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 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 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 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.
PEA SOUP--_Continued_.
(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 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.
LECTURE THIRD.
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 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
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 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.
PLAIN PASTRY.
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 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. 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.
BAKED APPLE DUMPLINGS.
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 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.