quart. Next, take an egg, break the egg into a tea-cup, and carefully
separate all the white from the yolk. This requires care, and the yolk
must be passed from one half-shell to the other half very gently, in
order to avoid breaking it. It is no use trying to do it at all with a
stale egg. Place the yolk in a basin, and break it with a fork—a wooden
salade-fork is best. Then drop some oil on, drop by drop at starting,
and at the same time beat it up lightly but quickly with the fork. Do
not, pray, get impatient, and put too much oil in at once. Continue
slowly till the yolk of egg and oil begin to look like yellowish cream.
When it once begins to get thick, you may slightly increase the dose of
oil, or let the drops fall more quickly. Continue the process till the
sauce assumes the appearance of railway grease. This is rather a nasty
simile; but then it is so exactly like it, that it conveys a correct
idea. You may now add a little white vinegar. Now, as the vinegar has
the effect of making the sauce thinner—and the thicker the sauce is, the
nicer it looks—this must be added with caution. A small bottle of dilute
acetic acid, purchased from some good chemist, will be found best for
the purpose, and is what I have always used myself, it being simply
strong vinegar, about eight times stronger than ordinary; and,
consequently, one-eighth of the quantity will answer the same purpose.
Half a salt-spoonful will be found sufficient, and will not have the
effect of thinning the sauce. Next, with a silver knife, or ivory
paper-knife, spread the sauce over the lobster, till the whole dish,
with the exception of where the green salade shows round the edge, has
the appearance of a mould of solid custard.
Now to ornament it. First pick out about a dozen of the
brightest-looking capers, and stick them lightly over the sauce. They
will stick easily without being in the least pushed in. Next pick out
about a dozen and a half pieces of the chopped parsley, each piece about
the size of a pin’s head, and drop these over it to give it a slight
speckled appearance. Next take the beetroot, which of course is supposed
to have been boiled and got cold, and cut it into small strips about an
inch long, and as thick as a wooden lucifer match split into four, and
with these strips form a trellis-work of beetroot round the edge of the
salade where the sauce joins the lettuce, so that the bottom of each
strip just touches the lettuce, but the strip itself rests on the sauce.
The contrast between the red trellis and the white sauce has a very
pretty effect. Next cut the egg into quarters lengthways, and place the
pieces round the edge at equal distances, and put the olives and
anchovies at equal distances between them; and also arrange the small
claws of the lobster, bent at the joint, around the border. By this
means nearly all of the green salade is hidden, and the effect of the
dish is exceedingly pretty. The remainder of the chopped parsley and
capers may also be placed round the edge, as when the dish is mixed up
it will help to improve the flavour.
There is one thing more, however, that may make the dish look still
prettier, and that is a little lobster-spawn. If the lobster contained
any spawn, take a small piece and cut it up into little pieces the size
of a pin’s head, or a little bigger—a dozen and a half pieces will be
sufficient—and sprinkle these over the sauce alternately with the little
green pieces of parsley.
It has been described how to make a nice-looking little lobster salade
mayonnaise for about four persons. When, however, a considerably larger
dish, and several of them, are required, such as for a wedding breakfast
or ball supper, you should get by way of garnish a few little crayfish
or prawns. A small crayfish placed in the corner of each dish, with its
claws out-stretched resting on the mayonnaise sauce, looks very pretty.
If, too, the dish is of a considerable size, a small one may be lightly
placed on the top as an ornament.
Now, we have described one way of ornamenting a lobster salade, but, of
course, this is only one out of an infinite number of methods. Nor do we
maintain that this is by any means the prettiest method; but we have
given it as one of the simplest. For instance, mayonnaise sauce can be
coloured red by mixing up some lobster butter with it, or green, by
means of parsley-juice. Plovers’ eggs, too, when they can be obtained,
form a very pretty garnish. Leaves or flowers can be cut out of beetroot
with a stamp, and be used by way of ornament. The long, thin tendons of
the lobster can be arranged, too, to stick upright out of the centre,
but they should be put in before the mayonnaise sauce is placed on the
lobster.
Perhaps a few explanations of why the salade was prepared in the order
named may not be out of place. It will be observed that the anchovies,
capers, &c., were got ready early, but the beetroot was not cut up till
long afterwards; the reason of this is, fresh-cut beetroot looks a
bright red, but after some hours, if it gets stale, it has a sort of
withered look, and turns a dirty reddish-brown colour; so too, with the
egg: never cut open a hard-boiled egg until it is nearly time to use it,
as the egg dries up, and the yellow yolk looks dark and separates from
the white. The capers, too, were dried, as if dropped on to the
spread-out sauce wet they would spoil its appearance.
Lastly, do not be disappointed if you do not succeed in getting the
sauce thick the first time; and do not be afraid of the oil. One yolk of
an egg will use up nearly a tea-cupful of oil. It requires a peculiar
quick movement of the wrist, and, like whipping cream into a froth, it
is not always learnt in a day. We fear that among the Mary Ann class,
there are some heavy-fisted women who would never learn it at all. The
dish, however, is well worth the trial, and if you can get one person to
do the sauce and another to ornament the dish, all the better, as the
exertion of making the sauce has often the effect of making the hand
shake so much that it is incapable of arranging the beetroot, &c., with
any degree of nicety.
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VI.—BREAKFAST DISHES.
There are, perhaps, few meals that in this country vary more than
breakfasts; and, indeed, it is not possible to draw any exact line
between the hospitable and heavy Yorkshire breakfasts, including the
huge game pie, and draughts of home-brewed strong ale at its finish, and
the feeble breakfast consisting of thin dry toast and cup of tea, which
with many is the limit of nourishment they can take early in the day.
There can, however, be no doubt that a good breakfast is very conducive
to good health. There are, too, perhaps, few meals at which the appetite
is more capricious than breakfast, and few occasions on which more
depends upon appearances. A nicely-laid breakfast-table, with its
snow-white cloth, crisp brown loaves, bright silver, neatly-patted
butter, looking doubly tempting by contrast with the rich dark-green
parsley with which it is ornamented; the juicy joint and tempting ham
upon the sideboard; the rich, fragrant smell of the coffee—in itself
sufficient to create an appetite.
But let us wait till the door opens, and the rattle of the silver covers
is heard. First, say, a fowl done spread-eagle fashion, with mushrooms;
next, some curried sausages; next, some mutton cutlets, with mixed hot
pickles in the centre; while in another dish some poached eggs sleep
peacefully on slices of rich juicy ham that have just left the gridiron.
All these are placed on the table, while some grilled salmon, with which
the breakfast begins, is handed round: many preferring hot muffins in
lieu of bread as an accompaniment. But we must not forget the tankard,
with the college arms emblazoned on its side, full of good buttery ale;
for, as many probably have already guessed, it is a college breakfast we
are describing; and Paterfamilias, when he shakes his head over the
college bills, will do well to excuse a little of the extravagance of
youth which breaks out in the form of breakfasts rather than suppers,
the latter being conducive too often to the former consisting simply of
a red herring and a brandy-and-soda.
With a dozen or more healthy young men seated round the table, free from
the cares of life, indifferent to, and indeed ignorant even of, the
meaning of the “money article,” no wonder the tempting viands cooked by
cunning hands rapidly disappear amid a merry conversation, in which the
_summum bonum_ of earthly happiness seems to be to row in the University
Eight. But we must wait a few years. The bright-eyed youth with the
fluffy whiskers, who performed such prodigies of valour in the last town
and gown, has settled down into the sleek-looking country clergyman or
lawyer; and his pretty, quiet little wife probably never dreams even of
the life he led in the boisterous, but for all that really innocent,
days of his college life. The college breakfasts and the college hall
have, however, had their effect, and the change from the “college
professor of cookery” (who probably is far better off than the tutor to
Mary Ann) is—well, a change. The unvarying cold boiled bacon and hot
boiled eggs will, in spite of the bright silver tea-pot, the butter-dish
with the silver cow on the top, the lavish display of butter-knives (all
wedding presents, of course), after a time pall upon the strongest
appetite; but, unfortunately, if Mary Ann breaks down in one thing more
than another, it is over the breakfast. There is an indescribable
something in the appearance of the breakfast dishes she sends up that is
not conducive to appetite. The yolks of egg have a tendency to run into
the whites, and the fried bacon always seems as if it had been up the
chimney, or under the grate, as well as in the frying-pan. An omelette
is a hopeless impossibility, kidneys turn out tough, sausages come up
burnt in one place and burst out like old boots in another, and when
eaten, the bread-crumbs overpower the pork. After a series of failures,
people settle down into the cold bacon and boiled eggs; what little
change they do have consisting of potted meat, the most delicate palate
being unable to distinguish between potted ham, potted beef, potted
tongue, and potted game; for if there is one thing in the world of which
the pieman’s remark of “It’s the flavouring as does it” holds true, it
is of these shilling pots of potted meat.
That breakfasts will occasionally go wrong, is probably everybody’s
experience; to show how to make them always go right is not so easy. One
great cause, in addition to ignorance of cooking, is late rising. Cooks
sometimes start the day an hour behindhand, and never overtake the time.
I am not sure that in judging a cook’s character I would not take her as
she appears in the morning coming down to light the kitchen fire. Some
will be seen at this period fresh, clean, and bright-looking. This is a
good sign, and augurs well. Others, however, come down yawning—no cap,
the hair in an eccentric fashion, consisting apparently of one large
knot at the back of the head. They have a fluffy and disagreeable look,
suggestive of having slept in their clothes in a close room, the window
of which has not been opened for months, and in which you would expect
to find an inky fluid render itself visible in the wash-hand basin, were
you to blow away the soapsuds. All this augurs ill for breakfast.
However, we will suppose the former of the two servants has come down,
and that the dish for breakfast is the very common one of ham and eggs.
First, the ham, which is probably in a slice or slices already. The
first point to be considered is the state of the frying-pan; this latter
should be perfectly clean before the ham is placed in it. Next, cook the
ham rather slowly; with ham, poached eggs look better, and to my
thinking taste better, than fried. Have a stew-pan ready full of water
gently boiling, and drop in this water four or five drops of vinegar.
Have a dish ready in the oven; and as soon as the ham is nearly done,
take the eggs, which should have been carefully broken each one
separately in a cup, and let them slide out slowly into the boiling
water, doing two at a time; as soon as the eggs are in the water, place
the ham on the hot dish, and so place it that an egg will stand on each
slice. Next, take the strainer and lift each egg carefully out of the
water, and have in your other hand a knife ready to trim off the loose
pieces of white, so as to have the egg a compact mass, the yolk
surrounded by an even rim of white. Next, should a little of the water
rest in the bend of the strainer, mop it up with the end of a cloth
before you slide the egg on to the ham, or otherwise, owing to the
vinegar, the egg will taste acid. After the eggs are on the ham, see
that all is placed uniformly in the middle of the dish, put two or three
pieces of fresh parsley round, and send the dish up to table as quickly
as possible.
In cooking eggs and bacon, fried eggs are best. Have, as before, the
eggs ready in a cup, each in a separate cup. As soon as the bacon is
cooked, place it on the dish, and put it in front of the fire. Then
slide the eggs into the frying-pan with the boiling bacon-fat. Do this
slowly and carefully, the chief point being not to break the yolks. It
is a mistake to have too much fat, as that seems to increase those large
bubbles that form themselves under the white. Take care, also, not to
have the fire too fierce, or the egg will get burnt at the bottom. In
taking out the eggs with the strainer use the left hand; and, if the
white has spread itself too much round, or very unevenly, trim the white
so as to have the yolk as much as possible in the centre. A knife will
do for this purpose, but better still an old pair of easy-going
scissors. Place these on the bacon, and look carefully over the dish,
and wipe up with a cloth any appearance of “blacks” having mingled with
the fat that has run off from the bacon, as this black grease, though
perfectly wholesome, is disagreeable to the eye, and through the eye
affects the palate.
We will next take another dish, cheap and nice—viz., bloaters. The
objection to bloaters is the smell. If the cook has a private bloater
for breakfast, the bloater himself informs you of the fact before you
leave your bed. Now, bloaters cooked as they generally are—viz.,
whole—send forth a gust of extra flavour on being opened in the room.
The best method of cooking them, therefore, is as follows:—First, shut
the kitchen door; secondly, take off the heads, and split the bloaters
open like a haddock. Have a perfectly clear fire, and having rubbed the
gridiron with a piece of mutton-fat, place the bloater on it and grill
it; four or five minutes will be ample time. When done, take a piece of
butter, and after placing the bloater on a dish, with the skin-side
downwards, rub the butter over the upper side of the bloater, and thus
take off the dry appearance, and make it look moist. Bloaters cooked and
sent to table this way are not nearly so disagreeable as in the ordinary
way. Indeed, bloaters done this way often end up a bachelor’s
dinner-party at a club. Let us trust the claret is good.
The only way I know of getting good sausages for breakfast is making
them at home. A sausage-machine soon repays itself, and is useful for
many purposes besides making sausages, such as forcemeat, rissoles, &c.
The great advantage in making sausages at home is, first and
principally, that you know what is in them; secondly, that you can
flavour them to suit your taste. Some persons like sausages highly
flavoured, some not. I will give you a recipe for sausages that I like
myself, and would recommend you, if you like highly-seasoned sausages,
to increase first the quantity of marjoram, secondly, the quantity of
sage, and see which flavour you prefer. I would, however, warn you
against increasing the quantity of lemon, as the result will probably be
that you will taste the sausages not merely with your breakfast, but
with your lunch and even your dinner, in a way better imagined than
described.
The ingredients are as follows:—One pound of lean pork and half a pound
of fat pork, or rather less; one tea-spoonful of salt, half a
tea-spoonful of pepper, half a tea-spoonful of dried marjoram, one-third
of a small nutmeg, the sixth part of the rind of a lemon, three
good-sized sage-leaves. First, of course, take care that the pork is
perfectly fresh; mince the lemon separately, as fine as possible, and
mix it up with the other ingredients, having minced or powdered the
sage-leaves. Cut up the pork into little pieces, and having mixed all up
together in a basin, pass the whole through a sausage-machine, taking
care to send the part that comes out first through the machine a second
time. Roll the sausage-meat into small balls—the quantity I have named
would make quite sixteen—and fry these balls in a frying-pan, and send
them to table on little square pieces of toast. The toast can be dipped
in the fat that runs out of the sausage-meat into the frying-pan.
Kidneys make a nice breakfast dish, especially when sent to table in
company with a little fried bacon. The general fault is that they are
overcooked, and consequently hard, tasteless, and indigestible. Some
persons like kidneys absolutely blue inside when they are cut. This is,
perhaps, going a little too far; they should, however, always be cooked
so that when placed on the dish some red gravy runs out. A good-sized
kidney is best cooked split open on the gridiron, and as soon as it is
done, placed on its round sides, and a little piece of butter put on
each half, on to which a pinch of chopped parsley is dropped. Sometimes
kidneys are sent up skewered on a little silver arrow. A little pepper
should always be sprinkled over kidneys while they are cooking.
The best form of having fish for breakfast is, undoubtedly, plain
grilled. When those very small soles called dabs can be obtained, the
best method of cooking them is simply to dry them, flour them, and then
cook them over a clear fire on a gridiron—rubbed, of course, with a
piece of fat to prevent the fish from sticking. Fish sent up this way
should be put on an ornamental piece of white paper. The fish, also,
should show the marks of the gridiron in light-brown streaks. A little
pepper and salt should be sprinkled on them before sending to table, and
a piece of cut lemon can also be sent up with the fish for those who
like lemon.
There are very many dishes I could mention that are suitable for
breakfast; but one word to those—and many such exist—who consider hot
breakfast extravagant: the only dish of which they approve being eggs
eaten with bread-and-butter. I would first remind them that the eggs and
the butter in the shape of an omelette would be just the same, as far as
expense goes; but I would protest against the custom of the day of young
men eating, comparatively speaking, no breakfast, but taking a heavy
meat meal in the middle of the day, about one or two o’clock, and then
going back to work. A look into the City dining-rooms in the middle of
the day shows to how great an extent this practice is carried, and also
suggests how very unintellectual the greater part of City work must be.
To really work with the brains immediately after an early dinner is, if
not impossible, at any rate very injurious. Probably the seeds of
chronic dyspepsia are sown by this unwise habit.
What men should do is to eat a good hearty breakfast; take a light
lunch, say a few biscuits, or at the outside a piece of bread-and-cheese
and a glass of ale, if this latter has not the effect of incapacitating
them for work; and then to make a good dinner at six or seven o’clock,
or later, as the case may be.
There is one thing in connection with breakfast that should not be
omitted to be mentioned, and that is coffee. How it is that, as a rule,
good coffee can no more be obtained in England than tea in France, is
difficult to say. One great secret, however, of French coffee is that it
is always not only fresh ground, but fresh-_roasted_. I would therefore
briefly advise you, in reference to coffee, first to buy it in the nibs,
and grind it yourself; secondly, never to grind it till just before you
want it; thirdly, before grinding it heat the coffee in the oven for a
few minutes—this latter having the effect of bringing out the flavour;
lastly, do not grudge the coffee.
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VII.—HOW TO GIVE A NICE LITTLE DINNER.
However strange may appear the statement, yet we have no hesitation in
saying that one of the greatest steps ever made in economy in giving
dinner-parties was the introduction into this country of the dinner _à
la Russe_. It will be our endeavour in the present article both to prove
and illustrate this point by contrasting a small dinner-party of thirty
or forty years ago with a modern one. As we have already remarked, our
observations are intended to apply to those whose status in society may
be best described as possessing neither poverty nor riches. We will
suppose the number of persons at dinner to be about ten or a dozen.
My mind now goes back to some people I knew very well in my younger
days, and who will make admirable representatives of a very large
portion of the backbone of English society: exceedingly kind, generous,
and hospitable, but whose ideas of cooking contained a strong element of
contempt for what they called—recollect, I am speaking of thirty years
ago—French messes.
The time is soon after Christmas, and the party a family one. The boys
of the party, in their large white collars outside their jackets, look
flushed and happy, and may be seen furtively looking from time to time
at a bright yellow coin, which they keep in their waistcoat pockets—the
coin in question being a recent “tip” in the shape of a Christmas-box
from the stout and hospitable host.
But dinner is announced, and we soon find ourselves seated round a large
table that may almost be said literally to groan with the weight of the
good things placed on it.
First, some good mock-turtle soup—no doubt about it being a jelly when
cold—a sort of soup that, in the present day of beards and moustachios,
would require some care in taking.
Next the cover is taken off a huge cod-fish, big enough to have
swallowed Jonah himself when he was a little boy, handed round with
which was some oyster sauce as it should be, containing oysters in
numbers. Ah! the very memory of it makes us heave a deep sigh. Good
oysters could then be obtained at four-pence a dozen, and now—three
shillings a dozen.
The present Chancellor of the Exchequer might well bring in a poll-tax
on the men who eat oysters.
Next the four entrées were uncovered, and the silver lids taken out of
the room, for the handles to be unscrewed, the dishes wiped, rubbed with
a leather for a minute, and then they made four new silver dishes for
the sweets. The entrées were as follows:—Oyster patties, curried rabbit,
stewed kidneys, and what used to be called a beef olive—which consisted
of a steak rolled with veal stuffing, and some very thick brown gravy
poured over it.
After all these had been partially consumed, the covers were taken off
what is termed the _pièce de résistance_, which consisted of a huge
sirloin of beef, looking somewhat like the host himself, fat and jolly,
with scraped horseradish instead of grey hair; or perhaps a fine haunch
of mutton, with a paper frill round its wrist, something like a lady’s
cuff.
At the other end of the table were generally two large capons, with a
boiled tongue between them; beside which, two side-dishes, the one a
pigeon pie, and the other a small York ham.
We will not go on to describe the second course. As a rule, lady
housekeepers have no difficulty in superintending this part of the
dinner. There are hundreds and thousands of ladies who can make a
splendid dish of trifle or a mould of jelly, who would not have the
slightest idea of gravy. It was but yesterday I was dining out where the
gravy was handed round, which looked and tasted like pale, weak
beef-tea, which in truth it was.
At other places, too, cooks seem to think that when gravy is required,
all they have to do is to put a little of the soup in the sauce-tureen,
and send it up.
We would inform them that soup and gravy are two distinct things.
Perhaps at some future period we may have a whole article on gravy, for
gravy is a very weak point with inexperienced cooks.
But to return to the dinner above-mentioned. We do not for one moment
wish it to be understood that we complain of it. It is a sort of dinner
that makes people, when they come home late in the evening, at any rate
feel they have dined, and do not, as is too often the case after some of
those large dinners where fruit, flowers, and ice abound, on their
arrival want a sandwich and glass of sherry or brandy and soda before
going to bed. What we do maintain is that it is exceedingly expensive,
and that a handsome little dinner _à la Russe_ can be served up for less
than half the money.