Part 8

(Contributed)

To one cupful of cold boiled rice add one cupful of warm milk, one tablespoonful of melted butter, one teaspoonful of salt and a dash of pepper; mix well and add three well-beaten eggs. Heat a tablespoonful of butter in a frying-pan and when hot pour in the omelet and set the pan in a hot oven. When it is thoroughly cooked fold it double, turn out on a hot dish and serve at once.

Fish omelet

(Contributed)

Make about a half pint of white roux, add a piece of butter about the size of an egg, twelve shelled and cooked shrimps; season with salt and pepper; let it cook for two or three minutes, stirring all the time, then add half of a green sweet pepper, chopped fine, and cook for one minute. Make an omelet of six eggs; when brown, turn up and fill with this mixture. Serve at once on a hot platter.

Frizzled beef and eggs

(Contributed)

To every half pound of chipped beef allow half a pint of milk, one tablespoonful of butter and one tablespoonful of flour. Put the butter into a frying-pan; when hot add the beef and stir for about two minutes, or until the butter begins to brown, then dredge in the flour. Stir well, add the milk and a little pepper, and just before taking from the fire whip in two well-beaten eggs.

Ham omelet

(Contributed)

Make an omelet in the usual way; pour into an omelet pan and before the egg sets sprinkle over the top one teacupful of finely minced, cold, cooked ham.

Egg croquettes

(Contributed)

Cut hard-boiled eggs into one-quarter inch dice. Add one-fourth as many chopped mushrooms and turn into a thick white sauce. When cold, mold into croquettes, dip into egg, then in bread crumbs and fry in deep fat.

Eggs in cases

(Contributed)

Make little paper cases of buttered writing paper; put a small piece of butter in each and a little chopped parsley or onion; pepper and salt. Put the cases upon a gridiron over a moderate fire of bright coals, and when the butter melts break a fresh egg into each case. Strew over them a few buttered bread-crumbs, and when almost done glaze the tops with a hot shovel.

Minced eggs

(Contributed)

Chop up, but not too fine, four or five hard-boiled eggs. Put over the fire, in a saucepan, one tablespoonful of butter, and when it begins to bubble, stir into it one tablespoonful of flour; cook one minute, then add one cupful of hot milk. When it cooks thick like cream, put in the minced eggs. Stir it for a few minutes, and serve garnished with sippets of toast.

Scalloped eggs

(Contributed)

Slice in rings twelve hard-boiled eggs. Cover the bottom of a well-buttered baking dish with fine bread-crumbs; over this put a layer of eggs, some small pieces of butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Alternate in this way until the dish is filled, being careful to have bread-crumbs on top. Add two tablespoonfuls of rich milk or cream and bake in a moderate oven.

Shirred eggs

Butter small “nappies” and drop an egg carefully into each, taking care not to break the yolk. Set the nappies in a pan of boiling water on the range, and cook until the white is set. Put on each egg a bit of butter, and a dash each of pepper and salt. Serve at once.

FAMILIAR TALK

WHO RULES THE HOME?

The question is seldom put so baldly. Indulgent husbands yield the point in verbal gallantry. Politic wives make it a point of conscience and etiquette to speak of their husbands as owners of house and contents and lawful directors in all pertaining thereunto. At heart, the complaisant Benedict knows his will to be potent, if not supreme, in home and family. The wedded Beatrice is secretly conscious that she can wind her boastful Benedict about her taper finger, and he will not suspect.

An old, old ballad, warbled with sly smiles by our foremothers, thus sums up her view of the matter:

“Now, sisters, since we’ve made it plain That the case is really so, We’ll even let them hold the rein, But _we’ll_ show them the way to go!”

Honest John, while his sinewy fingers feel the taut rein between them, believes himself master of the situation. He pays for house, food and servants, and often works hard for the money that secures these for his family. Upon general principles he has a right to know that the money is wisely spent and husbanded; a right to be well lodged and fed and made as comfortable when at home as his means will allow. If he sees furniture abused, food badly—hence unwholesomely—cooked, and needless waste in any department, he has an unquestionable right to direct his wife’s attention to the existing state of things, and insist that it be amended. On the other hand, in giving his wife his name, he has made her the managing, as he is the financial, partner of the firm matrimonial.

She is not his hireling.

Failure to comprehend this vital truth wrecks the happiness of more married couples than incompatibility of temper, fickleness and intemperance, all put together.

A reasonably good wife earns so much more than her own living that the surplus ought to go to her credit. If not in money, in a hundred other ways. When John stoops to captious surveillance of her methods, and personal inspection of her work, he degrades her to the position of a suspected menial, and sinks his manhood into Bettyishness. “Bettyishness,” according to lexicographers, is the synonym for “womanishness,” and for John to be “womanish” is to be unmanly; Mary would rather have him savage, now and then.

I saw a spotless reputation discounted the other day, and many rare, amiable traits of disposition shrivel as waste paper in the fire, under a single sarcastic utterance of a society woman who had her own reasons for disliking the person under discussion.

“Yes!” she said, dubiously, to the praise an elderly matron had given an excellent son and brother. “But, then, he is such a _ladylike_ person!”

The epithet was apt. Not one of us could deny it. Every woman present, while she laughed, would have preferred to have her husband called a brute.

John takes ugly risks when he tempts his hitherto loyal spouse to name him to her confidential self as “Bettyish,” “Miss Nancy-ish” or a “Mollycoddle.” They all mean the same thing. As a sloven he may be forgiven in consideration of the solid manliness back of personal carelessness. We wink at rusty shoes, and collars awry, and tousled hair, and missing sleeve-links. For the same reason we condone crossness, and even a touch of savagery. When he comes home “in a temper,” he has had a trying day down town, or he is hot, or headachy, or hungry. Womanly ingenuity is set to work to soothe down the inclement mood, and womanly love glides to the front with the mantle of tenderest charity to hide the fault from others, and put it out of our own minds when it is past.

I know a man—squarely-built, robust and keen-eyed—who carries the keys of the store-room, and lends them to his wife at night and morning to give out the supplies needed for the daily meals. He registers in day-book and ledger every pound of butter and box of crackers and quart of vinegar brought into the house, with the date of purchase.

I knew another (who ceased from his labors ten years ago), who visited kitchen, pantries and store-room several times every week to see that everything was clean and orderly. He used to smell milk-pans, run a critical finger around the insides of kettles and pots and inquire into the destination of scraps—and all without a blush or misgiving. In each case it was, of course, impossible to keep servants who could get any other place. Wives belong to the class that can not give warning.

If either of these men would have tolerated the apparition in his counting-room or office, at stated, or irregular, periods of his wife—bent upon inspection of accounts and sales, the clerks undergoing examination, or standing as witnesses of his humiliation—then he was justified to his conscience for his policy of home rule.

Mary would go to prison _for_ her John, and to the scaffold _with_ him. She springs to arms in his defense if her nearest of kin dare to intimate that he is not the pink of perfection she would have them believe. His grossest eccentricities are graces so long as they are masculine.

But let him prowl into the pantry, peep into the bread-box, criticize the arrangement or _de_rangement of china-shelves, pull open linen drawers, spy out dusty rungs of chairs, take down, sort, and hang in better order the contents of clothes-hooks and hat-racks—and he may shift for and shield himself. With lofty scorn the wife of his immaculate shirt bosom leaves him to the fate he deserves.

In which course there is some reason and a little unreason. For which of us does not draw upon John’s sympathies in her domestic distresses? He must not undertake the management of Bridget, or Daphne, or Marie. These be womanish matters, in which a man should not intermeddle. It may be the most temperate of suggestions, such as, “My dear, I don’t like to find fault, but if you _would_ speak to Margaret about meddling with the papers upon my table when she dusts the library?” It is a distinct trespass upon wifely preserves. Margaret is under the protection of her mistress’ wing. The interests and credit of the two are identical. But there comes a day when the league snaps in two, like scorched twine. The maid gives warning, and company is expected, and the mistress “did think she had a right to expect better things from Margaret, after all the kindness she has shown her in sickness and in health, and the excellent wages she has given her, and here, at the most inconvenient time she could have chosen, the creature is deserting her!”

Thus runs the torrent of talk into the ears of a man who left a much worse complication behind him in his office when he set his face toward home and imaginary peace. Had he found fault with Margaret a week ago, he would have been a “Molly.” Should he withhold sympathy from the mistress to-day, to the extent of commending the ingrate’s past services, and wondering if there may not be possible palliation somewhere for her present behavior—he is unfeeling, and—“a MAN!” When a woman brings out the monosyllable in that accent, she may as well go a semi-tone higher and say, “Monster!”

To be explicit, John must dance when his spouse puts the pipes to her lips, and not presume to mourn but at her lamenting. As her sister, my sympathies topple dangerously toward her. As an impartial chronicler I can not deny that much may be said in his defense, even when he is convicted of womanish meddling. He is but a passenger upon the domestic craft in fair weather, a paying passenger, who is expected, nevertheless, to be smilingly content with his accommodations, to eat as he is fed, sleep upon the bed as it is made, and to complain of nothing until the sea gets rough, and another and a stout hand is needed on deck and in the rigging.

The principle should work well both ways, or it will go to pieces of its own weight.

FISH FOR BREAKFAST

A modern Peter Magnus, always on the alert for coincidences, once called my attention to the singular fitness of the height of the fish season and the coming of Lent.

“It happens uncommonly convenient, at any rate. How very, very awkward it would be if there were no fish in the market just when the Church forbids meat!” prosed my interlocutor, whose nationality I need not specify.

I might have replied, had there been any hope of his seeing the point of the story, with the anecdote of one of his countrymen who invited me to view the total eclipse of the moon through his telescope, and, while I gazed, remarked upon the happy accident that this particular eclipse “had taken place at the full of the moon.”

Dame Nature adjusts kindly and cleverly all seasons and happenings to the need of her children. Fish, easily digested and rich in phosphates, are in their delicious prime as winter suddenly relaxes her hold upon our world and our systems. We needed fats to keep up animal fats in cold weather. The first warmer days ease the taut running-gear of muscles, nerves and digestive apparatus. She cries, “’Ware meat!” peremptorily. However deaf we may be to the Church’s behest, we can not afford to disregard the Great Mother’s.

The breaking up of winter, the general letting down of physical energies and the abundant supply of food precisely adapted to the season’s needs, form a “coincidence” that the most stupid must perceive. The like principle of demand and supply might, one might imagine, be recognized in the matter of breakfast foods. Fish, rightly cooked, tempts the appetite and does not overload the stomach. Another recommendation which should have weight with commuters and “hustlers,” is that the yielding fibers require less strenuous mastication than those of steaks, chops and rashers.

The truism that as a nation we are inordinate flesh-consumers is tattered by much wear. Since vegetarianism comes as a hard lesson to the mass of our race, and the exacting palate demands more definite flavors than those of eggs in any form, resort to crustacean and finny delicacies should follow as a matter of course and of common sense.

Shad

Sturgeon is known in England as the “Queen’s Own Fish.” Hiawatha names him as the “King of Fishes.” The American epicure has transferred this title to the more delicately flavored salmon. If a vote of native-born gourmands of all ranks of society were taken, I think the shad would be the elect favorite—the dainty queen of fishes, the more royal for the wealth of roes that bespeak her prime.

Planked shad

Have your fish cleaned and split down the back. Wash and wipe dry. Have ready a clean oak or hickory plank, about two and one-half inches in thickness and of such a length that it will go easily into your oven. Set it in the oven until it is heated through. Rub your shad on both sides with an abundance of butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Lay it, open side up, on the hot plank and fasten it firmly into place by putting a tin tack at each of the four corners. Lay the plank on the upper grating of the oven, and rub the fish with butter every few minutes until done. You can tell when this point is reached by testing with a fork. Carefully withdraw the tacks and slip the fish upon a hot platter. Serve with melted butter, and garnish with slices of lemon and sprigs of parsley.

Broiled shad with sauce piquante

Split the fish down the back, wash, wipe dry, and lay it open on a well-greased gridiron. Broil over clear coals, taking care to turn the fish often, as it burns easily. If the shad is a thick one it will take about twenty minutes to cook thoroughly. Remove carefully from the gridiron, lay on a hot fish platter, butter well and sprinkle with pepper and salt. Pass with the fish a sauce made in the following manner:

Rub to a cream three tablespoonfuls of butter and two teaspoonfuls of lemon juice. Whip into this two teaspoonfuls of finely minced parsley. The sauce should be light green in color. Keep in a cold place until time to serve it with the fish.

Fried shad

Mrs. S. T. Rorer, whose authority on culinary counsels few dare dispute, says: “Shad, being rich in oils, should never be fried.”

In tide-water Virginia, where shad are eaten in their perfection and within a few hours after they are drawn from the river, frying is a most popular method of preparing them. Some cooks there rid the fish of all suspicion of an oily taste by holding it up by the gills and pouring a pint or so of boiling water over it. After the shower-bath it is immediately laid in ice water to keep the flesh firm. Then have the shad split down the back, and cut each half of the fish into four pieces. Wash quickly and wipe dry. Roll in beaten egg and cracker crumbs, lay the pieces, side by side, on a platter and set in the ice-box for two hours. Fry to a golden brown in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. Drain all the grease off in a colander; arrange the fish in neat order on a folded napkin laid in the bottom of a fish platter. Garnish with slices of lemon and sprigs of parsley. Serve Bechamel sauce with the fish.

Shad croquettes

Flake the remains of yesterday’s fish into bits with a silver fork. There should be about a cupful of the picked fish. Cook together a tablespoonful of flour and one of butter and pour upon them a cup of milk. Stir to a thick sauce; pour this gradually upon the beaten yolks of two eggs, mix well, add the flaked fish, season to taste, and turn upon a platter to cool and stiffen. When the mixture is cold and firm form it into small croquettes and roll these, first in cracker dust, then in beaten egg, and once again in cracker dust. Set aside in a cool place for two hours, and fry in deep boiling cottolene or other fat brought slowly to the boil. Serve with sliced lemon.

Scalloped shad

Pick cold shad into bits, removing skin and bones. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a frying-pan and fry a sliced onion in this. Remove the onion, stir in a tablespoonful of browned flour, and, when this is blended with the butter, pour upon it slowly a cup of clear beef-stock. Stir to a smooth sauce, season with pepper and salt, a very little kitchen bouquet, and a half-cup of tomato liquor. When smooth and as thick as cream, add the fish, stir and toss for a moment and remove from the fire. Turn into scallop shells, sprinkle with crumbs and bake, covered, for twenty minutes; then uncover and brown.

Broiled shad roes

Parboil the roes in salted water as soon as they are taken from the fish. Cook ten minutes and leave in ice water until cold and firm. “Marinade” them in bath of lemon juice and salad oil for one hour. Wipe lightly and broil to a nice brown, turning several times. Pass with lemon sauce.

Fried shad roes

Parboil as directed, let them get chilled in ice water, wipe dry, roll in beaten egg and salted cracker crumbs and fry in deep hot cottolene or other fat heated gradually to the boiling point before the roes go in.

Scallops of shad roes

Parboil and blanch. When perfectly cold break up and pass through a colander or vegetable press. Season with lemon juice, kitchen bouquet, paprika and salt. Have ready a cup of rich drawn butter. Stir the roes into it, beat up well, pour into scallop shells or pâté-pans, sift fine crumbs over the top and bake quickly upon the upper grating of the oven.

Shad roe croquettes

Proceed as with the scallops, except that you make the drawn butter rather thicker, and add a well-beaten egg, together with a tablespoonful of fine crumbs, to give the croquettes consistency. Let the mixture get perfectly cold; mold into croquettes, roll in egg and cracker crumbs and leave on the ice over night. In the morning renew the crumbs and fry in deep hissing cottolene or other fat which has been brought gradually to the boil.

Fried smelts with lemon sauce

Clean, wash and dry the smelts. Roll in salted and peppered flour, and leave in a cold place for an hour to get firm. Fry in deep cottolene or other fat to a light brown, laying each in a hot colander as you take it from the pan, to drain off the grease. Serve in a hot dish. A pretty way of serving them is to fringe several thicknesses of white tissue paper at both ends, and lay in the bottom of the dish, the fringe showing beyond the heap of fish. Serve with—

Lemon sauce

Heat (not melt) three tablespoonfuls of butter until you can beat it to a cream. Whip into it the strained juice of one large or two small lemons, with a heaping tablespoonful of finely-minced parsley. It should be like a light-green cream when done. Fill with this mixture the halves of lemons, from which all the pulp and inner skin have been scraped, and garnish the dish of smelts with them, serving one of the “cups” with each portion of fish.

Fried trout

Clean, wipe inside and out, pepper and salt; roll in egg and cracker crumbs and fry in deep, hot cottolene or other fat, always recollecting to heat this gradually to boiling point before the fish go in.

Or, having cleaned and dried them, roll in salted and peppered meal; then fry.

Fried perch and other pan-fish

Cook as directed in last recipe. It is always well to have the fish on ice for an hour or more after they are egged and breaded, or rolled in meal.

Fish cutlets

Mince cold boiled or baked salmon, haddock, cod, or any other firm-fleshed fish. Season to taste and mix well with a little rich drawn butter, made quite thick with corn starch. Spread upon a broad platter, and, when stiff, cut into the desired shape with a tin “form.” Roll in fine crumbs, then in egg and in cracker crumbs again; leave on the ice to get firm, and fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat which has been heated slowly.

Lobster and crab cutlets

Are made in the same way.

Salmon steaks

Have the steaks cut nearly an inch thick. Wipe with a damp cloth and lay in salad oil for an hour. Drain and put upon a gridiron over a clear fire. Broil slowly, rubbing with butter from time to time. They will take at least twenty minutes to cook, and must be watched carefully that they do not scorch. When done, put upon each steak a generous lump of butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Salmon loaf

Flake cold boiled salmon and moisten it with a gill of cream, a half-gill of milk and two beaten eggs. Stir in a handful of fine crumbs, the juice of half a lemon, a tablespoonful of butter, salt and pepper to taste, and a tablespoonful of minced parsley. Mix thoroughly, turn into a greased pudding-dish, and bake in a steady oven for about three-quarters of an hour, then turn out upon a hot platter. Serve with a white sauce. You may also boil this in a covered mold.

Salmon croquettes

With a silver fork flake the contents of a can of salmon, or two pounds of fresh salmon, into bits—removing all pieces of skin and bone—and season to taste with salt, pepper and a few drops of lemon juice. Cook together a tablespoonful, each, of butter and flour, and when they bubble pour upon them a cup of milk. Stir to a smooth, white sauce, add slowly a raw egg, then turn in the salmon mixed with two tablespoonfuls of fine crumbs. When the salmon is heated remove from the fire and set aside to cool. When cold, form into croquettes, roll these in beaten egg and cracker crumbs and set in the ice-box for an hour before frying in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat, which has been heated gradually.

Scalloped salmon

With a silver fork pick into bits the contents of a can of salmon, rejecting all particles of skin and bone. Make a sauce of a half-pint of milk, thickened with a white roux, and turn the salmon into this. Stir and toss over the fire until smoking-hot; season to taste, put into a greased pudding-dish. Strew thickly with crumbs, dot with bits of butter and bake for twenty minutes.

Broiled haddock

Haddock is not popular among “good livers” in the United States. For some reason it is ranked as a second-hand and plebeian fish. Yet it can be made good although cheap.

Clean, wash and wipe well, and gash the back with a sharp knife. Then “marinade” as you would his patrician brethren: i. e., cover him with salad oil and vinegar, or lemon juice, and let him lie in the bath for an hour. Wipe and broil, turning when half done. Transfer to a hot dish, anoint with butter, lemon and chopped parsley, and send to table.

Haddock fillets

Two pounds of what the cooks call “the thick of the fish” will make four fillets, about four inches long by two wide. Skin each piece with a sharp knife; trim into shape and leave in a marinade of oil and vinegar with a tablespoonful of minced chives, or, if you have none, a tablespoonful of onion juice. Let the fillets lie there for an hour. Then drain well, roll in a good batter, afterward in fine crumbs, and fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. Drain upon hot tissue paper, and send to table very hot. Send around tomato sauce with it.

Halibut fillets

May be cooked in the same way.

Broiled halibut steak