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CULTURE AND COOKING;
OR,
ART IN THE KITCHEN.
BY
CATHERINE OWEN
"Le Créateur, en obligeant l'homme à manger pour vivre, l'y invite
par l'appétit et l'en récompense par le plaisir."
--BRILLAT SAVARIN.
CASSELL, PETTER, GALPIN & CO.,
NEW YORK, LONDON, AND PARIS.
1881
COPYRIGHT,
1881,
BY O. M. DUNHAM.
PRESS OF J. J. LITTLE & CO.,
NOS. 10 TO 20 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK.
PREFACE.
THIS is not a cookery book. It makes no attempt to replace a good one;
it is rather an effort to fill up the gap between you and your household
oracle, whether she be one of those exasperating old friends who
maddened our mother with their vagueness, or the newer and better lights
of our own generation, the latest and best of all being a lady as well
known for her novels as for her works on domestic economy--one more
proof, if proof were needed, of the truth I endeavor to set forth--if
somewhat tediously forgive me--in this little book: that cooking and
cultivation are by no means antagonistic. Who does not remember with
affectionate admiration Charlotte Bronté taking the eyes out of the
potatoes stealthily, for fear of hurting the feelings of her purblind
old servant; or Margaret Fuller shelling peas?
The chief difficulty, I fancy, with women trying recipes is, that they
fail and know not why they fail, and so become discouraged, and this is
where I hope to step in. But although this is not a cookery book,
insomuch as it does not deal chiefly with recipes, I shall yet give a
few; but only when they are, or I believe them to be, better than those
in general use, or good things little known, or supposed to belong to
the domain of a French _chef_, of which I have introduced a good many.
Should I succeed in making things that were obscure before clear to a
few women, I shall be as proud as was Mme. de Genlis when she boasts in
her Memoirs that she has taught six new dishes to a German housewife.
Six new dishes! When Brillat-Savarin says: "He who has invented _one_
new dish has done more for the pleasure of mankind than he who has
discovered a star."
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
PRELIMINARY REMARKS 1
CHAPTER II.
ON BREAD.
Sponge for bread.--One cause of failure.--Why home-made
bread often has a hard crust.--On baking.--Ovens.--More
reasons why bread may fail to be good.--Light
rolls.--Rusks.--Kreuznach horns.--Kringles.--Brioche
(Paris Jockey Club recipe).--Soufflée bread.--A novelty 12
CHAPTER III.
PASTRY.
Why you fail in making good puff paste.--How to
succeed.--How to handle it.--To put fruit pies together so
that the syrup does not boil out.--Ornamenting fruit
pies.--Rissolettes.--Pastry tablets.--Frangipane
tartlets.--Rules for ascertaining the heat of your oven 22
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT TO HAVE IN YOUR STORE-ROOM.
Mushroom powder (recipe).--Stock to keep, or glaze
(recipe).--Uses of glaze.--Glazing meats, hams, tongues,
etc.--Mâitre d'hôtel butter (recipe).--Uses of
it.--Ravigotte or Montpellier butter (recipe).--Uses of
it.--Roux.--Blanc (recipes).--Uses of both.--Brown flour,
its uses 28
CHAPTER V.
LUNCHEONS.
Remarks on what to have for luncheons.--English meat
pies.--Windsor pie.--Veal and ham pie.--Chicken
pie.--Raised pork pie.--(Recipes).--Ornamenting meat
pies.--Galantine (recipe).--Fish in jelly.--Jellied
oysters.--A new mayonnaise luncheon for small
families.--Potted meats (recipes).--Anchovy butter.--A new
omelet.--Potato snow.--Lyonnaise potatoes 35
CHAPTER VI.
A CHAPTER ON GENERAL MANAGEMENT IN VERY SMALL FAMILIES.
How to have little dinners.--Hints for bills of fare,
etc.--Filet de b[oe]uf Chateaubriand (recipe).--What to do
with the odds and ends.--Various recipes.--Salads.--Recipes 47
CHAPTER VII.
FRYING.
Why you fail.--Panure or bread-crumbs, to prepare.--How to
prepare flounders as filets de sole.--Fried oysters.--To
clarify dripping for frying.--Remarks.--Pâte à frire à la
Carême.--Same, à la Provençale.--Broiling 55
CHAPTER VIII.
ROASTING 62
CHAPTER IX.
BOILING AND SOUPS.
Boiling meat.--Rules for knowing exactly the degrees of
boiling.--Vegetables.--Remarks on making soup.--To clear
soup.--Why it is not clear.--Coloring
pot-au-feu.--Consommé.--_Crême de celeri_, a little known
soup.--Recipes 65
CHAPTER X.
SAUCES.
Remarks on making and flavoring sauces.--Espagnole or
brown sauce as it should be.--How to make fine white sauce 70
CHAPTER XI.
WARMING OVER.
Remarks.--Salmi of cold meats.--B[oe]uf à la
jardinière.--B[oe]uf au gratin.--Pseudo-beefsteak.
--Cutlets à la jardinière.--Cromesquis of lamb.--Sauce
piquant.--Miroton of beef.--Simple way of warming a
joint.--Breakfast dish.--Stuffed beef.--Beef olives.--Chops
à la poulette.--Devils.--Mephistophelian sauce.--Fritadella,
twenty recipes in one 72
CHAPTER XII.
ON FRIANDISES.
Biscuit glacée at home (recipes).--Iced soufflés
(recipes).--Baba and syrups for it (recipe).--Savarin and
syrup (recipes).--Bouchées de dames.--How to make
Curaçoa.--Maraschino.--Noyeau 84
CHAPTER XIII.
FRENCH CANDIES AT HOME.
How to make them.--Fondants.--Vanilla.--Almond
cream.--Walnut cream.--Tutti frutti.--Various candies
dipped in cream.--Chocolate creams.--Fondant
panaché.--Punch drops 91
CHAPTER XIV.
FOR PEOPLE OF VERY SMALL MEANS.
Remarks.--What may be made of a soup bone.--Several very
economical dishes.--Pot roasts.--Dishes requiring no meat 96
CHAPTER XV.
A FEW THINGS IT IS WELL TO REMEMBER 105
CHAPTER XVI.
ON SOME TABLE PREJUDICES 108
CHAPTER XVII.
A CHAPTER OF ODDS AND ENDS.
Altering recipes.--How to have tarragon, burnet,
etc.--Remarks on obtaining ingredients not in common
use.--An impromptu salamander.--Larding needle.--How to
have parsley fresh all winter without expense.--On having
kitchen conveniences.--Anecdote related by Jules
Gouffée.--On servants in America.--A little
advice by way of valedictory 111
INDEX 119
CULTURE AND COOKING.
CHAPTER I.
A FEW PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, _père_, after writing five hundred novels, says, "I
wish to close my literary career with a book on cooking."
And in the hundred pages or so of preface--or perhaps overture would be
the better word, since in it a group of literary men, while contributing
recondite recipes, flourish trumpets in every key--to his huge volume he
says, "I wish to be read by people of the world, and practiced by people
of the art" (_gens de l'art_); and although _I_ wish, like every one who
writes, to be read by all the world, I wish to aid the practice, not of
the professors of the culinary art, but those whose aspirations point to
an enjoyment of the good things of life, but whose means of attaining
them are limited.
There is a great deal of talk just now about cooking; in a lesser degree
it takes its place as a popular topic with ceramics, modern antiques,
and household art. The fact of it being in a mild way fashionable may do
a little good to the eating world in general. And it may make it more
easy to convince young women of refined proclivities that the art of
cooking is not beneath their attention, to know that the Queen of
England's daughters--and of course the cream of the London fair--have
attended the lectures on the subject delivered at South Kensington, and
that a young lady of rank, Sir James Coles's daughter, has been
recording angel to the association, is in fact the R. C. C. who edits
the "Official Handbook of Cookery."
But, notwithstanding all that has been done by South Kensington lectures
in London and Miss Corson's Cooking School in New York to popularize the
culinary art, one may go into a dozen houses, and find the ladies of the
family with sticky fingers, scissors, and gum pot, busily porcelainizing
clay jars, and not find one where they are as zealously trying to work
out the problems of the "Official Handbook of Cookery."
I have nothing to say against the artistic distractions of the day.
Anything that will induce love of the beautiful, and remove from us the
possibility of a return to the horrors of hair-cloth and brocatel and
crochet tidies, will be a stride in the right direction. But what I do
protest against, is the fact, that the same refined girls and matrons,
who so love to adorn their houses that they will spend hours improving a
pickle jar, mediævalizing their furniture, or decorating the dinner
service, will shirk everything that pertains to the preparation of food
as dirty, disagreeable drudgery, and sit down to a commonplace,
ill-prepared meal, served on those artistic plates, as complacently as
if dainty food were not a refinement; as if heavy rolls and poor bread,
burnt or greasy steak, and wilted potatoes did not smack of the shanty,
just as loudly as coarse crockery or rag carpet--indeed far more so; the
carpet and crockery may be due to poverty, but a dainty meal or its
reverse will speak volumes for innate refinement or its lack in the
woman who serves it. You see by my speaking of rag carpets and dainty
meals in one breath, that I do not consider good things to be the
privilege of the rich alone.
There are a great many dainty things the household of small or moderate
means can have just as easily as the most wealthy. Beautiful
bread--light, white, crisp--costs no more than the tough, thick-crusted
boulder, with cavities like eye-sockets, that one so frequently meets
with as _home-made bread_. As Hood says:
"Who has not met with home-made bread,
A heavy compound of putty and lead?"
Delicious coffee is only a matter of care, not expense--and indeed in
America the cause of poor food, even in a boarding-house, is seldom in
the quality of the articles so much as in the preparation and selection
of them--yet an epicure can breakfast well with fine bread and butter
and good coffee. And this leads me to another thing: many people think
that to give too much attention to food shows gluttony. I have heard a
lady say with a tone of virtuous rebuke, when the conversation turned
from fashions to cooking, "I give very little time to cooking, we eat to
live only"--which is exactly what an animal does. Eating to live is mere
feeding. Brillat-Savarin, an abstemious eater himself, among other witty
things on the same topic says, "_L'animal se repait, l'homme mange,
l'homme d'esprit seul sait manger._"
Nine people out of ten, when they call a man an epicure, mean it as a
sort of reproach, a man who is averse to every-day food, one whom plain
fare would fail to satisfy; but Grimod de la Reynière, the most
celebrated gourmet of his day, author of "_Almanach des Gourmands_,"
and authority on all matters culinary of the last century, said, "A true
epicure can dine well on one dish, provided it is excellent of its
kind." Excellent, that is it. A little care will generally secure to us
the refinement of having only on the table what is excellent of its
kind. If it is but potatoes and salt, let the salt be ground fine, and
the potatoes white and mealy. Thackeray says, an epicure is one who
never tires of brown bread and fresh butter, and in this sense every New
Yorker who has his rolls from the Brevoort House, and uses Darlington
butter, is an epicure. There seems to me, more mere animalism in wading
through a long bill of fare, eating three or four indifferently cooked
vegetables, fish, meat, poultry, each second-rate in quality, or made so
by bad cooking, and declaring that you have dined well, and are easy to
please, than there is in taking pains to have a perfectly broiled chop,
a fine potato, and a salad, on which any true epicure could dine well,
while on the former fare he would leave the table hungry.
Spenser points a moral for me when he says, speaking of the Irish in
1580, "That wherever they found a plot of shamrocks or water-cresses
they had a feast;" but there were gourmets even among them, for "some
gobbled the green food as it came, and some picked the faultless stalks,
and looked for the bloom on the leaf."
Thus it is, when I speak of "good living," I do not mean expensive
living or high living, but living so that the table may be as elegant as
the dishes on which it is served.
I believe there exists a feeling, not often expressed perhaps, but
prevalent among young people, that for a lady to cook with her own
hands is vulgar; to love to do it shows that she is of low intellectual
caliber, a sort of drawing-room Bridget. When or how this idea arose it
would be difficult to say, for in the middle ages cooks were often
noble; a Montmorency was _chef de cuisine_ to Philip of Valois;
Montesquieu descended, and was not ashamed of his descent, from the
second cook of the Connetable de Bourbon, who ennobled him. And from
Lord Bacon, "brightest, greatest, meanest of mankind," who took, it is
said, great interest in cooking, to Talleyrand, the Machiavelli of
France, who spent an hour every day with his cook, we find great men
delighting in the art as a recreation.
It is surprising that such an essentially artistic people as Americans
should so neglect an art which a great French writer calls the "_science
mignonne_ of all distinguished men of the world." Napoleon the Great so
fully recognized the social value of keeping a good table that, although
no gourmet himself, he wished all his chief functionaries to be so.
"Keep a good table," he told them; "if you get into debt for it I will
pay." And later, one of his most devoted adherents, the Marquis de
Cussy, out of favor with Louis XVIII. on account of that very devotion,
found his reputation as a gourmet very serviceable to him. A friend
applied for a place at court for him, which Louis refused, till he heard
that M. de Cussy had invented the mixture of cream, strawberries, and
champagne, when he granted the petition at once. Nor is this a solitary
instance in history where culinary skill has been a passport to fortune
to its possessor. Savarin relates that the Chevalier d'Aubigny, exiled
from France, was in London, in utter poverty, notwithstanding which, by
chance, he was invited to dine at a tavern frequented by the young
bucks of that day.
After he had finished his dinner, a party of young gentlemen, who had
been observing him from their table, sent one of their number with many
apologies and excuses to beg of him, as a son of a nation renowned for
their salads, to be kind enough to mix theirs for them. He complied, and
while occupied in making the salad, told them frankly his story, and did
not hide his poverty. One of the gentlemen, as they parted, slipped a
five-pound note into his hand, and his need of it was so great that he
did not obey the prompting of his pride, but accepted it.
A few days later he was sent for to a great house, and learned on his
arrival that the young gentleman he had obliged at the tavern had spoken
so highly of his salad that they begged him to do the same thing again.
A very handsome sum was tendered him on his departure, and afterwards he
had frequent calls on his skill, until it became the fashion to have
salads prepared by d'Aubigny, who became a well-known character in
London, and was called "_the fashionable salad-maker_." In a few years
he amassed a large fortune by this means, and was in such request that
his carriage would drive from house to house, carrying him and his
various condiments--for he took with him everything that could give
variety to his concoctions--from one place, where his services were
needed, to another.
The contempt for this art of cooking is confined to this country, and to
the lower middle classes in England. By the "lower middle classes" I
mean, what Carlyle terms the gigocracy--_i.e._, people sufficiently
well-to-do to keep a gig or phaeton--well-to-do tradesmen, small
professional men, the class whose womenkind would call themselves
"genteel," and many absurd stories are told of the determined ignorance
and pretense of these would-be ladies. But in no class above this is a
knowledge of cooking a thing to be ashamed of; in England, indeed, so
far from that being the case, indifference to the subject, or lack of
understanding and taste for certain dishes is looked upon as a sort of
proof of want of breeding. Not to like curry, macaroni, or parmesan,
_pâté de foie gras_, mushrooms, and such like, is a sign that you have
not been all your life accustomed to good living. Mr. Hardy, in his
"Pair of Blue Eyes," cleverly hits this prejudice when he makes Mr.
Swancourt say, "I knew the fellow wasn't a gentleman; he had no acquired
tastes, never took Worcestershire sauce."
Abroad many women of high rank and culture devote a good deal of time to
a thorough understanding of the subject. We have a lady of the "lordly
line of proud St. Clair" writing for us "Dainty Dishes," and doing it
with a zest that shows she enjoys her work, although she does once in a
while forget something she ought to have mentioned, and later still we
have Miss Rose Coles writing the "Official Handbook of Cookery."
But it is in graceful, refined France that cookery is and has been, a
pet art. Any bill of fare or French cookery book will betray to a
thoughtful reader the attention given to the subject by the wittiest,
gayest, and most beautiful women, and the greatest men. The
high-sounding names attached to French standard dishes are no mere
caprice or homage of a French cook to the great in the land, but
actually point out their inventor. Thus _Bechamel_ was invented by the
Marquis de Bechamel, as a sauce for codfish; while _Filets de Lapereau à
la Berry_ were invented by the Duchess de Berry, daughter of the regent
Orleans, who himself invented _Pain à la d'Orleans_, while to Richelieu
we are indebted for hundreds of dishes besides the renowned mayonnaise.
_Cailles à la Mirepois_, _Chartreuse à la Mauconseil_, _Poulets à la
Villeroy_, betray the tastes of the three great ladies whose name they
bear.
But not in courts alone has the art had its devotees. Almost every great
name in French literature brings to mind something its owner said or did
about cooking. Dumas, who was a prince of cooks, and of whom it is
related that in 1860, when living at Varennes, St. Maur, dividing his
time, as usual, between cooking and literature (_Lorsqu'il ne faisait
pas sauter un roman, il faisait sauter des petits oignons_), on
Mountjoye, a young artist friend and neighbor, going to see him, he
cooked dinner for him. Going into the poultry yard, after donning a
white apron, he wrung the neck of a chicken; then to the kitchen garden
for vegetables, which he peeled and washed himself; lit the fire, got
butter and flour ready, put on his saucepans, then cooked, stirred,
tasted, seasoned until dinner time. Then he entered in triumph, and
announced, "_Le diner est servi_." For six months he passed three or
four days a week cooking for Mountjoye. This novelist's book says, in
connection with the fact that great cooks in France have been men of
literary culture, and literary men often fine cooks, "It is not
surprising that literary men have always formed the _entourage_ of a
great chef, for, to appreciate thoroughly all there is in the culinary
art, none are so well able as men of letters; accustomed as they are to
all refinements, they can appreciate better than others those of the
table," thus paying himself and confrères a delicate little compliment
at the expense of the non-literary world; but, notwithstanding the naïve
self-glorification, he states a fact that helps to point my moral, that
indifference to cooking does not indicate refinement, intellect, or
social pre-eminence.
Brillat-Savarin, grave judge as he was, and abstemious eater, yet has
written the book of books on the art of eating. It was he who said,
"Tell me what you eat, I will tell you what you are," as pregnant with
truth as the better-known proverb it paraphrases.
Malherbe loved to watch his cook at work. I think it was he who said, "A
coarse-minded man could never be a cook," and Charles Baudelaire, the
Poe of France, takes a poet's view of our daily wants, when he says,
"that an ideal cook must have a great deal of the poet's nature,
combining something of the voluptuary with the man of science learned in
the chemical principles of matter;" although he goes further than we
care to follow when he says, that the question of sauces and seasoning
requires "a chapter as grave as a _feuilleton de science_."
It has been said by foreigners that Americans care nothing for the
refinements of the table, but I think they do care. I have known many a
woman in comfortable circumstances long to have a good table, many a man
aspire to better things, and if he could only get them at home would pay
any money. But the getting them at home is the difficulty; on a table
covered with exquisite linen, glass, and silver, whose presiding queen
is more likely than not a type of the American lady--graceful, refined,
and witty--on such a table, with such surroundings, will come the
plentiful, coarse, commonplace dinner.
The chief reason for this is lack of knowledge on the part of our
ladies: know how to do a thing yourself, and you will get it well done
by others. But how are many of them to know? The daughters of the
wealthy in this country often marry struggling men, and they know less
about domestic economy than ladies of the higher ranks abroad; not
because English or French ladies take more part in housekeeping, but
because they are at home all their lives. Ladies of the highest rank
never go to a boarding or any other school, and these are the women who,
with some few exceptions, know best how things should be done. They are
at home listening to criticisms from papa, who is an epicure perhaps, on
the shortcomings of his own table, or his neighbors'; from mamma, as to
what the soup lacks, why cook is not a "_cordon bleu_," etc., while our
girls are at school, far away from domestic comments, deep in the
agonies of algebra perhaps; and directly they leave school, in many
cases they marry. As a preparation for the state of matrimony most of
them learn how to make cake and preserves, and the very excellence of
their attainments in that way proves how easy it would be for them, with
their dainty fingers and good taste, to far excel their European cousins
in that art which a French writer says is based on "reason, health,
common sense, and sound taste."
Here let me say, I do not by any means advocate a woman, who can afford
to pay a first-rate cook, avoiding the expense by cooking herself; on
the contrary, I think no woman is justified in doing work herself that
she has the means given her to get done by employing others. I have no
praise for the economical woman, who, from a desire to save, does her
own work _without necessity for economy_. It is _not_ her work; the
moment she can afford to employ others it is the work of some less
fortunate person. But in this country, it often happens that a good
cook is not to be found for money, although the raw material of which
one might be made is much oftener at hand. And if ladies would only
practice the culinary art with as much, nay, half as much assiduity as
they give to a new pattern in crochet; devote as much time to attaining
perfection in one dish or article of food, be it perfect bread, or some
French dish which father, brother, or husband goes to Delmonico's to
enjoy, as they do to the crochet tidies or embroidered rugs with which
they decorate their drawing-rooms, they could then take the material, in
the shape of any ambitious girl they may meet with, and make her a fine
cook. In the time they take to make a dozen tidies, they would have a
dozen dishes at their fingers' ends; and let me tell you, the woman who
can cook a dozen things, outside of preserves, in a _perfect_ manner is
a rarity here, and a good cook anywhere, for, by the time the dozen are
accomplished, she will have learned so much of the art of cooking that
all else will come easy. One good soup, bouillon, and you have the
foundation of all others; two good sauces, white sauce and brown, "_les
sauces mères_" as the French call them (mothers of all other sauces),
and all others are matters of detail. Learn to make one kind of roll
perfectly, as light, plump, and crisp as Delmonico's, and all varieties
are at your fingers' ends; you can have kringles, Vienna rolls,
Kreuznach horns, Yorkshire tea cakes, English Sally Lunns and Bath buns;
all are then as easy to make as common soda biscuit. In fact, in
cooking, as in many other things, "_ce n'est que le premier pas que
coûte_;" failures are almost certain at the beginning, but a failure is
often a step toward success--if we only know the reason of the failure.