Part 6

To take the bone from the shoulder, first cut from the inside and take out the shoulder blade, cutting from the inside, avoiding as far as possible cutting through the skin on the outside. The butcher will always do this for you probably, if you tell him about what you want done. First, the shoulder blade is taken out, then the bone which follows down along the leg. After the shoulder blade is taken out put it into a kettle of water, over the fire, and boil it for awhile until you can scrape all the meat off of it. You will have to use it in finishing the dish. After taking out the shoulder blade the cutting must all be done from the inside. There will be two or three places where you may possibly cut through the skin, where it is drawn very close over the bone, but cut as little as possible. When the meat is freshly killed before the skin is dried, you may not always cut through there, but where the skin is dried fast to the bone you will have to. This may seem a slight waste of time, but this dish is desirable for several reasons. In the first place, the bone being entirely taken out you can carve it without any waste whatever and with a great deal of ease. In the next place it gives you a very ornamental dish. In fact, I am going to show you how to make a duck out of it. And as I say, if you get the butcher to do it, it will not make any difference to you if it does take time.

Always in sewing meat or poultry, ladies, take very large stitches, not with fine thread. Use cord, so that you can see where the threads are when the meat is done. Any kind of a large needle will answer for sewing, large enough to carry your cord. Always leave long ends too.

To stuff the meat, season it nicely with pepper and salt and any herb that you are going to use in making stuffing. Sage, of course, would be very good with fat meat; put onion in the stuffing to make it imitate duck. For a force meat of bread, a teaspoonful of chopped onion; fry it in a tablespoonful of butter until it is light brown. While the onion is frying soak a cupful of stale bread in cold water until it is soft, then squeeze out the water. Put the soaked bread with the fried onion, add a teaspoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of any herb that you decide for seasoning, any dried sweet herb, half a saltspoonful of pepper, and stir all these ingredients over the fire until they are scalding hot. Use that force meat for stuffing any kind of meat or poultry. Of course there are a great many ways of making force meats; this is only one, and a very simple one. Another good stuffing for duck or for this dish, if you wish it more closely to imitate duck, would be to increase the quantity of onion--use much more onion, half a cupful of onion, or even more when you want to make onion stuffing. Another way is to use dry bread without cooking, a chopped onion, herbs, butter; some ladies like to put an egg in stuffing. There are a great many different methods of making it. Cold, chopped meat is very nice added to stuffing or dressing.

After the shoulder is stuffed thus, run a needle entirely round the edge in a large, over-hand stitch, so that you can draw it up like a purse; stitches at least an inch and a half long. That draws the edge up. Then take two or three stitches in such a way as to hold the stuffing in. Remember always to leave long ends in tying the cord used in sewing. Then curl the leg up like the neck of a duck and fasten with a cord. After it is prepared like that it is to be put into a pan in the oven, or before a hot fire, and browned quickly on the outside. It may be seasoned after it is browned. There will be a little drippings in the pan; baste it with the drippings; bake it or roast it, allowing, if you want it well done, about twenty minutes to the pound. A shoulder like that will weigh about two pounds and a half or three pounds. It will do in an hour's time in a pretty quick oven; in an hour and a half in a moderate one. Use no water in the baking pan, because water never can get as hot as the fat outside of the meat. The temperature of the hot fat is higher than the temperature of hot water, and the result of putting water around meat in a baking pan is to draw out the juice. The object is to keep all the juice in the meat. You will always find that there will be drippings enough from any ordinary cut of meat for the purpose of basting. If you have an absolutely lean piece of meat pour about a couple of tablespoonfuls of drippings, or butter, in the baking pan, but no water, and use the drippings for basting. A nice gravy is very easily made from the drippings in the pan. I will tell you about that later. If the meat appears to be baking too quickly, if there is any danger of its burning, put a sheet of buttered paper over it. Baste the meat every fifteen or twenty minutes. You can drench it with flour, just before basting, if you want to. That gives it a rough surface. The flour browns with the fat. If you are basting with water of course the flour would not brown so quickly. I think I have given you good reasons for not basting it with water.

CREAM OF SALMON.

A cupful of boiled salmon separated from the skin and bone and rubbed through a sieve with a potato masher, mixed with a quart of cream soup, gives you cream of salmon. Any of the ladies who have seen cream sauce made will understand the making of the cream soup. Put a slice of salmon that will make a cupful, over the fire in enough boiling water to cover it, with a heaping tablespoonful of salt, and boil it until the flakes separate. That will be perhaps ten minutes. Watch it a little. When the flakes separate drain it, take away the skin and bones and put it into a fine colander or stout wire sieve, and rub it through with a potato masher.

_Question._ Do you use canned salmon?

MISS CORSON. Yes, you can use canned salmon. That is already cooked, and you simply would rub it through the sieve. The fresh salmon is to be boiled in salted water. If you use canned salmon you do not need to boil it. After the salmon is rubbed through the sieve it is called _puree_ or pulp of salmon.

Now to make a quart of cream soup: For each quart of soup put in the sauce pan a heaping tablespoonful of butter, a heaping tablespoonful of flour; put them over the fire and stir them until they are quite smooth. Then begin to add hot milk, half a cupful at a time, stirring each half cupful smoothly with the butter and flour before you add any more, till you have added a quart, or if milk is scarce a pint of milk and a pint of water. If you haven't any milk at all, a quart of water. That gives you a white soup, if you add simply water; if you add milk it is called cream soup. If you are very fortunate and have lots of cream, in place of some of the milk, use cream, and then you will have genuine cream soup. After the milk or water is all added, then season the soup palatably with salt and pepper--white pepper. I have told you about white pepper. It is to be had at all the grocery stores; it costs no more than black pepper and is very much nicer for any white soup or white sauce. Salt and pepper to taste, and a very little grated nutmeg; a quarter of a saltspoonful, a little pinch of grated nutmeg. After the soup is seasoned stir in the salmon. I have told you already how to prepare the salmon. Stir the soup constantly until it boils for a couple of minutes. By that time you will find that the salmon is stirred smoothly all through it. Then it will be ready to serve, and it is very good. You can use any other kind of fish in the same way, and your soup will take its name from the fish that you use. Halibut or codfish, trout or any fish. Only remember if you want the soup to be white you must use the white part of the fish. For instance, if you had a large dark fish you would want to take off the brown parts and use only the white parts. Otherwise the brown parts of the fish will color the soup. You can use cream soup as the basis for vegetable soups that are very nice. Prepare the vegetables in the same way; boil them, and rub them through a sieve with a potato masher. Then stir them into the cream soup. Use asparagus, celery, cucumbers, green peas, string beans, Jerusalem artichokes,--those little root artichokes,--any vegetable, in fact, varying the quantity of vegetable in this way. You will find that some vegetables will give a much more decided flavor than others. For instance, celery has a very strong flavor, and cucumbers have rather a decided flavor. You want to use enough vegetables to flavor the soup, if it is a white vegetable. If it is a vegetable that has a decided color like carrots, for instance, or beets,--by the way, beets make a delicious soup, and a very pretty one is made with spinach,--you want to use enough to color the soup. The beets, boiled so that all the color is preserved, and then rubbed through a sieve, make a very pretty soup. One of our New York pupils calls it a "pink velvet soup." Spinach makes a very nice green soup if it is properly boiled. We shall try to get some spinach for one of the lessons. We have _puree_ of spinach on our list, and if we can get any spinach I will show you how to boil it so as to keep its color.

BOILED POTATOES.

The boiling of potatoes is a very simple operation, but there is a good deal of talking to be done in connection with it. It does not make any difference whether you use hot water or cold in boiling potatoes. What you want to watch is the stage at which you take the potatoes out of the water. That is what determines whether they are to be mealy or not. The cause of the potatoes being mealy is the rupture of the starch cells and the escape of the steam just at the right moment, just when the potatoes are tender; and if you leave them in the water after they are tender, then the membrane of the starch cells being broken permits the water to penetrate; even if the skins are not cut or broken, the moisture in the starch cells themselves will condense and make the potato heavy, so that you want to give the steam a chance to escape as soon as the potatoes are tender. If you will do that you are sure of mealy potatoes, provided the potatoes are ripe. Unripe potatoes, or new potatoes, or sprouted or frosted potatoes, you cannot well make mealy, because the starch cells in the new potatoes are not fully matured, in the old sprouted potatoes they are disorganized, especially as the little sprouts take up the nutritive properties which enable them to grow. But if you use ripe potatoes, before they are beginning to sprout, and pour the water off of them when they are tender and allow the steam to escape, you will be sure to have the potatoes mealy, unless they are watery potatoes; the ordinary market potatoes will be sure to be mealy. Now you can insure the escape of the steam by draining the potatoes and covering them with a towel folded several times; that is, draining off all the water as soon as the potatoes are tender enough to enable you to run a fork through them. Do not wait until they begin to break apart, because by that time the starch cells are being broken up, and the water will have begun to penetrate to the interior of the potato.

After boiling the potatoes, either in cold or hot water, until they are tender, drain them and put a folded towel over them in the sauce pan. Set the sauce pan on the back part of the stove where the potatoes can not burn, or put it up on a brick on the back part of the stove. The potatoes may be peeled or not, as you choose; if you peel the potatoes in the most careful way, that is, cutting the thinnest possible skin off, you will waste at least an ounce in every pound. A very good way to peel potatoes is to take off just a little rim of the skin all around them and boil them; then if you want to peel them before they go to the table, it will be easy to strip off the two pieces of skin remaining. In order to save time I shall put the potatoes into boiling water enough to cover them, with a tablespoonful of salt. Take about a quart of water and a tablespoonful of salt. I have already said that as soon as the potatoes are tender enough to pierce with a fork, not when they are beginning to break, and they are drained, cover them with a cloth and keep them hot as long as you like. In about three or four minutes after they have been covered with the cloth they will begin to grow mealy, as the steam escapes; and you can keep them hot and mealy for three or four hours. It makes very little difference with potatoes, although with some kinds of vegetables it makes a decided difference, whether you boil them in hard or soft water. But as a rule soft water is best for boiling vegetables. You can always soften the water by putting a very little carbonate of soda in it, to counteract the extreme hardness of the water, which is caused by lime or mineral elements. The hardness of water slightly hardens the surface of vegetables, but it has an entirely different action on meats. It slightly hardens the surface--not enough to make the vegetable tough, by any means, but enough to retain all the juices and all the flavors. Do not have the potatoes tightly covered after they are cooked, because the steam will condense on the inside of the cover and fall back on the potatoes, thus making them watery. In serving potatoes on the table after they are cooked, do not put a cover on the dish; put a folded napkin over the potatoes. Do not put the dish cover on--it will have the same effect that it would have if you put the cover on the pot. The steam arising would condense, and fall back on the potatoes in the form of moisture, and make the potatoes watery.

In baking potatoes, the same general principles apply. That is, at the moment when the potatoes are tender--and that of course depends upon the oven in which you bake them--the starch cells are ruptured and the moisture is at the point of escaping if you give it vent by slightly breaking the potato, then the potatoes will keep mealy for a little while. But baked potatoes deteriorate every moment they stand after they are tender. You should serve baked potatoes just the moment they are done, if you want them to be perfect. If you wrap them up in a napkin it keeps in the steam. The longer they stand, the more of the hard skin forms on them, and if you let them stand for half an hour or more you find the skin sometimes a sixteenth of an inch thick. You can take a little slice off the end without breaking them, to permit the escape of the steam. But serve them just as quick as you can. In sending them to the table do not put the dish cover on them. Throw a napkin over them to keep the heat in. I have found that in baking potatoes that the hotter the oven the better the potatoes would be; that is, the more quickly they would be baked. I have been able to bake them sometimes in twenty minutes.

To soak potatoes in cold water restores a little of their moisture that may have been lost by the natural evaporation. For instance, late in the winter you will find potatoes slightly shriveled. That is caused by the escape of the moisture. If you had weighed them in the fall, and weighed them again at that time you would find they weighed less. To soak them for an hour or more before you cook them is to restore that wasted water and to increase the substance of the potato. There is very little nutriment lost in the waste of the moisture; it is only the bulk of the potato. You do not need to salt the water in which the potatoes are soaked. The only effect of salting water would be to make it colder. In soaking green vegetables it is well to salt the water, because if there are any insects in the vegetables they are killed by the action of the salt. In lettuce, or cabbage, or cauliflower, there are insects that hide away among the leaves, and salt kills them. In regard to the soaking of the green vegetables, of course, directly the insects are dead they naturally fall of their own weight from among the leaves. But if the leaves are closely packed, as sometimes they are in cabbage or lettuce; you want to hold the vegetable by the root and turn it up and with your hands separate the leaves without tearing; if lettuce is used, take care not to tear them; if cauliflower is being washed, take hold of the root and shake it well through the water, so that the motion will dislodge the little creatures.

CHEESE CRUSTS.

For cheese crusts use bread that is a day or two old, baker's bread or home-made bread; baker's bread is the best for toast of all kinds, and this is a sort of toast. Cut the bread in even slices, rather small, cutting off the crusts. There is no waste in doing that, for I have already told you how to use up pieces of stale bread by making them into crumbs. Grate some cheese so that you have a tablespoonful of cheese for each little slice of bread. On each of the little pieces of bread put a tablespoonful of the grated cheese, a very little dust of pepper and salt and a small piece of butter not larger than a white dried bean. Put the pieces of bread in a pan, set the pan in a rather quick oven, and just brown the cheese crusts. If the oven is in a good condition it will toast the bread and brown the cheese in about ten minutes, or even less; they are very good, those little cheese crusts. You can use them either hot or cold. They are a very nice supper dish. They are very good with salad at dinner, with any green salad. Of course, if you serve them hot the cheese is a little more tender. Any kind of cheese will answer for making the crusts. I think that the ordinary American factory cheese is about as good as any other cheese. You do not want a rich expensive cheese for cheese crusts.

(At this point the stuffed shoulder of mutton was brought forth, done, the fan-shaped shoulder blade being stuck in to represent the tail of the duck, which the whole dish strongly resembled.)

GRAVY FOR MEAT.

There are about two tablespoonfuls of drippings in the pan. I am going to put a heaping tablespoonful of flour with it and stir until it is brown; then I am going to stir in gradually about a pint of boiling water, and season it with salt and pepper, and then I will send it down and show it to you. Make gravy in this way for any baked meat.

LECTURE SIXTH.

Our first dish this afternoon, ladies, will be roast chicken. The lesson will include fish and poultry. First, to choose a tender chicken, examine the tip end of the breastbone--the lower end of the breast bone, to see if it is soft; if it bends without breaking under pressure; in other words, if the cartilage has not hardened into bone, you may be sure that the chicken is young, and consequently probably tender. The market people have a favorite way of showing you that the chicken is tender by taking hold of the wing and giving the joint a twist. They say, "You see how tender it is!" But that is no test except of strength. But there is no ingenuity which can simulate that soft cartilage on the end of the breast bone. That is always a sure test. After choosing the chicken--of course now I am speaking of dressed chicken, or chickens that are killed--after choosing the chicken, have it carefully picked and singed; then, if it is undrawn, wipe it with a wet towel, and proceed to draw it carefully without breaking the intestines. If it is drawn already the chances are that it will be imperfectly drawn and you will have to wash it. There is the disadvantage of having poultry drawn before it goes to the market, because where people draw poultry in large quantities they are very apt to do it carelessly. In that case it is necessary to wash it, but if you draw it carefully yourself you will not have to do that. By washing, you of course take away the flavor, as I told you the other day, because you lose more or less of the blood.

Cut the skin of the back of the neck and take out the crop, then out off the neck close to the body, that leaves the skin so that you can draw it up and fasten it back. If this chicken was not already cut for drawing I should cut it at one side under one of the legs, so that when I came to sew it up and dress it I could hide the cut. This chicken has been drawn carefully and does not seem to need washing. The liver and gizzard have been laid back inside. The entrails are all taken away. You can always tell by looking at the chicken whether the entrails are broken and whether it needs washing. After you have drawn the chicken very carefully separate the gall from the liver. The gall is that little greenish bag that lies on one side of the liver; and you want to cut it off without breaking, because if you break it it will make bitter everything that it touches. Save whatever fat there is about the entrails, and put it in the baking pan with the chicken. The gizzard has been cut open from one side and the inside bag which contains gravel and straw taken out. But a very much easier way to dress the gizzard instead of opening it, is to cut away the bluish skin which lies on the outside, on both sides, without opening the gizzard at all, and cut out that piece of flesh. That is the only valuable portion of the gizzard; if you dress the gizzard in this way when it is not already opened you save yourself a great deal of trouble, for it is a very hard matter to open a gizzard like that and take away the bag which contains the gravel, especially if the poultry has been frozen, as the bag is apt to break and let out the gravel. Use the gizzard and liver for making gravy, and the neck also. Cut out the oil sac or bag which lies at the back of the tail. Then the chicken is ready for stuffing. In cutting off the feet cut them below the joint, not just at the joint. If you cut them just at the joint the skin and flesh will draw up in cooking. But if you cut them just below the joint you will find that they do not draw up. After cutting off the feet scrape the skin all round to make sure that there are no bits of feather or anything of that sort, and wipe it with a wet towel and you have the chicken in readiness to stuff.