Part 17

Boil half a pound of macaroni tender in well-salted boiling water or in stock, and drain it in the colander. Place alternate layers of the macaroni and the sauce on a hot dish, pouring the sauce over the top; put the dish into the oven two or three minutes to soak the sauce. Serve immediately.

This sauce is simple and very nice. I change it from the receipt of the “London Cooking-teacher,” which requires a few additions. His sauce is as follows: Cut a carrot and an onion into little dice, and prepare a bouquet, i. e., tie a little parsley, thyme, and a bay leaf together. Put into a stew-pan some butter (size of a large egg); when it is hot, throw into it the vegetables, bouquet, and three or four whole peppers; let them cook for eight or ten minutes. Then mix in a heaping table-spoonful of flour, and a little of the _pot-au-feu_ broth; boil this eight or ten minutes longer; then add a cupful of cooked and strained tomatoes. Stir all together.

MACARONI AU GRATIN (_New York Cooking-school_).

Ingredients: Half a pound of macaroni, four ounces of cheese, two ounces of butter, three-quarters of a cupful of _Bechamel_ sauce.

Boil the macaroni as described in “macaroni with cheese.” When well drained, pour over it nearly all of the sauce and the grated cheese; toss it in the saucepan, mixing it well together without breaking the macaroni; put it into a _gratin_ dish; pour first the remainder of the sauce over the top, then the remainder of the cheese, and over this sprinkle a table-spoonful of cracker-dust and dots of butter. Put it into a very hot oven ten minutes, coloring the top.

CRACKERS, WITH CHEESE.

Soak in boiling water round crackers split in two, three inches in diameter and three-quarters of an inch high (I do not know the name). Take them out carefully, so as not to break them; make layers of these slices in a little _gratin_ dish or a deep baking-dish, each slice buttered, spread with a little made mustard, and sprinkled with pepper, salt, and plenty of grated cheese. When all is prepared, bake them in a hot oven for ten minutes.

EGGS.

BOILED EGGS

should all be placed in a wire-basket, and put into boiling water. Boil them two minutes and three-quarters precisely.

Lord Chesterfield said it was only necessary for him to see a person at table to tell if he were a gentleman. He must have had a fine opportunity for observation when boiled eggs were served. It seems nonsense (and it is nonsense) when I say that the fashionable world abroad and their imitators here consider it insufferably _gauche_ to serve a boiled egg but in one stereotyped way, _i. e._, in the smallest of egg-cups. The top of the egg is cut off with a knife, and with a little egg-spoon, dipped into salt when necessary, the egg is eaten from the shell. I really can not see that it matters much whether an egg is eaten from an egg-glass, or in the little egg-cups from the shell, unless one prefers to be in the fashion, when it requires no more trouble.

POACHED EGGS.

Salt the water well; when it is _simmering_, drop lightly each broken egg from a saucer into it. Cook one egg at a time, throwing carefully with a spoon the water from the side over the egg, to whiten the top. When cooked just enough (do not let it get too hard), take out the egg with a perforated ladle, trim off the ragged pieces, and slip it on a small, thin piece of hot buttered toast, cut neatly into squares. When all are cooked, and placed on their separate pieces of toast, sprinkle a little pepper and salt over each one.

Some put into the boiling water muffin-rings, in which the eggs are cooked, to give them an even shape; they present a better appearance, however, cooked in the egg-poacher, illustrated among the cooking utensils. Poached eggs are nice introduced into a beef soup--one egg for each person at table; they are also nice served on thin, diamond-shaped slices of broiled ham instead of toast.

Delmonico serves poached eggs on toast, with sorrel sprinkled over the tops.

POACHED EGGS ON ANCHOVY TOAST.

This is a favorite dish abroad. It is generally a supper-dish, yet can be served at breakfast, lunch, and even as a course for dinner. The dish consists simply of thin pieces of toast, cut of equal size, buttered, and spread with a little anchovy paste, and a poached egg placed on each piece. Anchovy paste can be purchased in little jars at all the larger groceries.

STUFFED EGGS (_for Lunch_).

Boil the eggs hard; cut them in two lengthwise, and remove the yolks, which chop, adding to them some cooked chicken, lamb, veal, or pickled tongue chopped fine; season the mixture, and add enough gravy, or the raw yolk of egg, to bind them; stuff the cavities, smooth them, and press the two halves together; roll them in beaten egg and bread-crumbs twice. When just ready to serve, dip them in a wire-basket into boiling lard; and when they have taken a delicate color, drain. Serve on a napkin, and garnish with parsley or any kind of leaves, or serve with a tomato-sauce.

STUFFED EGGS (_French Cook_).

Boil the eggs hard, and cut them in two; take out carefully the yolks, which mash well, adding a little finely minced onion, chopped parsley, pepper, and salt. Mash also double the quantity of bread, which has been soaked in milk; mix bread, yolks, etc., together; then bind them with a little raw yolk of egg; taste to see if they are properly seasoned. Stuff the eggs with the mixture, so that each half has the appearance of containing a whole round yolk; smooth the remainder of the mixture on the bottom of a pie-pan; arrange the halves symmetrically in this bed; brown a little in the oven.

STUFFED EGGS, WITH CHEESE.

Ingredients: Six eggs, one ounce of cheese, two ounces of butter, one heaping tea-spoonful of flour, a little cayenne, one table-spoonful of vinegar, one and a half cupfuls of milk.

Put the eggs on the fire in cold water, and when they come to a boil set them at the side of the fire to simmer seven minutes; then put them into cold water. When cold, remove the shells; cut them in half lengthwise with a sharp knife, taking care not to tear the whites; mash the yolks, to which add the grated cheese, vinegar, cayenne. At the cooking-school was added also a tea-spoonful of olive oil. Make a _roux_ by putting the butter into a little saucepan on the fire, and when it bubbles mix in the flour. In another small saucepan have a wine-glassful of milk boiling, to which add enough of the _roux_ to thicken it, and then add the yolks, and mix all together until quite hot. Now to the remaining _roux_ add a cupful of milk, and stir until quite smooth for a sauce; fill the cavities of the whites of the eggs with the yolk preparation, rounding the tops to represent whole yolks; arrange them in a circle on a warm platter, and pour the white sauce in the centre.

OMELETS.

Nothing is more simple than to make an omelet, yet very few can make one. The eggs stick to the pan, or they are overdone, and tough.

Senator Riddle, of Delaware, a decided epicure, took much pleasure in his superior knowledge on this important subject. Once when breakfasting with Mrs. Crittenden, of Kentucky, a piece of omelet of doubtful appearance was presented to him. “Before we proceed with our breakfast,” said he, “let me teach you a valuable accomplishment.” They repaired at once to the kitchen range, where the senator demonstrated at once his qualifications as a first-class cook. My own first lesson was from Mr. Riddle, so of course I have the correct _modus operandi_; afterward in London, however, I heard a lecture upon omelets from a cooking professor, and was astonished at the multiplicity of dishes which could be made from this simple preparation; not only breakfast dishes, but also the variety of sweet omelets for dessert.

PLAIN OMELET.

The fire should be quite hot. All cookery-books especially expatiate on the necessity of a pan to be used for omelets alone. Any clean, smooth iron spider, or _sauté_ pan, is a good enough omelet-pan. Put the pan on the fire to become heated; break the eggs into a kitchen basin; sprinkle over them pepper and salt, and give them twelve vigorous beats with a spoon. This is enough to break all the yolks, and twelve beats was Mr. Riddle’s rule. Now put butter the size of an egg (for five eggs) in the heated pan; turn it around so that it will moisten all the bottom of the pan. When it is well melted, and _begins to boil_, pour in the eggs. Holding the handle of the omelet-pan in the left hand, carefully and lightly with a spoon draw up the whitened egg from the bottom, so that all the eggs may be equally cooked, or whitened to a soft, creamy substance. Now, still with the left hand, shake the pan forward and backward, which will disengage the eggs from the bottom; then shaking again the omelet a little one side, turn with a spoon half of one side over the other; and allowing it to remain a moment to harden a little at the bottom, gently shaking it all the time, toss it over on to a warm platter held in the right hand. A little practice makes one quite dexterous in placing the omelet in the centre of the platter, and turning it over as it is tossed from the omelet-pan.

However, if one is unsuccessful in the tossing operation, which is the correct thing, according to the cooking professor, the omelet can be lifted to the platter with a pancake-turner. It should be creamy and light in the centre, and more firm on the outside.

I will specify several different omelets. A variety of others may be made in the same way, by adding boiled tongue cut into dice, sliced truffles, cooked and sliced kidneys with the gravy poured around, etc., etc.

OMELET, WITH TOMATOES.

Make the plain omelet; and just before turning one half over the other, place in the centre three or four whole tomatoes which have been boiled a few minutes previously and seasoned. When the omelet is turned, of course the tomatoes will be quite enveloped. Serve with tomato-sauce (see page 125) poured around it.

OMELET WITH GREEN PEASE

is managed as omelet with tomatoes, putting several spoonfuls of cooked green pease in the centre before the omelet is lapped, then serving with a neat row of pease (without juice) around it.

OMELET, WITH HAM.

Throw into the omelet-pan fine-cut shreds of tender ham, with the butter. When the ham has cooked a moment, throw in the eggs, and proceed as for plain omelet. A little chopped parsley beaten with the eggs will improve it. The dish may be garnished with thin diamonds of ham around the omelet.

OMELET, WITH FINE HERBS.

Before beating the eggs, add with the pepper and salt some chopped parsley and shives; cook a moment in the butter some thin shreds of onion, then pour in the eggs, and proceed as for a plain omelet. The shives may be omitted.

OMELET, WITH MUSHROOMS.

Boil the mushrooms in a little water, or stock, to which are added pepper, salt, a few drops of lemon-juice, and, when done, a little flour, to thicken it slightly. Inclose some mushrooms in the omelet in the manner explained for tomatoes; pour the remainder of the mushrooms around the omelet, with a little juice.

OMELET, WITH SHRIMPS.

Inclose some picked shrimps in the centre of the omelet. Garnish the omelet with shrimps unpicked.

OMELET, WITH OYSTERS.

Scald the oysters in their own liquor; when just about to boil, plump them by throwing them into cold water; then beard them; beat them into the eggs before they are cooked, leaving a few oysters for garnishing the plate.

OMELET, WITH CHEESE, OR FONDUE.

Brillat Savarin says: “Take the same number of eggs as guests at table. Take then a piece of good _fromage de Gruyère_, weighing about one-third, and a piece of butter one-sixth this weight. Break up and beat your eggs well in a saucepan; then add your cheese and butter grated. Put your saucepan on the fire, and stir with a wooden spoon until the substance is thick and soft; put in a little salt, according to the age of the cheese, and a good sprinkling of pepper, which is one of the positive characteristics of this ancient dish. Serve up on a warm dish. Get some of your best wine from the cellar, which pass around briskly, and you will see wonders.”

Gruyère cheese is considered superior to other cheeses in this omelet; yet any kind of American cheese, if highly flavored, is most delicious also, and, I think, quite as good as the Gruyère. I would use fresh cheese, and chop it fine, rather than grate it, and also would not add so much butter. We will say, then, to six eggs add three-quarters of a cupful, or two ounces, of cheese chopped fine, a piece of butter the size of a small egg, salt, and pepper. Proceed as for plain omelet.

OMELET, WITH CHEESE AND MACARONI.

Add to the above receipt about two or three cupfuls of macaroni which has been boiled in salted water and drained, and is still hot.

FRIED OMELET SOUFFLÉ (_for Breakfast_).

Beat the whites and yolks of four eggs separately, and then, adding pepper and salt, put the whites over the yolks, and mix them together carefully. Put butter the size of a small egg into an omelet-pan, and when it has covered the bottom of the pan and is bubbling turn in the eggs; with a spoon lift them from the bottom until all is slightly cooked, or at least well heated; then gather up the sides to make it into omelet form; shake the pan to disengage the omelet, and at the same time to color it slightly at the bottom; turn this over into the centre of a warm platter, so that the colored part be on top.

SWEET OMELET (_for Dessert_).

Add a little sugar to the eggs, instead of pepper and salt; make it then as a plain omelet, inclosing in the centre any kind of preserves, marmalade, or jam; when it is turned on to the dish, sprinkle sugar over the top.

OMELET, WITH RUM.

This is a most delicious omelet. Add a little sugar to the eggs, say a sherry-glassful to six eggs, and make the omelet as a plain omelet. When turned on to the dish, sprinkle a little handful of sugar over the top, and pour over five or six table-spoonfuls of rum. Set it on fire, and serve it at the table burning.

OMELET SOUFFLÉ.

Although it is a simple thing to make an omelet _soufflé_, and although in France there is not one cook in a score who can not make a delicious one for any and every occasion, I would not advise a careless cook to ever attempt it. The ingredients are: Six whites and three yolks of eggs, three ounces of pulverized sugar (three table-spoonfuls), and a flavoring of vanilla or lemon. First, beat the yolks and sugar to a light cream, and add a few drops of flavoring; then beat the whites to the stiffest possible froth. Have the yolks in a rather deep kitchen bowl; turn the whites over them, and with a spoon, giving it a rotary motion, cut the two, mixing them carefully together. Turn this on to a baking-dish, either of earthenware or tin, with sides two or three inches high and slightly buttered. Smooth over the top, sprinkle over sugar, and put it into a moderate oven. If it has to be turned or moved in the oven, do it as gently as possible. When it has risen well, and is of a fine yellow color, it is ready to be served. It should be served at once, or it will fall.

Omelet _soufflé_ was especially nice at the Café Vienna in Paris. This is their cook’s receipt: “For one portion,” said he, “use the whites of three eggs; beat them well; add one table-spoonful of marmalade cut into fine pieces, or little pieces of fresh peaches; mix with powdered sugar. Bake it on a dish rubbed with butter in a rather quick oven.” It seemed as if this was too simple a receipt to be so nice. In another place was a layer of marmalade on the bottom of the dish, with a _soufflé_ according to the first receipt, flavored with vanilla, banked over it.

OMELET, WITH ASPARAGUS POINTS, CAULIFLOWERS, OR OTHER VEGETABLES.

Cook the vegetables first until they are done, as they will not have time to cook with the eggs. Make them in the same manner described for tomatoes; or the vegetables may be beaten with the eggs. Make a border around the omelet of the vegetables used.

SALADS.

In an English book is told a story of a famous French salad-dresser who began very poor, and made a fortune by dressing salad for dinners in London. He would go from one place to another in his carriage, with a liveried servant, and his mahogony case. This case contained all the necessaries for his business, such as differently perfumed vinegars, oils with or without the taste of fruit, soy, caviar, truffles, anchovies, catchup, gravy, some yolks of eggs, etc. I confess to a lively curiosity as to how these perfumed and scientific mixtures would taste; however, we will be satisfied with the hundred and one ways of arranging our simple and delicious salads, within the comprehension of all.

A Frenchman thinks he can not eat his dinner without his salad. It would be well if every one had the same appreciation of this most wholesome, refreshing, and at the same time most economical dish. It is an accomplishment to know how to dress a salad well, which is especially prized by the fashionable world. The materials used for salads are generally those shown in the list on the following page:

Lettuce, Celery, Endive, Garden-cress, Sorrel, Onions, Garlic, Radishes, Beet-root, Pepper-grass, Cold boiled potatoes, Cabbage, Cives, Tarragon, Nasturtium blossoms;

or salads of mixed vegetables (_salades en macédoine_), selected from this list of vegetables:

Cold boiled potatoes, String-beans, Navy-beans, Lima beans, Beet-root, Olives, Tomatoes, Pease, Cauliflower, Asparagus-tops, Cucumbers, Carrots, Truffles, Turnips.

Salads are also made of cold boiled fowls or fish, as follows:

Chickens, Lobster, Salmon, Prawns, Shrimps, Sardines.

There are two kinds of dressing which are the best and oftenest used: the _Mayonnaise_ and the French dressing. Epicures prefer the simple French dressing for salads served without fish or fowl. For chicken and fish salads, and some vegetables, as tomatoes and cauliflowers, they use the _Mayonnaise_ sauce. This arrangement of dressings is almost universal in London and Paris. In America we use the _Mayonnaise_ for all salads. I prefer the foreign custom. The simple salad with the French dressing is, after all, the most refreshing and satisfactory, if one has a heavy dinner served before it. The receipts are as follows:

MAYONNAISE SAUCE.

Put the uncooked yolk of an egg into a cold bowl; beat it well with a silver fork; then add two salt-spoonfuls of salt, and one salt-spoonful of mustard powder; work them well a minute before adding the oil; then mix in a little good oil, which must be poured in very slowly (a few drops at a time) at first, alternated occasionally with a few drops of vinegar. In proportion as the oil is used, the sauce should gain consistency. When it begins to have the appearance of jelly, alternate a few drops of lemon-juice with the oil. When the egg has absorbed a gill of oil, finish the sauce by adding a very little pinch of Cayenne pepper and one and a half tea-spoonfuls of good vinegar; taste it to see that there are salt, mustard, cayenne, and vinegar enough. If not, add more very carefully. These proportions will suit most tastes; yet some like more mustard and more oil. Be cautious not to use too much cayenne.

By beating the egg a minute before adding the oil, there is little danger of the sauce curdling; yet if, by adding too much oil at first, it should possibly curdle, immediately interrupt the operation. Put the yolks of one or two eggs on another plate; beat them well, and add the curdled _Mayonnaise_ by degrees, and finish by adding more oil, lemon-juice, vinegar, salt, and cayenne according to taste. If lemons are not at hand, many use vinegar instead.

Delmonico uses four yolks of eggs for two quart-bottles of oil. It is only necessary, then, to use one yolk for a pint of oil, the egg only being a foundation for the sauce. It is easier, however, to begin with more yolks: many use three of them for a gill of oil. The sauce will not curdle so easily if the few drops of vinegar are used at first, after a very little oil is used. It keeps perfectly well by putting it into a glass preserve or pickle bottle, with a ground-glass stopper. It is well to have enough made to last a week at least. The opportunity of making it may be taken, and adding it to the _Mayonnaise_ bottle, when there are extra yolks left, after the whites of the eggs are used for other purposes, such as white cake, corn-starch pudding, etc.

It requires about a quarter of an hour to make this sauce. In summer, the process of making it is greatly facilitated by placing the eggs and oil in the ice-chest half an hour before using them. Sometimes, for the sake of a change, the _Mayonnaise_ sauce is made green. It is then called

SAUCE À LA RAVINGOTE.

Here is Carême’s receipt for it: “Take a good handful of chervil, together with some tarragon, and a few cives. When these herbs have been washed, put them into boiling water for five or six minutes, with a little salt; after which, cool, drain, and squeeze them dry. Pound them well, adding a spoonful of _Mayonnaise_ sauce; then pass the whole through a sieve, and mix with the _Mayonnaise_ sauce. If you find it too pale a green, add a little spinach prepared in the same way.”

It is more convenient and simple to add boiled and mashed green pease to the sauce for coloring. The green _Mayonnaise_ is sometimes used to spread over a cold boiled fish (marinated). The dish is garnished with lettuce heads. Sometimes, for lobster or fish salads, the _Mayonnaise_ sauce is prepared red.

RED MAYONNAISE SAUCE.

Pound some lobster coral, pass it through a sieve, and mix it with the _Mayonnaise_ sauce.

FRENCH DRESSING.

Ingredients: One table-spoonful of vinegar, three table-spoonfuls of olive-oil, one salt-spoonful of pepper, one salt-spoonful of salt, one even tea-spoonful of onion scraped fine. Many use tarragon vinegar, _i. e._, vinegar in which tarragon has been soaked.

Pour the oil, mixed with the pepper and salt, over the salad; mix them together; then add the vinegar and mix again. Chaptal says: “It results, from this process, that there can never be too much vinegar: from the specific gravity of the vinegar compared with the oil, what is more than needful will fall to the bottom of the salad-bowl. The salt should not be dissolved in the vinegar, but in the oil, by which means it is more equally distributed through the salad.”

This is the usual mode of mixing the salad; but I prefer to mix the pepper and salt, then add the oil and onion, and then the vinegar; and, when well mingled, to pour the mixture over the salad, or place the salad over it, and mix all together. It seems to me to be more evenly distributed in this manner.

Many different combinations can be made to suit the fancy, from the list of salad materials. I will give certain combinations oftenest seen. It must be remembered that salad is never good unless perfectly fresh. It should not be mixed, or brought into the dining-room, until the moment when it is to be eaten.

When preparing lettuce salad, choose the crisp, tender, centre leaves of head lettuce. The kind seen in England and France, called _romaine_, is now much used in New York; it is very crisp and tender. The seeds of this lettuce can be obtained in New York. In the East, tarragon, and endive also, are largely produced, and used to imitate these foreign salads. The tarragon leaves are chopped fine, and mixed in the French dressing (without onion) to use with lettuce. The taste for tarragon is generally an acquired one: I prefer the tarragon vinegar to the fresh leaves, as it has only a slight flavor of the plant.

COMBINATIONS.

1. LETTUCE (_French Cook_).