A CHAPTER FOR PEOPLE OF VERY SMALL MEANS.
I AM sorry to say in these days this chapter may appeal to many, who are
yet not to be called "poor people," who may have been well-to-do and
only suffering from the pressure of the times, and for whose cultivated
appetites the coarse, substantial food of the laboring man (even if they
could buy it) would not be eatable, who must have what they do have
good, or starve. But, as some of the things for which I give recipes
will seem over-economical for people who can afford to buy meat at least
once a day, I advise those who have even fifty dollars a month income to
skip it; reminding them, if they do not, "that necessity knows no law."
A bone of soup meat can be got at a good butcher's for ten or fifteen
cents, and is about the best investment, for that sum I know of, as two
nourishing and savory meals, at least, for four or five persons can be
got from it.
Carefully make a nice soup, with plenty of vegetables, rice, or any
other thickening you like. Your bone will weigh from four to six pounds,
perhaps; put it on with water according to size, and let it boil down
slowly until nice and strong. If you have had any scraps of meat or
bones, put them also to your soup.
When you serve it, keep back a cup of soup and a few of the vegetables,
and save the meat, from which you can make a very appetizing hash in the
following way: Take the meat from the bone, chop it with some cold
potatoes and the vegetables you saved from the soup. Cold stewed onions,
boiled carrots or turnips, all help to make the dish savory. Chop an
onion very fine, unless you have cold ones, a little parsley and thyme,
if liked, and sometimes, for variety's sake, if you have it, a pinch of
curry powder, not enough to make it hot or yellow, yet to impart
piquancy. If you have a tiny bit of fried bacon or cold ham or cold
pork, chop it with the other ingredients, mix all well, moisten with the
cold soup, and, when nicely seasoned, put the hash into an iron
frying-pan, in which you have a little fat made hot; pack it smoothly
in, cover it with a pot-lid, and either set it in a hot oven, or leave
it to brown on the stove. If there was more soup than enough to moisten
the hash, put it on in a tiny saucepan, with a little brown flour made
into a paste with butter, add a drop of tomato catsup, or a little
stewed tomato, or anything you have for flavoring, and stir till it
boils. Then turn the hash out whole on a dish, it should be brown and
crisp, pour the gravy you have made round it, and serve. For a change
make a pie of the hash, pouring the gravy in through a hole in the top
when done.
It is not generally known that a very nice plain paste can be made with
a piece of bread dough, to which you have added an egg, and some lard,
dripping, or butter. The dripping is particularly nice for the hash pie,
and, as you need only a piece of dough as large as an orange, you will
probably have enough from the soup, if you skimmed off all the fat
before putting the vegetables in (see _pot-au-feu_); work your dripping
into the dough, and let it rise well, then roll as ordinary pie-crust.
Potato crust is also very good for plain pies of any sort, but as there
are plenty of recipes for it, I will not give one here.
One of the very best hashes I ever ate was prepared by a lady who, in
better times, kept a very fine table. And she told me there were a good
many cold beans in it, well mashed; and often since, when taking
"travelers' hash" in an hotel, I have thought of that savory dish with
regret.
Instead of making your chopped meat into hash, vary it, by rolling the
same mixture into egg-shaped pieces, or flat cakes, flouring them, and
frying them nicely in very hot fat; pieces of pork or bacon fried and
laid round will help out the dish, and be an improvement to what is
already very good.
To return once more to the soup bone. If any one of your family is fond
of marrow, seal up each end of the bone with a paste made of flour and
water. When done, take off the paste, and remove the marrow. Made very
hot, and spread on toast, with pepper and salt, it will be a relish for
some one's tea or breakfast.
In this country there is a prejudice against sheep's liver; while in
England, where beef liver is looked upon as too coarse to eat (and falls
to the lot of the "cats-meat man," or cat butcher), sheep's is esteemed
next to calf's, and it is, in fact, more delicate than beef liver. The
nicest way to cook it is in very _thin_ slices (not the inch-thick
pieces one often sees), each slice dipped in flour and fried in pork or
bacon fat, and pork or bacon served with it. But the more economical way
is to put it in a pan, dredge it with flour, pin some fat pork over it,
and set it in a hot oven; when very brown take it out; make nice brown
gravy by pouring water in the pan and letting it boil on the stove,
stirring it well to dissolve the glaze; pour into the dish, and serve.
The heart should be stuffed with bread-crumbs, parsley, thyme, and a
_little_ onion, and baked separately. Or, for a change, you may chop the
liver up with a few sweet herbs and a little pork (onion, or not, as you
like), and some bread-crumbs. Put all together in a crock, dredge with
flour, cover, and set in a slow oven for an hour and a half; then serve,
with toasted bread around the dish.
It is very poor economy to buy inferior meat. One pound of fine beef has
more nourishment than two of poor quality. But there is a great
difference in prices of different parts of meat, and it is better
management to choose the cheap part of fine beef than to buy the sirloin
of a poor ox even at the same price; and, by good cooking many parts not
usually chosen, and therefore sold cheaply, can be made very good. Yet
you must remember, that a piece of meat at seven cents a pound, in which
there is at least half fat and bone, such as brisket, etc., is less
economical than solid meat at ten or twelve.
Pot roasts are very good for parts of meat not tender enough for
roasting, the "cross-rib," as some butchers term it, being very good for
this purpose; it is all solid meat, and being very lean, requires a
little fat pork, which may be laid at the bottom of the pot; or better
still, holes made in the meat and pieces of the fat drawn through,
larding in a rough way, so that they cut together. A pot roast is best
put on in an iron pot, without water, allowed to get finely brown on one
side, then turned, and when thoroughly brown on the other a little water
may be added for gravy; chop parsley or any seasoning that is
preferred. Give your roast at least three hours to cook. Ox cheek, as
the head is called, is very good, and should be very cheap; prepare it
thus:
Clean the cheek, soak it in water six hours, and cut the meat from the
bones, which break up for soup; then take the meat, cut into neat
pieces, put it in an earthen crock, a layer of beef, some thin pieces of
pork or bacon, some onions, carrots, and turnips, cut _thin_, or chopped
fine, and sprinkled over the meat; also, some chopped parsley, a little
thyme, and bay leaf, pepper and salt, and a clove to each layer; then
more beef and a little pork, vegetables, and seasoning, as before. When
all your meat is in pour over it, if you have it, a tumbler of hard
cider and one of water, or else two of water, in which put a half gill
of vinegar. If you have no tight-fitting cover to your crock, put a
paste of flour and water over it to keep the steam in. Place the crock
in a slow oven five or six hours, and when it is taken out remove the
crust and skim. Any piece of beef cooked in this way is excellent.
Ox heart is one of the cheapest of dishes, and really remarkably nice,
and it is much used by economical people abroad.
The heart should be soaked in vinegar and water three or four hours,
then cut off the lobes and gristle, and stuff it with fat pork chopped,
bread-crumbs, parsley, thyme, pepper, and salt; then tie it in a cloth
and very slowly simmer it (large end up) for two hours; take it up,
remove the cloth, and flour it, and roast it a nice brown. Lay in the
pan in which it is to be roasted some fat pork to baste it. Any of this
left over is excellent hashed, or, warmed in slices with a rich brown
gravy, cannot be told from game. Another way is to stuff it with sage
and onions. It must always be served _very hot_ with hot plates and on a
very hot dish.
Fore quarter of mutton is another very economical part of meat, if you
get your butcher to cut it so that it may not only be economical, but
really afford a choice joint. Do not then let him hack the shoulder
across, but, before he does a thing to it, get him to take the shoulder
out in a round plate-shaped joint, with knuckle attached; if he does
this well, that is, cuts it close to the bone of the ribs, you will have
a nice joint; then do not have it chopped at all; this should be roasted
in the oven very nicely, and served with onion sauce or stewed onions.
If onions are not liked, mashed turnips are the appropriate vegetable.
This joint, to be enjoyed, must be properly carved, and that is, across
the middle from the edge to the bone, the same as a leg of mutton; and
like the leg, you must learn, as I cannot describe it in words, where
the bone lies, then have that side nearest you and cut from the opposite
side.
You have, besides this joint, another roast from the ribs, or else cut
it up into chops till you come to the part under the shoulder; from this
the breast should be separated and both either made into a good Irish
stew, or the breast prepared alone in a way I shall describe, the neck
and thin ribs being stewed or boiled.
The neck of mutton is very tender boiled and served with parsley or
caper sauce; the liquor it is boiled in served as broth, with vegetables
and rice, or prepared as directed in a former chapter for the broth from
leg of mutton.
The mode I am about to give of preparing breast of mutton was told me by
a Welsh lady of rank, at whose table I ate it (it appeared as a side
dish), and who said, half laughingly, "Will you take some 'fluff'? We
are very fond of it, but breast of mutton is such a despised dish I
never expect any one else to like it." I took it, on my principle of
trying everything, and did find it very good. This lady told me that,
having of course a good deal of mutton killed on her father's estate,
and the breast being always despised by the servants, she had invented a
way of using it to avoid waste. Her way was this:
Set the breast of mutton on the fire whole, just covered with water in
which is a little salt. When it comes to the boil draw it back and let
it _simmer_ three hours; then take it up and draw out the bones, and lay
a force-meat of bread-crumbs, parsley, thyme, chopped suet, salt and
pepper all over it; double or roll it, skewer it, and coat it thickly
with egg and bread-crumbs; then bake in a moderate oven, basting it
often with nice dripping or butter; when nicely brown it is done, and
eats like the tenderest lamb. It was, when I saw it, served on a bed of
spinach. I like it better on a bed of stewed onions.
I now give some dishes made without meat.
RAGOUT OF CUCUMBER AND ONIONS.--Fry equal quantities of large cucumbers
and onions in slices until they are a nice brown. The cucumber will
brown more easily if cut up and put to drain some time before using;
then flour each slice. When both are brown, pour on them a cup of water,
and let them stew for half an hour; then take a good piece of butter in
which you have worked a dessert-spoonful of flour (browned); add pepper,
salt, and a little tomato catsup or stewed tomato. This is a rich-eating
dish if nicely made, and will help out cold meat or a scant quantity of
it very well. A little cold meat may be added if you have it. ONION
SOUP.--Fry six large onions cut into slices with a quarter of a pound of
butter till they are of a bright brown, then well mix in a tablespoonful
of flour, and pour on them rather more than a quart of water. Stew
gently until the onions are quite tender, season with a spoonful of salt
and a little sugar; stir in quickly a _liaison_ made with the yolks of
two eggs mixed with a gill of milk or cream (do not let it boil
afterwards), put some toast in a tureen, and serve very hot.
PEA SOUP.--Steep some yellow split peas all night, next morning set them
on to boil with two quarts of water to a pint of peas; in the water put
a tiny bit of soda. In another pot put a large carrot, a turnip, an
onion, and a large head of celery, all cut small and covered with water.
When both peas and vegetables are tender, put them together, season with
salt, pepper, and a little sugar, and let them gently stew till thick
enough; then strain through a colander, rubbing the vegetables well, and
return to the pot while you fry some sippets of bread a crisp brown;
then stir into the soup two ounces of butter in which you have rolled a
little flour.
This soup is simply delicious, and the fact of it being _maigre_ will
not be remembered.
POTATO SOUP is another of this good kind, for meat is scarcely required,
so good is it without.
Boil some potatoes, then rub them through a colander into two quarts of
hot milk (skimmed does quite well); have some fine-chopped parsley and
onion, add both with salt and pepper, stew three quarters of an hour;
then stir in a large piece of butter, and beat two eggs with a little
cold milk, stir in quickly, and serve with fried bread. There should be
potatoes enough to make the soup as thick as cream. Do not be
prejudiced against a dish because there is no meat in it, and you think
it cannot be nourishing. This chapter is not written for those with whom
meat, or money, is plentiful; and if it be true that man is nourished
"not by what he eats, but by what he assimilates," and, according to an
American medical authority, "what is eaten with distaste is not
assimilated" (Dr. Hall), it follows that an enjoyable dinner, even
without meat, will be more nourishing than one forced down because it
lacks savor; that potato soup will be more nourishing than potatoes and
butter, with a cup of milk to drink, because more enjoyable. Yet it
costs no more, for the soup can be made without the eggs if they are
scarce.
Or say bread and butter and onions. They will not be very appetizing,
especially if they had to be a frequent meal, yet onion soup is made
from the same materials, and in France is a very favorite dish, even
with those well able to put meat in it if they wished.