would be a good lesson to an inexperienced cook to watch for how long a
period the butter and flour will go on bubbling after the stew-pan has
been taken off the fire. It depends of course on the thickness of the
stew-pan, but this frying process will go on sometimes for ten minutes,
or even longer, after it has been moved on to a cold slab. This fact
will explain why hashes and stews are so often tough. Most cooks know
hash ought not to boil, but how many place a stew-pan on the fire, and
remove it on to the hob directly it begins what they call to simmer!
They forget that the boiling, for that is what it really is, goes on
perhaps for ten minutes after they have moved the stew-pan from the
fire, when a tea-spoonful of cold gravy, or even cold water, would have
stopped the boiling at once.
Keep stirring the brown thickening till it ceases to boil or bubble, and
then remove as much as you can of the onion, and pour the whole into a
stone jar—an empty white jam-pot is as good as anything—and allow it to
get cold.
When it is cold it has the appearance somewhat of light-coloured
chocolate, and a few spoonfuls of it will always give a nice rich brown
look to gravies. It must be put in the gravy, and stirred over the fire
in it; gradually, as the gravy boils, it becomes thicker. For ordinary
gravy, when brown thickening is used, a tea-spoonful of sherry is a
great improvement.
Cooks often thicken gravies, curries, &c., with butter and flour. The
effect too often is that the gravy looks a light colour, and has a
gruelly taste. A good cook should never be without some brown thickening
in the house.
Sufficient of this brown thickening must be added to the curry sauce,
which is supposed to have been rubbed through the wire-sieve, to make it
as thick as gruel; and, as we have said, this thickening only takes
place when it is boiled, and at the same time stirred, over the fire.
The curry is now complete, and has only to be poured round, not over,
the freshly-cooked sweetbreads.
Suppose, however, the dish required was curried mutton, which is, of
course, a much more economical dish than curried sweetbreads, and it is
undoubtedly one of the best methods of using up a cold joint. Cut some
slices of meat off the cold joint; avoid skin and gristle, and choose
those slices as much as possible containing most fat. Then boil up the
curry sauce, ready thickened and finished, in a stew-pan, remove the
stew-pan from the fire, and place the slices of meat in it, and cover
them with the sauce; replace the stew-pan on the hob, but not on the
fire, leave it in a warm place for half an hour, and just before turning
it out make it a little hotter, if you like, by carefully holding the
stew-pan over the fire; but recollect if it once boils or bubbles up the
meat will get hard, and the curry will be spoilt.
The proper accompaniment to curry is boiled rice; this ought properly to
be served in a separate dish. The rice must be boiled till quite tender,
and then the grains should be separated from one another by being tossed
lightly about on a cloth in front of the fire.
Curry is, as we have said, the most suitable dish for hot weather, as is
abundantly proved by its being the most popular in India. In India fresh
tamarinds and mangoes are, I believe, used instead of apples; various
herbs and spices are also used, which differ in different parts of the
country.
Many persons, especially old Indians, have recipes for curry. We have
given what must necessarily form the basis of curry, where the
curry-powder or paste is not home-made. By many, the addition of a
little grated cocoa-nut to the curry is considered a great improvement;
or where cocoa-nut cannot be obtained, a few grated Brazil nuts may be
used instead. Others, too, strongly recommend the addition of powdered
coriander-seeds. Coriander-seeds are, however, used in making
curry-powder, and good curry-powder ought to contain sufficient. When,
therefore, the powder is old, and has lost that aromatic smell which it
ought to have, a little powdered coriander-seed may be added with
advantage; but it has a very decided flavour, and must be used with
caution.
One of the most common faults in inexperienced cooks is to have certain
fancies for certain flavours, and then to let that flavour predominate.
I have tasted mock-turtle soup which might have been called marjoram
soup. Herbs and spices must always be used carefully, and it is
generally best to err on the side of too little than too much. To
illustrate this point, I would mention what is generally known as veal
stuffing. Who has not, at one time or other, tasted a turkey in which it
was so highly flavoured that you tasted it all through dinner? Indeed,
at times you may consider yourself fortunate if you don’t taste it all
through the next day.
How few cooks, too, understand how to use garlic or aromatic flavouring
herbs! It is in the proper blending of these strong flavours that one
can detect the hand of the _artiste_.
There are many worse things to eat in hot weather than cold roast beef
and salad. Now, it will often be said that if you want a good salad you
must go to Paris. Certainly you _do_ get a good salad there invariably;
but it is equally easy to have one at home by simply doing what they do.
One principal reason why English people so often have bad salads is that
they have an absurd prejudice against oil. Very often, too, when they
use oil, the oil is bad. Of course, it is as impossible to make a good
salad with bad oil as it is to cook a good dinner with high meat. The
oil must be clear, bright, and of a pale-yellow colour; if it looks at
all green, it is probably bad. Bearing, therefore, this in mind, I will
now tell you how to mix a salad, simply repeating the recipe or custom
used in ninety-nine out of a hundred French restaurants. First get two
or three small French cabbage-lettuces. Wash them, if necessary, in a
little cold water, but do not dry them on a cloth, as you will thereby
probably bruise them and spoil them. Shake them dry in a little wire
basket; or put them in a cloth, and take the cloth by the four corners,
and make the lettuce-leaves jump inside; then put them lightly into a
salad-bowl. Next chop up enough parsley to cover a threepenny-piece, and
also chop three fresh mint-leaves, and sprinkle this over the lettuce.
Next take a table-spoon, and place in it about half a salt-spoonful of
salt, and quarter of pepper; fill the table-spoon with oil. Mix up the
pepper and salt with the oil, and pour it over the lettuce—I am
supposing enough for about four persons—add half a table-spoonful more
oil, and toss the lettuce lightly together for two or three minutes.
Next add not quite half a table-spoonful of French white vinegar; mix it
for a minute or two more, and it is finished.
Now the difficulty in many households is to overcome the prejudice
against the oil. Perhaps some one, when they have read this, will do as
follows: First take care to have a _fresh_ bottle of _good_ oil; then
mix a salad as I have directed, without telling anybody how it is done.
Let it be handed round at dinner-time, and wait and see what people say.
If you tell them beforehand that there is nearly two table-spoonfuls of
oil, they probably will make up their minds beforehand that it is nasty;
but say nothing, and give the recipe a fair chance.
There are two additions to a salad which many think an advantage: one is
to chop up with the parsley and mint one fresh tarragon-leaf; another is
to rub a crust of bread with a piece of garlic, and then put the crust
into the salad-bowl, and toss it about with the salad. This is quite
sufficient to give it a decided flavour of garlic, and, where garlic is
not disliked, will be found to be a decided improvement.
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XI.—SALADS, AND HOW TO MAKE THEM.
There can be no doubt that the last ten or fifteen years have witnessed,
if not a revolution, at any rate a very great change in the domestic
habits of the middle classes of this country. Persons nowadays drink
wine every day who twenty years back looked upon a glass of port after a
Sunday’s early dinner as a rare luxury. There are probably more cases of
champagne consumed in a month now than bottles in a week of the time of
which we speak. In many households we regret to see brandies-and-sodas
have taken the place of good old-fashioned home-brewed ale. But in the
general management of the table the universal increase in the
undoubtedly luxurious habits of the age is still more marked. In every
class of society dinners are served in the present day which would have
simply astounded our forefathers. Now, were we to inquire into the cause
of this change, our subject would be political rather than domestic
economy. The freer intercourse, not merely amongst ourselves, but with
our foreign neighbours, the alteration in the value of money, the great
increase in the importation of foreign goods of various descriptions,
have all had their effect. Again, it must be borne in mind that
increased luxury in one sense does not necessarily mean increased
expenditure. We have before had occasion to contrast the old-fashioned
heavy English dinner with a modern one _à la Russe_, and have
endeavoured to explain that the latter, while far more luxurious, is at
the same time far more economical.
If there is any dish in the world that varies more than another,
probably it is a salad, and at the same time it may be considered as one
of the cheapest of modern luxuries, which by some is considered almost
an essential to the every-day dinner. Contrast what we may call the
early English style with the modern French. First, that huge lettuce,
sliced up, saturated in a pint or two of vinegar; it never even reached
the dignity of being eaten alone, but was considered a proper
accompaniment to a strong cheese, the unavoidable noise made in
masticating it unfortunately invariably drowning what little
conversation there was. Second, the _salade à la Française_ as one gets
it in Paris: soft, delicious, digestible, and somehow or other
containing some subtle flavour that seems at present to have baffled the
research of the most intelligent foreigner with the astutest taste. Of
course, too, tastes differ and require training. Many of the lower
orders in this country, were they to see a Frenchman in humble life
dress a salad, using the oil as he does, would regard him with feelings
somewhat akin to what the Frenchman would feel were he to witness the
national feat of drinking off a quart of adulterated beer as an
appetiser before breakfast. Each countryman would regard the other as a
beast. But we must come to the practical part of our subject, and
endeavour to improve upon the lettuce and vinegar, though by preface we
would state that that by no means small class who think the best part of
the salad _is_ the vinegar, which they keep to the last, like a child
with the jam part of a tart, and lap up finally with the assistance of a
blade of a steel knife, will find but little instruction from our
remarks.
We will commence with giving simple instructions for dressing an
ordinary salad, composed of plain lettuce.
First, have ready a salad-bowl sufficiently large to enable the
salad-dresser to toss the lettuce lightly together. Next, the lettuce
should be crisp, but not too hard, and we would advise that hard stalk
part (which, by the way, many persons think the best part) not to be put
in. This, of course, however, is a matter of taste. Then, if possible,
don’t wash the lettuce at all; examine every leaf carefully and wipe it
clean, and remove any specks of garden-mould that may be on it, and in
wiping be particularly careful not to crush or bruise the lettuce.
Sometimes, and indeed often, washing is absolutely indispensable; when
this is the case, however, bear in mind the importance of leaving the
lettuce to soak in the water as little as possible; next, when the
lettuce has been washed, it must of course be dried; the best plan being
to shake it in a little wire basket, which can be swung round in the
open air. These wire baskets are sold in the streets by men who go about
with skewers and penny gridirons, and are well worth buying. If you
possess a whitebait-basket, that will answer the purpose admirably.
Another method of drying the lettuce is to put it in a clean, dry cloth,
and take the cloth by the four corners and shake it lightly; the drops
of water shake off, and are absorbed by the cloth, but the lettuce does
not get bruised. Next chop up finely about enough parsley to fill a
small salt-spoon, and with it one or two leaves of fresh tarragon (we
will suppose you are mixing salad enough for four persons); sprinkle
this over the lettuce in the bowl, which, if the flavour is liked, may
be first rubbed inside with a slice of onion, or better still, a bead of
garlic. In giving this onion or garlic flavour to a salad, too great
care cannot be taken to avoid overdoing it. Sydney Smith wrote a recipe
on dressing salad, so well known that we will not repeat it in full,
with the exception of the two admirable lines which every one should
know by heart:—
“Let onion’s atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, scarce suspected, animate the whole.”
There are various ingredients used in cooking which can only be used as
here directed—viz., “scarce suspected.” Garlic is essentially one of
these, as well as nutmeg, allspice, mace, &c. But to return to the salad
which requires dressing. Place in a table-spoon a small salt-spoonful of
salt, about half of pepper, then fill up the spoon with good fresh Lucca
oil, stir it quietly with a fork, and pour over the salad and toss it
lightly about; add another table-spoonful of oil, and continue the
mixing; and finish by adding about half a table-spoonful of English
vinegar, or rather less of French white-wine vinegar. We ought in this
country to be very careful before we set up our opinions on such a
subject as cooking before the French. Now, some French cookery-books I
have seen maintain that in dressing a salad it does not matter whether
you put in the oil first or the vinegar. For my part I think it does. If
the vinegar be put in _before_ the oil, it is apt to be absorbed by the
lettuce-leaves, and consequently one part of the salad will taste
sharper than the other; while if the oil be put in first, and the salad
well mixed, each leaf gets coated with oil, and the small quantity of
vinegar when added is generally diffused. To my taste the king of
salad-dressings is mayonnaise sauce, but before refreshing your memories
as to how to make it, I will first describe two exceedingly nice salads,
which have the advantage of using up cold vegetables. The first is
asparagus salad, and as absolutely no oil is used in compounding it, a
description may raise the hopes of some of my readers, who somehow
“never will believe in oil.” We will suppose some properly-boiled
asparagus has been left from dinner. All that is necessary is to dip the
eatable parts or tops in the following sauce. Place the asparagus on a
dish, and if any remains over from the sauce pour it on the tops; the
sauce being made as follows:—Melt, but do not heat too much, a little
butter—say an ounce—and pour it on to a plate; mix in with a fork a good
tea-spoonful of made mustard, a little pepper and salt, and nearly a
dessert-spoonful of English vinegar; stir it all up quickly, and dip in
the ends of the asparagus as directed. This is a capital way of using up
asparagus, and the salad makes an excellent dish at a supper confined to
cold meats.
The other salad to which we refer is the old-fashioned dish, potato
salad, and is the best made from new potatoes, or rather from potatoes
not too old and floury. Considering the number of houses where potatoes
are left from the early dinner, and where there is afterwards a supper,
it seems strange that potato salad does not form a more frequent dish
than it does. The way in which it is compounded is extremely simple. The
“suspicion of onion”—which can be brought about as before, by simply
rubbing the bowl, or if a rather strong flavour of onion is not objected
to, by chopping up a small piece of onion finely and adding to the
salad—is one requisite; then slice the potatoes, place them in the bowl,
add a little chopped parsley, and if liked, as before, tarragon, and
dress the salad exactly as the lettuce was directed to be dressed,
adding a little more or less vinegar, according to taste.
We must not, in enumerating the various rarer kinds of salad, omit to
mention the ordinary English salad and its dressing. The ordinary
English salad is a mixture of lettuce, mustard and cress, beetroot,
radishes; to which are sometimes added endive and celery. If in season,
a little celery is certainly an improvement to a mixed salad of this
kind; and some even recommend a few slices of boiled potatoes. The usual
dressing to a salad of this description is made by mixing three or four
table-spoonfuls of cream with half a table-spoonful or more of brown
sugar, two table-spoonfuls of vinegar, about a tea-spoonful of made
mustard, pepper and salt, and some add a little oil, though when cream
is used there is no occasion for oil, and those who prefer this kind of
salad generally object to it.
In dressing mixed salads the variety of recipes is almost innumerable.
Yolks of hard-boiled eggs are mixed up with a little milk, and when
cream is liked and yet cannot be obtained, this is a very good
substitute. Of course, in winter the choice of salad is limited, though
of late years it is possible to obtain French lettuces nearly all the
year round. Still, a very nice salad can be made from mixed endive,
beetroot, and celery, which can be dressed in any of the ways I have
mentioned.
An exceedingly nice salad can be formed from mixed boiled vegetables,
the most important ones being cauliflower, French beans, peas, summer
cabbage, and new potatoes; a little chopped parsley and young onions
should be added, and the salad dressed exactly similar to the potato
salad.
A variety of herbs are used abroad for salads, which are not often used
in this country, the chief being dandelion-leaves. These herbs, however,
are difficult to obtain except in the neighbourhood of Soho, where a
knowledge of French is requisite in addition, in order for you to obtain
exactly what you want; and as there are herbs closely resembling those
used, some of which are absolutely poisonous, caution should be used by
amateur herbalists. The fact, however, remains that French peasants
would gather a delicious salad from our ditches, whereas the only
creature in the country sufficiently educated to appreciate these
delicacies at present is the British pig.
By far the best form of sauce for salads is mayonnaise sauce, especially
when the salads consist of some green vegetable, such as lettuce, mixed
with meat or fish. For instance, we can have chicken salad, lobster
salad, or salmon salad, &c. Now with salad of this description no sauce
can approach, either in appearance or flavour, the mayonnaise sauce. As
I have already given full instructions as to the best method of
preparing this sauce, in the article entitled “How to Make Dishes Look
Nice,” I will briefly remind you that the one great secret in getting
the sauce thick is to drop the oil on the yolk of egg very slowly, drop
by drop at starting, and also not to put the vinegar in the basin with
the yolk at the commencement, as is often erroneously taught. By
dropping the oil one drop at a time, and by patiently beating up the
yolk of egg, the sauce will gradually assume the form of custard, and by
adding more oil, and continuing the beating, can be made as firm as
butter. A little salt and white pepper and French white-wine vinegar can
then be carefully added; but it will be often found best to defer adding
the pepper, salt, and vinegar till the salad is all mixed up together.
As mayonnaise is, when properly made a firm sauce, it is particularly
useful in masking over salads, thereby rendering them very ornamental
dishes. For instance, suppose you have a few slices of smoked salmon—and
smoked salmon, lettuce (especially small French ones), and mayonnaise
sauce make one of the nicest salads that can be got—the following is the
best method of preparing a really ornamental dish:—Pile the lettuce up
in the centre of the dish as high as possible, and so arrange it that
the outer leaves are smooth and uniform; cover these leaves entirely
with the sauce, using if possible a silver knife or ivory paper-knife
for the purpose; place the slices of salmon neatly round the base of the
salad, which ought in appearance to resemble a mould of solid custard.
Ornament the sauce by dropping on little pieces of finely-chopped
parsley, and sticking in a few dried capers, and stick a little sprig of
bright-green parsley on the top; a few olives and anchovies are a great
improvement. A dish of this description makes a very pretty addition
either to the supper-table or at lunch. I need scarcely add that
hard-boiled eggs cut up form a capital garnish to almost every kind of
salad. The eggs, to taste nice, should be new-laid. They should be
placed in a saucepan in _cold_ water, and allowed to remain in a quarter
of an hour or twenty minutes after the water boils; they should then be
taken out and placed in cold water, and had better not be peeled and cut
up till within, say, half an hour of the salad being eaten, as
hard-boiled egg is apt to change its colour if exposed to the air too
long. When a silver dish is used, the egg will discolour it very much,
so bear in mind to clean it as soon as possible. Mayonnaise sauce will
keep two or even more days, if kept in a very cool place.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XII.—PICNIC DAINTIES.
There are perhaps few months that test the cook’s art more than that of
August; and not only the cook, but the housekeeper, must exercise some
little tact, in order to avoid the waste that too often ensues from heat
and thunderstorms.
We live in so variable a climate that housekeepers are at times apt to
forget that, though in winter a haunch of mutton will hang for a month,
and be all the better for it, yet there are occasional days on which
meat that has been killed in the early morning is bad by sunset.
It is these sultry days that seem to invite us to wander forth into some
shady wood, and, stretched on the soft green turf, eat cooling food and
imbibe cooling drinks, by the side of some clear rippling brook. Nor
should we necessarily, whatever be the weather, enjoy our lunch the less
for a little society—in other words, August hot days are admirably
adapted for picnics.
Picnic! the very name conjures up before my eyes hundreds of faces.
Wonderful institution! almost the only one that seems capable of driving
that curse of English society, formality, out of the field.
First, the unpacking of the huge hampers, at times necessitating almost
the diving in of two heads at once—bright eyes meet under cover of the
unromantic wickerwork, and look brighter for the meeting. It is
wonderful, by-the-by, how stooping over a hamper causes most people to
flush. Ah! happy time; when most are young, and the world before them as
fresh, as bright, and as green as the grass on which they sit. How many
staid old married couples are there who can look back upon a picnic as
the starting-point in their long road of happiness. No rose, however,
without a thorn. How many, too, can look upon the same festive occasion,
and remember as if yesterday the sharp sting of the green-eyed monster,
then felt for the first time, and the poison of which has blighted a
lifetime!
“Lift not the festal mask, enough to know
No scene of mortal life but teems with mortal woe.”
Fortunately, we are not all moulded alike by the parent hand of Nature.
The majority, in fact, pass in early life from face to face like the
butterfly from flower to flower, seeing no difference beyond that the
present one is always the sweetest, and at last settle down into a
humdrum life, as unacquainted with the heaven of love as they are
incapable of feeling the stings of disappointment.
“How much, methinks, I could despise this man,
But that in charity I am bound against it.”
But the very class of whom we are speaking—viz., the majority—have
probably long ere this looked for the practical part of the subject to
commence—viz., the lobster salad, pigeon pie, cucumber, ice, champagne,
&c.
A few hints on the general management of picnics may possibly be of
service.