Part 30

Lay the pig, which has been prepared by the butcher, in cold water for fifteen minutes, then wipe dry, inside and out. Make a stuffing as for a turkey, and work into it two beaten eggs. Stuff the pig to his original size and shape. Sew him up, bend his fore legs backward, and his back legs forward under him, and skewer him thus. Dredge him with flour and put it, with a little salted water, into a covered roaster. Roast for an hour and a half; remove the cover, rub the pig well with butter and return the cover, leaving the slide open. At the end of twenty minutes remove the cover again, rub the pig once more with butter, and brown him for ten minutes. Serve very hot with apple sauce.

A pig for roasting should not weigh over six or seven pounds after it is cleaned. If larger, it is gross food. The meat should be as delicate as chicken.

Roast pork

Score the skin until the knife touches the meat under it. Rub into these lines or squares a mixture of fine crumbs seasoned with onion juice, a little grated lemon-peel and the juice of half a lemon, with pepper and salt to taste. Work in well until the stuffing stands out of the cracks. Put into your roaster, with a cupful of hot water under it, and after covering bring quickly to the point at which the water begins to steam. Slacken the heat then, and cook twenty-five minutes to the pound, basting often with its own gravy.

Pour off this gravy twenty minutes before taking the meat up, and set in a bowl of ice to send all the fat to the top. Greasy pork gravy is an offense to the educated palate. Thicken with browned flour.

A better plan is not to attempt to make gravy, but to send around apple sauce alone with the roast.

Chine of pork braised with apples

Instruct your butcher to cut the chine with plenty of meat on both sides of the bone. Sprinkle it well with pepper and salt, and lightly with sage and sweet marjoram. Pare, core and cut into thick slices three large, tart apples. Cover the grating of your roaster with them, strew with sugar and lay the chine upon them. Dot the meat with butter; cover and roast twenty-five minutes to the pound. At the end of that time transfer the meat to a dripping-pan, turning it over that the side which has lain upon the apples may be uppermost. Wash with butter, cover thick with salted and peppered crumbs, and brown upon the upper grating of a hot oven while you make the gravy.

To do this rub the cooked apple and the liquor with them through a colander into a saucepan, add a little hot water, a lump of butter rolled in flour, and, if very tart, a little sugar; pepper and salt to taste, boil up and turn into a boat.

Serve peas, pudding or beans in some shape with the chine.

Pork tenderloins

Broil over a clear, steady fire, turning as often as they begin to drip. Allow twenty minutes, if small; more when large. Lay upon a heated dish, cover with a mixture of butter, lemon juice, onion juice, pepper, salt and a dash of powdered sage. Turn over and over in this as it melts; cover closely and leave over hot water several minutes to let the seasoning sink into the meat.

Serve browned whole potatoes and apple sauce with them.

Boiled ham

Soak eight hours, and scrub it hard with a stiff brush or whisk to get out salt and dirt. Cover with an abundance of cold water, and put into it two tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Heat very gradually. At the end of the first hour it should not have reached the boiling point. Simmer gently four or five hours. Allow twenty minutes to every pound for a corned ham; twenty-five for a smoked. Let it get almost cold in the liquor—entirely cold before you skin it.

Barbecued fresh ham

Score the rind with a sharp knife. Mix one tablespoonful of mustard seed, half a teaspoonful, each, of celery seed and pepper corns with one cupful of sugar, one cupful of vinegar and two cupfuls of water. Let these stand ten minutes, then pour it over the ham. Turn it in this pickle several times during the day. Next morning put the ham into your covered roaster in a slow oven, fat side down, for the first hour. Strain the pickle and keep it hot on the back of the stove. Baste the ham frequently with it and bake four hours, or until tender.

All of the pickle should have been used in basting. Lay the ham upon a heated dish and keep hot over boiling water while you make the gravy. Strain the liquor, thicken with browned flour, add salt to taste, simmer for five minutes and pour part over the meat, the rest into a boat.

Those who are fond of hot fresh pork can not do better than to try this. It is also delicious cold.

Breaded ham

Boil as directed in recipe for boiled ham. When cold, skin and rub all over with flour. Next, brush with beaten egg, sift fine crumbs thickly ever the egg, then more egg and another coat of crumbs. Dust with pepper and brown gradually.

Eat cold, garnished with parsley.

Baked ham

Is seldom really “baked.” Boil a ham eighteen minutes to the pound; leave it one hour in the liquor in which it was cooked; take it out and let it get really cold and firm before stripping off the skin. Rub the upper side with white of egg and sift over it bread dust a quarter of an inch thick. Pepper lightly, and set in the oven for half an hour, or until the coating is well shortened by the oozing fat, and of a nice brown. Let it get cold to the very bone before serving it. If you like a suspicion of onion flavoring, wash the surface to be breaded with onion juice before going over it with the white of an egg.

Baked corned ham

Soak over night. In the morning scrub hard and pare away the underside until the meat and fat show red and white. Wash well with vinegar and do not wipe. Lay, skin downward, in your roaster, covering the side you have pared with a thick paste of flour and water. Have ready a mixture of one cupful of cold water and half as much vinegar, a tablespoonful of molasses and one of onion juice. Pour around the ham; cover closely and bake half an hour to the pound, after the water is hot. Baste six times with the liquor in the pan.

Take up, scrape off the paste, remove the skin, dusting instantly and thickly with fine cracker-crumbs to stop the escape of the juices. There should be a cracker crust a quarter-inch thick. Set upon the upper grating to brown.

Stuffed ham

Wash a ham and soak over night; then, with a narrow, sharp blade, remove the bone. Fill the cavity thus left with a forcemeat of bread-crumbs, seasoned with pepper and moistened with a little water in which a spoonful of butter has been melted. Sew the ham up closely in a piece of cheese-cloth and boil until done, allowing twenty minutes to the pound. Leave it in the water until cold, transfer to a platter and put under a heavy weight for twelve hours. Now remove the cloth and the skin, and sprinkle the ham with pepper before sending to the table.

To pickle pork

Mix together four and a half pounds of salt, a pound of brown sugar and one ounce of saltpeter, stirred into three gallons of water. Boil for half an hour, skimming every ten minutes. Set aside to cool, and when cold pour over the meat packed in a crock or keg.

Virginia recipe for curing ham

Put the ham into pickle made by putting into one and one-half gallons of water one-half pound of brown sugar, one-half ounce of saltpeter and two and one-quarter pounds of salt. Boil this mixture for half an hour, skimming frequently; then set aside to cool and pour over the ham. Leave for two weeks, remove the ham, wash it in fresh water; dip it, still wet, in bran, and coat thickly with it. Now take to the smokehouse and hang, hock end down, in smoke from hickory chips and sawdust for four weeks. Brush off the bran, wrap in brown paper and hang up until needed.

POULTRY

ROAST TURKEY

Draw, with care not to break the gall-bag. Wash out the cavity three times with cold water, adding a little soda to the second water. You can not be too careful in this part of your task.

Fill the body and craw with some one of the stuffings or “dressings” given below. Sew up the body and tie the skin covering the craw securely about the “scrag” or neck with cotton twine. Bind the legs and wings snugly to the body with cotton tape or strips of muslin. If the fowl be rather scrawny cover the breast with thin slices of fat salt pork. Put upon the grating of your covered roaster. Pour a cupful of boiling water over it to sear the skin and keep in the juices; cover and cook fifteen minutes to the pound, quite fast for twelve minutes or so, afterward steadily but slowly. Baste four times, each time very thoroughly, with the gravy from the pan.

A quarter of an hour before taking the turkey up, uncover and wash over with butter, then dredge with flour, and shut up in the oven to brown.

Make the gravy by stirring into the contents of the dripping-pan (when you have removed the turkey and are keeping it hot) the giblets, minced almost to powder, a tablespoonful of browned flour wet up with cold water, salt and pepper to taste. Skim before you add anything. Boil one minute and pour into a gravy-boat.

Always serve cranberry sauce with turkey, when you can get it.

Bread dressing for turkey

To a large cupful of crumbs allow a tablespoonful of minced fat pork. Season with pepper and, if you like, a little minced parsley. A little onion juice is an improvement. Moisten very slightly with cream, or milk.

Sausage dressing for turkey

Make as in last recipe, substituting sausage-meat for the pork. If partially cooked before it goes into the dressing, it is more wholesome.

Oyster stuffing for turkey

Make a stuffing for turkey in the ordinary way of dried breadcrumbs seasoned with parsley, thyme and sweet marjoram, and moistened with melted butter. To this add twenty small oysters chopped fine, and with this stuff the breast of the turkey.

Or to the ordinary seasoned bread-stuffing for a turkey add two dozen small oysters, moisten the crumbs slightly with the oyster liquor, and fill the breast of the turkey with the mixture.

Chestnut stuffing for turkey

Boil one quart of the large French or Italian chestnuts, shell and peel them. Mash smooth and rub into them two tablespoonfuls of butter, and salt and white pepper to taste. Stuff the turkey with this as you would any other kind of dressing.

Fillets of turkey with rice

Skin the breast of a plump turkey, and slice away the breast. Use a sharp knife and hold it almost horizontal while at work. The slices should be nearly half an inch thick, and as nearly uniform in size as possible. Dip in beaten egg, then in salted and peppered cracker-crumbs; again in the egg, and once more in the crumbs. Set on the ice while you cook the rice.

Put one cupful of clear chicken or turkey stock into a saucepan; add a cupful of rice, one-half teaspoonful of onion juice, and the same of salt, and simmer slowly until the liquid is absorbed. When the rice is tender add two tablespoonfuls of butter; one tablespoonful of grated cheese, and season to taste. Cover and let it stand at the side of the fire until the fillets are ready. Heat five or six spoonfuls of pure salad oil slowly in a frying-pan, and when it boils, cook the fillets in it to a nice brown. Mound the savory rice in the center of a hot dish and lay the fillets about it.

When properly made this is an elegant _entrée_.

Roast turkey, réchauffé

When but half of a large turkey has been cut away, the remainder can be made presentable for a second serving by “braising” it thus:

Cut very thin slices of fat salt pork and cover the untouched side with them, binding in place with soft twine. Lay the turkey, cut-side downward, in your covered roaster; pour a large cupful of weak stock or gravy under the grating, put on the lid and cook one hour, slowly, basting several times with the gravy in the pan below the roast. Take up the turkey, remove the pork, dredge with flour and set back in the oven, basting it with butter to “glaze” it as soon as the flour is wet through. Shut up to brown when you have drained away the gravy.

Strain this through a colander, thicken with browned flour, add half a can of minced champignons, cook two minutes, and pour into a boat.

Scallop of turkey and oysters

Cut cold roast or boiled turkey into inch-lengths, free from skin and gristle, and put a layer in the bottom of a buttered bake-dish. Season with salt and pepper, dot with butter and cover with minced raw oysters. Season this layer, scatter fine crumbs over it, put in more seasoned turkey, and go on in this order until your materials are used up. Pour in, then, a cupful of gravy made by boiling down bones and stuffing in a quart of water until reduced to one-third the original quantity of liquid, and straining out the bones. Cover with fine crumbs, dot with butter and bake, covered, forty-five minutes, then brown. You may omit the oysters, and have a plain turkey scallop.

Or substitute chopped mushrooms for the minced oysters.

Turkey and sausage pudding

This is a good way of using yesterday’s turkey, if there is not a sightly half left to be set on again.

Into a buttered bake-dish put a layer of turkey, cut—not chopped—into half-inch lengths. Drop bits of butter over it, but no other seasoning. Cover with minced, cooked sausage-meat, and this with three or four olives chopped fine. Proceed in this way until the dish is ready for the crust. Pour in a cupful of rich gravy made of bones and stuffing; cover with a good biscuit-dough half an inch thick; cut a hole in the middle and bake, covered, three-quarters of an hour, then brown.

Ragout of turkey

Break the carcass of a roast turkey all to pieces, and chop what remnants of stuffing you have. Add a quart of cold water, and cook slowly until you have but a cupful of liquid. Strain and let it get cold. Skim off the fat, season with onion juice, kitchen bouquet, salt and paprika, and set over the fire with the turkey meat, cut into neat cubes, and a half cupful of champignons (or fresh mushrooms, if you have them). Bring quickly to a boil, thicken well with browned flour, boil up, add a glass of claret and serve. Lay sippets of fried bread around the ragout.

Boiled turkey

An undeniably tough turkey would be better boiled than roasted.

Clean, wash and fill with oyster-stuffing, for which a recipe was given a few pages back. Truss closely and sew up in a clean piece of white mosquito-netting. Lay in a pan and pour boiling water all over it from the tea-kettle, slowly, to toughen the skin and keep in the juices. Roll the turkey over and over in his hot bath, take out at the end of two minutes; put into a pot, cover deep with cold water, and heat gradually to a boil. Cook fifteen minutes to the pound, always gently. If the turkey be large and old, give him twenty minutes for each pound. Take the pot from the range, leave it covered for twenty minutes with the bird in it. Take him out, unwrap quickly, dish, wash freely with hot butter well-seasoned with salt and white pepper; pour a few spoonfuls of hot drawn butter over him, and serve. Send oyster sauce around with boiled turkey.

DUCKS

Roast ducks

Draw and clean, washing the inside in three waters, the second having a teaspoonful of baking-soda mixed with it.

Plunge into ice-cold water; leave them there for fifteen minutes; wipe well inside and out, and stuff with a forcemeat of dry crumbs seasoned with salt, pepper, onion juice and finely minced parsley.

Personally, I do not like sage in the stuffing. It gives a “medicated tang,” to my way of thinking—or tasting. Many people, however, insist upon adding the venerable simple to the forcemeat. Do not moisten the stuffing. Put it in dry, packing well. Dredge the ducks with peppered and salted flour; lay upon the grating of your roaster, pour a cupful of boiling water over them, and roast, covered, from twelve to fifteen minutes to the pound, according to age. Baste four times with the gravy from the dripping-pan. Uncover, wash with butter, dredge with flour and brown.

To make the gravy, drain off the liquor from the pan; set in ice-water to throw up the grease, strain, add the giblets minced very fine, thicken with browned flour, and boil for two minutes.

Serve with currant jelly, or apple sauce, and pass green peas with them.

Braised ducks

Young ducks are essential for this purpose. Lay three slices of fat corned ham upon the grating of your roaster, and upon them a minced onion, a stalk of celery, chopped, a sliced carrot and a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Clean and truss, but do not stuff the ducks; lay them upon the prepared “bed,” and pour a cupful of boiling water over them. Cover the pan and let them cook, closely covered, in a moderate oven for about two hours. Take up the ducks, strain the liquor from the pan, and let it cool enough to remove all the fat. Then put it into a saucepan, and let it boil. Add one teaspoonful of lemon juice, and thicken it slightly with browned flour. Return the fowls to the sauce till hot again, then serve with the sauce poured over them.

Creole salmi of duck

Melt in a saucepan two tablespoonfuls of butter, and stir into this a half tablespoonful, each, of chopped ham, onion, celery, sweet pepper and parsley, with a tablespoonful of flour, a quarter of a teaspoonful of salt, and a half teaspoonful of paprika. Stir for three minutes, then add a cupful of consommé, two cloves and a blade of mace. Simmer for an hour; strain and add to it two cupfuls of cold duck, cut into neat pieces an inch long. Boil one minute to heat the meat thoroughly, and serve.

Garnish with sippets of fried bread.

CHICKENS

Roast chickens

Singe to get rid of down, draw and wash well, rinsing the cavity of each fowl with soda and water. Wipe and fill bodies and craws with a stuffing of dry crumbs, well-seasoned with pepper, salt and butter. Tie up the neck and bind legs and wings close to the body with soft cord or tapes.

Lay upon the grating of your covered roaster; dash a cupful of boiling water over them, cover, and roast fifteen minutes to the pound. Drain off the gravy, and set in iced water to throw up the fat. Wash the chickens over with butter, dredge with flour and brown. Clip the threads and dish. Thicken the gravy with browned flour, add the chopped giblets (previously boiled tender), boil up once and turn into a boat.

Boiled fowls

Prepare as for roasting; sew up in white netting, or in coarse lace, and souse four times in boiling water. Then put over the fire in cold, slightly salted water, covering deeply; bring slowly to the boil, and cook gently fifteen minutes to the pound.

Have ready egg-or oyster-sauce, or bread-sauce. Pour a few spoonfuls of hot butter, salted and peppered, over the chickens, the rest into a boat.

Smothered chickens

Broilers, and other really young fowls, are necessary for this dish. Split down the back when you have cleaned and washed them. Lay them out flat on the grating of your roaster, skin side down, and put into a very hot oven, covered. Have ready half a cupful of melted butter, and after five minutes baste the chickens well with this. Turn them as soon as the inside has colored slightly; baste again with butter; when nearly done dredge thickly with flour and wash again with butter. When they are brown, and the flesh is tender in the joints, they are done. Thirty minutes should be sufficient. Baste frequently, and as soon as they are browned you may add a little hot water to the butter.

Take up the chickens and keep them hot, thicken the gravy with browned flour, and boil one minute before pouring into a boat.

If the chickens are large, make a gash at each joint before cooking, and cook longer. This is sometimes called “baked broiled chicken,” sometimes, “chicken broiled in the oven.”

Broiled chicken

When you have cleaned and washed the young chickens, split down the back, so as to leave the breast in one piece. Lay in lemon juice and salad oil for half an hour, wipe lightly, pepper and salt, and lay within a well-greased broiler, skin side uppermost. Broil ten or twelve minutes to the pound, according to age and weight, turning often and never allowing it to drip upon the coals. When done, lay, breast upward, upon a hot dish, rub all over with a mixture of butter, lemon juice and minced parsley, and serve.

Pass fried potatoes with it.

Baked fried chicken

Here again you must have young chickens. Clean, wash and cut up at every joint, dividing the breast into two pieces. Lay in a marinade of salad oil and lemon juice for half an hour; drain, but do not wipe. Roll in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs. Repeat the process and leave on the ice for an hour. Lay, then, upon the grating of your roaster, pour a little gravy in the pan beneath, and cover closely. At the end of twenty minutes, baste with melted butter, carefully, not to disturb the crumb coating; re-cover, and at the end of half an hour more, baste plentifully with the gravy. Now let them brown. Send bread-sauce in with them, and garnish with parsley.

Braised chicken

Cover the grating of your roaster with a blanket of vegetables; a carrot, a small young turnip, an onion, a young carrot, a stalk of celery, all cut up small; a little chopped parsley, and two tablespoonfuls of finely minced salt pork. Have ready the chicken, cleaned and trussed, but not stuffed. Lay, breast upward, on the vegetables and pork. Pour a little boiling water over him from the teakettle, and set, covered, in the oven. Cover closely and cook at least twenty minutes to the pound if the chicken be young. If old, extend the time. At the end of one hour lift the cover and baste with butter, then with the water from the pan, and shut up for an hour longer. Uncover then, rub with butter, dredge with flour and brown.

Drain the gravy with the vegetables from the pan, rub through a colander into a saucepan, thicken with browned flour, boil up and serve in a boat.

Baked chicken

Clean as usual, and cover with thin slices of cold boiled ham. Corned ham is better than smoked, but either will do. Wind fine cotton cord around and around the ham to hold it in place; lay upon the grating of your roaster; pour over it a cup of boiling hot stock, scatter parsley and sprinkle onion juice upon it; cover closely to keep in the steam and cook slowly twenty-five minutes to the pound. Baste three times within the first hour. Test with a skewer or a fork. If tender, it should be unwrapped, basted with butter, dredged with flour and left uncovered to brown.

Garnish with the ham cut into strips. Thicken the gravy with browned flour, season and cook one minute.

Fricasseed chicken

Clean as usual, and dissect so thoroughly that the carver will have nothing for his knife to do in “helping” the dish. The breast and the back should be in two pieces, each, and every joint be separate from the next.

Wash, but do not wipe. Arrange the pieces, dripping wet, in a pot, scatter over each layer minced onion, parsley and chopped fat pork; season with salt and pepper. Cover the pot very closely and set it where it will not begin to boil under an hour. Increase the heat somewhat, but cook slowly throughout. _Cook until done!_ The toughest tendons will yield to slow stewing in time.

When assured that your end is gained, take out the meat with a split spoon, heap upon a platter, the white at one end, the dark at the other, and keep hot while making the gravy. To do this, pour into a bowl, set in iced water to make the fat rise. Skim, return to the pot and add a cupful of hot milk thickened with a tablespoonful of butter rubbed into one of flour. Boil one minute—when you have added a pinch of soda. Have ready two well beaten eggs, add the boiling gravy gradually and pour over the chicken.

This is an old family recipe and warranted excellent.

Pass boiled rice with this dish.