Soups and Meats
"When I came to look over what you said about soups and meats the other
day," Dolly complained at the next lesson, "I found it was all
glittering generalities. I didn't have a thing written down under soups
but 'beans' and 'split peas,' and as to meats, it was mostly don'ts or
left-overs. Now, before you go off on anything else, suppose you tell me
a lot more about these things."
"So I will. Perhaps I did generalize a bit, but I do not always realize
that you do not know how to use a cook-book yet; if you did you could
look up all these things for yourself.
"To begin with soups, then, like 'all Gaul,' they are divided into three
parts.' There are soups made with vegetables and water and nothing else;
soups made with a foundation of meat and bones; and milk-and-vegetable
soups. The first kind is the cheapest, and we will start there.
"There are any number of good things to make these soups of, principally
beans,--black, white, red, and Lima beans, all dried. You must soak
them, cook them slowly in another water, season well with a slice of
onion, salt, and pepper, and put them, when they are soft and pulpy,
through the sieve. What is called a purée sieve is the best, because it
is made in such a way that it presses the vegetables through itself.
Then you must thicken the soup with a little bit of butter melted and
rubbed with flour; this is not because it is not thickened with the
vegetables already, but because the water will separate from the rest if
no extra thickening is used. You can have the soup rather thin to make
it just right after it is thickened.
"Black bean soup is the best kind; this really needs a bone of some sort
cooked with it, a ham bone if you have it. Then it takes lots of
seasoning, a pinch of mustard, a thin slice or two of lemon, and last a
little chopped hard-boiled egg on top at serving; but it pays for the
slight trouble of making it because it is so good; have it often in
winter. White bean soups also need a good deal of seasoning, and a bone
is good in them, but not really necessary. Left-over baked beans make a
good brown soup, and dried Lima beans are excellent; alternate these,
and make each one by rule, for each has some little touch of seasoning
which makes it have a taste of its own. Any cook-book will tell you how,
because all of them are so simple to put together. Besides these there
is one more thick soup, split pea purée, which you must have too. You
can buy the peas in packages, but you can also get them in bulk, and
that is the cheaper way. You soak and cook them exactly as you do the
beans, and serve them with croutons on top; croutons are tiny squares of
bread browned in the oven,--not fried in fat, as some people make them;
those are very greasy.
"You can also make purées of any fresh vegetable, carrots, or garden
peas, or a mixture of several kinds of vegetables; cook them with onion
and salt and pepper and bits of celery or parsley, and put them through
the sieve and thicken them. All of them are improved by adding a little
milk, but they will do as they are if you have none to spare."
"Do you put a bone in purées?"
"If I happen to have one I do, but not otherwise; I never buy a bone for
such a soup. Remember that these thick soups go with the dinners with
the light meat course, because they are so substantial. Now we will go
on to the next kind.
"The stock soups are made with water, bones, meat, and vegetables. Some
housekeepers keep a stock pot on the back of the range and put in it any
odds and ends they happen to have, adding more water and seasoning from
time to time. When they want a soup, they pour off enough of the stock,
strain and clarify it, and either use it as it is or put in something
like tomato or potato. This is all very well if you have a range which
goes day and night, and if you are careful to completely empty the pot
twice a week in winter and three times a week in summer and scrub it out
thoroughly and start an entirely fresh lot of bones and meat; otherwise
the whole will have a sour taste. I think a better way is to start a
soup on the fire and cook it all night in the tireless stove; start it
over again in the morning, and cook it half a day more, and then cool
and use it."
"Do you mean you pour off the soup, and it is all right just as it is?"
"No, indeed; you first put what bones and meat and vegetables you have
in cold water and slowly bring them to the boiling point and skim well.
Then you must simmer and simmer on the stove or in the tireless box.
When it is done you cool it, take off the white cake of fat on top and
save it for frying purposes; heat the soup again and clarify it by
stirring in a washed and broken up egg-shell and a little of the white.
When this has boiled with the soup for two minutes, the whole will
clear. Then you strain it and divide it; half you can have one night
with tapioca or barley or minced vegetables, and the other half another
night with perhaps tomato in it."
"Do you buy bones and things for stock soup?"
"No, because I use what I have. I don't think it is necessary to buy
things for it; but one thing I do; I keep a little kitchen bouquet in
the house. It comes in a small bottle on purpose, and it flavors the
soup and at the same time colors it brown; that is really necessary,
making soup out of odd things, for too often it has little color.
"Milk soups come next, and those are always nice; cream of celery or
cream of corn are among the best things we can have. Unfortunately, if
you have to buy your milk, they are rather expensive; however, I will
tell you how to make them in case you have an extra pint to use up at
any time. You take about a cupful of any vegetable and cook it in a pint
of water till it is pulpy, adding a little onion, salt, and pepper; then
you put it through the sieve, and add a pint of milk, or, rather, add as
much milk as you have water, for often you can use only half a pint of
each. Then you thicken it slightly, cook it up once, strain, and serve.
You can use left-overs of any sort for this,--the outer leaves of
lettuce, a little spinach, a few cooked beets, or minced carrot, or a
mixture of any different thing you happen to have in the refrigerator. I
often make this soup in the morning and just heat it up for dinner, to
save time; or, I get the vegetables ready and add the milk at night.
Now that is the end of the soup lesson; it is too easy to spend more
time over."
"But I can think of ever and ever so many more soups you have not so
much as mentioned," said Dolly, indignant at having her thirst for
information treated in this summary manner. "You have not spoken of
oyster soup or clam chowder, or tomato bisque, or potato soup, or--"
Mary put her hands over her ears. "I won't listen," she said. "I am not
compiling a cook-book, as I keep on telling you over and over. I am only
laying down general instructions, and after you get those fixed in your
mind you can go on by yourself and have no trouble at all. I am in such
a hurry to get on to meats, to tell the truth, that I feel like skipping
everything to get to that, because to my mind it is the most important
of all the subjects we have to learn about. It is where most
housekeepers come to grief, if they do. I consider that a girl who wants
to really live on a little cannot know too much about meat; she must
simply have the whole subject at her finger-ends.
"Remember what I told you in your last lesson, that you cannot have
regular dinner meat at all, but instead must have plain and cheap dishes
of all sorts and kinds. Now we will begin with beef, because that is
really our staple; it is good and nourishing and has no waste about it.
Also it does not vary much in price in the different seasons of the
year; it is a plain, substantial, dependable sort of meat.
"Though we cannot have regular roasting-roasts, we may have pot-roasts.
To make those you buy a sort of square piece from the round. Do not let
the butcher persuade you to get a long, thin piece; insist on a chunk.
Sear this all over by pressing it down in a hot frying-pan, first on one
side and then on the other; this makes a covering that keeps in the
juices. Then simmer it a long, long time in a deep covered dish; a
casserole, or a crock, or some such thing. When it is half-done put in
salt and pepper, chopped onions, and plenty of finely minced vegetables,
and keep on cooking till it is tender and the juice is pretty well
absorbed. You can cook it in the tireless stove all day, or keep it shut
up in the oven of the range, or let it cook slowly on the back of it;
but it must cook very slowly and a long, long time. This is all good
solid meat, and a four-pound piece will easily make three meals, with
perhaps something over for croquettes.
"Beef stew is just this same sort of thing; beef cut in finger lengths,
and cooked with vegetables till very soft. Serve that with the gravy
thickened. Chopped beef you can have in a dozen ways. Buy cheap beef and
put it through your own meat-chopper, to be quite sure it is perfectly
clean. Sometimes I get three pounds at once, and make up two pounds into
beef loaf, mixing it with a cup of bread crumbs, an egg, salt, and
pepper, and a little bit of salt pork. I put it in a bread tin and bake
it two hours, basting it well with melted butter and water mixed, and
serve it hot, with either a brown gravy or a tomato sauce. That is a
dish good enough for a king. For the second dinner you slice what is
left, and heat this in the gravy or tomato; or, have brown gravy with
the loaf and thick tomato with the slices.
"The other pound I make into a steak. Now real porter-house steak is far
too costly for you and me, but I recommend this substitute; you will be
surprised to see how exactly it looks like a porter-house and how good
it tastes. Copy the shape and size of the real thing, and flatten out
the chopped meat and make it into a long piece, larger at one end than
the other. Have the butcher give you some strips of suet and press one
down through the middle, to represent the bone; put the other one all
around the steak to look like the edge of fat. Then put this into a hot,
dry frying-pan and cook it, turning it only once and dusting with salt
and pepper as you do so. Do not overcook it, as it should be pink
inside. Take it up on a hot platter, put a little butter on top and
parsley around the edge, and, behold, a perfectly gorgeous
porter-house!
"When I am going to make a beef loaf, and do not intend to have this
steak, however, I get only two pounds and a half of the meat, and the
extra half-pound I make up into little balls and fry. At the same time I
fry thick rounds of banana and put one on each ball when I take them up;
this is a very good combination. Or, Dolly, if you will never betray me,
I will tell you a horrid secret. Twice a year, when the equinoctial
storm rages and I am positively certain no one can go out or come in
that evening, I make up a plain little steak without suet of the extra
half-pound, and all around the edge I put--fried onions!"
"I don't wonder you said it was a horrid secret. I don't think I shall
ever sink to that low level; fried onions are not romantic."
"Still, put it down, equinoctial and all, my dear, for Fred probably
will approve the dish in spite of your prejudice. And now one thing more
about steak: did you ever hear of a flank steak?"
"Never in my life."
"That is the answer most women would make to the question, I fancy; yet,
strange to say, many epicures think this one of the best dishes of beef
there is. You get the butcher to cut you one, and hang it till it is
tender. Then broil it, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dot with
butter mixed with chopped parsley; if you have any doubts about its
being tender, score it all over with a sharp knife and lay it in a
little oil and vinegar mixed for half an hour or more before you cook
it. You will really find it a delicious piece of meat, and you will have
enough over for a second dinner, at least."
"Do you ever have corned beef?"
"Once in awhile. When we have it, I cook it till it is very tender and
serve it as it is the first night; then I put it back in the water it
was cooked in, to keep it from drying out, and the second time I have it
I cut it up in even cubes and cream them and put them in a baking-dish
with crumbs and butter on top, and brown it in the oven. It is difficult
to use up corned beef, for it is not good sliced and warmed over, as
most meats are. Sometimes we have it cold, with a hot soup and
vegetables; or I have a dish of hash put in a mould and baked. I turn
this out and surround it with a ring of minced carrots and turnips; that
does very well indeed. The stock I make into bean soup.
"Veal I find a most useful meat, for there is so little waste about it,
like beef. When I have a roast I get the breast and stuff it and it is
just as good as the higher priced roasts. I get the cheap cut from the
leg too, and have a stew with dumplings in it, or a meat pie; if I have
any over I sometimes mix it with egg, gravy, and crumbs and make a loaf
of it. Or I mince it, add chopped hard-boiled eggs, and serve it that
way. Then there is veal stew cooked with tomatoes; to make that, cut up
the meat, add a slice of onion and a small cup of tomato, with a
tablespoonful of rice or barley, and simmer them all till they are
almost solid. This is very nourishing and good. Veal cutlet is
expensive, but half a pound goes a long way if you have it cut in small
bits and pound them out, and bread and fry them.
"Then there is veal loaf; that is a delightful dish. Get the cheapest
veal you can buy and chop it; add a little chopped salt pork, bread
crumbs, seasoning, some celery if you have any, or chopped nuts, and
bake it as you did the beef loaf; that will make at least two dinners.
In summer you can have that for dinner, cold.
"And also for summer, do not forget to have veal and ham pie. You get
about a pound of veal, a slice of ham, and a veal knuckle bone, and
simmer them all together till the meat drops apart; put this in layers
in a deep baking-dish, and add seasoning. Boil down the stock to a
cupful, strain it, add a level teaspoonful of gelatine dissolved in cold
water, and pour it all over the meat; put on a thin crust and bake it.
Set it away to get ice-cold, and you will have a pie with the meat set
in a delicious aspic jelly."
"Wasn't that the 'Weal and hammer' of the Boffins?"
"It was indeed, and worthy of immortalization, too. And now as to a
second dinner off one of these firsts. One of the perfectly improper
dinner dishes you will want to have is croquettes. You can make them of
any sort of meat, but they are particularly nice of veal. Learn to make
good croquettes, Dolly. So few amateur cooks can do it, and it is the
easiest thing in the world to do if only you will remember a few simple
things."
"I'll write the rule down; I love croquettes."
"Chop your meat evenly, to begin with; then make the white sauce with
double the usual quantity of flour. Instead of using one cup of milk,
one tablespoonful of butter, and one of flour, you must take two of
flour; that is the first thing to emphasize. You mix this with the meat
and seasoning and cook it till it is a smooth paste; spread it out
thickly in a platter and let it get perfectly cold before you take
another step. I leave mine an hour, at the very least. Then cut it up
into small pieces and roll them under your hand and square the ends; dip
each one in finely sifted bread crumbs--have them well sifted, Dolly.
Next dip in half-beaten egg yolk, then in crumbs again, and then dry
them thoroughly before you go any farther. I usually make the paste
after breakfast and set it away, bread the croquettes after lunch and
set them away again. Then just before dinner I fry them, two at a time,
in the wire basket in deep fat. I keep them in only enough to brown the
crumbs; then I put them in the oven on paper to drain, leaving the door
open. That way you make delicious croquettes, pale golden brown outside
and creamy inside and with a soup--"
"A good thick purée," interrupted Dolly.
"Yes, and vegetables, you will have a substantial meal.
"Now for pork. I do hope you are going to see that you get that from a
reliable man, and have it once in awhile, especially in winter, for it
is to my mind neither indigestible nor unwholesome for a change, and it
is such an inexpensive meat that it saves you ever so much. You can see
for yourself that two pork chops, with all the other things you are to
have for dinner, will be plenty of meat for two people, and so cheap!
Pork tenderloins I think are the greatest economy. Try getting two of
them and opening them lengthwise, filling them with bread-crumb
stuffing, and roasting them with nice brown gravy; you will be perfectly
surprised to see how good they are. There will be enough meat left over
for a second dinner, either croquettes or scallop or something else. And
there is this other way of cooking them: tell the butcher to French
them for you; that is, to cut them into rounds and pound each one out
into a little cake. Cook these in the frying-pan till they are a pale
brown; arrange them on a hot platter, and put an edge of mashed potato
around. One good-sized tenderloin will make a dinner.
"As to mutton, you can get what are called steaks of that; really they
are chops from the top of the leg, round, with a bone in the middle.
Those you can simmer a little, as they are inclined to be tough, and
then fry them; or broil them and have peas with them. And there is
mutton stew, and scrag of mutton--a part of the neck,--and minced mutton
made up into collops with Worcestershire sauce, and mutton stewed with
barley into a thick Scotch broth and served like a stew; all those are
cheap. As to roasts, once in a long time you can get a small leg of
mutton and parboil it, to save roasting it all the time in the oven, and
so shrinking it more or less. Brown it at the last, however, and serve
it with peas and mint jelly. For the second dinner there will be plenty
to slice with the gravy, and enough still to offer again, perhaps
disguised as a curry. Of course the stock in which the meat was boiled
must make a soup. Tomatoes would go well with mutton, and after the bone
was free, that could go in bean soup. As to lamb, I spoke of having stew
of that, the cheap parts such as the neck, of course; and occasionally
the forequarter for parties. We will experiment with that later on, so I
am going to skip it now."
"Yes, do; I want to talk about chicken. Are we never, never to have
that? I think you are dreadfully severe."
Mary smiled. "Well, as a concession, I will say that you can have it
once in a long, long time, provided you conscientiously make up
beforehand for the extravagance by going in for a regular diet of cheap
things. When you do indulge, buy a large fowl, because that goes farther
for the price. Stew it till it is tender, and serve it in sections. Cut
the breast in four pieces, and lay two away; cut the second joints
lengthwise, take out the bone and lay half the meat away with the
breast. Cook some boiled rice, to put around your platter; have plenty
of gravy, and the first four pieces will do very well for two people.
For the second dinner, brown the corresponding four pieces, and serve
these with sweet potatoes. The third night, open the drumsticks, take
out the bones, fill the centres with stuffing, and brown these. Serve
them on toast, like birds; you might well pretend that is what they are,
too. You will still have the bits on the wings, neck and back for a nice
luncheon dish or for croquettes; and the liver, gizzard, and heart
should go into an omelette. After all, a fowl is not too expensive for
two people provided they will make three meals of it; not too expensive
for an occasional change, that is. It would be too much for daily
consumption."
"It would do provided the fowl was not too tough," corrected Dolly.
"It is tolerably sure to be tough, but long cooking corrects that. Try
this sometimes: instead of simmering it, cut it up and fry each piece a
little; as you do so, put them in a kettle and add a very little water.
When all are in see that the water just covers them; put a cover on and
put this away in the tireless stove, or simmer it very slowly on the
back of the range for four or five hours. It will come out brown and
tender."
"And put all left-over gravy and bones in the stock pot," Dolly muttered
to herself as she wrote this down. "Now, before I forget it, tell me why
the drumsticks are to be served 'on toast?' I see I have that expression
down over and over. Are you so awfully fond of toast as all that?"
"Toast, my dear child, is the way of making a small dish larger. When
things are scanty it conceals the fact as nothing else does. Don't you
know how often the cook-books say, 'serve with sippets of toast?'"
"Now you mention it, I do seem to recall the phrase, though I thought it
said 'snippets' of toast. I supposed they were a sort of garnish, like
parsley."
"They are a garnish, but at the same time they are one of the small
economies of cooking. They get rid of bits of bread, and at the same
time give an air to a dish while they help eke it out.
"And now for the left-overs of meat. I have spoken of some of those as
we have gone along, but there are heaps and heaps more. If you have a
good deal of meat left over you can have English rissoles, for one
thing; generally you make them out of beef, but not necessarily. You
chop the meat, mix it with gravy and a raw egg to bind it, add a few
crumbs and some seasoning, and roll the whole into balls. Dip each one
in flour and fry it in a wire basket. Beef olives are thin slices of
beef with a spoonful of crumbs put on each slice, and these rolled over
once and pinned in place with a tiny wooden skewer--in other words, a
wooden toothpick. Any other meat can be used in the same way. Mutton can
be served a la marquise; that is, mince it, mix it with boiled rice and
curry-powder and a tiny bit of onion, and a raw egg to bind it all; make
into balls and fry them. Sliced mutton is nice dipped in French dressing
and broiled. Cottage loaf is good, especially for an extra busy day. For
that, line a dish with mashed potato, put the minced and seasoned meat
in the centre and cover with more potato; bake this and turn out in a
mould. Tomato sauce goes well with this dish by way of gravy. Baked hash
is just minced meat mixed with gravy, pressed into a mould and baked in
the oven till it will turn out.
"When you have only a little meat left over and can make none of these
dishes, try soufflé; I have never found anything so good to help out.
You chop the meat till you have a cupful; or, if there is less, measure
everything else in the same proportion. With a cupful take as much white
sauce, a little minced onion and parsley, salt and pepper, and put it
all on the fire with two beaten egg yolks. Cook this three minutes; take
it off and cool it, and fold in the stiffly beaten whites. Put it in a
buttered baking-dish and bake it half an hour and serve at once while it
is nice and puffy.
"Besides this have croquettes, and if you are short of meat for those,
put in a little boiled rice. And when your meat gives out altogether,
try this cheap and very nice Mexican dish: put in a saucepan a quarter
of a pound of dried beef cut up rather small, with a cup of tomato and a
quarter of a cup of rice, a little onion and seasoning; cook till the
rice is soft. The rest of the beef in the box, if you buy it that way,
you can broil; it is like delicate ham.
"I should think all these things ought to make it easy for you to at
least begin to manage; afterwards you can go on and have anything more
you can find to make that is good and cheap."
"I think somebody once told me that twice-cooked food was not wholesome;
do you really believe it is a good idea to have warmed-over things for
dinners?"
"Think of the French once more! They have the greatest number of made
dishes in the world and they never have dyspepsia. And then you are to
have warmed-over things only every other night, at the worst, and not
always then, by any means, and I am sure you will thrive on them."
"One thing more; do you believe it pays to spend so much time and
thought and all that on doing over things? Don't you think you might as
well buy fresh ones as to put so much strength in these?"
"My dear girl, if you are going to save your money you must expend your
time and ingenuity in doing so. I don't believe in wasting strength, but
I do believe in using it wisely in order to save buying unnecessarily.
But you will learn that as you go on. Now do you think I have told you
enough about meat to enable you to keep the wolf from the door?"
"I do, indeed; I only hope Fred will consent to eat these things. If he
finds out he is dining on left-overs and dried beef and scrags of
mutton, I am afraid he will think me a pretty poor sort of housekeeper."
"Do you suppose any mere man is going to know that he is eating cheap
meat unless you actually tell him so in plain words? Not at all; he
will eat all these delicacies and declare that they are far better than
roasts of beef and spring lamb, and wonder how you can possibly afford
to have such good things on your little housekeeping income. You will
simply be covered with glory, and he will never know how you are
deceiving him for his own good."
"I think it is going to be dreadfully trying to live on an allowance,
anyway. It will be just like being shipwrecked on a raft, and having
exactly so much hardtack and so many ounces of water doled out to you
each day. If you eat any of your to-morrow's provisions you won't be
alive when a ship sights you at last. In other words, you will never get
your salary raised if you don't live within what you have now."
"You won't deserve to have it raised if you can't live within what you
have now; so much is sure. But you won't have any trouble. Remember to
keep within your week's allowance, not your daily one; there's comfort
in that for you. You can see that one day you may buy two days' food at
once, and so spend part or all of the dollar that properly belongs to
to-morrow; but the end of the week straightens that out comfortably, and
if that account comes out all right you cannot run over the whole."
"I really believe we had better be vegetarians and live on pea soup and
lentils and peanuts and such things. Being both cheap and filling, what
more could one ask?"
"Well, vegetarians have taught us all a great deal. I think, however,
that men who have been brought up to have meat at least once a day do
not take kindly to a diet which cuts it out altogether. But I am sure
they are far better off without too much meat, and if they can be made
to think they are getting as much as usual when really they are getting
only half as much, that is a distinct gain. Always remember what I told
you, that they do not inquire too closely exactly what they are getting
to eat if only it is good; that is something to count among your
mercies."
"Have you any idea what you spend for meat a day?"
"Yes; we have it for dinner only, and, as I explained, I buy enough one
day for at least two dinners. Dividing the two or possibly three pounds
up in that way, of course it makes the daily total absurdly small; I
suppose it averages only about twenty cents,--probably less."
"That does seem impossible, except as I review the baked hash and other
dinner meats you mentioned. And with this enormous expense you pay for
vegetables, milk, eggs, butter, and all the rest, and yet put pennies in
the kitchen bank?"
"Of course. I buy meat one day, vegetables the next, flour the third,
and so on; that is the explanation."
"Well, I see that it is not quite as impossible as one would think at
first sight, anyway."
"You are only in the first stages of housekeeping yet, so wait awhile,
my dear, before you make up your mind one way or the other. Now
get your hat and we will go down-town and buy the dinner for
to-night,--pot-roast, I think, for one thing."
"Pot-roast to-night; to-morrow the remains of yesterday's mutton; the
next day the beef again,--in soufflé, possibly, provided Dick comes home
to-night with a good appetite, in which case little will be left."
"Don't forget the soup; we have a vegetable one to-night."
"Then there may possibly be enough beef left for rissoles next time."
"Good girl," said Mary, approvingly, "you are learning, and deserve a
reward, and, as George Eliot says 'the reward for work well done is the
ability to do more work,' we will pick out a particularly difficult
lesson on something for to-morrow," and she laughed over the ungrateful
face Dolly made as she went for her marketing hat.