and[91] when the dish is done it should not have the gravy about it; it simply needs to be moist, so you will have to add water cautiously after the first quart.
If the meat that you use is very fat,—and sometimes beef like this is very fat,—you may cook the meat, fat and lean together in with the onion in the first place instead of the tablespoonful of butter or drippings. If you have no meat you can make the dish in the same way using tomato, onion and rice; and if you have cold gravy of any kind put that in it.
Next take the recipe for a dish called French hash. There is no potato in it, it is simply meat and gravy, so that you must not let the name mislead you. Little slices of cold meat, fat and lean together. For a pint bowlful of meat use about a tablespoonful of chopped onion. First slightly brown the onion with a tablespoonful of butter or drippings or fat from the meat; then when the onion begins to brown put in the meat and let that brown. Next a tablespoonful of dried flour; stir the flour with the brown meat and onion until the flour is quite brown; then cover the meat with pork gravy or boiling water. After you have covered the meat with water or cold gravy just let the water or gravy boil, then season it palatably with salt and pepper; of course, the seasoning will depend upon whether you have used gravy or broth or water. If you have used gravy or broth that already will have been seasoned, so that you want to taste for the seasoning. After the gravy is both boiled and seasoned take the sauce pan off the fire and stir in the yolk of one raw egg with it and dish at once. You must not put the hash back on the fire after putting the egg in. If you do you will curdle it. Do not stir the egg in till you are ready to serve it, on toast or plain.
The next recipe will be for baked tenderloins. Split the pork tenderloins in such a way as to make rather thick slices. Tenderloins are so thick that by cutting you spread them out. Inside the slice of tenderloin put any stuffing that you like. I have given two or three recipes for different kinds of stuffing. For this to-day I shall use a little stale bread, crumbed, seasoned with salt and pepper, and moistened with butter; a tablespoonful[92] of butter to a scant cupful of bread, or in place of butter you could use an egg. After you put a little stuffing in the tenderloins fold them together and either tie or sew them so as to keep the stuffing inside. Put the tenderloins in the dripping pan in the oven and bake them until they are thoroughly browned. Then take off the strings and serve them. They are very nice if you bake potatoes in the pan with them. If the oven is hot the potatoes and tenderloins will bake in about the same time. The potatoes should be peeled. Remember what I told you about always taking large stitches in sewing up meat, so that you can see to pull them out when the meat is done. Of course, pork tenderloins will be pretty sure to yield drippings enough to baste with. I have spoken about that in the baking of meats two or three times. No water is needed in preparing them. The tenderloins, when sewed up, will resume their original shape.
First, wash the liver in cold water, then pour scalding water on it and let it stand for about ten minutes to draw out the blood; slice it about half an inch thick. After the liver is scalded and sliced, roll it in flour, season it with salt and pepper and put it into the frying pan containing about a quarter of an inch of hot fat, which may be drippings or fat from bacon or salt pork. In that case you first would fry the salt pork or bacon to get the fat or drippings, and put the slices of pork or bacon to keep warm when they are done. After the pork or bacon is fried put it on a dish to keep warm, and then fry the liver in the drippings. As soon as the liver is browned on both sides serve it on a dish with the fried pork or bacon. Fried liver needs to be cooked as quickly as possible, making sure that it is done. The more quickly you can cook it the tenderer it will always be. You can take that as a rule in regard to liver, heart and tongue, that the faster they can be cooked the tenderer they will be. To-day I simply have fried this with drippings. I have not fried the bacon with it, but I have told you how to fry it.
Next take a recipe for baked hash. Equal quantities of chopped meat and stale bread, meat of any kind. Suppose you have a pint bowl of each. Mix with the meat and the[93] bread a heaping tablespoonful of butter, a palatable seasoning of salt and pepper, and that, of course, will depend upon the seasoning of the meat. You may use corned beef or highly seasoned meat, and then you will not need so much seasoning as you would if you used fresh meat. A heaping teaspoonful of chopped parsley, enough cold gravy, if you have it, or broth to moisten the hash,—just to moisten it, not make it sloppy,—or if you have not gravy or broth you must use water and butter. Mix the hash very thoroughly. Have ready an earthen dish, buttered. See that the oven is hot, then very quickly dissolve a teaspoonful of baking powder in a teaspoonful of water or broth and stir it into the hash just as fast as you can and put it into the oven to bake. As soon as the hash is brown on top it will be done.
Now I will give you a recipe for corned beef hash. Yesterday we spoke about boiling corned beef. You will take cold corned beef and boiled potatoes, either hot or cold, about equal quantities. Sometimes people like a little more potato than meat. Mix the meat and potato together; add just enough water or broth to moisten the meat and potato. Season palatably with salt and pepper and butter; have the hash nicely mixed together; put into the frying pan; suppose you have a quart of hash, about two tablespoonfuls of butter and let it get hot, then put in the hash. Stir the hash in the butter until it is nearly hot. Then, using a knife, form it into a cake on one side of the frying pan and let the bottom brown. Loosen the hash once in a while from the bottom of the pan to make sure it is not burning and when it is brown on the bottom turn it out on a dish with the brown side up. Another form of hash is the moist hash. That is simply prepared and warmed without browning it, using broth or butter and hot water for moistening it.
We begin our lecture this morning with roast oysters, Mobile style. All oysters, when cooked in any way, should be first put in a colander and the juice allowed to drain off, then strain the juice. Always take each oyster in the hand and carefully remove all fragments of shell from the gills. The shells of oysters are dangerous to swallow, and serious illness is often the result. Hold the oyster by the hard part, removing pieces of shell with the finger. Then wipe the oyster with a wet towel. Keep the most perfect specimens for broiling, as the more imperfect ones will do sufficiently well for soups or stews. For roasting oysters in the Mobile style, have as many deep oyster shells as you intend to have oysters, scrubbed very clean; put the shells in a dripping pan and place them in the oven, until they become so hot as to melt butter when put into them. When quite hot take the shells out of the oven and put a small piece of butter and a very little pepper in each shell. If the oysters are large lay one in each shell, if they are small put two or three in each shell and put them back in the oven directly. By the time the edges of the oysters curl they will be done. Oysters when heated through are done. Do not put any salt on them. Serve them on the shells. As they are served in Mobile, a large shell is used, laid on a small charcoal furnace, putting the shell on top of the furnace to get very hot; the furnace is brought to the table and the oysters opened and dropped into the hot shell and turned once. The regulation way of roasting oysters is to thoroughly wash the outside of the shell and lay them on the fire with the large end down. As soon as the oysters open serve them.
To use the liquor, take a pint of the oyster liquor after it has been strained; sift a heaping cupful of flour; mix with it a level teaspoonful of salt and a heaping teaspoonful of baking powder. Have the griddle as hot as you would for pancakes. Very quickly stir into the flour enough of the oyster liquor to make a batter, and fry just as any pancake; serve hot with butter.
Next take a recipe for oyster fritters. Have the frying kettle half full of fat, as you would for doughnuts. Strain the oysters and remove all bits of shell. In the meantime the lard[95] should be heating on the back of the stove. Cut the oysters slightly. For a pint of oysters use a pint of flour, sifted, and mixed with a level teaspoonful of salt. Put the flour in a mixing bowl with the yolk of one egg, a tablespoonful of salad oil, and a pinch of pepper. Use enough of the oyster liquor to make a batter thick enough to drop from the spoon. Beat the white of an egg to a stiff froth. Mix the oysters and the white of egg lightly with the batter, and as soon as it is mixed drop by the large spoonful into the hot lard. As soon as brown take the fritters out and lay them for a moment on brown paper to drain the grease off. In order to keep them hot while you are frying the rest lay the paper on a dripping pan and set it in the oven.
Take next a recipe for oyster soup, thickened with cracker dust. For a quart of oysters, remove all bits of shell, as usual, and mix the oyster liquor with enough to make a quart. Take one tablespoonful of butter, a very little white pepper, if you have it, two tablespoonfuls of cracker dust finely powdered. As I told you the other day, the cracker dust which you buy at the cracker factories is the nicest. Stir all together over the fire, and when it comes to a boil put in the oysters, with a level teaspoonful of salt. Stir till the edges of the oysters curl; then serve. To thicken with flour, stir one tablespoonful of flour and one of butter together over the fire. Season with pepper, and put in one quart of liquor and milk.
For plain broiled oysters, prepare the oysters as above directed and lay them on a towel. Take a double-wire broiler and butter it thickly, taking care to have the fire hot. Season the oysters lightly with pepper and but very little, if any, salt. Put the oysters between the broiler, and broil them; serve them on toast.
For breaded oysters, prepare as before, and dip the oysters in melted butter seasoned with pepper and salt, and roll them in cracker crumbs. Put them on the gridiron and broil them until they are light brown.
For oysters broiled with bacon, cut very thin slices of breakfast bacon, as many slices as oysters, and stick them on little skewers, half a dozen oysters on each skewer, first a slice of bacon and then an oyster, until you have half a dozen on each skewer. Flatten them so that they will lie a little apart. Put the skewer between the buttered bars of the gridiron, dust them a little with pepper and brown them. The bacon should[96] be cut very thin and about the size of the oyster. Serve them on the skewers.
For oysters in the Philadelphia style, prepare the oysters by draining the juice from them and removing the small pieces of shells. Use for one dozen large oysters one tablespoonful of lard, two tablespoonfuls of salad oil. As soon as the fat is hot put the oysters in and fry them till the edges curl. Season them with pepper and salt. Fry them plain or rolled in flour.
For a rarebit large enough for three or four persons, put in a sauce pan a quarter of a pound of grated cheese, two tablespoonfuls of butter, a saltspoonful of salt, two tablespoonfuls of ale, one teaspoonful of mustard, a little dust of cayenne pepper, stir all these together over the fire and serve on toast.
For broiled chicken choose always a tender chicken. Remove all the feathers, singe it over the fire, and wipe the chicken with a wet towel. Split the chicken down the back. In doing that one can remove the entrails without breaking. Take out the entrails and crop; lay the chicken open on the gridiron. It is better to use a double gridiron, well buttered. If the chicken is not tender, break the joints so the chicken will lie flat on the gridiron. Put the inside of the chicken to the fire first and brown it. Do not put it too close to the fire. Broil it fifteen or twenty minutes, for it will require about that time to get well done. When the inside is brown, turn it and broil the outside, allowing about ten minutes. Take time enough to brown it nicely without burning. If you have a very young spring chicken less time will be required. Do not broil a chicken that weighs over three pounds. If the chicken is very large it is better to put it in a very hot oven in a pan, with no butter unless the chicken is very lean. Season with salt, pepper and butter, if desired, when it is removed from the oven.
Split down the back, and after breaking the joints dress and lay it open. Use two tablespoonfuls of butter and one cup of water. Season with salt and pepper. Brown the chicken well, dredge it with flour and baste it every fifteen minutes with drippings from the pan until tender. Pour over it the gravy that you find in the pan, and serve. The Southerners, with whom this dish is a great favorite, usually put in this gravy some nice table sauce.
Take one-half cup of very finely ground oatmeal and put it over the fire with a pint of boiling water and a level teaspoonful of salt. Boil it very slowly until it becomes transparent. This will require two hours or longer. Do not add any more water unless it is positively necessary. When it is done it should be stiff and hold its form when it is turned out. It makes a dish which is very nice and nutritious for sick people, when it is quite gelatinous. Add sugar, if it is desired, and put it in a mould. Serve when cold and solid with cream and powdered sugar.
Boiled trout makes an excellent dish for convalescents and it is very nutritious. Have the fish cleaned and the scales removed. The entrails should be drawn from the gills. After the fish has been thoroughly washed boil it in salted boiling water till you can easily pull a fin out, then serve it with a white sauce either made plain or with milk. French canned green peas are nice with trout. If the peas are served with the trout put the peas on the dish and lay the trout on them.
Clam soup may be given to invalids with beef tea, alternating. Clam soup may be given when beef tea can not be digested. It is very nutritious. Drain off the juice and remove all bits of shell as with oysters. If the clams are whole put the shells over the fire until they are heated; remove the clams and simply season the juice very lightly with salt and pepper and use the broth in that shape. If you are using canned clams heat the clams in the juice, then remove the juice and season slightly, using the juice. Strain the juice. Take the clams and cut away[98] the hard part from the soft part. Boil the juice, with the hard part, long enough to extract the flavor. Use the juice to make the soup, adding water or milk. When the soup is made season it, putting the soft part of the clam in it. Boil it a couple of minutes and serve it. Use butter and flour in the same manner as for thickening oyster soup.
Make orange salad to serve with broiled chicken in the following manner: For a small chicken use two small sour oranges, sliced very thin. Arrange them nicely on a dish. Place over the slices of orange a very little salt, a little cayenne pepper, and three tablespoonfuls of salad oil. If the oranges are sweet a few drops of vinegar or lemon juice must be added. Serve the chicken on top of the orange salad.
Heat a half pint of milk until it is lukewarm. While the milk is heating beat one egg with a teaspoonful of powdered sugar and stir the egg and sugar in with it. When the milk is lukewarm add one teaspoonful of liquid rennet and one teaspoonful of wine or one tablespoonful of rennet wine. Mix all together and let it become cold. Rennet custard may be given safely when the invalid is not able to take more than broth.
For a pint of beef tea take one pound of beef chopped very fine. All the fat is to be cut away. Put it in a bowl with a pint of cold water. Let it stand in an earthen bowl at least an hour, and longer if possible. Put the water and beef in the sauce pan over the fire, and heat them very slowly indeed. When the beef tea arrives at the boiling point pour it into a wire sieve to allow the juice and the little particles of meat—not the fibres—to pass through. Season it very lightly, and if any particles of fat are visible lay little pieces of white porous paper on top of the tea to absorb the fat; serve it hot or cold.
The following typographical errors were corrected.
Page | Error | Correction |
4 | sent to Miss Carson | sent to Miss Corson |
7 | slowly head | slowly heat |
8 | thoroughly wish | thoroughly wash |
10 | tablespoonful of floor | tablespoonful of flour |
11 | pans are pefectly | pans are perfectly |
12 | Question: Do you use a wooden | Question. Do you use a wooden |
13 | in the appearence | in the appearance |
13 | Ichotyophagus | Ichthyophagous |
17 | friends in this | friends in the |
17 | fresh. Al | fresh. All |
17 | Then it beomes | Then it becomes |
18 | tend to harded | tend to harden |
22 | To day I am | To-day I am |
23 | use cold meat | use cold meat, |
36 | from this pieee | from this piece |
36 | Carson. No, decidedly | Corson. No, decidedly |
37 | Carson. Of course | Corson. Of course |
41 | Obscured text in flour use reconstructed as flour in general use | |
44 | with it,if | with it, if |
51 | deal of erase | deal of ease |
58 | those little chese | those little cheese |
60 | way of choping | way of chopping |
60 | burning, becausea | burning, because a |
64 | double boileryou | double boiler you |
69 | softens at once, | softens at once. |
71 | bowlfull | bowlful |
72 | from greese, | from grease |
72 | it from greese | it from grease |
72 | manilla | manila |
72 | that the greese | that the grease |
74 | No, beats | No, beets |
74 | skin of beats, | skin of beets |
80 | part of the stock | part of the stalk |
82 | that the cabbags | that the cabbage |
83 | tablespoonful of flower | tablespoonful of flour |
88 | two or thre | two or three |
92 | in the tenderlonis | in the tenderloins |
92 | that the fatter | that the faster |
94 | wet towl | wet towel |
95 | pinch of peper | pinch of pepper |
95 | finely powdered, | finely powdered. |
98 | BEAF TEA. | BEEF TEA. |
98 | in an earthern | in an earthen |
101 | Eighteenth Ave. S E. | Eighteenth Ave. S. E. |
111 | 316 Sixth Street Southesst, Minneaplis. | 316 Sixth Street Southeast, Minneapolis |
111 | Three-and-a-half | Three-and-a-Half |
111 | St. Cloud, Minn | St. Cloud, Minn. |
115 | Lyons, Iowa | Lyons, Iowa. |
119 | merringue, | meringue, |
119 | Section break added before Beans, How to cook, 25 | |
120 | Saucepans, To clean, 11 | Saucepans, To clean, 12 |
The following word was inconsistently spelled.
Force meat / Forcemeat
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