Part 2

VEGETABLES AND THE LIKE

ARTICHOKES MISTER ANTONIO 57 ASPARAGUS 78 BEANS (VARIOUS STYLES) 123, 167 BURACHKI (POLISH) 117 EGGPLANT AU GRATIN 162 EGGPLANT SAUTÉ Á L’ALEXANDER 63 FRENCH FRIED ONIONS 138 ITALIAN RICE 124 MORELS SAUTÉ 174 POTATO STICKS ALEXANDER 63 RICE Á LA MANHATTAN 127 SAVORY POTATOES 75 “SCOLLOPED” MUSHROOMS 83 TOMATO SOP 95 TURNIP GREENS 48 YAPINGACHO (FROM ECUADOR) 94

SPAGHETTI—MACARONI—ETC. MACARONI STEW, ZITELLI’S 154 MACARONI WITH CHEESE 75 SPAGHETTI 35 SPAGHETTI DIABOLIQUE 169 SPAGHETTI FOR-THE-GANG 146 SPAGHETTI-MY-STYLE 197 SPAGHETTI SAUCES 118, 146, 154 SPAGHETTI WITH PELOTAS 103

SALADS AND SALAD DRESSINGS DRESSING (FOR STUFFED TOMATOES, COLD MEAT, POTATO SALAD) 188 LETTUCE Á LA RED CREEK 131 A MAYONNAISE AND A SALAD DRESSING 122 PANDORA FRENCH DRESSING 192 RADISH SALAD 38 ROMAINE SALAD Á L’ALEXANDER 66 SALADE Á LA TURC 191 VEGETABLE SALAD 46

DESSERTS—CAKES—PIES—PUDDINGS

BREAD TARTS 140 COCOA CREAM CAKE 159 CORN PUDDING 80 COTTAGE PUDDING WITH STRAWBERRY SAUCE 82 DEEP APPLE PIE 130 DESSERT, A 72 FRIED ELDERBERRY BLOSSOMS 70 INDIAN PUDDING 156 JAMES MONTGOMERY SUDS 53 LEMON LAYER CAKE 181 LEMON PIE 187 MINCE-PIE 109 ORANGE COMPOTE 152 PEACH COBBLER 71 PANDOWDY 45 PIE 143 PIE CRUST 111, 144 RASPBERRY SHORTCAKE 60 RICE PUDDING 39 STRAWBERRY TARTLETS ALEXANDER 67

CHEESE AND CHEESE DISHES CELERY STUFFED WITH CHEESE 151 FONDU AU FROMAGE Á L’ALEXANDER 65 LIEDERKRANZ Á LA HOOSIER 40 RUM-TUM-TIDDY 106 TOMATO WIGGLE 155 WELSH RABBIT (A DIPLOMATIST’S RECIPE) 176 WELSH RABBIT Á LA MORGAN ROBERTSON 193

THE STAG COOK BOOK

“This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men.” IZAAK WALTON.

I

_Meredith Nicholson_

WABASH VALLEY STEAK

No man can be a hero in his own kitchen. No man with the slightest regard for domestic peace will ever permit his wife to see him cook without having outsiders present. The psychology of this is obvious. Impatient though a woman may be of her husband’s attempts to show that he is a real sport and skilled in all the arts of social entertaining, before guests she is likely to manifest a modest degree of pride in his performances. Or even if slightly contemptuous she is moved to assume a chaffing attitude that adds to the general good feeling. I beg not to be confused with the type of bachelor club man who is a perfect wizard with the chafing dish. I have always viewed those birds with suspicion. Their tricks are few and easy of accomplishment—stunts with mushrooms, or chicken à la king done nonchalantly in a dinner coat. I sing my fiercest hymn of hate of those persons.

My own method is to assume full charge of an orderly kitchen, removing coat and waistcoat, donning an apron and attacking the job without apology or simper or the silly pretense that I’m not sure of the result. Not sure! Except in the case of colored women cooks, who trust to inspiration and achieve miracles without, seemingly, knowing how they do ’em—except, I say, in such instances, cookery is an exact science. If you follow a good rule and know how to regulate the range and have a true eye and acute nose, failure is obliterated from the lexicon.

And now for my scenario, which I stole from a lady, who in turn stole it, I dare say, from some cook book. I might pretend that I invented it, but I didn’t. All I claim is that it offers an Olympian feast—particularly if you can accompany it with hot biscuits, which I admit are beyond my powers.

_The Recipe_

Take a round steak cut two inches thick; and beat a cup of flour into it. Heat a large skillet till it is piping hot with lard covering the bottom about one inch. Put in the steak, cover immediately, and allow it to cook about five minutes, turning once.

Then cover it with a sauce composed in this wise:

Four large tomatoes Four onions Four green mango peppers Four ripe pimentoes

Put through a grinder or better still chop thoroughly with a chopper in a wooden bowl. Don’t skimp on this labor; the chopping must be done conscientiously. Season with salt and pour over the steak; cook slowly for two hours. When done turn into a large platter and serve piping hot.

II

_Rex Beach_

ONION CLAM CHOWDER

To each 10 oz. can of Pioneer Brand Minced Clams use 1 pound of sliced Spanish or white onion.

For a good sized chowder take six large onions (white), and cut in lengths one inch long. Pour the juice from the clams into saucepan, add onions and a little water and boil thoroughly until onions are well cooked and soft. Then add clams which have been taken out of the can and put into a dish, and stew five minutes before onions are done. Next place in a stew pan about a pint of cream or half cream and half milk and let come to a boil. After the clams have been in with the onions for about three minutes pour on the hot milk and season to taste with salt and pepper. If serving in a soup plate, a little chopped parsley adds to the attractiveness of the dish. Then EAT it.

(You can substitute for fresh milk or cream—Carnation Canned Milk diluted—⅔ milk to ⅓ water. The soup should be thick and not too watery. This can be regulated by amount of milk added.)

III

_Hudson Maxim_

SPAGHETTI

Take one package of vermicelli or spaghetti, and put it into a saucepan, crushing it in the hand, then put in hot water, and salt a little more than will suit the taste, and boil for an hour.

While the vermicelli or spaghetti is cooking, take a quart of milk and heat three-quarters—or 24 ounces—of it until it boils. Then stir into the eight ounces of cold milk a level cupful of flour, or two tablespoonfuls of flour, pretty well heaped, and then stir the thickened milk into the boiling milk and cook slowly for ten minutes.

Then add three-quarters of a pound of good, ripe, old American cheese, and about half a pound of butter. Then drain the water off the vermicelli or spaghetti and put in from one and one half pints to a quart of canned tomatoes. Heat the vermicelli or spaghetti to the boiling point; and while the mixture of cheese, butter, milk and flour is still hot, stir the two together, then keep hot and serve hot. Do not boil any more, because further boiling would tend to cause the tomatoes to coagulate the milk in the mixture. I prefer to use a mixture of spaghetti and vermicelli instead of all spaghetti or all vermicelli.

IV

_Warren G. Harding_

WAFFLES

2 eggs 2 tablespoons sugar 2 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon salt 1 pint milk flour to make thin batter 2 large teaspoons of baking powder

Beat yolks of eggs, add sugar and salt, melt butter, add milk and flour; last just before ready to bake add beaten whites of eggs and baking powder.

Bake on hot waffle iron.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—There is a great deal of argument about the proper dressing for waffles. Various gravies are used by one school of waffle eaters; while honey, maple syrup, and various specially flavored sugar powders are preferred by another.

President Harding is a staunch upholder of the gravy school and likes his in the form of creamed chipped beef.

V

_Ellis Parker Butler_

BOUILLABAISSE JOE TILDEN

In a soup kettle put four tablespoonsful of genuine olive oil. When hot enough fry in it two large onions, sliced, and two cloves of garlic chopped. Cut two pounds of any sort of firm white-textured fish into small pieces and put in the kettle, just covering the mixture with warm water.

Now have the Eighteenth Amendment repealed and add to the mixture one cup of White Wine, the juice of half a lemon, two large tomatoes (peeled and cut up), pepper, salt and one or two bay leaves.

Cook this briskly for twelve minutes, by which time the liquor should be one third evaporated. Now add a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Joe Tilden added a pinch of saffron, but I don’t care for it. Cook two minutes longer and serve ladled on slices of French bread.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—Moquin’s have made a luncheon specialty of Bouillabaisse for many years. They add lobster and eel. Here is a wonderful dish to experiment with—great fun and delicious results if you try it once or twice. It’s a habit-forming dish, so beware!

VI

_Jules J. Jusserand_

(Ambassador to the United States from France)

RADISH SALAD

The French ambassador presents his compliments and begs to state that he does not believe that any dish, or food, is more palatable than a salad of radishes, the radishes to be cut in very thin slices and to be seasoned with the usual salad dressing.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—This salad will be at its best if the foundation, upon which the thin slices of radish are placed, is made of small crisp leaves of romaine. The usual dressing—french, of course—is prepared in this way:

To one tablespoonful of lemon or vinegar add three tablespoonsful of the best olive oil, a dash of black pepper, and a half teaspoonful of salt. Beat well with a silver fork, and add enough paprika to give it a ruddy color, and a rich flavor. If the salad dish is rubbed with garlic it will do no great harm to the mixture!

VII

_Bruce Barton_

RICE PUDDING

I am president of the S. R. R. R. P.—the Society for Restoration of Raisins to Rice Pudding.

I have made a list of New York hotels and clubs and rated them according to the number of raisins they put in a portion of rice pudding as follows:

Class D—no raisins Class C—1 raisin Class B—3 or more raisins Class A—plenty of raisins

To my mind, rice pudding without raisins is like Hamlet without the eggs.

1 cup rice 4 cups milk 3 eggs ½ cup sugar 1 teaspoonful salt 1 package seedless raisins 1 teaspoon of vanilla

Bake one hour in a hot oven. Set the pan inside of another containing hot water.

Serve with whipped cream and garnish with Dromedary dates.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—Cook the rice twenty-three minutes.

VIII

_Richard Bennett_

LIEDERKRANZ Á LA HOOSIER

Run around and find a real nice Liederkranz cheese and treat it as follows to get a serving for four people:

Mix the cheese with about a quarter of a pound of butter and work into a fine paste, adding salt, pepper, French mustard, paprika and Worcestershire sauce as you go along. Just add them to taste.

When the paste is smooth put in one finely chopped small green pepper; one small onion, or chives.

Mix well!

And serve on rye bread—spread thick. To be thoroughly technical, I suppose I should have said: spread to taste!

EDITOR’S NOTE:—You can have a wonderful time and make quite a reputation for yourself by inventing cheese combinations. Ordinary cream cheese makes a splendid base for original mixtures. Try combinations of finely minced pimento, celery, olives, chives and peppers (green and red). And anything else that promises well.

IX

_Walt Louderback_

CORN CHOWDER

_I believe my favorite recipe is Corn Chowder._

The appetite for this dish must be approached from the windy side of a promontory in early spring with a sixty pound pack between the shoulder blades, aforementioned pack to contain for a couple of congenial souls a pound of bacon, a pound of dry onions, two cans of corn and one large tin of condensed milk.

Cut the bacon up into small half inch squares and start it frying. Simultaneously slice the onions and give them the heat. If, after the aroma from these two begins to permeate the air, you feel like risking their falling into the fire, start boiling the corn and milk. Before the onions are too thoroughly cooked stir them into the bacon, at which time the battle for the supremacy of the appetizing odors is occupying most of your attention.

Now throw the bacon and onions into the corn pot and wait as long as you are able so that the ingredients become thoroughly familiar with one another.

Write me as soon as you get home if you don’t remember that day until you are an old man.

To make this sound extremely professional I suppose I should add, “Season to taste,” but do not mind if a few ashes get mixed in by mistake.

X

_Captain Robert A. Bartlett, U.S.A._

COD FISH

Here is my favorite dish. Viz.:—Fresh Labrador Codfish caught during the Caplin school. The fish is at this time in splendid condition.

Here is the recipe:

Place a small bake pot upon a wood fire; then take a few strips of fat pork, cut up into small pieces and put into the bake pot. When the pork fat has melted you cut the fish into several small pieces and place in the pot. In about twenty minutes the fish is cooked. The fish must be eaten from the pot with a wooden spoon.

XI

_George F. Worts_

SWEET POTATO PONE

There are two sure ways of identifying a true southerner. One of them is to play “Dixie.” Unlike your northerner, or counterfeit southerner who springs to his feet and looks exalted and proud when the band strikes up that swinging anthem, your true, or southern southerner rarely springs. Generally he just sets and waggles one boot, and looks happy or sentimental, according to his nature. That is one way of detecting your true southerner. The second and surer way is to announce in a tremulous voice: “Gemmen, dat potato pone am done set.”

The sweet potato pone is strictly a southern dish. It is served south of the Mason and Dixon line hot and smoking. You don’t need much experience as a cook, although the old rule which also places “perfect” after “practice” of course holds good. Your ninth potato pone will be better than your third. Here is the how:

Grind up raw sweet potatoes in a meat chopper until you have one quart. Mix the grindings thoroughly in a bowl with molasses—enough molasses so the mass is soft and sticky, or spongy.

Mix in a heaping tablespoonful of lard.

Add a teaspoonful of allspice.

Put the mixture in a cake tin and place in a slow oven. Stir constantly until a rich brown hue is attained, then smooth over with a knife or spoon and allow to bake slowly until a mellow brown crust is formed.

Remove from oven, allow to cool slightly, cut in slices and serve. General Robert E. Lee would walk ten miles for a slice of it.

XII

_Gelett Burgess_

PANDOWDY

In a quart pudding dish arrange alternate layers of sliced apples and bits of bread; place on each layer dots of butter, a little sugar, and a pinch each of ground cinnamon, cloves and allspice.

When the dish is filled, pour over it half a cupful each of molasses and water, mixed well; cover the top with bread crumbs.

Place the dish in a pan containing hot water, and bake for three-quarters of an hour, or until the apples are soft.

Serve hot, with cream or any light pudding sauce.

Raisins or chopped almonds are sometimes added.

XIII

_William Allen White_

VEGETABLE SALAD

My idea of good food is a vegetable salad. Any kind of a vegetable salad is good; some are better than others. Here is a recipe for a French dressing on a lettuce salad which you should try on your meat grinder, or your potato masher, or your rolling pin or whatever kitchen utensil you can play.

Get a crisp head of lettuce, discard the outer green leaves, using the inner yellow and white. Wash it thoroughly, and after pulling it apart dry each leaf with a tea towel. Put it in a big bowl—a big mixing bowl, six inches deep anyway. Then set that to one side, and get about as much onion as the end of your first finger would make, if it was chopped off at the second joint. Mince that. Put it in the bottom of a bowl. Take a large tablespoon; put in salt and paprika to taste, and don’t be afraid of making it salty, then add oil and vinegar, about three or four to one, mixing them in the spoon until it slops over into the onion, and then stir the salt and paprika and oil and vinegar down into the bowl of minced onion, taking a salad fork and jabbing it around in the mixture until the onion has been fairly well crushed and the onion flavor permeates the mixed oil and vinegar, and the salt and paprika have become for the moment a part of the mass. Don’t let it stand a second, but pour it quickly into the bowl of dry lettuce, and then stir like the devil. Keep on stirring; stir some more, and serve as quickly as possible.

Cheese may be mashed into the onion before putting on the oil and vinegar and paprika and salt. If one wants to add tomatoes, wait until the last three jabs of the stirring fork into the lettuce, and then quarter the tomatoes and turn them in just before you turn the lettuce over the last two or three times. This is done so that the watery juice of the tomatoes won’t get smeared over the oil on the lettuce leaves. If you stir the tomatoes in early, you get a runny, watery, gooey mess. Cucumbers may be added, and they should be stirred in rather earlier than the tomatoes in the business of mixing the lettuce leaves and the dressing. Green peppers may be added if they are cut into strings, but too much outside fixings spoils the salad for me. The tomatoes are about as far as one can go wisely.

XIV

_Irvin S. Cobb_

HOG JOWL AND TURNIP GREENS

_Paducah Style_

For a person who has written so copiously about food and the pleasures of eating it, I probably know less of the art of preparing it than any living creature. I cannot give my favorite recipe because I have none; but I am glad to give the names of my two favorite dishes, to wit, as follows:

1st—Hog jowl and turnip greens—Paducah style 2nd—Another helping of the same.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—Hog Jowl, Paducah Style, may be prepared like this:

Get the jowl. Some prefer it cooked and served with the bone; others remove the bone before serving. Boil it in well salted water for thirty minutes, then add the turnip greens and boil at least thirty minutes longer. Serve with plenty of butter for dressing; a dash of vinegar and a semi-colon of mustard are used by some folks who are hard to please.

Beet greens could be used but they are not considered au fait, and to use spinach is an absolute faux pas.

XV

_Richard Walton Tully_

HAWAIIAN CROQUETTES Á LA “THE BIRD OF PARADISE”

It was about fifteen years ago that I first visited the Hawaiian Islands in search of material for my play, “The Bird of Paradise,” and during the course of my sojourn I made many friends among the natives, often living weeks at a time with them in out-of-the-way villages. Although their food was radically different from ours in many of its contents and modes of making, it was always palatable, and often strikingly delicious. However, most of the native dishes contained ingredients which we cannot obtain here, but I did learn how to make what some of my friends have nick-named Hawaiian Croquettes à la “Bird of Paradise,” the materials for which are easily procured. And it is a dish so wonderfully appetizing that I constantly prepare it for guests of epicurean tastes.

First grate the meat of half a cocoanut, and add to it a cup of (cow’s) milk, mixing thoroughly, and straining through cloth. Melt two tablespoonsful of butter over a low flame, rubbing into it with the back of a spoon five tablespoonsful of flour, stirring until very smooth. Then add slowly the strained cocoanut and milk liquid, stirring constantly until very thick. Season meanwhile with one and a half teaspoonsful of salt; one of paprika, and one of grated onion. Finally add two cups of cold, boiled, shredded mullet, or any other firm white fish, and two cups of cold, boiled, chopped lobster, and after stirring allow to cool.

Shape into croquettes, or balls, allowing a rounded tablespoonful to each ball; roll in fine cracker crumbs; dip into an egg which has been slightly beaten and to which one-quarter of a cup of water has been added; again roll in cracker crumbs.

Have a deep pan of fat, hot enough to fry a piece of bread a golden brown while you count forty, and cook the croquettes therein for about a minute; then drain on paper, and serve with olives.

XVI

_William Johnston_

OYSTERS PECHEUR

One keg of freshly dredged oysters put on the deck of the schooner not later than eight p. m.

One hundred pounds of ice put on top of the oysters.

Shell and eat at 5 a. m. on the way to the fishing grounds with salt to taste, and occasional draughts of hot coffee.

XVII

_Dr. Charles M. Sheldon_

LIKES BREAD AND MILK

A recipe of my favorite dish is very simple—bread and milk with American cheese broken into it. I eat this dish once a day every day and find it wholesome and nourishing. It does not require any skillful putting together, simply a good appetite and a taste for that sort of provender. If there is an apple pie anywhere around to top it off with, I do not despise that.

I find as a rule that the simpler and more elementary the food, the better so far as the body is concerned. And take it the year around a bowl of milk with fresh bread and rich American cheese, finishing up with “good apple pie like mother used to make,” is all the midday meal I need. I can work on that all the afternoon and feel better than if I had had a seven course dinner.

XVIII

_James Montgomery Flagg_

“JAMES MONTGOMERY SUDS”

This is a dessert. When a Swedish cook is put on her mettle to suggest a dessert—something different—she stands a while in uffish thought, then breaks out into a smile of satisfaction and says “Snow Pudding”! It’s Swede law. The Swedes _must_ suggest Snow Pudding when asked for an original thought in the dessert line.

So this dessert of mine was a protest.