Part 2

Beat the eggs steadily four minutes. Have ready in a bowl the warmed milk, water, melted butter and soda. Into this stir the salted flour, cupful by cupful, until all is in. Beat smooth from lumps and add the yeast. The eggs should now be whipped three minutes with the “Dover,” in a cool bowl. They will not froth in a hot or warm one. When light, beat well into the batter, and then beat _up_ hard for a full minute. A wooden spoon is best for this purpose. Butter a tin cake-mould well in every part, and put in the batter. If there is more than enough to half-fill the mould have two prepared, that the contents may not overflow in rising.

Set in a moderately warm place for six hours at least, and then bake in the mould for three quarters of an hour if there is but one loaf, half an hour if there are two.

The oven must be steady and not very hot at first. Turn the mould twice in this time keeping the oven door open as short a time as possible. When you think the loaf is done, thrust a clean straw down into the thickest part.

If it comes up as clean as when it went in, take out the bread. Slip a knife around the edge to loosen it, and turn out upside down on a warm plate.

Cut in triangular slices at table, holding the knife upright to avoid crushing and making it heavy.

Quick Biscuits.

One quart of sifted flour.

Two heaping tablespoonfuls of sweet, firm lard.

Two cups of new milk (warm from the cow if you can get it.)

Two tablespoonfuls of baking powder.

One teaspoonful of salt.

Sift salt, flour, and baking-powder twice into a bowl or tray. With a clean sharp chopping-knife work the lard into this, turning and chopping until no lumps are left. Into a hollow in the middle pour the milk, working the flour downward until you have a soft, wet mass, using the chopper for this purpose. Flour your pastry-board and your hands, make the dough into a ball, handling it as little as possible, and lay on the board. Roll out with a floured rolling-pin into a sheet half an inch in thickness, and with _very few strokes_. Cut into round cakes, sift flour lightly over the bottom of a baking-pan, and set your biscuits—just _not_ touching one another—in even rows within it.

Bake about twelve minutes in a quick oven. The dough should have a rough appearance before it is baked, like what is known as “pebbled morocco.” Too much handling will make it sleek without and tough within.

You can make excellent quick biscuits by the above receipt, by substituting Hecker’s Prepared Flour for the barreled family flour, and omitting the baking-powder. You will, however, probably be obliged to add a little more milk, as prepared flour “thickens up” rather more than other brands.

4

OTHER BREAKFAST BREADS.

Griddle Cakes.

IN making these, let quickness be the first, second and third rules. Beat briskly and thoroughly; mix just as you are ready to send the cakes to the table (except when yeast is used), bake, turn, and serve promptly. Have all your materials on the table, measured and ready to your hand. The griddle must be perfectly clean and wiped off with a dry cloth just before you lay it on the stove. Heat it gradually at one side of the stove or range, and when it is warm grease with a bit of fat salt pork stuck firmly on a fork. The fat should be hissing hot, but not scorching, when the batter is poured on. Before putting the cakes on to fry, slip the griddle to the hottest part of the stove. Drop the batter in great, even spoonfuls, and be careful not to spill or spatter it.

M. H. PHILLIPS AND CO., of Troy, N. Y., manufacture a griddle with three shallow cups sunken in an iron plate which moves on a hinge. When the cakes are done on the lower side the turn of a handle reverses the plate upon a heated surface. This makes the cakes of equal size and thickness and saves the trouble of watching, spatula in hand, to turn each one. It greatly simplifies the process of baking cakes, and, lessens the heating labor of attending to them.

Be sure that each cake is done before you turn it. A twice-turned “griddle” is spoiled.

Sour-milk Cakes.

One quart of “loppered,” or of buttermilk.

Three cups of sifted flour.

One cup of Indian meal.

One “rounded” teaspoonful of soda free from lumps.

One teaspoonful of salt.

Two tablespoonfuls of molasses.

Sift flour, salt and meal into a bowl. In another mix the milk, molasses and soda. Stir these last to a foam, and pour into the hollow in the middle of the flour. Work down the flour into the liquid with a wooden spoon until you have a batter, and beat _hard_ with upward strokes, two minutes. Bake at once. These are cheap, easy and good cakes.

Hominy Cakes.

Two cups of fine hominy boiled and cold. (Take the tough skin from the top before mixing in the batter.)

One heaping cup of sifted flour.

One quart of milk.

Three eggs beaten very light.

One tablespoonful of molasses.

One teaspoonful of salt.

Rub the hominy with the back of a wooden spoon until all the lumps are broken up. Wet it little by little with the milk and molasses, working it smooth as you go on. Sift flour and salt together, and put in next. Beat for a whole minute before adding the whipped eggs, and another minute very hard, before baking. Stir up well from the bottom before putting each fresh batch of cakes on the griddle.

These cakes if properly made, are tender, wholesome and delightful.

Graham Cakes.

Two cups of Graham flour.

One of sifted white.

One heaping tablespoonful of Indian meal.

Three cups of buttermilk, or loppered milk.

One rounded teaspoonful of soda.

Two tablespoonfuls of molasses.

One teaspoonful of salt sifted with the flour.

Two eggs whipped very light.

One tablespoonful melted butter.

Put Graham and salted white flour into a bowl with the Indian meal. Stir up in another milk, molasses, soda and melted butter, and while foaming pour into the hollowed flour. Work to a good batter and beat in the eggs already whipped to a froth.

Beat one minute and bake at once.

This is a good standard breakfast hot bread.

5

EGGS.

MANY people do not know a well-boiled egg by sight or taste, yet a _fresh_ egg, boiled to a nicety, is one of the simplest, most nutritious of breakfast dishes.

Boiled Eggs.

Select the cleanest eggs, wash them well, and lay them in lukewarm water for five minutes. Have ready on the fire a saucepan of water on a fast boil, and in quantity sufficient to cover the eggs entirely. Into this put one egg at a time with a spoon, depositing each gently on the bottom, and quickly.

_Four minutes_ boils an egg thoroughly, if one likes the white set and the yolk heated to the centre. _Five minutes_ makes the white firm and sets the yolk. _Ten minutes_ boils both hard.

Take up the eggs with a split spoon or wire whisk. If you have no regular egg dish, lay a heated napkin in a deep dish or bowl (also warmed), put in the eggs as in a nest, cover up with the corners of the napkin, and send directly to the table. They harden in the shells if left long without being broken.

The best way to manage a boiled egg at the table is the English way of setting it upright in the small end of the egg-cup, making a hole in the top large enough to admit the egg-spoon, and eating it from the shell, seasoning as you go on. Heat and taste are undoubtedly better preserved by this method than by any other. Those who cannot afford gold-washed spoons, can procure pretty ivory ones at a trifling cost, or small teaspoons will serve the purpose.

Spoons smeared with eggs should be laid to soak in _cold_ water directly you have finished using them.

Custard Eggs.

Put the washed eggs in a saucepan of cold water and let them just come to a boil, then take them up.

Or, lay them in a hot tin pail, cover them with boiling water, put the top on the pail and leave them on the kitchen table for five minutes. Drain off the water, pour on more _boiling_ hot and replace the top. Wrap a hot towel about the pail, and leave it four minutes before dishing the eggs. They will be like a soft custard throughout, and more digestible than if cooked in any other way.

Poached, or Dropped Eggs.

Into a clean frying-pan, pour plenty of boiling water, and a teaspoonful of salt. Let it boil steadily, not violently. Wipe a cup dry, break an egg into it, and pour, very cautiously and quickly, on the surface of the water. Avoid spreading or breaking it. It will sink to the bottom for an instant, but if the water is boiling hot, will rise soon and be cooked in about three and a half minutes. Do not put more than three into the pan at one time, or they will run into one another.

Take them up with a perforated skimmer and lay on a hot, flat dish in which a teaspoonful of butter has been melted. If the whites have ragged edges, trim neatly with a sharp knife. When all are done, pepper and salt lightly, put a bit of butter on each egg and send up _very hot_.

Eggs on Toast.

Cut out with a sharp-edged tumbler or a cake cutter as many round slices of stale bread as there are eggs to be cooked. Toast these nicely, butter thinly; cover the bottom of a heated dish with them, and pour on each a tablespoonful of boiling water. Set in the plate-warmer or an open oven while you poach eggs as directed in the last receipt.

Lay each when done on a round of toast, pepper, salt and butter, and serve.

Eggs on Savory Toast.

Toast rounds of stale bread as directed in preceding receipt, but instead of moistening them with hot water, pour upon them, as they lie in the dish, two tablespoonfuls of boiling gravy to each slice. A half-cupful of gravy left over from yesterday’s roast or stew skimmed free of fat, heated, thinned with a very little boiling water, well-seasoned, then strained and boiled up quickly, makes this a tempting dish.

Poach as many eggs as you have rounds of toast, and lay on these, with pepper, salt and bits of butter.

Scrambled or Stirred Eggs.

Nine eggs.

One tablespoonful of butter.

Half a teaspoonful of salt.

A little pepper.

Half a teaspoonful of chopped parsley very fine.

Break the eggs altogether in a bowl. Put the butter in a clean frying-pan and set it on the range. As it melts, add pepper, salt and parsley. When it hisses, pour in the eggs, and begin at once to stir them, scraping the bottom of the pan from the sides toward the centre, until you have a soft, moist mass just firm enough not to run over the bottom of the heated dish on which you turn it out. Make it into a neat mound. Some people prefer it without the parsley.

In serving _everything_, be careful that the rims of the dishes are perfectly clean. The effect of the most delicious viand is spoiled by drops or smears of food on the vessel containing it.

If you heap your scrambled eggs on a platter and lay parsley-sprigs around, making a green fringe or border for the yellow hillock, you have an elegant dish. Study to make plain things pretty when you can.

Bacon and Eggs.

Fry as many slices of ham, or what is known as breakfast-bacon, as there are eggs to be cooked. Have the clean frying-pan warm, but not hot, when the meat goes in. Turn the slices as they brown. When done, take the pan over to the sink or table, remove the meat to a hot dish and set where it will keep warm.

Strain the grease left in the pan through a bit of tarlatan or coarse muslin into a cup. Wipe the frying-pan clean, pour in the strained fat and return to the fire. If there is not enough to cover the bottom a quarter of an inch deep, add a tablespoonful of butter. Break the eggs one at a time in a cup, and when the fat hisses put them in carefully.

Few people like “turned” fried eggs. Slip a cake-turner or spatula under each as it cooks to keep it from sticking. They should be done in about three minutes. Do not put in more at once than can swim in the fat without interfering with one another.

Take up as fast as they cook, trim off ragged and rusty edges and lay on a hot platter. Drain each to get rid of the fat, as you take it out of the pan.

When all are dished, lay the ham or bacon neatly about the eggs like a garnish. Pepper all lightly. Ham for this purpose should be cut in small narrow slices.

Drop sprays of parsley on the rim of the dish.

Baked Eggs.

Put a tablespoonful of butter in a pie-plate, and set in the oven until it melts and begins to smoke. Take it to the table and break six eggs one by one into a cup, pouring each in turn into the melted butter carefully. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, put a tiny bit of butter on each and set in the oven to bake until the eggs are “set”—that is, when the whites are firm and the yolks skimmed over, but not hard. Four minutes in a quick oven should do this. Send to table at once.

If you have a few spoonfuls of nice chicken gravy, you can strain and use it instead of butter.

Scalloped Eggs.

Six eggs.

Half a cupful of nice gravy skimmed and strained. Chicken, turkey, game and veal gravy are especially good for this purpose. Clear soup may also be used.

Half a cupful of pounded cracker or fine dry bread-crumbs.

Pepper and salt.

Pour the gravy into a pie-plate and let it get warm before putting in the eggs as in last receipt. Pepper, salt and strew cracker crumbs evenly over them. Bake five minutes. Serve in the pie-plate.

Dropped Eggs with White Sauce.

Drop or poach the eggs; put them on a hot, flat dish and pour over them this sauce boiling hot.

In a saucepan put half a cupful of boiling water.

Two or three large spoonfuls of nice strained gravy.

A little pepper.

A quarter teaspoonful of salt.

When this boils stir in a heaping teaspoonful of flour wet up smoothly with a little cold water to keep it from lumping. Stir and boil one minute and add a tablespoonful of butter. Stir steadily two minutes longer, add, if you like, a little minced parsley, and pour the sauce which should be like thick cream, over the dished eggs.

Omelette.

Six eggs.

Four teaspoonfuls of cream.

Half a teaspoonful salt.

A little pepper.

Two tablespoonfuls of butter.

Whip whites and yolks together for four minutes in a bowl with the “Dover” egg beater. They should be thick and smooth before you beat in cream, salt and pepper. Melt the butter in a clean frying-pan, set on one side of the stove where it will keep warm but not scorch. Pour the beaten mixture into it and remove to a place where the fire is hotter. As it “sets,” slip a broad knife carefully around the edges and under it, that the butter may find its way freely to all parts of the pan.

When the middle is just set, pass a cake-turner _carefully_ under one half of the omelette and fold it over the other. Lay a hot platter upside down above the doubled mass and holding frying-pan and dish firmly, turn the latter quickly over, reversing the positions of the two, and depositing the omelette in the dish.

Do not be mortified should you break your trial omelette. Join the bits neatly; lay sprays of parsley over the cracks and try another soon. Be sure it is loosened from the pan before you try to turn it out; hold pan and dish fast in place; do not be nervous or flurried, and you will soon catch the knack of dishing the omelette dexterously and handsomely.

I have given you ten receipts for cooking eggs. It would be easy to furnish as many more without exhausting the list of ways of preparing this invaluable article of food for our tables. I have selected the methods that are at once easy and excellent, and adapted to the ability of a class of beginners.

6

BROILED MEATS.

IT has been said that the frying-pan has ruined more American digestions than all the other hurtful agencies combined. It is certainly true that while the process of frying _properly_ performed upon certain substances does not of necessity, make them unwholesome—the useful utensil does play altogether too important a part in our National cookery. Broiled meats are more wholesome, more palatable, and far more elegant. Certain things should never be fried. That beefsteak should _never_ make the acquaintance of the frying-pan is a rule without an exception.

The best gridirons for private families are the light, double “broilers,” made of tinned wire and linked together at the back with loops of the same material. They are easily handled, turned and cleansed, and when not in use may be hung on the wall out of the way. It is well to have two sizes, one for large steaks, the smaller for birds, oysters, and when there is occasion to broil a single chop or chicken-leg for an invalid.

Beefsteak.

Never wash a steak unless it has fallen in the dirt or met with other accident. In this case cleanse quickly in cold water and wipe perfectly dry before cooking.

Have a clear hot fire and do not uncover that part of the stove above it until you have adjusted the steak on the broiler. If you use the ordinary iron gridiron, lay the meat on it the instant it goes over the fire, but have it already warm and rub the bars with a bit of fresh suet.

When the meat has lain over the coals two minutes and begins to “sizzle,” turn it and let the other side cook as long. Watch it continually and turn whenever it begins to drip. Do this quickly to keep in the juices. If these should fall in the fire in spite of your care, lift it for an instant and hold over a plate or dish until the smoke is gone. Broiled meats flavored with creosote are not uncommon, but always detestable. The knack of broiling a steak well is to turn it so often and dexterously that it will neither be smoked nor scorched.

Ten minutes should cook it rare, if the fire is right and the steak not very thick. Cut with a keen blade into the thickest part when the time is up. If the heart is of a rich red-brown—not the livid purple of uncooked flesh, carry broiler and meat to a table where stands a hot dish. Lay the steak on this. In a saucer have a liberal tablespoonful of butter cut into bits, and with these rub both sides of the smoking steak, leaving unmelted pieces on the top. Sprinkle it also on both sides with pepper and salt—about half a teaspoonful of salt and a third as much pepper for a large steak. All this must be done _quickly_. Before you begin to cook the steak, prepare the butter and measure the salt and pepper. Cover the dish closely. If you have not a block-tin dish-cover, lay over the steak another dish, made very hot in the oven, and set both with the meat between them in the plate-warmer, or in an open oven, or somewhere where it will keep hot for three minutes.

Serve—i. e. put on the table—as hot as possible and on warm plates. Unless you have a hot water dish, do not send the steak into the dining-room until all have taken their places.

Sometimes steak is tough. You shake your head over it as it comes from the butcher’s basket. I know of an enterprising meat merchant who objected to a wealthy customer because he would have choice cuts. He was willing to pay double for them, but as the worthy seller observed: “We _must_ sell second-best cuts, and he’d ought to take his turn.”

Like sin, tough steak ought not to be, but it _is_! If your turn to take it has come, lay it on a clean board, some hours before cooking it, and hack it on both sides, criss-cross, with a tolerably sharp knife, taking care not to cut too deeply. Rub both sides very well with the strained juice of a lemon, and set the meat in a cold place until you are ready to cook it. Do this over night, if you want it for breakfast. Very tough, fibrous meat is sometimes made eatable by this process.

Mutton or Lamb Chops.

Cut off most of the fat and all the skin. A clean bone an inch in length will project from the smaller end when you have pared away the tallow and skin which would have cooked into rankness and leather.

Put as many chops on the broiler as it will conveniently hold, and broil as you would beefsteak. Cut into the largest to see if it is done. If it is, lay the chops on a heated dish set over a pot of boiling water; butter, pepper and salt them, and cover them up while you cook the rest.

Serve as soon as the last is cooked, as they lose flavor with standing.

Lay sprigs of parsley around the edges of the dish and scatter a few over the chops which must be arranged in neat rows, a small end next to a large.

Broiled Ham.

Cut even slices from a cold boiled Ferris & Co.’s “Trade Mark” ham. Divide these into oblong pieces about an inch and a half in width, and broil quickly over clear coals until a delicate brown touches the slices here and there. Lay in order on a hot dish. Broiled ham is appetizing, and should be accompanied by dry toast, lightly buttered.

7

FRIED MEATS.

Larded Liver.

THE butcher will slice the liver, or show you how to do it. When it is cut up, lay it in cold water in which has been stirred a teaspoonful of salt. This will draw out the blood.

Cut fat, raw salt pork into strips a finger long and a quarter of an inch thick and wide.

In half an hour’s time take the liver from the water, spread it out on a clean dry cloth, lay another cloth over the slices and pat gently to dry them thoroughly. Make holes an inch apart in the liver with a pen-knife or sharp skewer, and stick in the pork strips. They should protrude an equal distance on both sides.

As fast as they are ready, lay them in a clean, warm (_not_ hot) frying-pan. When all are in, set it over the fire, and let it fry rather slowly in the fat that will run out from the pork “lardoons.” In five minutes turn the slices, and again ten minutes later. Let the liver heat quite slowly for the first ten minutes. If cooked fast it is hard and indigestible. Allow about twenty-five minutes for frying it.

Take it up with a fork, draining off every drop of grease against the side of the pan as you remove each piece, and dish on a hot platter.

Put a half a teaspoonful of tomato sauce on each slice. Serve without gravy and very hot.

Veal Cutlets (Breaded).

Whip two eggs light and pour them into a pie-plate. Turn the cutlets, one by one, over in this until every part is coated. In another dish spread evenly a cupful of rolled or pounded cracker, very fine and dry. Turn the “egged” cutlets over in this to encrust them well.

Meanwhile four large spoonfuls of sweet lard or nice beef-dripping must be melting in a clean frying-pan at one side of the range. When the cutlets are all breaded, move the pan directly over the fire. As the fat begins a lively hiss, put in as many cutlets as can lie in it without crowding. In five minutes turn them with care, not to loosen the crumb-coating. After another five minutes of rapid frying, pull the pan to a spot where the cooking will go on slowly, but regularly. In ten minutes turn the cutlets a second time. In another ten minutes they should be done.

Understand! The first fast cooking sears the surface of the meat and forms the breading into a firm crust that keeps in the juices. The slower work that follows cooks the veal thoroughly without hardening the fibres.

Lift the cutlets carefully from the pan, draining all the grease from each, and keep hot in a covered dish set over a pot of boiling water until all are done.

Always put tomato catsup or tomato sauce, in some form, on the table with veal cutlets.

Sausage Cakes.

Break off bits of sausage meat of equal size, roll them in the palms of clean hands into balls and pat them into flat cakes. Arrange them in a frying-pan and cook (not too fast) in their own fat, turning them twice until they are nicely and evenly browned. The time allowed for frying them depends on the size of the cakes. If they are not large, fifteen minutes should be enough.

Serve on a hot dish, without gravy.

Smothered Sausages.