Part 23

This, the most important meal of the day, is attended with a certain degree of ceremony in the most modest household. Breakfast may be hurried over in haste that is not unseemly when one considers that the day’s work is all ahead of the family, and luncheon may dwindle down to a “cold bite” eaten standing. Everybody must dine, and dining is always “business.” A dinner party is the most serious of social functions, and even a family dinner follows a prescribed order. There must be a beginning, a middle and an end. Plates must be changed, for even in the backwoods, meat and pudding are not set on the table at the same time.

This is as it should be. If we would have

“_Good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both_,”

we must bring to the discussion of the heavier nourishment set before us orderliness, leisure and tempers free from annoying discomforts. Magnificence is within the reach of a few; modest elegance is attainable by many; cleanliness and good manners are free to the humblest housemother and her brood.

So much for a general view of the wide field indicated by the word set at the head of this chapter. Before entering upon a discussion of the dishes which belong to this section of our book, I would lay stress upon a cardinal duty connected with dinner—eating—a duty the neglect of which is a proverbial national disgrace.

It is a physical impossibility to eat properly—and to digest with any prospect of healthful assimilation—a breakfast of coffee, steak, hot rolls and fried potatoes, in five minutes, or in fifteen. Yet this is what the commuter, the clerk, the collegian—and a host of other men (including an occasional capitalist) try to do six days in the week. They eat, as they live, on the jump. When an especially audacious jump lands them in the grave, intelligent scientists affect to wonder with the rest of mankind at the untimely taking-off.

Big mouthfuls and bolting are alike part of the national trick advertised in dead earnest, not satirized, by the raucous shout of the brakeman at the half-way house—“_Five minutes for refreshments!_”

Mr. Gladstone did not consider it undignified to give, as one secret of the sanity of body and mind prolonged through four-score years, his habit of chewing twenty times upon every morsel of meat taken into his mouth. The family physician who attended one of our great men—lately deceased—in his awfully brief final illness, said frankly that certain sharp attacks that had afflicted the statesman for several months before the cruel climax came, were caused by the habit of eating hurriedly such luncheons as he could snatch in the intervals of business. If the truth were told as bravely in thousands of other “mysterious visitations,” business men would be startled and enlightened—if not cured—of like practices.

Dinner—the evening dinner in particular—gives the driven man a chance for his life. He sins against light and opportunity when he carries the bolting habit to the third meal. It may be vulgar to talk of chewing. Our very babies are taught to say “masticate,” instead. It is more vulgar not to do the thing itself.

The cool indifference with which we admit the humiliating truth that our national digestion is chronically out of order, is more culpable even than the shiftless amiability with which we condone municipal and corporation murders. The individual citizen may well draw back from the task of fighting boards and millions. His digestive apparatus is his own, subject to no lien or disability except such as sloth and carelessness put upon it.

If there be a self-evident fact in everyday hygiene it is that food swallowed without chewing, clogs and irritates the stomach. No other health law is so shamelessly and constantly transgressed by the human animal whose _habitat_ is the United States of America. The most stupid lout of a hostler knows that a horse must have time for chewing his oats, or he will go hungry; the scullion will tell you that, while chickens bolt whole corn and gobble down worms, the gizzard stands sentinel over the stomach, doing thoroughly the part of grinders and incisors. The cow sets us the best example of all our sensible dumb teachers. The wondrous-wise air with which she munches cud by the hour is a proverb among sages. The so-called nobler part of creation is not ashamed to seek in the pepsin, which is a memorial to her wisdom, a remedy for the ills brought upon himself by obstinate disregard of the duty her example enforces.

It is not a nice thing to talk or write of, as I have admitted. And this is not because the act of mastication is unseemly. The measured movement of the jaws in the decorous disposition of whatever is committed to them is no more grotesque than the “winking as usual,” enjoined by the photographer. This is emphatically true when food is cut small before it is eaten.

The stomach is long-suffering and kind, but not omnipotent. The salivary glands are her natural and most efficient allies. The “bolter” cuts off supplies from this source. The chunks of solid matter, washed down with scalding liquid or iced water, are more than the other gastric juices can manage. The result is as sure as the addition of two and two, followed by the subtraction of four.

A judicious mother who has made physiology a study for her children’s sake, teaches her little ones to chew the well-cooked cereals that form the staple of their breakfast. Furthermore, she teaches that it is indecent to swallow anything except liquids without chewing it. The rule is not arbitrary. Each child comprehends the office of the saliva, that the motion of chewing excites it, and that to take crude lumps of anything into the stomach is absolutely wrong.

In the chance that other mothers may imitate her example lies the only hope of the American stomach. The adult bolter is joined to his evil practice. He is feeding with egg-coal an engine that was built to be run with pea coal, adding to the mischief done the delicate machinery the outrage of chunking in and packing down the fuel.

SOUPS

It is a progressive age and the average American housewife is slowly coming to some appreciation of the nutritive value of soups as an article of daily food. As a rule of wide application, she does not yet credit how easy it is to prepare them. Some one says that the motto for the would-be soup-maker should be, “strong stock and no grease.” What might be a good soup is unpalatable if globules of grease float on the surface, and it takes a hungry man, without a fastidious taste, to enjoy it under these circumstances. See to it then that all meat-stocks are perfectly skimmed when very cold, that every vestige of fat may be removed.

A good soup stock

Four pounds of beef marrow bones, well cracked; one pound of coarse lean beef chopped as for beef-tea, and the same of lean veal; one large onion, one carrot, one turnip, six refuse stalks of celery, a cabbage leaf; seven quarts of cold water; prepare and salt to taste.

Put the meat and vegetables, the latter cut up small, into a large pot, cover with the water and set at the side of the range where it will not reach the scalding point under an hour. Keep closely covered and let it simmer, always scalding hot, never boiling hard, for six hours. Remove from the fire, season and set in a cool place until next day. Remove the fat, strain out bones and vegetables, pressing hard to extract all the nourishment and set away in the refrigerator until needed.

At least one dozen varieties of soups and broths can be founded upon this stock.

White stock

Put over the fire two pounds of the cheaper part of veal, cut into small pieces, or a well-cracked knuckle of veal, with three quarts of cold water, a sliced onion, a bay-leaf and a couple of stalks of celery cut into pieces. Let it come to a boil slowly, and simmer for five or six hours. Season with salt and pepper and set aside to get cold. Remove the fat, take out the bones and you will have a thick jelly. This can be heated, skimmed and, if desired, strained before it is used. It will be a strong and nutritious stock.

“Left-over” stock

Have a crock in your refrigerator expressly for this. Collect for it the bones of cooked meats from which the meat has been carved; the carcasses of poultry, bits of gristly roasts and steaks, cold vegetables, even a baked apple now and then. Twice a week, put all, cracking the bones well, into the stock-pot; cover deep with cold water and cook slowly until the liquid is reduced to half the original quantity. Season to taste, and strain, rubbing all through the colander that will pass.

By addition of barley, rice, tomatoes or, in fact, almost any vegetable or cereal, you may make excellent broths from this compound of “unconsidered trifles.”

Mock turtle soup

Boil a calf’s head until the meat leaves the bones. Leave it in the seasoned soup until next day, then take it out, scrape off the fat and remove the bones. Put the jellied stock over the fire with the bones, the ears, chopped, one grated carrot, one sliced onion, a bunch of soup herbs, a teaspoonful of allspice, a saltspoonful of paprika and salt to taste. Boil for one hour. Take from the fire, strain, thicken with two tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in as much browned flour, add two teaspoonfuls of kitchen bouquet, and, when the soup is thickened, drop in the tongue and parts of the cheek cut into dice. Add a gill of sherry and the juice of a lemon and pour upon forcemeat balls in a hot tureen. Make the forcemeat balls by rubbing the brains to a paste with the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, a little browned flour and the yolk of a raw egg. Roll them in brown flour and let them stand in a quick oven until lightly crusted over.

Veal and tapioca soup

Crack a knuckle of veal into six pieces and put over the fire with a cracked ham bone, if you have it. If not, use a half-pound of _lean_ salt pork, chopped, or the soaked rind of salt pork or corned ham. Add a few stalks of celery, chopped. Cover with cold water, adding a quart for every pound of meat and bones. Cover, and bring slowly to the boil. Simmer then for five hours, or until the liquor is reduced to one-half the original quantity. Season with pepper, salt and onion juice and set away until next day, when remove the fat.

You have now a thick jelly. Set over the fire to melt. When you can pour it easily, strain out the bones and scraps of meat. Put half a cupful of tapioca to soak in a cupful of cold water for two hours. Measure a quart of your veal stock and put over the fire to heat. When the boil is reached, add the tapioca, a scant tablespoonful of kitchen bouquet, with a tablespoonful of finely minced parsley and cook fifteen minutes longer, boiling briskly.

Veal and sago broth

Make stock as directed in last recipe, adding, when it has been skimmed and strained, half a cupful of pearl sago, previously soaked for three hours in warm water. Simmer for half an hour. Have ready in a saucepan a cupful of hot milk, into which a bit of soda has been dropped; stir into it a tablespoonful of butter rolled in half as much flour, and when it has thickened, turn into the sago broth two minutes before removing it from the fire.

Veal and rice broth

To a quart of your veal stock add half a cupful of washed and soaked rice; cook for twenty minutes, _fast_, and mix with hot milk, thickened as directed in last recipe. Cook three minutes and serve.

Ox-tail soup

Cut a cleaned ox-tail at each joint and fry five minutes in butter or good dripping. Take out the meat and put into a warmed soup-kettle while you fry a sliced onion in the dripping left in the frying-pan. Turn this, with the fat, upon the pieces of ox-tail, rinse out the frying-pan with hot water and add this to the soup-kettle. Now cover with two quarts of cold water; slice a carrot thin, mince four stalks of celery and add these to the water. Cover closely and simmer for five hours. Season to taste and set aside until next day, remove the fat and strain the liquor from meat and vegetables. Pick out the best joints and return to the soup. Heat to a fast boil, skim, add kitchen bouquet to taste, and serve. There should be two or three joints in each portion. Some cooks slice two or three very small carrots, parboil them and put into the strained liquor with the joints before giving the last boil.

Clear brown soup

After making, cooling and skimming your stock as directed in the beginning of this chapter, measure out a quart; put over the fire and when lukewarm stir in the white of a raw egg. Bring quickly to a boil, stirring all the time. As soon as it bubbles, take from the fire, pour in a little very cold water and let it stand for three minutes. Then pour slowly off the dregs through a flannel bag, or a double cloth. Let it drip as you would jelly. When all has run through, return to the fire with a little soaked tapioca, or a handful of “manestra”, such as comes in shapes for soups; simmer five minutes, color with kitchen bouquet, or with caramel, and serve.

Clear soup with poached eggs

Make as directed above, but without tapioca or other cereal. Have ready as many neatly poached eggs as there will be people at table, and when the hot soup is in the tureen slip these carefully into it.

Caramel for coloring soups

Put two tablespoonfuls of sugar into a small tin cup and let it melt, then bubble over the fire. When you have a seething brown (not burnt) mass, pour in two tablespoonfuls of boiling water and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Put in enough to color your clear soup, but not enough to make it sweet.

Clear soup á la royale

To cleared soup made according to directions given for making and clearing stock, add minute squares of paste made thus:

Heat half a cupful of milk in a saucepan with a bit of soda. In a frying-pan cook a tablespoonful of butter and stir into it two of flour. Turn the milk gradually upon this, and, when well incorporated, a scant half-cupful of soup stock. In a bowl have ready two whipped eggs and pour upon them, stirring well, the hot mixture. Return to the fire, stir to a thick paste and pour upon a buttered platter to cool. Set on ice to harden for at least six hours before cutting into tiny blocks. The soup must not boil after they go in.

Glasgow broth

One quart of strong mutton stock, from which every particle of fat has been removed. The liquor in which a leg of mutton has been boiled will do well for this purpose. Boil it down for an hour before making the broth, as it should be strong.

One cupful of barley that has been soaked in tepid water for three hours. One large carrot, one turnip, two onions, four stalks of celery, half a cupful of green peas and the same of string-beans, parsley and four or five leek tops.

Cut the vegetables up small and parboil them for ten minutes. Drain and put over the fire in the stock. Simmer slowly for three hours. Have ready a good white roux made by heating a heaping tablespoonful of butter in a pan and stirring into it a tablespoonful of flour. Add a few spoonfuls of the soup to thin it, and stir into the broth. Boil one minute and serve.

This recipe, given to me in rhymes a century old by a distinguished professor in the University of Glasgow, is the genuine Scotch broth dear to the Scottish heart and stomach. It is nowhere as delicious as in the Highlands, but it is good everywhere.

Mulligatawney soup

(An East Indian recipe.)

Joint a large fowl, as for fricassee, and cut into small pieces a pound of lean veal. Slice two onions and fry them in butter; pare, quarter and core two sour apples. Put all these into a saucepan with six quarts of cold water. Add four cloves and four pepper corns, cover closely and let it simmer until the fowl is tender. Remove it and cut the meat from the bones into small pieces. Return the bones to the kettle and add one level tablespoonful of curry powder, one level teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar mixed to a smooth paste with a little water.

Simmer another hour, or until reduced one-half, strain the soup, let it stand all night and remove the fat. Put it on to boil again, add the pieces of fowl and one cupful of boiled rice. This will make a large quantity of soup. Send around with it bananas, chilled by burying them in ice, for those who relish this accompaniment to curry dishes.

Chicken cream soup (No. 1)

Cut up a large fowl and beat with a mallet to crack the bones; pour in five quarts of cold water, cover closely and simmer for four hours more, until the chicken is perfectly tender. Take the meat off the bones, take out the skin. Return the soup to the fire with a part of the meat chopped fine, salt, pepper, a little boiled rice and butter rolled in flour. Just before taking from the fire add a small teacupful of cream heated with a pinch of soda; add a tablespoonful of chopped parsley and boil for one minute.

You may further enrich this excellent soup by beating up two eggs and stirring them into it just before taking from the fire. A still better way is to pour a little of the soup upon the eggs to avoid curdling, then add to the rest.

Chicken cream soup (No. 2)

(An English recipe)

One cupful of cold roast chicken, chopped as fine as powder; a pint of strong chicken broth; a cupful of sweet cream; half a cupful of bread or cracker-crumbs; three yolks of eggs; one teaspoonful of salt; one-half teaspoonful of pepper.

Soak the crumbs in a little of the cream. Bring the broth to boiling point and add the meat. Break the eggs, separating the yolks and whites. Drop the yolks carefully into boiling water and boil hard; then rub to a powder and add to the soup with the cream and the seasoning. Simmer ten minutes and serve hot.

Beef bouillon

Put together in an agate-lined saucepan two pounds of lean beef, minced; one-half pound of lean veal, also minced, and two pounds, each, of beef and veal bones, well cracked. Cover deep with cold water and bring slowly to a boil, then simmer for four hours. Season with salt, pepper and two teaspoonfuls of kitchen bouquet, then remove from the fire. When very cold and like a jelly, skim all fat from the surface of the soup and heat to enable you to strain out the bones and meat. Return to the fire, drop in the white of an egg and a crushed egg-shell, bring to a boil, drop in a bit of ice to check ebullition and, five minutes later, pour carefully, not to disturb the dregs, through a colander lined with white flannel. You may now heat it to scalding, add a glass of sherry and eat it hot, or set on ice when cold until you can have it as “iced-bouillon.” It is good in either way.

Bouillon á la russe

Make as just directed and serve in cups, laying a delicately poached egg upon the surface of the steaming liquid.

Chicken bouillon (No. 1)

Cut a large fowl into pieces; put into a porcelain-lined kettle and cover with cold water. Set at the side of the range and simmer for four hours. Season with celery salt, pepper and onion juice, and set away to cool. When cold skim off the fat and strain out the bones and meat. Return to the fire, and when hot, add a quarter of a box of gelatine that has soaked for an hour in a gill of water. When the gelatine is dissolved, take the soup from the fire, strain through a cheese-cloth bag, and serve it when you have reheated it, or set aside to cool, afterward keeping it in ice, when you may enjoy delicious “iced and jellied chicken bouillon.”

Chicken bouillon (No. 2)

Cut a four-pound fowl into pieces and put it over the fire with four quarts of cold water. Bring very slowly to the boiling point, and simmer gently for three hours, or until the meat is so tender that it slips from the bones. Add half of a sliced onion and three stalks of celery, and simmer for an hour longer. Turn into a bowl and set in a cold place for some hours. When thoroughly chilled remove the fat from the surface of the soup, strain out the bones and skim. If the liquor is jellied after skimming it, set it on the fire long enough to melt the jelly from the bones. Strain through coarse muslin, letting it drip through, but not squeezing the bag. Put over the fire and, when lukewarm, throw in the unbeaten white and broken shell of an egg; stir to a quick boil and again strain through muslin after seasoning to taste.

Gumbo (No. 1)

(A Creole recipe)

Cut a fowl at every joint and fry for five minutes in good dripping or in butter. Remove the meat and put into a soup kettle. Cook two sliced onions in the fat left in the frying-pan. Put into the kettle with the chicken half a pound of lean salt pork, or corned ham, cut into small bits, and the fried onions. Add two quarts of cold water, and bring slowly to a boil, after which you should let it simmer two hours. Add, now, two dozen young okra pods, half a pod of green pepper, chopped, and half a can of tomatoes, or a pint of fresh, cut small, and simmer till the chicken is tender. Remove the larger bones, add salt to taste, and five minutes before serving add one pint of fine, sweet corn pulp, scraped from the cob, or one small can of canned corn, or one pint of oysters. Stir in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour, boil a few minutes and serve. If fresh okra can not be obtained, use the canned.

Gumbo (No. 2)

This delicious soup may be made with oysters, or shrimps, or chicken. Brown one small onion in a heaping tablespoonful of butter. Add one quart of sliced okra, and fry it well, stirring all the time to prevent burning. Now add half a gallon of hot water and let it cook until simmered down to one quart. Add three ripe tomatoes and the chicken, or oysters, or shrimps. If the chicken is used it must have been previously stewed tender, in which case use the broth instead of the hot water. Season to taste with salt and cayenne, and serve with a tablespoonful of rice for each soup-plate.

Julienne soup

Cut into thin strips, and these into inch lengths, two carrots, one-half of a white turnip, two or three celery stalks, two small onions, a leaf or two of young cabbage, and a good handful of string beans. Put all together, with half a cupful of green peas, into cold salted water, and leave for half an hour. Turn, then, into your soup kettle with sufficient water to cover, and cook for fifteen minutes. Drain off the water, cover the vegetables with a quart of good soup stock or consommé, and cook gently for twenty-five minutes longer. Season with salt and pepper, add chopped parsley and kitchen bouquet to taste, and boil up once before serving. You may add tomatoes or not, as you like.

The stock should be strong.

French onion soup

To a quart of good stock allow six small onions that have been parboiled for ten minutes, and a cupful of fine, dry bread-crumbs. Let them simmer together for half an hour; rub the soup through a colander, pressing through as much of the onion and bread as possible. Put into a saucepan, rub one tablespoonful of butter and two of flour to a cream, and stir into the hot mixture until it thickens. Season with salt and pepper, add one pint of milk heated with a tiny bit of soda, boil up, and serve.

A homely, but a savory soup.

White barley soup

Soak a cupful of barley for several hours in enough water to cover it; then boil in a quart of veal stock until tender and clear. Season with a teaspoonful of onion juice, a tablespoonful of minced parsley, and with celery salt and white pepper to taste. Thicken a pint of scalding milk with a white roux, pour the hot soup slowly upon this and serve.

“Turkey rack” soup

(A Virginia recipe)