glass of wine, a dozen button mushrooms, three ounces of truffles cut
in pieces, and a cup of broth, or the stock of plain soup without
vegetables. Simmer gently, and finish by adding the juice of a lemon.
HASHED BEEF, PLAIN
Slice some beef in very thin pieces, season with pepper and salt, and
shake a little flour over it. Next, chop a medium sized onion and
put it (without the beef) into a stew-pan with a tablespoonful of
mushroom or tomato catsup. Boil for a few minutes, then add a pint of
broth stock, or gravy-soup; boil it down to half the quantity. Five
minutes before serving, throw in the cold sliced beef; let it boil
five minutes and serve on toasted bread.
SANDWICHES. VERY FINE
Take half a pound of nice sweet butter, three tablespoonfuls of mixed
mustard, the same of sweet oil, a little salt, pepper and the yolk
of an egg. Put it over the fire and stir till it thickens; set it by
to cool and chop fine some tongue or boiled ham. Cut the bread thin,
then spread on the dressing and over it put a layer of ham or tongue.
Press the slices of bread hard together, trim the edges and garnish
with curled parsley.
SANDWICHES OF VARIOUS KINDS, FOR PIC-NICS
Home-made bread cuts better for sandwiches than baker’s bread, so
if you wish the sandwiches very nice, it is better to make a loaf
at home. For bread and butter sandwiches, cut the bread very thin,
spread it evenly with sweet butter, and lay the buttered sides
together. Lay them in circles on a plate and put parsley on top of
them. Sandwiches may be made with cheese sliced and placed between
the buttered bread, or with hard-boiled eggs sliced or chopped, and
put between. The best are made with boiled smoked tongue or ham, with
French mustard spread over the butter.
TO MAKE FRENCH MUSTARD
Put on a plate an ounce of the best mustard, add to it salt, a clove
of garlic or a few tarragon leaves. Mince the garlic, stir it in, and
pour on vinegar till it is of the proper thickness for use.
VEAL HASH FOR BREAKFAST. VERY NICE
Take a pint cup of cold veal cut small, dredge it with a spoonful of
flour, and add a piece of butter the size of a hen’s egg. Put all
in a stew-pan with half a pint of water; cover up and put it on the
stove; let it simmer for an hour at least, stir it occasionally and
add to it some parsley and sweet herbs. Just before serving add a
teacup of milk, and serve on toasted bread.
PLAIN VEAL AND HAM PIE. EASILY MADE
Cut a pound of veal and a pound of ham into slices, salt them
slightly; chop a cupful of mushrooms, a bunch of parsley, some
eschalots, and fry them lightly; add to them a pint of soup stock,
boil it together for five minutes and pour it into the piepan where
you have placed your ham and veal. Put a dozen hard-boiled yolks of
eggs in among the contents of the pie, cover it with a nice paste and
bake it one hour and a half.
FRICANDELLONS OF COLD VEAL OR MUTTON
Mince the meat very fine, soak a thick slice of bread in boiling
milk, mash it, and mix it with the cold meat; add a beaten egg (or
two if you have more than a quarter of a pound of meat), some chopped
parsley and thyme, a little grated lemon peel, pepper and salt; make
this into cakes, and fry in butter or lard. Serve them dry on a
serviette, accompanied with a gravy made from the bones of the minced
meat which must be cooked with an onion, a little butter and flour,
and milk; when brown it is ready.
VEAL AND HAM RAISED PIE, OR TIMBALE
Lard two pounds of lean veal well with strips of fat bacon, and add
two pounds of ham. Line a deep pan or mould with rich paste; lay in
the bottom of this a layer of liver forcemeat, then the veal and ham,
and so on in alternate layers, till the dish is full. Season between
each layer with thyme, bay leaf, marjoram, or any dried and pounded
sweet herbs; fill up the hollow places, and cover the pan with paste.
Decorate the top of the pie with cut dough leaves; make a hole in the
top to pour in the gravy, and let out the steam. Egg the top of the
pie and bake it for three hours; withdraw it from the oven, and place
the point of a funnel in the hole in the top, and pour in about a
pint of good gravy or veal consommé. This should be eaten cold. It
will be jellied all through if cooked enough.
VEAL SALAD FOR LUNCH
To a pint of minced veal add three heads of celery. Pour over this a
dressing made of the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, a tablespoonful
of dry mustard, and a large spoonful of olive oil. When this dressing
is well beaten and perfectly smooth, add to it slowly (to keep from
curdling) four tablespoonfuls of good wine vinegar, a little cayenne
and salt. Garnish the dish with parsley and celery leaves.
VEAL SWEETBREADS, WITH TOMATOES
Set over the fire two quarts of ripe tomatoes; stew slowly, and
strain through a coarse sieve. Add to them four or five sweetbreads,
well trimmed and soaked in warm water; season with salt and cayenne
pepper. Thicken with three spoonfuls of flour and a quarter of a
pound of butter, mixed; cook slowly till done, and just before
serving stir in the beaten yolks of three eggs.
VEAL LOAF FOR LUNCH OR TEA
Mince cold roast veal as fine as possible; add a fourth part as
much fat ham, a cup of grated bread, or cracker crumbs, and two
well-beaten eggs to bind the crumbs together; season with salt,
and pepper (black and red), mix and form it into a loaf. Glaze the
outside with yolk of egg, and sprinkle over it fine cracker crumbs.
Bake half an hour, and serve with gravy made from the bones, etc., of
the veal. Serve the gravy hot.
MINCED VEAL AND POACHED EGGS
One pound of cold veal chopped very fine. Boil half a pint of sauce
till it begins to thicken or glaze; then add a cup of cream and the
minced veal; season with pepper and salt. When dished put six poached
eggs around it, alternately with slices of red tongue or ham. This is
a nice breakfast dish, and uses to advantage the cold meats from the
day previous.
CALF OR PIG BRAINS FRIED
Wash the brains in salt water, and wipe dry and dip in wheat flour or
in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs. Fry in butter or lard, and
season with pepper, salt and lemon sliced.
CALVES’ AND PIGS’ FEET FRIED IN BATTER
Wash and cook the feet tender, the day before using. When wanted,
wash and roll them in a little flour to dry. Set them by, and make a
batter of flour, eggs, milk, and a little salt and pepper (one egg is
sufficient to two feet); take out the largest bones and roll the feet
in batter, or lay them in a pan with hot lard, and pour the batter
over them. Fry a delicate brown and serve on toast.
CALF’S HEAD BOILED OR BAKED
Have a head nicely cleaned, and soak it in salt and water to make
it look white. Remove the eyes. Take out the tongue and salt it. Of
the brains make a separate dish. To boil the head put it in a pot of
lukewarm water and boil till very tender. Serve with sauce made of
butter, flour and water, some lemon juice and tomatoes. If to bake,
dredge flour over it, put on bits of butter, season with pepper,
salt, and sweet herbs, set in a hot oven and baste with the water in
which it was boiled.
POTTED CALF’S HEAD
Boil a calf’s head or half a beef’s head with a cow-heel until very
tender. When done, pick out all the bones and chop the meat and
tendons very fine; strain the liquor they were boiled in, and set
it away to cool; skim off the fat and pour the jelly over the meat.
Season with a teaspoonful of black pepper, salt, and thyme, powdered;
boil all together for a few minutes, and pour into bowls or jelly
moulds. Serve with parsley. Add a little garlic if the flavor is
liked.
COLLARED CALF’S HEAD WITH BRAINS. COLD DISH
Boil half, or the whole calf’s head, as you require. Cover it with
water and let it simmer for two hours; take it up, remove the bones,
and put them back into the broth; let it continue to stew, adding to
it sage leaves, and an onion. Cut the meat of head and brains into
a stew-pan, adding to it some slices of ham, pepper and salt, the
chopped tongue and an eschalot; let these cook two hours. The brains
should be beaten up with two eggs, before putting them in, which
should be the last thing. Then pour all in a mould and fill up with
the liquor from the head, which should be boiled to a jelly.
CURRY OF COLD ROAST FOWL
Take two large onions, two apples, two ounces of butter, a
dessertspoonful of curry powder or paste, half pint of gravy or
soup-stock, one spoonful of lemon juice and two tomatoes.
Fry the fowl and the onions in butter to a light brown color; stew
the apples, or fry them also. Put all, onions, apples, gravy and
fowl, with the tomatoes and lemon juice into a stewing pan and let it
stew thirty minutes; then serve with boiled rice. If curry paste is
used instead of curry powder, no lemon is required.
WELSH RAREBIT
Cut a pound of cheese in slices a quarter of an inch thick, fry them
together five minutes in butter, then add two well-beaten eggs, a
little mustard and pepper; stir it up and send it to table hot, on
slices of buttered bread.
HAM TOAST FOR LUNCHEON
Beat the yolk of an egg with a tablespoonful of sweet milk; set it on
the fire to warm, and thicken it with grated or finely chopped ham;
let it simmer a few moments and pour it on buttered toast. This is
for one person.
WINTER DISH OF BAKED BEANS AND PORK
This is a very heavy dish, but nourishing, and it is well to know how
to cook it, as it is economical.
Pick the beans, wash them, and put them to soak over night in plenty
of water. In the morning pour this water off and put the beans in a
kettle of cold water; place them on the fire and let them simmer till
quite tender. Take them up and drain them; when thoroughly drained,
put them in a baking pan with a large piece of salt pork; score the
pork and lay it deep in among the beans, not upon them. Pour boiling
water over them and bake till brown. If in a range, leave them in all
night. This constant change of water improves the beans very much,
and makes them less flatulent.
MUTTON, BEEF AND HAMS
REMARKS ON BOILING MEATS
Meat, whether fresh or salted, smoked or dried, should always be
put on the fire in cold water. Dried meats should be soaked before
boiling. The delicacy of meat and fowls is preserved by carefully
skimming while they are boiling.
STUFFED HAM
Smoked hams are much liked stuffed with spices and sweet herbs, which
the only kind of stuffing a salt ham will admit, as bread, crackers
or oysters would sour before the ham could be used. If you wish to
stuff a ham, look at the recipe for “Aromatic Spices for seasoning
Meat, Pies, etc.” Soak your ham all night, scrape it nicely, and
boil it half an hour to make the skin tender; then take it from the
pot, gash it all over, introduce as much of the pounded spices as
the incisions will hold, and then close the skin over the gashes and
boil in the same manner, with vegetables thrown in, as in recipe for
boiled ham.
BAKED HAM
Soak and clean your ham, boil it with onions, cloves, parsley and
sweet herbs until it is nearly done, then let it cool in its own
liquor; when cold, pull off the skin and place the ham in the oven
gate, with a little sugar and bread crumbs over it till it is brown.
If it is to be eaten hot, serve with vegetables and some acid or
piquant sauce; if cold, send up savory jelly, No. 21.
TO BOIL A HAM
Run a knife, or skewer, into the thickest part of the ham next the
bone; if the knife comes out clean the ham is good, if it smells rank
and smears the knife the ham is not good. Select your ham, then,
according to this rule, and when good lay it in cold water; scrape
and wash it carefully, and let it remain in the water all night.
In the morning, when the water--enough to cover the ham--is nearly
boiling lay the ham in, and keep the water in a simmer. When it has
boiled about an hour throw in two carrots, four onions, two heads
of celery, a sprig of parsley, two or three blades of mace and four
cloves. If the ham is very salty, it is well to change the water
before putting in the seasoning. To obtain tenderness and mellowness
the ham must not be allowed to boil hard, only simmer. Too much heat
hardens all meat, especially salt meat. When the ham is done set it
off in its own water, let it cool in it; by this means it will retain
its moisture. When cool take it out, skin it, and dredge sugar over
it, set it in the oven till it browns, or hold a hot shovel over it.
DAUBE GLACEE OF BEEF, FOR COLD SUPPERS
Take a thick round of beef--from four to six inches is the best
size--make holes in it and stuff them with salted pork or bacon; roll
each piece, before it is drawn through the beef, in pepper, salt,
sugar, and vinegar, with minced parsley, and a very little minced
garlic. If the weather is cold it will be better to keep the meat
till the next day before cooking it. Boil two calf’s feet or four
pig’s feet until they drop to pieces; pick out the bones and strain
the liquor; set it away to jelly, or put it on ice to make it jelly.
The next morning, put one half the jelly in a large stew pan, then
add the beef, and cover it with the remainder of the jelly. Paste the
pan over very tight or cover it extremely well, so that none of the
flavor can escape. Cook this about four hours; when done, take out,
cover with the liquor, and set it aside till it is jellied. This is
delicious to eat cold, for suppers and collations.
BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF, STUFFED
A piece weighing about eight pounds requires five or six hours to
boil. Before boiling the beef make a dressing of bread crumbs,
pepper, butter, salt, sweet herbs, mace, and an onion, all chopped
fine and mixed with a beaten egg. Put the dressing between the fat
and the lean of the beef; sew it up to keep the dressing in. Flour a
cloth, tie the beef up tight in it, and let it boil five or six hours.
ROUND OF BEEF STEWED BROWN
Make incisions in the beef and stuff with chopped onions, salt,
pepper, and sweet basil, thyme and parsley. Dredge the meat with
flour, lay some slices of bacon over it, and put it to brown in a
close oven. Slice two turnips, four carrots, four salsifies, three
stalks of celery and two onions; add a quarter of a cup of tomato
catsup or two large tomatoes; season with salt and put all in the
oven to cook with the meat. After it has been cooking in the oven two
hours and is brown, add a cup of water with the vegetables. Cover
again closely, and let this stew for one or two hours more, or until
the meat and vegetables are tender.
TO FRY A STEAK TO TASTE AS IF BROILED
It sometimes happens that when the fire is low and the coals gone
out, you are called on to cook a steak. Then get up a quick blaze in
the stove with some kindlings. Put in a pan, over the blaze, a little
butter; when it is hot lay in your steak; let it fry quickly; while
frying cover the pan. Work some butter, salt and pepper together in
a tin pan, and when the steak is done to taste, let it lie in this
mixture a few minutes, and then serve. Do not salt a steak until it
is cooked as salt will toughen it and draw out its juices.
ROUND OF BEEF A LA BARONNE
Boil a fat round of beef for half an hour, take it up and put in a
deep dish; cut gashes in the sides of the meat, put pepper and salt
into each gash; fill the dish the meat is in with claret wine; set it
in to bake, adding as it goes in the stove three blades of mace, a
cup of pickled capers, or nasturtiums, three white onions cut small,
and a bunch of parsley cut fine. Stew or bake all together until the
meat is tender. Toast some slices of bread very brown, lay them in
the bottom of a dish, lay in the beef and pour the gravy around it,
unless it is preferred in a sauce boat.
ROASTED BEEFSTEAKS
Tenderloin or porterhouse steaks are the best for broiling. Have a
clear fire of coals to broil on; rub the gridiron with a little fat
of the meat; lay on the steak without salting, let it broil gently
until one side is done, then turn. Catch the blood as you turn it,
to make the gravy rich. If the steak is a large firm one, take a
quarter of a pound of butter and work into it pepper and salt. When
the steak is done lay it on to this seasoned butter, keep it hot
until the butter melts, turn the steak in it a few times, put the
blood with the gravy, and serve hot, with tomato sauce or catsup.
TO ROAST BEEF IN A STOVE
A fine roasting piece of beef may, if properly managed, be baked in
a stove so as to resemble beef roasted before a large, open fire.
Prepare the meat as if for roasting, season it well with salt,
pepper, and a little onion if liked. Set the meat on muffin rings,
or a trivet in a dripping pan, and pour into the pan a pint or so
of hot water to baste the meat with. Keep the oven hot and well
closed on the meat; when it begins to bake, baste it freely, using a
long-handled spoon; it should be basted every fifteen minutes; add
hot water to the pan as it wastes, that the gravy may not burn; allow
fifteen minutes to each pound of meat unless you wish it very rare.
Half an hour before taking it up, dredge flour thickly over it, baste
freely and let it brown. Take the meat from the pan, dredge in some
flour and seasoning if needed; throw into the gravy a cup of water,
let it boil up once, and strain into a sauce boat or gravy tureen.
LEG OF MUTTON BOILED A L’ANGLAISE
Select a fat, fine leg of mutton, put it on the fire in warm water;
when it boils skim it, and let it simmer gently for two hours and
a half; throw in a tablespoonful of salt. When the mutton is done
garnish with turnips mashed in cream, butter, pepper and salt, and
send it to table with a sauce boat of caper sauce No. 11.
ROAST LEG OF MUTTON
Select a fine, fat leg, cut holes in it, and lard it with fat bacon;
season with parsley, pepper, and salt and put it to bake in a slow
oven. Roast it for two hours, and serve with tomato sauce.
MUTTON STUFFED WITH MUSHROOMS
Chop up half a pint of mushrooms, put them in a stew pan with some
chopped parsley and onion, and a tablespoonful of grated lean and
same of fat ham; season with salt and pepper, add the yolks of four
eggs, stir it all together, and introduce it in the leg by taking out
the bone or by making incisions in the mutton. Bake very brown, froth
it up by dusting flour over it, and serve with a good brown gravy,
in which some currant jelly is melted. Sauce No. 28 is very nice for
stuffed leg of mutton.
MUTTON HAUNCH
Let it lie in vinegar and water a few hours before it is put to cook.
When wanted, rub it all over with pepper and salt, and when going to
put it in the oven, cover it with a paste made of flour and water,
to keep in the juices while baking; allow fifteen minutes to each
pound of mutton. When half done, take off the flour paste, baste the
meat well and dredge flour over it. Half an hour before serving, stir
into the pan a quarter of a pound of butter, baste the meat freely,
dredge flour over it again, and brown. Serve with port wine and
jelly in the gravy, or if preferred, use one of the sauces mentioned
for roast mutton.
MUTTON THAT WILL TASTE LIKE VENISON
Take a hind quarter of lamb or mutton; rub it well all over with
brown sugar, half a pint of wine, and same of vinegar. Let it stay
in this pickle for a day or two, if the weather is cold. When it is
wanted, wash it, dry it, and roast it, or it may be cut into steaks,
or made into a pie like venison. Sugar is a great preservative, and
gives a finer flavor than salt, which hardens delicate meats. Salt
drains out the juices of mutton or lamb.
FOWLS AND GAME
BOILED CHICKEN
After the chickens are cleaned and trussed fold them in a nice white
cloth, put them in a large stew-pan and cover them with boiling
water; boil them gently, and skim carefully as long as any scum
rises; let them simmer slowly as that will make them plump and white,
while fast boiling will make them dark and lose flavor. When done lay
them on a hot dish, and pour celery, oyster, or egg sauce over them.
Serve some also in a boat, as it keeps hot longer than when poured
over the fowls. Boiled tongue or ham should be served with boiled
chicken. If the chicken is not very tough, an hour or an hour and a
quarter is sufficient to boil it.
COUNTRY FRIED CHICKENS
Take a young, fat chicken, cut it up, pepper and salt it, dredge it
over with flour, and set it by while you mix a cup of lard, and some
slices of fat bacon in a frying pan. Let the lard get very hot, then
drop in a few pieces of the chicken, always allowing room in the pan
for each piece to be turned without crowding. As fast as you fry the
pieces, put them on a dish over hot water to keep the heat in them
while you make the gravy. Pour off some of the grease the chicken was
fried in, and then dredge into the frying pan some flour, let this
brown nicely and then pour into it a cup of sweet milk, little at a
time; let it froth up, and then place your chicken back into the
gravy for three minutes. If you like the chicken brown and dry, pour
the gravy under it on the dish for serving.
BOILED CHICKENS WITH STUFFING
Truss and stuff the chicken as for roasting, dredge it all over with
wheat flour, and put it in a pot of boiling water; take the pot off
the fire for five minutes after the chicken is put in, or the skin
will crack; then let it boil gently according to its age and weight,
an old fowl requiring twice as long to boil as a young one; allow
fifteen minutes to the pound. Take off all the scum as it rises, and
when done serve with hard-boiled egg sauce, or parsley, or oyster
sauce. This is a nice way to cook a fat old chicken, as it is much
more tender and nourishing than baked, for if the chicken is old
baking toughens it.
STEW, OR FRICASSEE OF CHICKEN
Clean and wash the chicken, cut it up as for frying, lay it in a
stew-pan with water to cover it; add a teaspoonful of salt and half
as much pepper; set it to boil very gently, take off all scum as it
rises. When the chicken is tender, which will be in an hour, take a
teacup of butter, a tablespoonful of flour worked in it, and a bunch
of parsley, put them in the stew-pan with the chicken; let all stew
twenty minutes, and serve on toasted bread. Egg-balls around the
toast add much to the beauty of this dish.
CHICKEN FRICASSEE A LA MARENGO
Cut the chicken up as for a fricassee, put it in a sauce-pan with a
wineglassful of salad oil, and allow it to cook rather briskly for
twenty minutes; then put in with it a quarter of a pound of truffles
cut up, a bunch of parsley, six chives or small green eschalots,
a bruised clove of garlic, and pepper and salt; let them stew for
twenty minutes; then pour off the oil and take out the parsley. If
only one chicken is used, throw in half a pint of button mushrooms, a
ladleful of brown gravy sauce, and the juice of a lemon. Garnish this
dish with pieces of fried bread and large crayfish.
ROAST CHICKENS
Draw them and stuff with rich bread and butter stuffing; baste them
with butter and a little fat bacon, seasoned with sweet herbs;
brown nicely, and serve with their own gravy made by sifting in a
tablespoonful of flour and a cup of hot water; add a little chopped
parsley, and serve with hard-boiled eggs on the dish with the
chickens.
CHICKEN SAUTE WITH OYSTER SAUCE
Cut up the chicken as for frying, roll each piece in salt, pepper,
and sifted flour, and fry a light brown. Pour off most of the grease
the chicken was fried in, and in the same pan put three dozen oysters
with a pint of their juice, and a spoonful of lemon juice. Let them
simmer a few minutes, and serve with pieces of fried bread around the
dish.
COLD CHICKEN ESCALLOPED
Mince cold chicken without the skin, wet it with gravy or hot water
(gravy is best), and season with salt and pepper. To the minced meat
of one chicken, put two ounces of sweet, fresh butter, cut small.
Rub tin or silver scallop pans with butter, strew over the bottom
powdered cracker, lay the minced chicken in, strew cracker over the
top, and bake in a hot oven long enough to brown the top. Serve with
celery or pickle.
TO BROIL A CHICKEN
Clean it as usual and split it down the back, break the breast-bone
with a stroke of the potato beetle, spread it out flat and lay it
on the gridiron over clear coals; put the inside of the chicken to
the fire first. Put a tin cover over it, let it broil quickly until
nearly done, then turn it and finish without the cover. When nicely
browned take it on a dish, season it with salt and pepper, and butter
it freely; turn it once or twice in the butter and serve it hot.
CHICKEN CURRY
Cut up the chicken and stew as usual for the table. When done add a
tablespoonful of curry powder. Serve rice with the dish.
CHICKEN PIE, A LA REINE