this begins to bubble stir into it one tablespoonful of flour; cook for
one minute, then add slowly one teacupful of highly-seasoned stock;
cook for ten minutes, add a cupful of cider, and when it again comes to
a boil, strain and serve. This sauce is excellent with boiled ham.
Giblet sauce
(Contributed)
Boil the giblets until tender. Chop them, but not too fine. Put two
tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan, with two tablespoonfuls of
flour. Add slowly a cupful of the water in which the giblets have been
boiled and a cup and a half of rich milk. Add to this the chopped
giblets and season with salt and pepper. Serve in sauce-boat.
Cauliflower sauce
(Contributed)
To a pint of white sauce add a cupful of chopped cauliflower. Reheat,
and when ready to serve stir in a teaspoonful of butter and a
tablespoonful of lemon juice.
Champagne sauce
(Contributed)
Into one cupful of champagne put two cloves, four peppercorns, one bay
leaf and a little sugar. Let all simmer for five minutes. Then add one
cupful of brown sauce. Simmer for ten minutes more and strain. To be
served with ham.
Port wine sauce
(Contributed)
Port wine sauce is made the same as champagne sauce, except that port
wine is used instead of champagne.
Olive sauce
(Contributed)
Make a brown sauce as follows: Put four tablespoonfuls of butter into a
saucepan; when hot add four and a half tablespoonfuls of flour and stir
until very brown; add two cupfuls of brown stock and salt and pepper to
taste. Remove the stones from five olives and boil for five minutes in
water to which one tablespoonful of vinegar has been added. Drain and
mince and add to the sauce.
Imitation caper sauce
Cut cucumber pickles into tiny cubes with a sharp knife. Do not chop
them, as the bits must be of uniform size. Drain perfectly dry and stir
into hot drawn butter. Boil for one minute. Eat with fish or chops.
FAMILIAR TALK
IS IMPROMPTU HOSPITALITY A LOST ART
Without staying to prove my premises I take it for granted nobody will
dispute that what it pleases me to call impromptu hospitality is an
out-of-date virtue.
In the very olden time there were those who were backward in the
practice of it. Else the fisherman Apostle would not have enjoined upon
the “strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia
and Bithynia,” to “use hospitality, one to another, without grudging.”
An ancient writer says: “The primitive Christians made one principal
part of their duty to consist in the exercise of hospitality; and they
were so exact in the practice of it that the very heathens admired them
for it.”
From which we gather that the Apostolic admonition had fallen into good
soil and brought forth much fruit.
It would be interesting to know when the _quid pro quo_ element entered
into and defiled the noble virtue. The primitive Christians aforesaid
had no knowledge of this alloy, while the recollection of the Master’s
teaching was fresh in their minds:
“For if ye lend to them of whom you hope to receive, what thank have
ye?”
The principle that moves me to invite those to sit at my table and
sleep under my roof who can return the favor in kind, or be useful
in turn to me in some way, is barter, not hospitality. When I give a
feast—be it afternoon tea, or the gravest of social functions, a dinner
party—to five hundred, or to five people who have invited me at some
time to their houses—and because of the obligation under which their
invitations have laid me—I may be honest. I am not generous. I pay a
debt. I do not exercise a grace.
The former times were _not_ better in all respects than these. But
for divers reasons they were more hospitable times. It was inevitable
that private houses should keep open doors when taverns, and even
houses of entertainment, were few and far apart upon main-traveled
roads, and utterly wanting to the traveler who pushed his way into the
back country unknown except to the pioneer. If the stranger were not
welcomed to the home of him whose house stood nearest to the wayside,
he was shelterless in night or storm. There is the less need for the
exercise of undiscriminating hospitality when inn and hotel “blaze” the
track into the wilderness.
There is none the less occasion for asking our friends to enter our
homes and to partake of the food which is a symbol of the good-will we
have for them, our disposition to share with them the best blessings
granted to man in this world—home loves and home joys. True hospitality
but widens the circle and makes the guest “at home.” Artificial
hospitality seeks or accepts a convenient season for making the
everyday life of the home seem what it is _not_ to the stranger within
our gates.
Our forbears said: “Come in and take pot-luck with us.”
An old Virginian told me that, as a boy, he was a visitor in a country
house in the central part of the state, when a carriage drove up to
the gate, and James Madison, then president of the United States,
alighted. The lady of the manor was sitting upon the front porch, a bit
of needle-work in hand. She arose, cordial and dignified, to receive
her guest. As her chief butler, a far more consequential personage than
his mistress, bustled out with a footman or two at his heels to see
what could be done for the distinguished arrival, she said to him in a
gentle “aside,” audible to the boy visitor: “James! see that a plate is
put upon the table for Mr. Madison.”
Southern hospitality was a proverb then and for many a year thereafter.
In her book, “The Voice of the People,” Miss Glasgow tells a story,
which I can certify is not exaggerated, of an old aunt who came to her
nephew’s house on a visit of a week and stayed twenty years, guarded
by the viewless, but potent, ægis of hospitality. A plate was put upon
the table for the poor relation in town and country house in that
lavish land, as freely as for the chief magistrate, and was filled as
bountifully.
When relative, acquaintance or stranger tarried but a night, the
householder, in the homely speech of his fathers, asked in gentle
sarcasm, “if he had come for a chunk of fire?”
In his father’s day, lucifer matches were unknown. When the fire went
out upon the kitchen hearth of plantation or cabin, a swift runner was
sent across fields to borrow a live brand from the nearest neighbor. He
must hurry back before it went out.
_We_ invite people to come to us at a stated time and for a given
period. When the time is up, we tell them graciously that we have
enjoyed their visit, and hope we shall meet again before long. When the
carriage that takes them to the station is out of sight, we say, “That
is well over!” and make a note to that effect in our visiting book.
Leaving the general view of our subject for individual illustration:—
If satirists and grumbling wives are to be believed, a husband can
hardly do a more imprudent thing than to bring home an unexpected guest
to dinner, or luncheon, or supper.
The ill-used wife contends that he always does this—as if with malice
aforethought—at the most inconvenient times and seasons. From her
standpoint he might have recollected—it seems incredible that he could
have forgotten—that it is washing or ironing day, or Thursday, which
is the cook’s afternoon out, and that the housemaid is not equal to
a regular dinner. When the mistress has planned to have a “pick-up”
composite of the substantial meal required by a man after his day’s
work, and the tea and toast which are supposed to meet the temporal
needs of the feminine system—the apparition of an impromptu guest,
and that guest a man, is like a boulder rolled upon the track before
the domestic engine. The train is derailed, conductor and engineer
“rattled,” and badly shaken up.
Our housewife has reason on her side, and a good deal of it. It is
all very fine to say, she urges, that her table should always be neat
and orderly; that what is nice enough for her husband in the way of
food and appointments should content the president, should he chance
to drop in. Everybody sings that song in the same key, and it is
stale _bosh_! For everybody knows that in the best regulated families
we do make special provision for company. John comprehends that the
best china can not be used every day, if we would have it remain even
“good.” The second-best is excellent in quality, and pretty. Yet what
housekeeper is superior to the wish to show outsiders that she has a
Minton fish set; Coalport meat dishes and plates; silver vegetable
dishes; Sèvres after-dinner coffee-cups? To set out her table as
tastefully as she can afford to do is an offering due to the stranger
within her gates—a visible token of hospitable intent. She is, in a
measure, defrauded in all this when a surprise-visit is sprung upon her.
John is sensible, and does not object to left-overs now and then, when
flavorously put together. Today’s salmi, or salad, or croquette is,
to him, a reminiscence of yesterday’s roast. The oyster-stew made by
his wife to spare servants wearied by laundry work, is as satisfactory
to him, once in several whiles, as a six-course dinner would be. He
sees in an Irish stew, supported by browned potatoes, hot biscuits,
home-made cake and a capital cup of coffee, a feast fit for the gods as
represented by his hungry self and any fellow he may have corralled and
brought in to “take pot-luck.”
“I ask yer honors if that is anny sort of a shkull to take to
Donnybrook Fair!” cried an Emeralder who had killed his man “in a
bit of a foight,” when the defense produced the broken skull of the
deceased in court to prove that the “frontal, parietal and occipital
segments were extraordinarily thin.”
Mary submits to a jury of her peers if she has not a right to be “put
about” when Johnny comes marching home serenely with a guest in tow,
who, for the lack of time to make anything else ready, must be set down
to left-over oyster, or Irish stew.
“When a man is asked to dinner, he expects a dinner!” she asserts in
justifiable vexation. “And when all is said and done, the fact remains
that one’s husband is not a visitor for whom one must mind her p’s and
q’s.”
[Illustration: IRISH STEW AND BROWNED POTATOES
HOT BISCUITS
SLICED HOME-MADE CAKE
“AND A CAPITAL CUP OF COFFEE”
“A PICK-UP DINNER”]
Yet—and a “yet” that might fill a whole line if its importance were
considered—there is, also, much to be said on John’s side. Any bachelor
can ask the old friend who looks in upon him in business hours and
places, to lunch or dine with him at a chop house or hotel. The guest
knows what he would get there. Just such a meal as he can buy for
dollars and cents at fifty other “eating joints” all over the country.
A meal, eaten in the presence of from twenty to one hundred other
feeders, amid the babble of voices, the rattle of crockery and the
click of knives and forks.
It is the married man alone who can offer the wayfarer a taste—and a
generous taste—of HOME. The dear old fellow thrills in every inch of
body and soul when he claps an ancient chum on the back with—
“Now you must see my wife and babies, old man!” or says to a business
acquaintance in town for the day: “Mrs. Johannes and I would be charmed
to have you take a family dinner with us. I am just going home now.
Come with me!”
If malcontent Mary but knew it, he pays the highest possible compliment
to her, as woman and housekeeper, by taking her welcome for granted.
I heard a man say the other day of another:
“He is a royally good fellow, and, I take it, is happily married. He
begged me to dine with him when I called at his office, and without
giving his wife notice. A fellow doesn’t take such liberties with his
wife unless he is pretty sure of her and her housekeeping. I couldn’t
accept the invitation, but the impression left upon my mind was most
agreeable.”
It is worth Mary’s while to score a point in her favor with her
husband’s friends and to strengthen her hold upon him by meeting the
unexpected guest with frank cordiality, and in every other way making
the best of the situation.
She keeps the house, and has the work and worry that go with the
keeping. John pays for the material part of the home. How much it
signifies to him the best of wives does not always know. It is his
stimulus, his hope, his sheet anchor, when all the waves and billows
of business trouble go over his soul—his haven of refuge—the nearest
approach to Heaven he can find on this side of the dark river. He has a
lien—in legal phrase—upon all the benefits accruing therefrom.
The exercise of spontaneous hospitality is not the least of these.
I am so unhappy as to know a woman who has her whole house, including
attic and cellar, swept every week and dusted thoroughly daily. Every
picture is taken down on Saturday morning that the backs and cords may
be wiped off with a damp cloth wet with a disinfectant. She changes
servants from twelve to twenty-four times a year. She will tell you
with an air of calm sad conviction, that “there is not one tolerably
efficient maid in America.” Her daughters have been her slaves since
they could wield broom and duster. They are pale and thin; their eyes
have a hunted look and are hollowed by fixed dark crescents beneath
them. One of them was married two years ago, and sank into confirmed
invalidism after the birth of a pitiful scrap of a baby that wailed
feebly for an hour and died.
I met the single sister not long ago on a ferry-boat, and she confided
to me that she is to submit to a crucial operation in a few days.
“The doctors say it is too much housework,” she said bitterly, “I can
not recollect when I was not tired, _tired_, TIRED! My mother keeps
the cleanest house in town. She says ‘dirt is disease.’ Maybe so! I
know that life is not worth living when one has to pay such a price for
cleanliness. My mother has bones of steel and nerves of whalebone, and
can not comprehend ‘how it happens that she should be afflicted with
delicate children.’
“As to company—it is a curse—nothing less! To have a friend in to
a meal involves so much extra work beforehand, so much readjusting
afterward, that the thought is frightful.
“This is not living. It is slavery!”
MEATS
BEEF
Roast beef
Never wash a raw roast, at least not the parts unprotected by the
thin skin. Wipe the skin off with vinegar, dry with a soft cloth, and
lay the meat, cut sides at top and bottom, upon the grating of your
roaster. Dash a cupful of really boiling water over it. They cicatrice
the surface and keep in the juices. Dredge with flour, cover and cook
ten minutes to the pound, turning all the heat into the oven for
fifteen minutes; then shift into a slower oven, or “dampen” the fire.
Baste every ten minutes with the gravy dripping into the pan. Ten
minutes before dishing the meat, wash freely with butter and dredge
with browned flour, to “glaze” the roast.
Never serve “made gravy” with roast beef. Pour the liquid from the
pan into a bowl, and when the fat is solid, remove it and clarify for
dripping. The residuum will add richness to your soup-stock, or make a
savory base for stew or hash.
Serve horseradish sauce and mustard with your rare roast, and put a
little of the ruddy juice which exudes as the meat is carved, upon each
slice when served.
Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding
Fifteen minutes before taking up the roast just described, skim six
tablespoonfuls of fat from the gravy, put into a smaller dripping-pan,
or pudding-dish, and set in the oven. Have ready this batter:
Sift an even teaspoonful of salt and one of baking-powder twice with
a pint of flour. Beat two eggs light, add to them two cupfuls of milk,
turn in the sifted flour and mix quickly. Set the reserved fat upon
the upper grating of the oven; when it begins to bubble, turn in the
batter, and cook quickly to a fine, golden-brown. Cut into squares and
garnish the meat with them when you dish it.
This is a better way than cooking the pudding in the roaster under the
meat, as used to be the custom with English cooks.
Réchauffé of beef à la jardiniére
Lay yesterday’s piece of beef in a roasting-pan, sprinkle with salt
and pepper, and cover it with thick slices of raw tomatoes. Dash a
cupful of boiling water over all, put a close cover on the roaster,
and cook in a hot oven for thirty-five minutes. While this is cooking
boil tender a pint of green peas, a pint of potatoes—cut into tiny
squares—three carrots, also cut small, and ten small onions. Season
each vegetable with pepper, salt, and a small bit of butter.
Lay the beef with the tomatoes upon it on a hot platter, pour over it
any gravy remaining in the pan, and arrange neatly about it the other
vegetables. Be sure that meat and vegetables are very hot when served.
Braised beef
Put a nice round of beef in a broad-bottomed iron pot with a
tablespoonful of butter, and sprinkle a chopped onion over it. Cook
the beef on one side until brown, then turn and cook on the other side
for the same length of time. Now dash a pint of boiling water over the
meat, put a close cover on the pot and let the contents cook slowly,
allowing at least fifteen minutes to every pound of beef. When the
meat is done, remove from the pot to a platter and keep warm while you
strain the gravy left in the pot; return to the fire and thicken it
with a tablespoonful of browned flour rubbed into the same quantity
of butter. Season the gravy with salt, pepper, and a teaspoonful of
kitchen bouquet, and pour it over the meat.
Rib-ends of beef
These are usually cut off when the roast is rolled, and can be bought
cheap.
Fry in beef fat a sliced onion and a chopped sweet pepper—carefully
seeded. Take these up with a skimmer and keep hot. Pepper, salt and
flour the rib-ends and fry in the same fat until they begin to brown.
Put, now, with the fat into a saucepan, strew the fried onion and
pepper on top; pour in a cup of weak stock; fit on a close cover, and
cook very slowly until the beef is tender.
Strain and skim the gravy, thicken with browned flour; add a
teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet; arrange the beef-bones in a dish; pour
the gravy over them and serve.
Pot-roast of coarse beef
Cut four pounds of coarse lean beef in one piece. Fry half a pound of
fat salt pork in a rather shallow pot. Put in the beef, and cook fast
on both sides for five minutes. Cover with a chopped onion and a cupful
of canned tomatoes, a sliced carrot and a sliced turnip. Now, pour in
enough hot water to come half-way to the top of the meat; cover closely
and simmer slowly for two hours, turning at the end of the first hour.
Take out the beef; rub with butter, pepper and salt, and set in the
oven while you skim and strain the gravy, rubbing the vegetables with
it through a colander. Put this back into the pot, thicken with browned
flour, boil up once; pour half over the meat and serve the rest in a
gravy-boat.
Rolled boiled beef
(An English recipe)
Cut an oblong piece of beef from the flank. It should be two inches
thick, twelve inches long and six wide. Lay it on a dish and spread
upon it this forcemeat:
A cupful of cracker crumbs, two tablespoonfuls of finely-chopped salt
pork, half a teaspoonful of salt, one saltspoonful, each, of thyme,
marjoram, and sage, half a saltspoonful of pepper, a few drops of onion
juice, or one teaspoonful of chopped onion, and one egg. Moisten with a
good stock until soft enough to spread over the meat.
Roll as you would a valise pudding, tie about with pack-thread and sew
up in mosquito netting or cheese-cloth. Put on in plenty of boiling
water and cook slowly for four hours. Let it lie in the water until the
latter is a little more than lukewarm, and put under a heavy weight
until next day. Remove the cloth, cut the strings and serve cold with
horseradish sauce.
Corned beef is very good prepared in this way. Add vinegar to the water
in which it is boiled and omit the pork from the stuffing.
Beef à la mode (No. 1)
Cut two pounds of lean beef from the round into strips. Cover the
bottom of a pudding-dish with thin strips of bacon, then put in half
the meat and strew over this carrots, turnips and onions, sliced very
thin. There should be four of these, part of them going over the first
layer of beef, the remainder over the second layer of beef. With them
go two bay-leaves broken into bits. Cover all with stock, make a paste
of flour and water, rolling it out as for pie crust, cover the top of
the bake-dish with this, pinching it down about the edges so that no
steam may escape. Bake for two hours in a steady oven, remove the paste
cover, and send the dish at once to the table.
Beef à la mode (No. 2)
Have a solid piece cut from the round, and tie into shape with stout
cords at intervals of an inch apart. Plug the meat perpendicularly with
strips of fat salt pork, long enough to project half an inch at top and
bottom. Make incisions clear through the beef with a sharp, thin knife,
and fill these with forcemeat made of fat pork, minced, onion and
bread-crumbs, sharply seasoned. Lay the meat in a braising-pot, cover
deep with chopped onion, carrot, turnip, celery, three bay-leaves, a
sliced tomato, and sprinkle with mace and paprika. Now pour in a cupful
of cold water, cover closely and cook slowly fifteen minutes to the
pound.
If you wish to serve hot, clip the threads; rub the gravy through a
colander, let it cool a few minutes to throw up the fat; skim and
thicken with browned flour, and pour half over the meat, half into a
gravy-boat.
It is, however, nicer if left to get cold in the gravy, with a heavy
weight on top, until next day. Then remove the cords, and cut in thin,
horizontal slices.
An underdone roast can be metamorphosed in this way for a second-day’s
dinner.
Braised rolled beefsteak
This is a good way of dealing with a hopelessly tough steak. Lay
upon a board and pound from end to end with a mallet. Cover with a
forcemeat of minced salt pork, onion and seasoned crumbs, wet with a
little gravy; roll up upon the stuffing and tie into shape. Lay in your
roaster; pour in a little cold water (or, better still, weak stock),
cover and cook slowly for two hours, basting often with gravy from
the pan. Undo the strings carefully, after pinning the roll together
with skewers, and lay upon a hot dish, covered, while you prepare the
gravy. Skim, thicken with browned flour, add a good spoonful of kitchen
bouquet, boil up and pour into a boat.
Baked beefsteak à la jardiniére
Still another way of making a tough steak eatable. Pound it on both
sides and lay in lemon juice and salad oil for two hours. Transfer
then to your roaster, cover with two sliced tomatoes, a sliced carrot,
an onion and a turnip, with minced sweet herbs. Add a cupful of cold
water, cover closely and cook slowly twenty minutes to the pound.
Cut one large carrot, two large onions, two turnips and four stalks of
celery into neat dice and cook them soft, without breaking, in salted
water, each in a pan of its own. In another saucepan cook four large
tomatoes, peeled and whole.
When the steak is done, keep hot over boiling water, while you rub the
vegetables with which it was cooked through the colander or a vegetable
press back into the gravy, thickening this with browned flour. Boil
one minute, add the juice of a lemon and a glass of sherry, and keep
hot in a closed vessel. Dish the meat, lay the vegetable dice about it
in little heaps, each kind by itself, leaving the tomatoes whole; pour
the rich gravy over all; cover the dish and leave in the open oven for
three minutes to let the gravy soak in.
You have now a “French dish,” that will amply repay the additional
pains it has cost you.
A family pot-roast of beef
The round will serve for this dish. Fry slices of fat salt pork in an
iron pot, and when crisp, remove and throw in a sliced onion. When this
is browned, remove and lay the roast in the pot. Cook for ten minutes,
turn and cook for five minutes more. Now, add a cupful of water, cover
closely and simmer over a slow fire for an hour. Add a sliced carrot,
two teaspoonfuls of lemon juice, a bay-leaf and a tablespoonful of
Worcestershire sauce to the contents of the pot. Turn the beef over
and over in this, and if the meat seem dry add a cupful of water,
or, better still, stock. Cook covered, very slowly, for two hours
more. Transfer the meat to a hot platter, thicken the gravy left in
the pot with a brown roux, salt and pepper to taste, and stir in two
tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Pour this sauce over the meat and send to
the table.
A New England pot-roast