Part 11

But since unlooked-for visitors will occasionally drop in upon the best regulated families, make it your study to receive them gracefully and cordially. If they care enough for you to turn aside from their regular route to tarry a day, or night, or week with you, it would be churlish not to show appreciation of the favor in which you are held. Make them welcome to the best you can offer at so short a notice, and let no preoccupied air or troubled smile bear token to your perturbation—if you are perturbed. If you respect yourself and your husband, the appointments of your table will never put you to the blush. John, who buys the silver, glass, china, and napery, is entitled to the every-day use of the best. You may have—I hope this is so—a holiday set of each, put away beyond the reach of hourly accidents; but if this is fit for the use of a lord, do not make John eat three hundred and sixty days in the year from such ware as would suit a ditcher’s cottage. If your children never see bright silver unless when “there is company,” you cannot wonder, although you will be mortified, at their making looking-glasses of the bowls of the spoons, and handling the forks awkwardly. Early impress upon them that what is nice enough for Papa, is nice enough for the President. I have noticed that where there is a wide difference between family and company table furniture, there usually exists a corresponding disparity between every-day and company manners.

Especially, let your welcome be ready and hearty when your husband brings home an unexpected guest. Take care he understands clearly that this is his prerogative: that the rules by which you would govern the visits of your own sex are not applicable to his. Men rarely set seasons for their visits. They snatch an hour or two with an old chum or new friend out of the hurry of business life, as one stoops to pluck a stray violet from a dusty roadside. John must take his chances when he can get them. If he can walk home, arm in arm, with the school-fellow he has not seen before in ten years, not only fearlessly, but gladly, anticipatory of your pleasure at the sight of his; if, when the stranger is presented to you, you receive him as your friend because he is your husband’s, and seat him to a family dinner, plain, but nicely served, and eaten in cheerfulness of heart; if the children are well-behaved, and your attire that of a lady who has not lost the desire to look her best in her husband’s eyes—you have added to the links of steel that knit your husband’s heart to you; increased his affectionate admiration for the best little woman in the world. Many a man has been driven to entertain his friends at hotels and club-rooms, because he dared not take them home without permission from the presiding officer of his household. The majority of healthy men have good appetites and are not disposed to be critical of an unpretending bill of fare. The chance guest of this sex is generally an agreeable addition to the family group, instead of _de trop_—always supposing him to be John’s friend.

As to party and dinner-giving, your safest rule is to obey the usage of the community in which you live in minor points, letting common sense and your means guide you in essentials. Be chary of undertaking what you cannot carry through successfully. Pretension is the ruin of more entertainments than ignorance or lack of money. If you know how to give a large evening party (and think it a pleasant and remunerative investment of time and several hundred dollars)—if you understand the machinery of a handsome dinner-party, and can afford these luxuries, go forward bravely to success. But creep before you walk. Study established customs in the best managed houses you visit; take counsel with experienced friends; now and then make modest essays on your own responsibility, and, insensibly, these crumbs of wisdom will form into a comely loaf. There is no surer de-appetizer—to coin a word—to guests than a heated, over-fatigued, anxious hostess, who betrays her inexperience by nervous glances, abstraction in conversation, and, worst of all, by apologies.

A few general observations are all I purpose to offer as hints of a foundation upon which to build your plans for “company-giving.” Have an abundance of clean plates, silver, knives, &c., laid in order in a convenient place,—such as an ante-room, or dining-room pantry,—those designed for each course, if your entertainment is a dinner, upon a shelf or stand by themselves, and make your waiters understand distinctly in advance in what order these are to be brought on.

Soup should be sent up accompanied only by bread, and such sauce as may be fashionable or suitable. Before dinner is served, however, snatch a moment, if possible, to inspect the table in person, or instruct a trustworthy factotum to see that everything is in place, the water in the goblets, a slice of bread laid upon a folded napkin at each plate, &c. Unless you have trained, professional waiters, this is a wise precaution. If it is a gentleman’s dinner, you can see to it for yourself, since you will not be obliged to appear in the parlor until a few minutes before they are summoned to the dining-room. If there are ladies in the company, you must not leave them.

To return, then, to our soup: It is not customary to offer a second plateful to a guest. When the table is cleared, the fish should come in, with potatoes—no other vegetable, unless it be stewed tomatoes. After a thorough change of plates, &c., come the substantials. If possible, the carving of game and other meats is done before they are brought in. One or more vegetables are passed with each meat course. Salad is a course of itself, unless when it accompanies chicken or pigeon. If wine be used, it is introduced after the fish. Pastry is the first relay of dessert, and puddings may be served from the other end of the table. Next appear creams, jellies, charlotte-russes, cakes, and the like; then fruit and nuts; lastly, coffee, often accompanied with crackers and cheese. Wine, of course, goes around during the dessert—if it flows at all.

Evening parties are less troublesome to a housekeeper, because less ceremonious than dinners. If you can afford it, the easiest way to give a large one is to put the whole business into the hands of the profession, by intrusting your order, not only for supper, but waiters and china, to a competent confectioner. But a social standing supper of oysters, chicken-salad, sandwiches, coffee, ice-cream, jellies, and cake, is not a formidable undertaking when you have had a little practice, especially if your own, or John’s mother, or the nice, neighborly matron over the way will assist you by her advice and presence. The “Ladies’ Lunch” and afternoon “Kettle-Drum” are social and graceful “modern improvements.”

We make this matter of company too hard a business in America; are too apt to treat our friends as the Strasburgers do their geese; shut them up in overheated quarters, and stuff them to repletion. Our rooms would be better for more air, our guests happier had they more liberty, and our hostess would be prettier and more sprightly were she not overworked before the arrivals begin, and full of trepidation after they come,—a woman cumbered with many thoughts of serving, while she is supposed to be enjoying the society of her chosen associates. It is so well understood that company is weariness, that inquiries as to how the principal agent in bringing about an assembly has “borne it,” have passed into a custom. The tender sympathies manifested in such queries, the martyr-like air with which they are answered, cannot fail to bring to the satirical mind the Chinaman’s comment upon the British officers’ dancing on shipboard in warm weather.

“Why you no make your servants do so hard work, and you look at dem?”

We pervert the very name and meaning of hospitality when we pinch our families, wear away our patience, and waste our nervous forces with our husbands’ money in getting up to order expensive entertainments for comparative strangers, whose utmost acknowledgment of our efforts in their behalf will consist in an invitation, a year hence it may be, to a party constructed on the same plan, managed a little better or a little worse than ours. This is not hospitality without grudging, but a vulgar system of barter and gluttony more worthy of Abyssinians than Christian gentlefolk.

GAME.

VENISON.

I ONCE received a letter from the wife of an Eastern man who had removed to the Great West, in which bitter complaints were made of the scarcity of certain comforts—ice-cream and candy among them—to which she had been accustomed in other days. “My husband shot a fine deer this morning,” she wrote, “but I could never endure _venzon_. Can you tell me of any way of cooking it so as to make it tolerably eatible?” I did not think it very singular that one whose chief craving in the goodly land in which she had found a home was for cocoanut cakes and chocolate caramels, should not like the viand the name of which she could not spell. Nor did I wonder that she failed to make it “eatible,” or doubt that her cooking matched her orthography. But I am amazed often at hearing really skilful housewives pronounce it an undesirable dish. In the hope of in some measure correcting this impression among Eastern cooks, who, it must be allowed, rarely taste really fresh venison, I have written out, with great care and particularity, the following receipts, most of which I have used in my own family with success and satisfaction.

The dark color of the meat,—I mean now not the black, but rich reddish-brown flesh,—so objectionable to the uninitiated, is to the gourmand one of its chief recommendations to his favor. It should also be fine of grain and well coated with fat.

Keep it hung up in a cool, dark cellar, covered with a cloth, and use as soon as you can conveniently.

HAUNCH OF VENISON. ✠

If the outside be hard, wash off with lukewarm water; then rub all over with fresh butter or lard. Cover it on the top and sides with a thick paste of flour and water, nearly half an inch thick. Lay upon this a large sheet of thin white wrapping-paper well buttered, and above this thick foolscap. Keep all in place by greased pack-thread, then put down to roast with a little water in the dripping-pan. Let the fire be steady and strong. Pour a few ladlefuls of butter and water over the meat now and then, to prevent the paper from scorching. If the haunch is large, it will take at least five hours to roast. About half an hour before you take it up, remove the papers and paste, and test with a skewer to see if it is done. If this passes easily to the bone through the thickest part, set it down to a more moderate fire and baste every few minutes with Claret and melted butter. At the last, baste with butter, dredge with flour to make a light froth, and dish. It should be a fine brown by this time. Twist a frill of fringed paper around the knuckle.

For gravy, put into a saucepan a pound or so of scraps of raw venison left from trimming the haunch, a quart of water, a pinch of cloves, a few blades of mace, half a nutmeg, cayenne and salt to taste. Stew slowly to one-half the original quantity. Skim, strain, and return to the saucepan when you have rinsed it with hot water. Add three tablespoonfuls of currant jelly, a glass of claret, two tablespoonfuls of butter, and thicken with browned flour. Send to table in a tureen.

Send around currant jelly with venison _always_.

NECK.

This is roasted precisely as is the haunch, allowing a quarter of an hour to a pound.

SHOULDER.

This is also a roasting-piece, but may be cooked without the paste and paper. Baste often with butter and water, and toward the last, with Claret and butter. Do not let it get dry for an instant.

TO STEW A SHOULDER,

Extract the bones through the under-side. Make a stuffing of several slices of fat mutton, minced fine and seasoned smartly with cayenne, salt, allspice, and wine, and fill the holes from which the bones were taken. Bind firmly in shape with broad tape. Put in a large saucepan with a pint of gravy made from the refuse bits of venison; add a glass of Madeira or Port wine, and a little black pepper. Cover tightly, and stew very slowly three or four hours, according to the size. It should be very tender. Remove the tapes with care; dish, and when you have strained the gravy, pour over the meat.

This is a most savory dish.

VENISON STEAKS. ✠

These are taken from the neck or haunch. Have your gridiron well buttered, and fire clear and hot. Lay the steaks on the bars and broil rapidly, turning often, not to lose a drop of juice. They will take three or four minutes longer to broil than beef-steaks. Have ready in a hot chafing-dish a piece of butter the size of an egg for each pound of venison, a pinch of salt, a little pepper, a tablespoonful currant-jelly for each pound, and a glass of wine for every four pounds. This should be liquid, and warmed by the boiling water under the dish by the time the steaks are done to a turn. If you have no chafing-dish, heat in a saucepan. Lay each steak in the mixture singly, and turn over twice. Cover closely and let all heat together, with fresh hot water beneath—unless your lamp is burning—for five minutes before serving. If you serve in an ordinary dish, cover and set in the oven for the same time.

_Or,_

If you wish a plainer dish, omit the wine and jelly; pepper and salt the steaks when broiled, and lay butter upon them in the proportion I have stated, letting them stand between hot dishes five minutes before they go to table, turning them three times in the gravy that runs from them to mingle with the melted butter. Delicious steaks corresponding to the shape of mutton chops are cut from the loin and rack.

VENISON CUTLETS. ✠

Trim the cutlets nicely, and make gravy of the refuse bits in the proportion of a cup of cold water to half a pound of venison. Put in bones, scraps of fat, etc., and set on in a saucepan to stew while you make ready the cutlets. Lard with slips of fat salt pork a quarter of an inch apart, and projecting slightly on either side. When the gravy has stewed an hour, strain and let it cool. Lay the cutlets in a saucepan, with a few pieces of young onion on each. Allow one onion to four or five pounds. It should not be flavored strongly with this. Scatter also a little minced parsley and thyme between the layers of meat, with pepper, and a very little nutmeg. The pork lardoons will salt sufficiently. When you have put in all your meat, pour in the gravy, which should be warm—not hot. Stew steadily twenty minutes, take up the cutlets and lay in a frying-pan in which you have heated just enough butter to prevent them from burning. Fry five minutes very quickly, turning the cutlets over and over to brown, without drying them. Lay in order in a chafing-dish, and have ready the gravy to pour over them without delay. This should be done by straining the liquor left in the saucepan and returning to the fire, with the addition of a tablespoonful of currant jelly, a teaspoonful Worcestershire or other piquant sauce, and half a glass of wine. Thicken with browned flour, boil up well and pour over the cutlets. Let all stand together in a hot dish five minutes before serving. Venison which is not fat or juicy enough for roasting makes a relishable dish cooked after this receipt.

HASHED VENISON. ✠

The remains of cold roast venison—especially a stuffed shoulder—may be used for this dish, and will give great satisfaction to cook and consumers. Slice the meat from the bones. Put these with the fat and other scraps in a saucepan, with a large teacupful of cold water, a small onion—one of the button kind, minced, parsley and thyme, pepper and salt, and three or four whole cloves. Stew for an hour. Strain and return to the saucepan, with whatever gravy was left from the roast, a tablespoonful currant jelly, one of tomato or mushroom catsup, a teaspoonful of anchovy sauce, and a little browned flour. Boil for three minutes; lay in the venison, cut into slices about an inch long, and let all heat over the fire for eight minutes, but do not allow the hash to boil. Stir frequently, and when it is smoking hot, turn into a deep-covered dish.

ROAST FAWN.

Clean, wash thoroughly; stuff with a good force-meat made of bread-crumbs, chopped pork, pepper and salt, a little grated nutmeg, the juice of a lemon. Moisten with water and cream, bind with beaten egg and melted butter. Sew up the fawn, turning the legs under, and binding close to the body. Cover with thin slices of fat pork, bound on with pack-thread, crossing in every direction, and roast at a quick fire. Allow twenty-two minutes to a pound. Twenty minutes before it is dished, remove the pork, and set down the fawn to brown, basting with melted butter. At the last, dredge with flour, let this brown, froth with butter, and serve.

Garnish with abundance of curled parsley, dotted with drops of red currant jelly. A kid can be roasted in the same way—also hares and rabbits.

VENISON PASTY. ✠

This is a name dear to the heart of the Englishman since the days when Friar Tuck feasted the disguised Cœur de Lion upon it in the depths of Sherwood Forest, until the present generation. In this country it is comparatively little known; but I recommend it to those who have never yet been able to make venison “tolerably eatable.”

Almost any part of the deer can be used for the purpose, but the neck and shoulders are generally preferred.

Cut the raw venison from the bones, and set aside these, with the skin, fat, and refuse bits, for gravy. Put them into a saucepan with a shallot, pepper, salt, nutmeg and sweet herbs, cover well with cold water, and set on to boil. Meanwhile, cut the better and fairer pieces of meat into squares an inch long, and cook in another saucepan until three-quarters done. Line a deep dish with good puff-paste. That for the lid should be made after the receipt appended to this. Put in the squares of venison, season with pepper, salt, and butter, and put in half a cupful of the liquor in which the meat was stewed, to keep it from burning at the bottom. Cover with a lid of the prepared pastry an inch thick. Cut a round hole in the middle, and if you have not a small tin cylinder that will fit this, make one of buttered paper; stiff writing-paper is best. The hole should be large enough to admit your thumb. Bake steadily, covering the top with a sheet of clean paper so soon as it is firm, to prevent it from browning too fast. While it is cooking prepare the gravy. When all the substance has been extracted from the bones, etc., strain the liquor back into the saucepan; let it come to a boil, and when you have skimmed carefully, add a glass of Port wine, a tablespoonful of butter, the juice of a lemon, and some browned flour to thicken. Boil up once, remove the plug from the hole in the pastry, and pour in through a small funnel, or a paper horn, as much gravy as the pie will hold. Do this very quickly; brush the crust over with beaten egg and put back in the oven until it is a delicate brown, or rather, a golden russet. The pie should only be drawn to the door of the oven for these operations, and everything should be in readiness before it is taken out, that the crust may be light and flaky. If you have more gravy than you need for the dish, serve in a tureen.

CRUST OF PASTY.

1½ lb. of flour. 12 oz. butter. Yolks of 3 eggs. Salt. Ice-water.

Dry and sift the flour and cut up half the butter in it with a knife or chopper until the whole is fine and yellow; salt, and work up with ice-water, lastly adding the yolks beaten very light. Work out rapidly, handling as little as possible, roll out three times _very_ thin, basting with butter, then into a lid nearly an inch thick, reserving a thinner one for ornaments. Having covered in your pie, cut from the second sheet with a cake-cutter, leaves, flowers, stars, or any figures you like to adorn the top of your crust. Bake the handsomest one upon a tin plate by itself, and brush it over with egg when you glaze the pie. After the pasty is baked, cover the hole in the centre with this.

If these directions be closely followed the pasty will be delicious. Bake two or three hours, guiding yourself by the size of the pie. It is good hot or cold.

VENISON HAMS.

These are eaten raw, and will not keep so long as other smoked meats.

Mix together in equal proportions, salt and brown sugar, and rub them hard into the hams with your hand. Pack them in a cask, sprinkling dry salt between them, and let them lie eight days, rubbing them over every day with dry salt and sugar. Next mix equal parts of fine salt, molasses, and a teaspoonful of saltpetre to every two hams. Take the hams out of the pickle, go over them with a brush dipped in cider vinegar, then in the new mixture. Empty the cask, wash it out with cold water, and repack the hams, dripping from the sticky bath, scattering fine salt over each. Let them lie eight days longer in this. Wash off the pickle first with tepid water, until the salt crystals are removed; then sponge with vinegar, powder them with bran while wet, and smoke a fortnight, or, if large, three weeks. Wrap in brown paper that has no unpleasant odor, stitch a muslin cover over this, and whitewash, unless you mean to use at once. Chip or shave for the table.

VENISON SAUSAGES.

5 lbs. lean venison. 2 lbs. fat salt pork. 5 teaspoonfuls powdered sage. 4 teaspoonfuls salt. 4 teaspoonfuls black pepper. 2 teaspoonfuls cayenne. 1 small onion. Juice of one lemon.

Chop the meat very small, season, and pack in skins or small stone jars. Hang the skins, and set the jars, tied down with bladders, in a cool, dry place.

Fry as you do other sausages.

RABBITS OR HARES.

The tame rabbit is rarely if ever eaten. The wild hare of the South—in vulgar parlance, “old hare,” although the creature may be but a day old—exactly corresponds with the rabbit of the Northern fields, and when fat and tender may be made into a variety of excellent dishes.

Hares are unfit for eating in the early spring. There is thus much significance in “Mad as a March hare.” The real English hare is a much larger animal than that which is known in this country by this name. To speak correctly, all our “old field hares” are wild rabbits.

ROAST RABBIT.

Clean, wash, and soak in water slightly salted for an hour and a half, changing it once during this time. It is best to make your butcher or hired man skin it before you undertake to handle it. Afterward, the task is easy enough. Parboil the heart and liver, chop fine, and mix with a slice of fat pork, also minced. Make a force-meat of bread-crumbs, well seasoned, and working in the minced meat. Stuff the body with this, and sew it up. Rub with butter and roast, basting with butter and water until the gravy flows freely, then with the dripping. It should be done in an hour. Dredge with flour a few minutes before taking it up, then froth with butter. Lay in a hot dish, add to the gravy a little lemon-juice, a young onion minced, a tablespoonful of butter, and thicken with browned flour. Give it a boil up, and serve in a tureen or boat.

Garnish the rabbit with sliced lemon, and put a dot of currant jelly in the centre of each slice. Cut off the head before sending to table.

RABBITS STEWED WITH ONIONS.