Part 14

Cut three pounds of lean veal into dice an inch square. Fry a sliced onion in two tablespoonfuls of butter until it begins to color. Strain out the onion; heat the butter to hissing, put in the meat cubes and shake over the coals until heated through and slightly browned. Turn the contents of the frying-pan into a pot, rinsing out the pan with a cupful of boiling water, just enough to cover the meat. Sprinkle over all three tablespoonfuls of finely-minced salt pork and some chopped parsley, cover closely and stew gently for two hours, or until the veal is tender. Drain the meat free from gravy in a colander and keep hot over boiling water. Return the gravy to the fire; add salt if necessary. Have ready in a cup a great spoonful of browned flour, wet to a paste with cold water. When smooth, add a teaspoonful of curry, and stir in well before adding both to the hot gravy. As it begins to boil put in the meat; cook gently (covered) ten minutes, and serve.

Always serve boiled rice with curry, the same person helping both. A large spoonful of the rice is put upon the heated plate, and the curry poured over it. Bananas that have been chilled upon the ice are a most grateful accompaniment to curry of any kind. One is given to each person, who peels and slices it with a silver knife.

Curried lamb or mutton

Make in the same way, substituting either of these meats for veal. If you like, stir a little currant jelly into the gravy.

Curried chicken

Joint the chicken as for frying, divide the breast and the back into two pieces, and proceed as with a curry of veal. It is particularly nice and popular with all who have been gently led on to appreciate a savory curry.

A “toss-up” of veal

Make a roux of one tablespoonful of butter and the same of flour; when very hot and bubbling, add a little onion juice, pepper and salt, four tablespoonfuls of hot milk (cream if you have it), with a pinch of soda heated in it; lastly, six tablespoonfuls of rich, strained tomato sauce. Stir in two cupfuls of cold veal, cut into dice, and the moment it begins to boil remove from the fire to a hot dish.

Mince of veal garnished with eggs

Make the mince as directed in foregoing recipe, but somewhat stiffer; season highly, bring to a boil and mold in the middle of a hot platter. Against this hillock of mince lay fried eggs, neatly trimmed, and outside of these curled strips of fried breakfast bacon. This dish will be much improved by the addition of half a can of mushrooms, minced fine.

Mince of lamb and rice

This is very much like the mince just described, the main difference being that a cupful of cold boiled rice and a green sweet pepper minced fine are added to the meat and tomato sauce. You may also substitute poached eggs for fried, and ham for bacon.

Any of the dishes just mentioned make savory a plain family luncheon, and may be easily prepared at little expense by the housewife who keeps a bright lookout for available “left-overs.”

An Italian hotch-potch

which became a favorite with us under the general name of “Frittura” during the winters we spent in Florence.

I suppose that it was a weekly clearing-house for all manner of leavings from roast and boiled meats, but it was _good_! Calf’s and poultry livers; cold mutton, lamb and veal; calf’s brains; now and then oysters; small artichokes; sprigs of cauliflower; potatoes; celery—all cooked, cut into small pieces, seasoned, rolled in flour, next in egg, again in flour, and fried; first the meat, then the vegetables, in boiling oil, and drained,—were duly sorted, but served upon one and the same dish—very hot.

Stew of mutton and peas

Cut three pounds of lean mutton into dice. In a pot fry six slices of fat salt pork; when crisp, remove them with a skimmer and lay in the grease the mutton, dredged with flour and half an onion sliced. Cook for five minutes, then cover with cold water and simmer until the meat is very tender. Remove the meat, lay it on a platter, sprinkle with salt and pepper and keep it hot while you thicken the gravy in the pot with a brown roux, and season it to taste with a tablespoonful of tomato catsup, a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet and salt and pepper to taste. Now add the contents of a can of peas. These peas should have been drained and exposed to the air for an hour. Bring the stew to a boil, cook for five minutes, return the meat to the pot for a minute, then pour all into the hot platter.

Mince turnovers

Two cupfuls of flour, sifted twice with one rounded teaspoonful of baking-powder and half as much salt. Chop into it two tablespoonfuls of butter, and wet up with a cupful of milk, quickly and lightly. Roll into a sheet less than a quarter-inch thick, and this into squares about six inches across. Put into the middle of each square a large tablespoonful of minced poultry, veal, ham or lamb—or a mixture of these well-seasoned and wet with gravy. Double the paste into a triangle, enfolding the meat; pinch or print the edges to hold them together, and bake.

They are good hot or cold.

Beef with sauce piquante

Cut slices from yesterday’s roast of beef, mutton or veal. Put into a saucepan three tablespoonfuls of butter, a teaspoonful of vinegar, a half-teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, a tablespoonful of tomato catsup, a teaspoonful of made mustard, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir these ingredients well together and lay the sliced meat into the sauce thus prepared. Turn the meat over and over until heated through, and serve with the sauce poured over it.

Larded beef

With a sharp knife make through a round of beef incisions an inch apart. Into the holes thus made stick long strips of fat salt pork. Rub the meat with a dressing made of equal parts of oil and vinegar, seasoned with salt and pepper. Let the meat lie in this for eight hours. Put the meat into a covered roaster, pour a pint of beef stock around it and roast for four hours. Set away in the gravy with a weight on the top. When cold, slice very thin and serve.

Beef loaf

Mix together three pounds of chopped raw beef, one-quarter of a pound of minced salt pork, one cup of cracker dust, two teaspoonfuls, each, of salt and pepper, and moisten all with two beaten eggs and a teaspoonful of onion juice. Work in two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, and pack in a greased mold. Cover; set in a roasting-pan of boiling water, and cook in a steady oven for two hours. Let the loaf get cold in the mold before turning out.

Veal loaf

Chop two pounds of cold cooked veal very fine, and work into it a teaspoonful, each, of salt, pepper and onion juice, a dozen chopped olives and as many minced mushrooms. Wet with a half-pint of veal or chicken stock. Pack in a greased mold and cook as in the preceding recipe. Have the loaf very cold before turning it out.

Pressed veal

Boil two pounds of lean veal in enough water to cover it. When cold, remove the meat from the liquor, skim the grease from the latter and chop the meat fine. To the chopped veal add a cupful of minced boiled ham and two hard-boiled eggs, chopped. Season the veal liquor with celery salt, pepper, a little tomato catsup and a dash of nutmeg. Make the chopped meat very moist with this liquor and press the mass hard into a buttered mold. Cover and set in the oven for half an hour. Remove from the oven; keep in a cool place for twenty-four hours, and turn from the mold upon a chilled platter.

Jellied tongue

Boil a tongue, and when cold place it in a brick-shaped mold. Into a pint of seasoned and heated beef stock stir a half-box of soaked gelatine, and when this is dissolved pour the stock around the tongue in the mold. When cool, set on the ice until the jelly is very firm. Turn out on a cold platter.

Jellied chicken

Boil a chicken the day before it is to be used. When the liquor is cold skim from it every bit of fat.

Soak a half-cup of gelatine in a cup of cold water for two hours. Remove all skin from the chicken and cut the meat into neat dice. Cut two dozen canned French mushrooms into halves. Stone and halve one dozen large olives.

Bring to a boil and strain a pint of the chicken liquor; stir into it the soaked gelatine, and set aside to cool. As it begins to thicken prepare your chicken loaf in the following manner: In a buttered mold lay a stratum of the chicken, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and a few halved olives and mushrooms, pour upon this the thickening, but still liquid, jelly. Then add more chicken, mushrooms and olives; pour upon them more jelly, and proceed in this manner until the mold is full. Set in a cool place for twenty-four hours before using. Lay a warm cloth for a moment about the mold, then invert it upon a chilled platter. This loaf is delicious served with lettuce and mayonnaise.

Beefsteak and sherry sauce

Broil a porterhouse steak over a clear fire until done. Lay on a hot platter. Make a sauce of a cupful of beef bouillon, thickened with a tablespoonful of brown roux, and when this is smooth add to it a wineglassful of sherry, a tablespoonful of onion juice and a half-cupful of French mushrooms, cut in half. Boil up once and pour over the steak.

Mock roast chicken

Boil and chop fine the giblets from three chickens saved from roast or fricassee. Trim the fat from a good-sized, but not thick, round steak. Make a forcemeat in the following manner:

Mix together the chopped chicken giblets, two hard-boiled eggs, chopped fine, and a half-cupful of fine bread-crumbs. Moisten all with chicken stock. Lay the steak upon the table, cover thickly with the forcemeat and roll it up, as you would a sheet of music, tying it in shape with stout strings. Melt two tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan and cook the steak in this just long enough to brown it lightly. Remove the meat from the pan and put over the fire in a large pot. Add to the fat in the pan a tablespoonful of browned flour and pour upon it two cups of chicken stock. Stir to a smooth sauce, season to taste and pour over the steak in the pot. Cover closely and simmer for an hour and a half. Transfer the meat to a hot platter, remove the string, and pour the sauce over it.

Stewed rump steak

Trim the fat from the edge of a thick rump steak, and put the steak over the fire in a large pot. Pour over it a cup of cold water, cover closely and set at the side of the range, where it will simmer for three-quarters of an hour after it reaches the boil. Remove the meat from the pot and transfer to a baking-pan; season the gravy and pour it over the top, and cook for fifteen minutes longer, basting three times during the process. Remove the steak to a hot platter and set in the open oven while you add to the gravy a cup of soup stock and thicken it with a little browned flour rubbed to a paste with a spoonful of butter. Season with kitchen bouquet, celery salt and a half-teaspoonful of good sauce. Add a dozen canned mushrooms cut in half. Cook one minute and pour over the steak.

Rump steak and tomatoes

With a sharp carving-knife split a thick rump steak, thus making two thin steaks. Spread the lower half of this with bits of butter, a little minced ham and a cupful of tomatoes. (Use the canned tomatoes, straining off the juice and using it for the sauce.) Lay the upper half of the steak, sandwich-wise, upon the lower, and fasten the two together with small, stout skewers. Lay the meat in a covered roasting-pan, dash a cup of boiling water over it, and cook, allowing twenty minutes to each pound. Transfer to a hot dish, remove the skewers and pour over the steak a savory tomato sauce.

Mutton mince with tomatoes

Make three cups of good tomato sauce thickened with a heaping teaspoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter. Keep hot in a double boiler set at the side of range.

Toast slices of bread, butter, spread on a platter, and put a tablespoonful of tomato sauce on each. Into the remainder of the tomato sauce turn two cupfuls of minced mutton, put the saucepan over the fire, stir until the meat is thoroughly heated, season to taste and pour upon the toast.

Porterhouse steak with oysters

Broil a fine tender steak on both sides and transfer it to a hot dish. Pepper and salt well, then rub into the steak a mixture of butter rubbed to a cream with the juice of half a lemon.

Put one pint of oysters into a saucepan without any of the liquor. Stir until the edges ruffle, add one tablespoonful of butter creamed with an equal amount of flour and cooked to a roux. Pour over the hot steak and serve at once.

Savory stew of beef

Cut two pounds of raw lean beef into very small strips, almost like straws, with a keen blade. Put into a saucepan; cover with cold weak stock, or, if you have none, with cold water, and cook slowly two hours. Put into another saucepan a cupful of rich brown stock, one small onion chopped fine, a little grated nutmeg, cayenne pepper and the juice of half a lemon; boil these ingredients a few minutes and mix with the beef, adding a little browned flour if necessary. Dish upon a hot platter, lay triangles of fried toast about the base, and serve.

Roulades of beef

Cut two pounds of lean steak into pieces about five inches long and half as wide, and less than half an inch thick. Make a forcemeat of cooked sausage, chopped fine, and mixed with one-fourth as much fine, buttered and seasoned bread-crumbs. Place two tablespoonfuls of this mixture on each piece of meat, roll them into the shape of a small cylinder, and sew both ends with fine thread. Let them brown in butter in a frying-pan, then put them into a saucepan with the juice of a lemon, two cupfuls of brown stock, a carrot and an onion, sliced, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover closely, and cook for two hours. Transfer to a hot platter, clip and draw out the thread; thicken the gravy left in the saucepan with browned flour, add a little Worcestershire sauce and a glass of sherry; boil up once and pour over the roulades.

How to use up the cold tongue

Cut cold boiled beef-tongue into dice. Make a roux in a saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of butter and the same amount of flour, salt, pepper, and the juice of half a lemon. Add a cupful of strained tomato. Simmer slowly for ten minutes. Strain, return to the saucepan, lay in the tongue and let it stand where it will keep hot without boiling for five minutes. Serve in a hot platter.

This is still better if made of fresh beef’s tongue.

Galantine

Cut a strip of lean veal from the loin or the breast, about six inches wide and twice as long. Prepare a forcemeat of cooked ham, chopped mushrooms, any scraps of poultry you may have, the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, one-third as much crumbs as you have meat, season with paprika and grated onion.

Lay this forcemeat in the center of the veal, roll up carefully, wrap in cheese-cloth and sew up closely. Lay it in a plate in a kettle, cover with cold water, add one-half teaspoonful of salt, one bay leaf and a sprig of thyme, cover and boil for fifteen minutes. Then put it at one side of the fire where it can only simmer for two hours. When done set aside, with a plate upon it and a heavy weight upon the plate, until next day. Clip the threads, unwrap the meat and serve, garnished with cress and nasturtiums. Cut perpendicularly.

Chipped smoked beef

Shred the beef into thin straws. Make a white sauce, lay in the beef and simmer for five minutes. Then stir in a beaten egg, a little onion juice and pepper. Stir until the egg is set, and serve upon toast.

Brains on toast

Scald and blanch the brains, beat smooth, add three eggs and beat hard. Have ready a tablespoonful of butter in a frying-pan hissing hot; turn in the mixture and stir steadily for three minutes. Serve upon rounds of toast.

Baked calf’s liver (larded)

Lard with strips of fat salt pork, inserted perpendicularly. The lardoons should project on both sides. Cover the bottom of a saucepan with minced pork, place the liver on it; add a carrot, two small onions, a half-dozen stalks of celery, all chopped fine; the juice of a lemon and a quart of strong stock; cover the saucepan and bake slowly for two hours and a half, basting often with the liquor in the pan. When done remove the liver, and put into the oven for a few minutes to brown; make a rich gravy of the remainder of the gravy in the pan; put the liver in the center of the dish, strain the sauce and pour over it.

Mock pâté de foie gras

When poultry is in full season and the weather is cold, save the giblets from half a dozen fowls, boiling them, salting slightly to keep them and setting them in a cold place. When you have enough, chop them, rejecting tough portions, and run through a vegetable press. Work to a smooth paste with melted butter, season with paprika, salt, and a dash of onion juice. Pack down in small jars, pour melted butter over the top, and keep in a cool, dry place. If you will boil a few mushrooms in salted water, strain, cut them into coarse dice and intersperse throughout the paste, you will have a veritable imitation of the famous Strasburg _pâtés_.

You may substitute calf’s, lamb’s or pig’s liver for those of fowls if you can not get the latter.

Savory ham

Fry slices of boiled ham on both sides. Transfer to a hot dish. Cook together in a frying-pan four tablespoonfuls of vinegar, a teaspoonful of granulated sugar, a teaspoonful of French mustard, and a dash of paprika. Stir until very hot, and pour over the fried ham.

Cottage pie

(Contributed)

Chop cold meat very fine. To each cupful add one saltspoonful of salt and one-and-a-half saltspoonfuls of pepper, a pinch of summer savory and one-half cupful of stock. Put into a baking dish and cover with a crust of mashed potatoes. Brush over the top with milk and bake in an oven to a golden brown.

Breaded tongue with tomato sauce

(Contributed)

Take six slices of cooked tongue, one-half can of tomatoes, one slice of onion, three tablespoonfuls of butter and a bit of bay leaf, three tablespoonfuls of flour, one-third cupful of bread-crumbs and one egg. Cut the tongue in slices about one-half inch thick. Dip into the crumbs, then in the egg and then in the crumbs again, and sauté in butter. Place on a dish and pour around it a sauce made by cooking together the tomatoes, onion and bay leaf fifteen minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Steamed beef

(Contributed)

Select a piece of lean beef, wipe well with a cloth wrung out of cold water; remove all pieces of fat and gash with a sharp knife. Put the meat into a stone crock, sprinkle with salt and pepper and put in a few cloves. Cover with a tight lid. Cook in an oven slowly for several hours allowing no steam to escape. When done the meat will be very tender.

Irish stew

Take a pound of meat from the neck of beef or mutton and cut into neat pieces. Stew gently, and about an hour before it is done season and add two onions cut into dice and two carrots also cut into dice. About half an hour before the meat is done add two potatoes and three stalks of celery cut into dice. Serve on a platter, putting the vegetables around the meat.

Veal loaf (raw meat)

Put three pounds of raw veal and one-fourth pound of salt pork through the meat chopper; add to this one teacupful of fine bread crumbs, one tablespoonful of butter, three beaten eggs to which four tablespoonfuls of cream have been added, one teaspoonful of pepper, three teaspoonfuls of salt and two teaspoonfuls of powdered sage. Mix well together and form into a loaf. Bake in a mold two and a half hours, basting with butter and water.

Peppers stuffed with giblets

Extract the seeds from large sweet green peppers, and cut the latter into halves. Pour boiling water over them to mellow their pungency. Leave them in this until they are cold and set them on ice to get firm. When ready to cook them fill each half with minced giblets seasoned and moistened with gravy. Put the halves together, fasten in place with skewers or toothpicks, set in a bake-dish; pour in enough stock to prevent scorching and bake, covered, twenty minutes.

FAMILIAR TALK

LIVING TO LEARN

When one is too old to learn anything, his day of life is virtually over, so far as usefulness to his kind goes. The ten or twenty years left to him upon earth are a blunder on the part of some one, and we know that the Creator and Father of us all makes no mistakes. In the eloquent (and pessimistic) description of old age from the pen of the royal preacher-poet, we read that the aged shall be afraid of that which is high. The shrinking from new emprises, characteristic of the days when the almond-tree shall blossom and the knees that upbear (or keep) the house, shall tremble, is excusable when physical infirmity has enfeebled nervous forces and digestion. There is no excuse except this for the cessation of mind-growth.

This may sound didactic. It is written with a purpose. Given a sane mind in a sane body, and learning should go on indefinitely. The man or woman of mature years leaves off lessons because he chooses to get out of the habit of study. The prejudice against old cooks—said by one authority to be either drunk or crazy as a class—is founded upon this disinclination to learn novel methods. She who honestly aspires after excellence never thinks that she has reached it. When, in saying, “that is not MY WAY,” a cook believes that she has put an end, not only to controversy, but to any suspicion that the world may have moved an inch or two since she learned her trade—she registers herself among the incurables.

The mistress who yields to the earliest manifestations of an inclination to draw the dead line in housewifely progress is weakly indulgent or blindly foolish. In one wealthy family, not a hundred miles from a great city, “a valued old servant” played the tyrant for over a score of years. Little by little, the employers, mindful of her long term of faithful service, admitted her pleas that this or that new-fangled way was opposed to her habits and inclination, until family bills of fare were monotonous to boredom, the style of serving that of a preceding generation. At last Elizabeth died and was buried at the master’s expense.

“It’s dreadful, I suppose,” piped the youngling of the long-suffering band on the way home from the funeral. “But it ought to be some comfort that we won’t be obliged to have rice pudding three times a week any more.”

Faithful Elizabeth had her epitaph.

Nothing is more solemnly and sadly sure in this rushing age than that he who does not keep up with it will be thrown down and trampled out of sight. It is a trifle, apparently, when a woman tabooes oil in salad dressing because she “has never been used to putting it in,” when she thinks mint sauce a “trashy” accompaniment to roast lamb, and “won’t hear of hot sauce with cold pudding,” or whipped cream as an accompaniment to ice-cold raw tomatoes. When the vegetable dishes must all be set on the table with the meat, “as she has always had them,” and lettuce be cut up and dressed in the kitchen at the cook’s convenience, instead of being served, crisp and cool, from the deft fingers of some member of the family who is “up in salads.”

Each protest is a symptom of decadence which is wilful, not inevitable. She has stopped learning because she _has_ “stopped.” In time, mental muscles become stiff, but disuse is the cause of the change.

“I account that day lost in which I have learned no new thing,” said an aged sage.

Our housewife may lay the saying to heart. If there be a better way than hers of doing anything—from making pickles to giving a wedding supper—she should be on the alert to possess herself of it. It is not true that it is easier for young people to keep themselves and their houses abreast of the times than it is for their elders. The first step that counts in the downward road is the tendency not to take any step at all. To stand still is to be left.