Part 27

Make a rich-drawn butter and beat into it the coral of a lobster worked smooth with a tablespoonful of butter. Add the juice of half a lemon, cayenne and salt. Finally, add half a cupful of lobster meat, minced as fine as powder. Heat and serve.

Horseradish sauce

Into a cupful of drawn butter beat a great spoonful of grated horseradish wet with lemon juice, and work to creamy whiteness.

Anchovy sauce

Beat a tablespoonful of anchovy paste into a cupful of drawn butter, adding the juice of half a lemon and a dash of cayenne or paprika.

Shrimp sauce

Into a cupful of drawn butter beat a good teaspoonful of anchovy sauce, the juice of half a lemon, and half a can of shrimps minced fine and made very hot in a tablespoonful of boiling butter. Simmer for two minutes and serve.

An excellent fish sauce.

Celery sauce

Boil half a cupful of minced celery in a cupful of hot water for fifteen minutes. Strain through a cloth, pressing hard. Return the liquor to the fire and boil up. Then cook with it a roux made of two tablespoonfuls of butter and the same of flour. Have ready the yolk of an egg, beaten light. Pour the hot sauce upon it, stir less than one minute over the fire, season with salt and paprika and pour out.

A nice accompaniment to boiled fowl and to boiled mutton.

Tomato sauce

Peel and slice a quart of tomatoes; cook twenty minutes and strain through a coarse bag into a saucepan. Season with a teaspoonful of onion juice, one of sugar, a little salt and pepper, and when it boils stir in a tablespoonful of butter cooked to a roux with one of flour. Simmer two minutes and serve.

Caper sauce

Into a cupful of good drawn butter stir a great spoonful of minced capers and a teaspoonful of onion juice.

Maître d’hôtel sauce

Beat two tablespoonfuls of soft butter to a cream with the juice of half a lemon and a tablespoonful of finely-minced parsley. It should be a fine, pale green when done. Serve cold with hot fish.

Mint sauce

Chop six sprays of mint very fine, and add to half a cupful of vinegar in which have been dissolved two tablespoonfuls of white sugar and a dash of pepper.

Serve cold with roast lamb.

Onion or soubise sauce

Boil two onions of fair size in two waters and until soft all through; mince and mix with a cupful of drawn butter. Season with pepper and salt, beat to a cream over the fire, and when very hot, serve.

Bread sauce

Heat a cupful of milk and season with a tablespoonful of butter, salt and pepper to taste and a teaspoonful of onion juice. Boil up and stir in lightly half a cupful of fine bread-crumbs, previously dried, but not colored in the oven. They should be tossed up several times while drying to prevent clotting, and be very crisp.

Serve with boiled chicken.

Béarnaise sauce

Beat the yolks of two eggs very light, put into a round-bottomed saucepan and set in one of boiling water; stir into it, a few drops at a time, three tablespoonfuls of salad oil, heating as you stir; then, as gradually, the same quantity of boiling water; next, one tablespoonful of lemon juice, a dash of cayenne and salt.

It is served with all sorts of fish, also with chops, cutlets and steaks.

Claret or Bordelaise sauce

Make a brown sauce by substituting browned flour for white in the roux, adding a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet. Season with onion juice, salt and pepper, boil one minute, pour in a wineglassful of claret, heat for half a minute more, and serve.

Serve with roast meats and poultry.

Cream cucumber sauce

Pare and mince with a keen knife two cucumbers of fair size. Drain off the liquid without pressing, letting it drip for two minutes. Have ready a chilled bowl rubbed with a clove of garlic. Put the mince into it, season with white pepper, salt, a teaspoonful of onion juice and a tablespoonful of lemon juice.

Mix lightly into it with a silver fork a cupful of whipped cream into which has been beaten a pinch of soda.

Serve very cold with fish.

Plain cucumber sauce

When the cucumbers have been minced, drained and turned into the chilled bowl scented with cut garlic, mix with them a good French dressing of two tablespoonfuls of oil, one-third as much lemon juice, a little salt and pepper.

N. B.—You may substitute for the garlic a tablespoonful of minced chives blended with the dressing.

Serve cold with fish, and quickly, before the cucumbers wilt.

Cranberry sauce

Wash and pick over carefully a quart of cranberries. Put into the inner vessel of a double boiler, fill the outer with boiling water and cook, keeping the cranberries closely covered until they are broken to pieces. Rub through your vegetable press into a saucepan, sweeten abundantly, bring to a boil (barely), and turn into a wet mold to form.

Apple sauce

Pare, core and quarter tart apples, dropping into cold water as you do this. Put over the fire dripping wet and cover closely to keep in the steam. When they are heated through, open and stir up from the bottom. When soft and broken, rub through colander or vegetable press, sweeten to taste while hot and set away to cool.

Serve with roast pork and roast ducks.

Jelly sauce

Make a cupful of a brown sauce of butter, browned flour and a little caramel. Heat boiling hot and beat in four or five teaspoonfuls of currant or other tart jelly.

Serve with game, lamb or mutton.

Espagnole sauce

(Contributed)

Put four tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan. When hot stir into it five tablespoonfuls of flour. Stir until very brown. Add two cupfuls of brown stock and one tablespoonful of Worcester sauce. Salt and pepper to taste. Let the sauce boil well and remove from the fire. Serve with chops or steak.

Parsley sauce

(Contributed)

To a good white sauce add three tablespoonfuls of finely-chopped parsley and a little green fruit coloring and let it come to a boil.

Cider sauce

(Contributed)

Put into a saucepan over the fire one tablespoonful of butter and when this begins to bubble stir into it one tablespoonful of flour; cook for one minute, then add slowly one teacupful of highly-seasoned stock; cook for ten minutes, add a cupful of cider, and when it again comes to a boil, strain and serve. This sauce is excellent with boiled ham.

Giblet sauce

(Contributed)

Boil the giblets until tender. Chop them, but not too fine. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan, with two tablespoonfuls of flour. Add slowly a cupful of the water in which the giblets have been boiled and a cup and a half of rich milk. Add to this the chopped giblets and season with salt and pepper. Serve in sauce-boat.

Cauliflower sauce

(Contributed)

To a pint of white sauce add a cupful of chopped cauliflower. Reheat, and when ready to serve stir in a teaspoonful of butter and a tablespoonful of lemon juice.

Champagne sauce

(Contributed)

Into one cupful of champagne put two cloves, four peppercorns, one bay leaf and a little sugar. Let all simmer for five minutes. Then add one cupful of brown sauce. Simmer for ten minutes more and strain. To be served with ham.

Port wine sauce

(Contributed)

Port wine sauce is made the same as champagne sauce, except that port wine is used instead of champagne.

Olive sauce

(Contributed)

Make a brown sauce as follows: Put four tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan; when hot add four and a half tablespoonfuls of flour and stir until very brown; add two cupfuls of brown stock and salt and pepper to taste. Remove the stones from five olives and boil for five minutes in water to which one tablespoonful of vinegar has been added. Drain and mince and add to the sauce.

Imitation caper sauce

Cut cucumber pickles into tiny cubes with a sharp knife. Do not chop them, as the bits must be of uniform size. Drain perfectly dry and stir into hot drawn butter. Boil for one minute. Eat with fish or chops.

FAMILIAR TALK

IS IMPROMPTU HOSPITALITY A LOST ART

Without staying to prove my premises I take it for granted nobody will dispute that what it pleases me to call impromptu hospitality is an out-of-date virtue.

In the very olden time there were those who were backward in the practice of it. Else the fisherman Apostle would not have enjoined upon the “strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,” to “use hospitality, one to another, without grudging.”

An ancient writer says: “The primitive Christians made one principal part of their duty to consist in the exercise of hospitality; and they were so exact in the practice of it that the very heathens admired them for it.”

From which we gather that the Apostolic admonition had fallen into good soil and brought forth much fruit.

It would be interesting to know when the _quid pro quo_ element entered into and defiled the noble virtue. The primitive Christians aforesaid had no knowledge of this alloy, while the recollection of the Master’s teaching was fresh in their minds:

“For if ye lend to them of whom you hope to receive, what thank have ye?”

The principle that moves me to invite those to sit at my table and sleep under my roof who can return the favor in kind, or be useful in turn to me in some way, is barter, not hospitality. When I give a feast—be it afternoon tea, or the gravest of social functions, a dinner party—to five hundred, or to five people who have invited me at some time to their houses—and because of the obligation under which their invitations have laid me—I may be honest. I am not generous. I pay a debt. I do not exercise a grace.

The former times were _not_ better in all respects than these. But for divers reasons they were more hospitable times. It was inevitable that private houses should keep open doors when taverns, and even houses of entertainment, were few and far apart upon main-traveled roads, and utterly wanting to the traveler who pushed his way into the back country unknown except to the pioneer. If the stranger were not welcomed to the home of him whose house stood nearest to the wayside, he was shelterless in night or storm. There is the less need for the exercise of undiscriminating hospitality when inn and hotel “blaze” the track into the wilderness.

There is none the less occasion for asking our friends to enter our homes and to partake of the food which is a symbol of the good-will we have for them, our disposition to share with them the best blessings granted to man in this world—home loves and home joys. True hospitality but widens the circle and makes the guest “at home.” Artificial hospitality seeks or accepts a convenient season for making the everyday life of the home seem what it is _not_ to the stranger within our gates.

Our forbears said: “Come in and take pot-luck with us.”

An old Virginian told me that, as a boy, he was a visitor in a country house in the central part of the state, when a carriage drove up to the gate, and James Madison, then president of the United States, alighted. The lady of the manor was sitting upon the front porch, a bit of needle-work in hand. She arose, cordial and dignified, to receive her guest. As her chief butler, a far more consequential personage than his mistress, bustled out with a footman or two at his heels to see what could be done for the distinguished arrival, she said to him in a gentle “aside,” audible to the boy visitor: “James! see that a plate is put upon the table for Mr. Madison.”

Southern hospitality was a proverb then and for many a year thereafter. In her book, “The Voice of the People,” Miss Glasgow tells a story, which I can certify is not exaggerated, of an old aunt who came to her nephew’s house on a visit of a week and stayed twenty years, guarded by the viewless, but potent, ægis of hospitality. A plate was put upon the table for the poor relation in town and country house in that lavish land, as freely as for the chief magistrate, and was filled as bountifully.

When relative, acquaintance or stranger tarried but a night, the householder, in the homely speech of his fathers, asked in gentle sarcasm, “if he had come for a chunk of fire?”

In his father’s day, lucifer matches were unknown. When the fire went out upon the kitchen hearth of plantation or cabin, a swift runner was sent across fields to borrow a live brand from the nearest neighbor. He must hurry back before it went out.

_We_ invite people to come to us at a stated time and for a given period. When the time is up, we tell them graciously that we have enjoyed their visit, and hope we shall meet again before long. When the carriage that takes them to the station is out of sight, we say, “That is well over!” and make a note to that effect in our visiting book.

Leaving the general view of our subject for individual illustration:—

If satirists and grumbling wives are to be believed, a husband can hardly do a more imprudent thing than to bring home an unexpected guest to dinner, or luncheon, or supper.

The ill-used wife contends that he always does this—as if with malice aforethought—at the most inconvenient times and seasons. From her standpoint he might have recollected—it seems incredible that he could have forgotten—that it is washing or ironing day, or Thursday, which is the cook’s afternoon out, and that the housemaid is not equal to a regular dinner. When the mistress has planned to have a “pick-up” composite of the substantial meal required by a man after his day’s work, and the tea and toast which are supposed to meet the temporal needs of the feminine system—the apparition of an impromptu guest, and that guest a man, is like a boulder rolled upon the track before the domestic engine. The train is derailed, conductor and engineer “rattled,” and badly shaken up.

Our housewife has reason on her side, and a good deal of it. It is all very fine to say, she urges, that her table should always be neat and orderly; that what is nice enough for her husband in the way of food and appointments should content the president, should he chance to drop in. Everybody sings that song in the same key, and it is stale _bosh_! For everybody knows that in the best regulated families we do make special provision for company. John comprehends that the best china can not be used every day, if we would have it remain even “good.” The second-best is excellent in quality, and pretty. Yet what housekeeper is superior to the wish to show outsiders that she has a Minton fish set; Coalport meat dishes and plates; silver vegetable dishes; Sèvres after-dinner coffee-cups? To set out her table as tastefully as she can afford to do is an offering due to the stranger within her gates—a visible token of hospitable intent. She is, in a measure, defrauded in all this when a surprise-visit is sprung upon her.

John is sensible, and does not object to left-overs now and then, when flavorously put together. Today’s salmi, or salad, or croquette is, to him, a reminiscence of yesterday’s roast. The oyster-stew made by his wife to spare servants wearied by laundry work, is as satisfactory to him, once in several whiles, as a six-course dinner would be. He sees in an Irish stew, supported by browned potatoes, hot biscuits, home-made cake and a capital cup of coffee, a feast fit for the gods as represented by his hungry self and any fellow he may have corralled and brought in to “take pot-luck.”

“I ask yer honors if that is anny sort of a shkull to take to Donnybrook Fair!” cried an Emeralder who had killed his man “in a bit of a foight,” when the defense produced the broken skull of the deceased in court to prove that the “frontal, parietal and occipital segments were extraordinarily thin.”

Mary submits to a jury of her peers if she has not a right to be “put about” when Johnny comes marching home serenely with a guest in tow, who, for the lack of time to make anything else ready, must be set down to left-over oyster, or Irish stew.

“When a man is asked to dinner, he expects a dinner!” she asserts in justifiable vexation. “And when all is said and done, the fact remains that one’s husband is not a visitor for whom one must mind her p’s and q’s.”

Yet—and a “yet” that might fill a whole line if its importance were considered—there is, also, much to be said on John’s side. Any bachelor can ask the old friend who looks in upon him in business hours and places, to lunch or dine with him at a chop house or hotel. The guest knows what he would get there. Just such a meal as he can buy for dollars and cents at fifty other “eating joints” all over the country. A meal, eaten in the presence of from twenty to one hundred other feeders, amid the babble of voices, the rattle of crockery and the click of knives and forks.

It is the married man alone who can offer the wayfarer a taste—and a generous taste—of HOME. The dear old fellow thrills in every inch of body and soul when he claps an ancient chum on the back with—

“Now you must see my wife and babies, old man!” or says to a business acquaintance in town for the day: “Mrs. Johannes and I would be charmed to have you take a family dinner with us. I am just going home now. Come with me!”

If malcontent Mary but knew it, he pays the highest possible compliment to her, as woman and housekeeper, by taking her welcome for granted.

I heard a man say the other day of another:

“He is a royally good fellow, and, I take it, is happily married. He begged me to dine with him when I called at his office, and without giving his wife notice. A fellow doesn’t take such liberties with his wife unless he is pretty sure of her and her housekeeping. I couldn’t accept the invitation, but the impression left upon my mind was most agreeable.”

It is worth Mary’s while to score a point in her favor with her husband’s friends and to strengthen her hold upon him by meeting the unexpected guest with frank cordiality, and in every other way making the best of the situation.

She keeps the house, and has the work and worry that go with the keeping. John pays for the material part of the home. How much it signifies to him the best of wives does not always know. It is his stimulus, his hope, his sheet anchor, when all the waves and billows of business trouble go over his soul—his haven of refuge—the nearest approach to Heaven he can find on this side of the dark river. He has a lien—in legal phrase—upon all the benefits accruing therefrom.

The exercise of spontaneous hospitality is not the least of these.

I am so unhappy as to know a woman who has her whole house, including attic and cellar, swept every week and dusted thoroughly daily. Every picture is taken down on Saturday morning that the backs and cords may be wiped off with a damp cloth wet with a disinfectant. She changes servants from twelve to twenty-four times a year. She will tell you with an air of calm sad conviction, that “there is not one tolerably efficient maid in America.” Her daughters have been her slaves since they could wield broom and duster. They are pale and thin; their eyes have a hunted look and are hollowed by fixed dark crescents beneath them. One of them was married two years ago, and sank into confirmed invalidism after the birth of a pitiful scrap of a baby that wailed feebly for an hour and died.

I met the single sister not long ago on a ferry-boat, and she confided to me that she is to submit to a crucial operation in a few days.

“The doctors say it is too much housework,” she said bitterly, “I can not recollect when I was not tired, _tired_, TIRED! My mother keeps the cleanest house in town. She says ‘dirt is disease.’ Maybe so! I know that life is not worth living when one has to pay such a price for cleanliness. My mother has bones of steel and nerves of whalebone, and can not comprehend ‘how it happens that she should be afflicted with delicate children.’

“As to company—it is a curse—nothing less! To have a friend in to a meal involves so much extra work beforehand, so much readjusting afterward, that the thought is frightful.

“This is not living. It is slavery!”

MEATS

BEEF

Roast beef

Never wash a raw roast, at least not the parts unprotected by the thin skin. Wipe the skin off with vinegar, dry with a soft cloth, and lay the meat, cut sides at top and bottom, upon the grating of your roaster. Dash a cupful of really boiling water over it. They cicatrice the surface and keep in the juices. Dredge with flour, cover and cook ten minutes to the pound, turning all the heat into the oven for fifteen minutes; then shift into a slower oven, or “dampen” the fire. Baste every ten minutes with the gravy dripping into the pan. Ten minutes before dishing the meat, wash freely with butter and dredge with browned flour, to “glaze” the roast.

Never serve “made gravy” with roast beef. Pour the liquid from the pan into a bowl, and when the fat is solid, remove it and clarify for dripping. The residuum will add richness to your soup-stock, or make a savory base for stew or hash.

Serve horseradish sauce and mustard with your rare roast, and put a little of the ruddy juice which exudes as the meat is carved, upon each slice when served.

Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding

Fifteen minutes before taking up the roast just described, skim six tablespoonfuls of fat from the gravy, put into a smaller dripping-pan, or pudding-dish, and set in the oven. Have ready this batter:

Sift an even teaspoonful of salt and one of baking-powder twice with a pint of flour. Beat two eggs light, add to them two cupfuls of milk, turn in the sifted flour and mix quickly. Set the reserved fat upon the upper grating of the oven; when it begins to bubble, turn in the batter, and cook quickly to a fine, golden-brown. Cut into squares and garnish the meat with them when you dish it.

This is a better way than cooking the pudding in the roaster under the meat, as used to be the custom with English cooks.

Réchauffé of beef à la jardiniére

Lay yesterday’s piece of beef in a roasting-pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cover it with thick slices of raw tomatoes. Dash a cupful of boiling water over all, put a close cover on the roaster, and cook in a hot oven for thirty-five minutes. While this is cooking boil tender a pint of green peas, a pint of potatoes—cut into tiny squares—three carrots, also cut small, and ten small onions. Season each vegetable with pepper, salt, and a small bit of butter.

Lay the beef with the tomatoes upon it on a hot platter, pour over it any gravy remaining in the pan, and arrange neatly about it the other vegetables. Be sure that meat and vegetables are very hot when served.

Braised beef

Put a nice round of beef in a broad-bottomed iron pot with a tablespoonful of butter, and sprinkle a chopped onion over it. Cook the beef on one side until brown, then turn and cook on the other side for the same length of time. Now dash a pint of boiling water over the meat, put a close cover on the pot and let the contents cook slowly, allowing at least fifteen minutes to every pound of beef. When the meat is done, remove from the pot to a platter and keep warm while you strain the gravy left in the pot; return to the fire and thicken it with a tablespoonful of browned flour rubbed into the same quantity of butter. Season the gravy with salt, pepper, and a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, and pour it over the meat.

Rib-ends of beef

These are usually cut off when the roast is rolled, and can be bought cheap.

Fry in beef fat a sliced onion and a chopped sweet pepper—carefully seeded. Take these up with a skimmer and keep hot. Pepper, salt and flour the rib-ends and fry in the same fat until they begin to brown. Put, now, with the fat into a saucepan, strew the fried onion and pepper on top; pour in a cup of weak stock; fit on a close cover, and cook very slowly until the beef is tender.

Strain and skim the gravy, thicken with browned flour; add a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet; arrange the beef-bones in a dish; pour the gravy over them and serve.