Part 5

Take a pound of salt pork, cut into strips, and soak in hot water five minutes. Cover the bottom of a pot with a layer of this. Cut four pounds of cod or sea-bass into pieces two inches square, and lay enough of these on the pork to cover it. Follow with a layer of chopped onions, a little parsley, summer savory, and pepper, either black or cayenne. Then a layer of split Boston, or butter, or whole cream crackers, which have been soaked in warm water until moist through, but not ready to break. Above this lay a stratum of pork, and repeat the order given above—onions, seasoning, (not too much,) crackers, and pork, until your materials are exhausted. Let the topmost layer be buttered crackers, well soaked. Put in enough cold water to cover all barely. Cover the pot, stew gently for an hour, watching that the water does not sink too low. Should it leave the upper layer exposed, replenish constantly from the tea-kettle. When the chowder is thoroughly done, take out with a perforated skimmer and put into a tureen. Thicken the gravy with a tablespoonful of flour and about the same quantity of butter. Boil up and pour over the chowder. Send sliced lemon, pickles, and stewed tomatoes to the table with it, that the guests may add, if they like.

CHOWDER (_No. 2._)

Slice six large onions, and fry them in the gravy of fried salt pork. Cut five pounds of bass or cod into strips three inches long and one thick, and line the bottom of a pot with them. Scatter a few slices of onion upon them, a little salt, half a dozen whole black peppers, a clove or two, a pinch of thyme and one of parsley, a tablespoonful tomato or mushroom catsup, and six oysters; then comes a layer of oyster crackers, well-soaked in milk and buttered thickly. Another layer of fish, onions, seasoning, and crackers, and so on until all are used up. Cover with water, boil slowly for an hour and pour out. Serve with capers and sliced lemon. A cup of oyster liquor added to the chowder while boiling improves it.

SHELL-FISH.

TO BOIL A LOBSTER.

Choose a lively one—not too large, lest he should be tough. Put a handful of salt into a pot of boiling water, and having tied the claws together, if your fish merchant has not already skewered them, plunge him into the prepared bath. He will be restive under this vigorous hydropathic treatment; but allay your tortured sympathies by the reflection that he is a cold-blooded animal, destitute of imagination, and that pain, according to some philosophers, exists only in the imagination. However this may be, his suffering will be short-lived. Boil from half an hour to an hour, as his size demands. When done, draw out the scarlet innocent, and lay him, face downward, in a sieve to dry. When cold, split open the body and tail, and crack the claws to extract the meat, throwing away the “lady fingers” and the head. Lobsters are seldom served without dressing, upon private tables, as few persons care to take the trouble of preparing their own salad after taking their seats at the board.

DEVILLED LOBSTER.

Extract the meat from a boiled lobster, as for salad, and mince it finely; reserve the coral. Season highly with mustard, cayenne, salt, and some pungent sauce. Toss and stir until it is well mixed, and put into a porcelain saucepan (covered), with just enough hot water to keep it from burning. Rub the coral smooth, moistening with vinegar until it is thin enough to pour easily, then stir into the contents of the saucepan. It is necessary to prepare the dressing, let me say, before the lobster-meat is set on the fire. It ought to boil up but once before the coral and vinegar are put in. Next stir in a heaping tablespoonful of butter, and when it boils again, take the pan from the fire. Too much cooking toughens the meat. This is a famous supper dish for sleighing parties.

LOBSTER CROQUETTES. ✠

To the meat of a well-boiled lobster, chopped fine, add pepper, salt, and powdered mace. Mix with this one-quarter as much bread-crumbs, well rubbed, as you have meat; make into ovates, or pointed balls, with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Roll these in beaten egg, then in pulverized cracker, and fry in butter or very nice sweet lard. Serve dry and hot, and garnish with crisped parsley. This is a delicious supper dish or _entrée_ at dinner.

DEVILLED CRAB. ✠

This is prepared according to the receipt for devilled lobster—substituting for the coral in the vinegar some pulverized cracker, moistened first with a tablespoonful of rich cream. You can serve up in the back-shell of the crab if you like. Send in with cream crackers, and stick a sprig of parsley in the top of each heap, ranging the shells upon a large flat dish.

CRAB SALAD.

Mince the meat and dress as in lobster salad. Send in the back-shell of the crab.

SOFT CRABS. ✠

Many will not eat hard-shell crabs, considering them indigestible, and not sufficiently palatable to compensate for the risk they run in eating them. And it must be owned that they are, at their best, but an indifferent substitute for the more aristocratic lobster. But in the morning of life, for him so often renewed, his crabship is a different creature, and greatly affected by epicures.

Do not keep the crabs over night, as the shells harden in twenty-four hours. Pull off the spongy substance from the sides and the sand bags. These are the only portions that are uneatable. Wash well, and wipe dry. Have ready a pan of seething hot lard or butter, and fry them to a fine brown. Put a little salt into the lard. The butter will need none. Send up hot, garnished with parsley.

WATER-TURTLES, OR TERRAPINS.

Land-terrapins, it is hardly necessary to say, are uneatable, but the large turtle that frequents our mill-ponds and rivers can be converted into a relishable article of food.

Plunge the turtle into a pot of boiling water, and let him lie there five minutes. You can then skin the underpart easily, and pull off the horny parts of the feet. Lay him for ten minutes in _cold_ salt and water; then put into more hot water—salted, but not too much. Boil until tender. The time will depend upon the size and age. Take him out, drain, and wipe dry; loosen the shell carefully, not to break the flesh; cut open also with care, lest you touch the gall-bag with the knife. Remove this with the entrails and sand-bag. Cut up all the rest of the animal into small bits, season with pepper, salt, a chopped onion, sweet herbs, and a teaspoonful of some spiced sauce, or a tablespoonful of catsup—walnut or mushroom. Save the juice that runs from the meat, and put all together into a saucepan with a closely fitting top. Stew gently fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally, and add a great spoonful of butter, a tablespoonful of browned flour wet in cold water, a glass of brown Sherry, and lastly, the beaten yolk of an egg, mixed with a little of the hot liquor, that it may not curdle. Boil up once, and turn into a covered dish. Send around green pickles and delicate slices of dry toast with it.

STEWED OYSTERS.

Drain the liquor from two quarts of firm, plump oysters; mix with it a small teacupful of hot water, add a little salt and pepper, and set over the fire in a saucepan. Let it boil up once, put in the oysters, let them boil for five minutes or less—not more. When they “ruffle,” add two tablespoonfuls of butter. The instant it is melted and well stirred in, put in a large cupful of boiling milk and take the saucepan from the fire. Serve with oyster or cream crackers, as soon as possible. Oysters become tough and tasteless when cooked too much, or left to stand too long after they are withdrawn from the fire.

FRIED OYSTERS. ✠

Use for frying the largest and best oysters you can find. Take them carefully from the liquor; lay them in rows upon a clean cloth, and press another lightly upon them to absorb the moisture. Have ready some crackers crushed fine. In the frying-pan heat enough nice butter to cover the oysters entirely. Dip each oyster into the cracker, rolling it over that it may become completely incrusted. Drop them carefully into the frying-pan, and fry quickly to a light brown. If the butter is hot enough they will soon be ready to take out. Test it by putting in one oyster before you risk the rest. Do not let them lie in the pan an instant after they are done. Serve dry, and let the dish be warm. A chafing-dish is best.

OYSTER FRITTERS. ✠

Drain the liquor from the oysters, and to a cupful of this add the same quantity of milk, three eggs, a little salt, and flour enough for a thin batter. Chop the oysters and stir into the batter. Have ready in the frying-pan a few spoonfuls of lard, or half lard, half butter; heat very hot, and drop the oyster-batter in by the tablespoonful. Try a spoonful first, to satisfy yourself that the lard is hot enough, and that the fritter is of the right size and consistency. Take rapidly from the pan as soon as they are done to a pleasing yellow brown, and send to table very hot.

Some fry the oyster whole, enveloped in batter, one in each fritter. In this case, the batter should be thicker than if the chopped oysters were to be added.

SCALLOPED OYSTERS. ✠

Crush and roll several handfuls of Boston or other friable crackers. Put a layer in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Wet this with a mixture of the oyster liquor and milk, slightly warmed. Next, have a layer of oysters. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and lay small bits of butter upon them. Then another layer of moistened crumbs, and so on until the dish is full. Let the top layer be of crumbs, thicker than the rest, and beat an egg into the milk you pour over them. Stick bits of butter thickly over it, cover the dish, set it in the oven, bake half an hour; if the dish be large, remove the cover, and brown by setting it upon the upper grating of oven, or by holding a hot shovel over it.

BROILED OYSTERS. ✠

Choose large, fat oysters; wipe them very dry; sprinkle salt and cayenne pepper upon them, and broil upon one of the small gridirons sold for that purpose. You can dredge the oyster with cracker-dust or flour if you wish to have it brown, and some fancy the juices are better kept in in this way. Others dislike the crust thus formed. Butter the gridiron well, and let your fire be hot and clear. If the oyster drip, withdraw the gridiron for an instant until the smoke clears away. Broil quickly and dish hot, putting a tiny piece of butter, not larger than a pea, upon each oyster.

CREAM OYSTERS ON THE HALF-SHELL.

Pour into your inner saucepan a cup of hot water, another of milk, and one of cream, with a little salt. Set into a kettle of hot water until it boils, when stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter and a little salt, with white pepper. Take from the fire and add two heaping tablespoonfuls of arrow-root, rice-flour, or corn-starch, wet with cold milk. By this time your shells should be washed and buttered, and a fine oyster laid within each. Of course, it is _selon les régles_ to use oyster-shells for this purpose; but you will find clam-shells more roomy and manageable, because more regular in shape. Range these closely in a large baking-pan, propping them with clean pebbles or fragments of shell, if they do not seem inclined to retain their contents. Stir the cream _very_ hard and fill up each shell with a spoon, taking care not to spill any in the pan. Bake five or six minutes in a hot oven after the shells become warm. Serve on the shell. Some substitute oyster-liquor for the water in the mixture, and use all milk instead of cream.

OYSTER OMELET. ✠

12 oysters, if large; double the number of small ones. 6 eggs. 1 cup milk. 1 tablespoonful butter. Chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.

Chop the oysters very fine. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately as for nice cake—the white until it stands in a heap. Put three tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan, and heat while you are mixing the omelet. Stir the milk into a deep dish with the yolk, and season. Next put in the chopped oysters, beating vigorously as you add them gradually. When they are thoroughly incorporated, pour in the spoonful of melted butter; finally, whip in the whites lightly and with as few strokes as possible. If the butter is hot, and it ought to be, that the omelet may not stand uncooked, put the mixture into the pan. _Do not stir it_, but when it begins to stiffen—“to set,” in culinary phrase, slip a broad-bladed, round-pointed dinner-knife around the sides, and cautiously under the omelet, that the butter may reach every part. As soon as the centre is fairly “set,” turn out into a hot dish. Lay the latter bottom upward over the frying-pan, which must be turned upside-down dexterously. This brings the browned side of the omelet uppermost. This omelet is delicious and easily made.

OYSTER PIE. ✠

Make a rich puff-paste; roll out twice as thick as for a fruit-pie for the top crust—about the ordinary thickness for the lower. Line a pudding-dish with the thinner, and fill with crusts of dry bread or light crackers. Some use a folded towel to fill the interior of the pie, but the above expedient is preferable. Butter the edges of the dish, that you may be able to lift the upper crust without breaking. Cover the mock-pie with the thick crust, ornamented heavily at the edge, that it may lie the more quietly, and bake. Cook the oysters as for a stew, only beating into them at the last two eggs, and thickening with a spoonful of fine cracker-crumbs or rice-flour. They should stew but five minutes, and time them so that the paste will be baked just in season to receive them. Lift the top crust, pour in the smoking hot oysters, and send up hot.

I know that many consider it unnecessary to prepare the oysters and crust separately; but my experience and observation go to prove that, if this precaution be omitted, the oysters are apt to be wofully overdone. The reader can try both methods and take her choice.

PICKLED OYSTERS. ✠

100 large oysters. 1 pt. white wine vinegar. 1 doz. blades of mace. 2 doz. whole cloves. 2 doz. whole black peppers. 1 large red pepper broken into bits.

Put oysters, liquor and all, into a porcelain or bell-metal kettle. Salt to taste. Heat slowly until the oysters are very hot, but not to boiling. Take them out with a perforated skimmer, and set aside to cool. To the liquor which remains in the kettle add the vinegar and spices. Boil up fairly, and when the oysters are almost cold, pour over them scalding hot. Cover the jar in which they are, and put away in a cool place. Next day put the pickled oysters into glass cans with tight tops. Keep in the dark, and where they are not liable to become heated.

I have kept oysters thus prepared for three weeks in the winter. If you open a can, use the contents up as soon as practicable. The air, like the light, will turn them dark.

It is little trouble for every housekeeper to put up the pickled oysters needed in her family; and besides the satisfaction she will feel in the consciousness that the materials used are harmless, and the oysters sound, she will save at least one-third of the price of those she would buy ready pickled. The colorless vinegar used by “professionals” for such purposes is usually sulphuric or pyroligneous acid. If you doubt this, pour a little of the liquor from the pickled oysters put up by your obliging oyster-dealer into a bell-metal kettle. I tried it once, and the result was a liquid that matched the clear green of Niagara in hue.

ROAST OYSTERS.

There is no pleasanter frolic for an Autumn evening, in the regions where oysters are plentiful, than an impromptu “roast” in the kitchen. There the oysters are hastily thrown into the fire by the peck. You may consider that your fastidious taste is marvellously respected if they are washed first. A bushel basket is set to receive the empty shells, and the click of the oyster-knives forms a constant accompaniment to the music of laughing voices. Nor are roast oysters amiss upon your own quiet supper-table, when the “good man” comes in on a wet night, tired and hungry, and wants “something heartening.” Wash and wipe the shell-oysters, and lay them in the oven, if it is quick; upon the top of the stove, if it is not. When they open, they are done. Pile in a large dish and send to table. Remove the upper shell by a dexterous wrench of the knife, season the oyster on the lower, with pepper-sauce and butter, or pepper, salt, and vinegar in lieu of the sauce, and you have the very aroma of this pearl of bivalves, pure and undefiled.

Or, you may open while raw, leaving the oysters upon the lower shells; lay in a large baking-pan, and roast in their own liquor, adding pepper, salt, and butter before serving.

RAW OYSTERS.

It is fashionable to serve these as one of the preliminaries to a dinner-party; sometimes in small plates, sometimes on the half-shell. They are seasoned by each guest according to his own taste.

STEAMED OYSTERS.

If you have no steamer, improvise one by the help of a cullender and a pot-lid fitting closely into it, at a little distance from the top. Wash some shell oysters and lay them in such a position in the bottom of the cullender that the liquor will not escape from them when the shell opens, that is, with the upper shell down. Cover with a cloth thrown over the top of the cullender, and press the lid hard down upon this to exclude the air. Set over a pot of boiling water so deep that the cullender, which should fit into the mouth, does not touch the water. Boil hard for twenty minutes, then make a hasty examination of the oysters. If they are open, you are safe in removing the cover. Serve on the half-shell, or upon a hot chafing dish. Sprinkle a little salt over them and a few bits of butter; but be quick in whatever you do, for the glory of the steamed oyster is to be eaten hot.

OYSTER PÂTÉS. ✠

1 qt. oysters. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. Pepper, and a pinch of salt.

Set the oysters, with enough liquor to cover them, in a saucepan upon the range or stove; let them come to a boil; skim well, and stir in the butter and seasoning. Two or three spoonsful of cream will improve them. Have ready small tins lined with puff paste. Put three or four oysters in each, according to the size of the _pâté_; cover with paste and bake in a quick oven twenty minutes. For open _pâtés_, cut the paste into round cakes: those intended for the bottom crust less than an eighth of an inch thick; for the upper, a little thicker. With a smaller cutter, remove a round of paste from the middle of the latter, leaving a neat ring. Lay this carefully upon the bottom crust; place a second ring upon this, that the cavity may be deep enough to hold the oysters; lay the pieces you have extracted also in the pan with the rest, and bake to a fine brown in a _quick_ oven. When done, wash over with beaten egg, around top and all, and set in the oven three minutes to glaze. Fill the cavity with a mixture prepared as below, fit on the top lightly, and serve.

_Mixture._

Boil half the liquor from a quart of oysters. Put in all the oysters, leaving out the uncooked liquor; heat to boiling, and stir in—

½ cup of hot milk. 1 tablespoonful butter. 2 tablespoonfuls corn starch, wet with a little milk. A little salt.

Boil four minutes, stirring all the time until it thickens, and fill the cavity in the paste shells. These _pâtés_ are very nice.

SCALLOPS.

The heart is the only part used. If you buy them in the shell, boil and take out the hearts. Those sold in our markets are generally ready for frying or stewing.

Dip them in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs and fry in hot lard.

_Or,_

You may stew like oysters. The fried scallops are generally preferred.

SCALLOPED CLAMS.

Chop the clams fine, and season with pepper and salt. Cayenne pepper is thought to give a finer flavor than black or white; but to some palates it is insufferable. Mix in another dish some powdered cracker, moistened first with warm milk, then with the clam liquor, a beaten egg or two, and some melted butter. Stir in with this the chopped clams. Wash as many clam-shells as the mixture will fill; wipe and butter them; fill, heaping up and smoothing over with a silver knife or teaspoon. Range in rows in your baking-pan, and cook until nicely browned. Or, if you do not care to be troubled with the shells, bake in patty-pans, sending to table hot in the tins, as you would in the scallop-shells.

CLAM FRITTERS. ✠

12 clams, minced fine. 1 pint of milk. 3 eggs.

Add the liquor from the clams to the milk; beat up the eggs and put to this, with salt and pepper, and flour enough for thin batter; lastly, the chopped clams. Fry in hot lard, trying a little first to see that fat and batter are right. A tablespoonful will make a fritter of moderate size. Or, you can dip the whole clams in batter and cook in like manner. Fry quickly, or they are apt to be too greasy.

CLAM CHOWDER. ✠

Fry five or six slices of fat pork crisp, and chop to pieces. Sprinkle some of these in the bottom of a pot; lay upon them a stratum of clams; sprinkle with cayenne or black pepper and salt, and scatter bits of butter profusely over all; next, have a layer of chopped onions, then one of small crackers, split and moistened with warm milk. On these pour a little of the fat left in the pan after the pork is fried, and then comes a new round of pork, clams, onion, etc. Proceed in this order until the pot is nearly full, when cover with water, and stew slowly—the pot closely covered—for three-quarters of an hour. Drain off all the liquor that will flow freely, and, when you have turned the chowder into the tureen, return the gravy to the pot. Thicken with flour, or, better still, pounded crackers; add a glass of wine, some catsup, and spiced sauce; boil up, and pour over the contents of the tureen. Send around walnut or butternut pickles with it.

POULTRY.

Poultry should never be eaten in less than six or eight hours after it is killed; but it should be picked and drawn as soon as possible. There is no direr disgrace to our Northern markets than the practice of sending whole dead fowls to market. I have bought such from responsible poultry dealers, and found them uneatable, from having remained undrawn until the flavor of the craw and intestines had impregnated the whole body. Those who are conversant with the habit of careful country housewives, of keeping up a fowl without food for a day and night before killing and dressing for their own eating, cannot but regard with disgust the surcharged crops and puffy sides of those sold _by weight_ in the shambles. If you want to know what you really pay for poultry bought in these circumstances, weigh the offal extracted from the fowl by your cook, and deduct from the market weight. “But don’t you know it actually poisons a fowl to lie so long undressed?” once exclaimed a Southern lady to me. “In _our_ markets they are offered for sale ready picked and drawn, with the giblets—also cleaned—tucked under their wings.”

I know nothing about the poisonous nature of the entrails and crops. I do assert that the custom is unclean and unjust. And this I do without the remotest hope of arousing my fellow-housekeepers to remonstrance against established usage. Only it relieves my mind somewhat to grumble at what I cannot help. The best remedy I can propose for the grievance is to buy live fowls, and, before sending them home, ask your butcher to decapitate them; the probabilities being greatly in favor of the supposition that your cook is too “tinder-hearted” to attempt the job.