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 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 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 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 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.
MERINGUE.
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.
LECTURE FIFTH.
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 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 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
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. 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.
CREAM OF SALMON.
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 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.
BOILED POTATOES.