Part 4

One large tablespoon of butter beaten to a cream. Add gradually one and a half cups powdered sugar and the beaten white of one egg. Beat till very light and just before serving add one pint of strawberries which have been cut in small pieces.

XXXVII

_Houdini_

SCALLOPED MUSHROOMS AND DEVILED EGGS

_The Mushroom Dish_

Choose for this purpose fine firm ones. Pick, wash, wipe and peel—then lay them in a deep pudding dish well buttered. Season them with pepper and salt, and add a little onion. Sprinkle each layer with rolled bread crumbs, dot with small pieces of butter and proceed in this way until dish is full, having the top layer of bread crumbs. Bake in a moderate oven.

_The Eggs_

Boil the eggs hard. Remove shells and cut eggs in half, slicing a bit off the ends to make them stand upright. Extract yolks and rub them to a smooth paste with melted butter, cayenne pepper, a touch of mustard and a dash of vinegar. Fill the hollowed whites with this and send to table upon a bed of chopped lettuce or water cress, seasoned with pepper, salt, vinegar and a little sugar.

XXXVIII

_Charles P. Steinmetz_

MEAT LOAF

I have been consulted about very many things, but this is the first time I have been consulted on gastronomical matters. But I give herewith, from my camping experience, the following favorite dish of mine:

Beef, veal, and pork (sirloin steak and chops), ½ pound each. Cut off the bones and the fat from the beef and veal, leaving the fat on the pork. Then pass all three through the meat grinder, chopping fairly fine. Add two complete raw eggs and some finely sliced bacon (Beechnut bacon, cut in pieces about 1 inch square) and mix everything together thoroughly, adding the proper amount of salt and pepper and if available some celery salt. Form into the shape of a round loaf.

In a cast iron or cast aluminum frying pan (that is a pan of sufficiently heavy metal to well distribute the heat and guard against local burning) melt some butter, then put the loaf in the melted butter and cover the pan. Heat on a very low fire, turning over after some time, and continue for a long time, until very thoroughly cooked through. Add butter once or twice when absorbed. Then uncover and greatly raise the fire, turning over after a little while so as to brown both sides.

Then take out the loaf and put it on a warm platter or plate. Now pour a cup of cream or rich milk into the pan, stir until the sediment in the pan is dissolved, and heat until you get a good brown gravy. Pour this over the loaf and serve with boiled mealy potatoes. What is left over can be eaten cold, sliced and served on buttered toast.

XXXIX

_Charlie Chaplin_

STEAK AND KIDNEY PIE

This is how I do it:

Get 2 pounds lean steak 1 beef kidney 1 small onion.

Cut the steak and kidney into two inch pieces. Flour them. Add pepper and salt to taste. Line a deep pie dish with rich pie crust after having buttered dish. Put inverted egg cup in center. Fill with meat and finely chopped onion. Add water almost to top of dish. Roll pastry half inch thick and cover all. Make several small holes in pastry to permit steam to escape. Bake three hours in moderate oven. EAT.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—Steak and kidney pie is a favorite with many beside the great film comedian. Interesting variations of Mr. Chaplin’s recipe are:

_Lamb kidney instead of the beef kidney._

_Top crust only._

_Fry the meat chunks before putting them into the pie._

XL

_Dr. Frank Crane_

ROUND STEAK

Somebody named Johnson, a name with most excellent vibrations, writes me and says that in spite of rumors he has heard, to the effect that I have a hired hand or two to write my stuff, he believes that I honestly wrote all by myself an article which appeared some time ago over my name, in which I stated I could cook round steak so that it would taste as good as fried chicken and be as tender.

“If you are not bluffing,” he says, “you could do a world of good to many housekeepers and stag clubs if you would print your recipe. The writer has worn the outer coat of enamel off his teeth in a vain attempt to make himself believe that round steak is as tender as chicken. Give us a hand, pal.”

Hence, being called, I lay my cards down, face up, on the table, to wit, namely and as follows:

Have the butcher cut you a round steak thin. A little thicker than a lead pencil. He will insist on cutting it thicker, saying it will be juicier and so on. Draw your revolver and compel him to obey you. Don’t have the steak too thick.

After cutting the steak from the piece, have him separate it into portions, each about the size of your hand. Don’t try to cook the steak all in one piece. It must be in small sections, just as fried chicken is best when each joint is cooked separately.

Have the butcher then take his sharp knife (which is much better for the purpose than any knife you have at home, because he knows the art of sharpening and you don’t), and criss-cross each piece, on both sides, don’t forget. So that each piece will be in tatters, almost ready to fall apart.

Put in the frying pan plenty of good sweet lard. Don’t use butter. It will burn. Don’t fry in deep fat, as with doughnuts, but plenty of fat, as with fried chicken.

Rub each portion of the raw steak in flour. Rub it in good. Drop into the hot skillet. Cover it with lid. Keep covered. This cooks it through and makes it tender.

Fry till a golden brown, turning once in a while. You notice the process is exactly as with fried chicken, Southern style.

After you lift out the meat, put in the flour, let it scorch a bit, then pour water and milk mixed into the hot grease and meat particles left in the skillet. Just how much, you will have to find out by experiment. Let it boil up and boil down, keep stirring, until you have gravy of the right consistency. Flavor according to taste, with salt and pepper, before cooking. If the result is not good it is because you have not followed directions.

Round steak not only is cheap, but it is all good meat, with the minimum of waste, and properly cooked it TASTES better than any part of the beef.

XLI

_Robert H. Davis_

CREAM SAUCE Á LA WORCESTERSHIRE

This incomparable concoction is to be united in the bonds of holy wedlock with a piece of fried ham, the ceremony to be solemnized on a hot rasher, hooded.

Select a thick slice of mild cured ham, fry it in its own fat in a hot skillet until both sides show a golden brown. Place in a large cooking spoon one spoonful of Worcestershire sauce, and one heaping tablespoon of rich cream. Set the cooking spoon in frying pan beside ham until Worcestershire and cream become warm, adding a few drops of ham fat while the sauce is heating. Complete the perfect union on the rasher by pouring the sauce over the ham.

Put a Mendelssohn Wedding March disc on your phonograph and conclude the honeymoon at the table.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—This sauce was created by Mr. Davis at a breakfast given at the Wyandanch Club, Long Island, by Mr. Charles R. Flint to Admiral Guy Gaunt of the British Navy and Irvin S. Cobb of the United States of America in 1915.

XLII

_John A. Dix_

FRIED TROUT

For my favorite dish—unhesitatingly—baked beans and pork, country style.

As to my favorite recipe, that requires many condiments, among others a mountain trout stream; the inspiration of the odor of the woods; the vigor of early morning and the pursuit. The requirements, just enough trout plus a few. From the pack basket take a piece of pork or bacon, fry well in a skillet over a carefully laid fire. Prepare the fish and roll well in fine bread crumbs seasoned with salt and pepper. When the fish are done a golden brown remove from the skillet and partake in the aboriginal manner, eating from the fingers. Kings could do no more.

XLIII

_Guy Bates Post_

LAMB CURRY Á LA “OMAR, THE TENTMAKER”

1 onion (diced) 1 cup of stock ½ cup of rice water 1 cup of potatoes, which have been previously boiled and diced 2 cups of lamb, cold roast preferred, and cut into the size of dominoes 2 tablespoons of Curry Powder (Cross and Blackwells, or other imported—_never domestic_) Zest of one lemon Salt to taste

Give me the above ingredients, and I will make you the meat dish which, above all others, is, to my way of thinking, the most savory and delicious. Eight years ago, when I was first playing “Omar, the Tentmaker,” I became acquainted with various members of the Persian Embassy, who were especially interested in the play because of its Persian locale, and it was while dining in the home of one of these gentlemen that I first became initiated to lamb curry—that is, lamb curry as it really should be cooked! Begging the recipe from my host, it has ever since been the favorite pièce-de-résistance in my home.

First of all you brown the onion in olive oil in a deep pan; then add the stock, rice-water, salt and curry powder; the latter having been mixed with a little of the rice-water to insure a smooth sauce. Simmer slowly till the oil and curry float in dark blobs, add the lamb, and continue simmering and stirring until just before serving, when the lemon juice should be dripped in.

Lamb curry should always be served with hot rice, taking on your fork equal portions of both, increasing the amount of rice in case you find the curry too hot. Never drink water with curry, as it intensifies the burning sensation. The amount of curry powder used in the above recipe can be increased or decreased according to the individual taste. Cold cooked shrimps, lobster, veal or chicken may be used in place of lamb; but never beef. Personally I find that lamb produces the finest curry dish.

XLIV

_Dr. Don Rafael H. Elizalde_

(Minister from Ecuador)

SANCOCHO

Four pounds of loin beef cut into two-inch squares.

Eight good-sized potatoes.

Five or six ears of green corn, broken in lengths of two inches.

Water sufficient to make the amount of soup required.

Boil until the beef is tender, with the potatoes, then add the corn and cook until done.

_Onions_—

Slice thin three large onions—boil for half an hour, drain and cool. Then pour olive oil over them.

_Banana Paste_—

One quart of milk in a double boiler; add two heaping tablespoonsful of banana flour mixed in a little milk to a smooth paste, and cook from half hour to an hour.

_How to Serve_—

Strain the soup through a colander and serve in a tureen, placing meat, potatoes, corn, onions and banana paste in separate, individual dishes from which each person may help themselves.

(In South America the yucca and plantains are used in this dish.)

YAPINGACHO

Make potato cakes by the ordinary recipe, but before shaping them place a piece of cream cheese the size of a walnut in the center of each; then fry brown in very little fat.

_Sauce_—

One quart of milk and one half pound of peanuts ground fine; boil until thick, seasoning with salt, paprika and butter.

Serve the potato cakes with fried eggs and pour the sauce over both.

XLV

_Bide Dudley_

TOMATO SOP

Slice firm, ripe tomatoes; roll in flour and fry in equal parts of lard and butter until brown on both sides. Remove several slices to a platter, stir those remaining with flour and small lumps of butter: then thicken with milk and season to taste.

Sop with bread or toast.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—This is good. But in the interest of the culinary art it should be stated that the flour, and not the milk, is the thickening agent.

Try it—you’ll thank the author of “tomato sop.”

XLVI

_William Hale Thompson_

(Mayor of Chicago)

ROAST BEEF

My favorite food is Roast Beef, rare, or a good American sirloin steak, which, I take it, are so simple to prepare that they need no recipe.

_Suggestions_:

1. Stand your roast on two or three thin slices of bacon—not too fat.

2. On the top of the roast lay three or four thin slices of lemon—particularly if you like the “outside cut.”

3. If your steak looks a bit fresh rub with lemon juice (both sides) and allow to stand several hours before broiling or frying. Don’t be frightened if it turns a bit black—be glad.

4. Pan may be rubbed with garlic.

5. Steaks should be _thick_, particularly if you broil.

XLVII

_Booth Tarkington_

CORN FLAKES

My favorite dish is corn flakes. They should be placed in a saucer or hollow dish, then lifted in both hands and rolled for a moment, then dropped back into the dish. After that an indefinite quantity of cream should be poured upon them. They should be eaten with a spoon. I don’t know how to prepare anything else for the table. I think the best Kennebunkport manner of steaming clams is as follows:

A bushel of clams 4 dozen lobsters 4 dozen ears of sweet corn 4 dozen sweet potatoes 4 dozen eggs

A cartload of seaweed, a bonfire burning for six hours on rocks, then swept away; the lobsters, clams, etc., placed in the seaweed, and the seaweed on the hot rocks and covered with BBB canvas. Allow to steam until screams of distress issue from the seaweed; then be careful what you eat!

XLVIII

_T. A. Dorgan_

CHILI CON CARNE

_Comes through with a natural_

What is my favorite filler for the feed bag? Well, I’ll be on the square with my answer.... It’s Chili con Carne.

I might have said Terrapin Maryland, or some other Ritzy dish, but thought I’d better come with a natural.

I’ll play Chili con Carne and tamales as they are served in California (where I was born) against any dish I’ve ever forked over.

_Recipe_

Cut, say, two pounds of good beef in small pieces the size of the first finger joint. Add some of the chopped fat, mix and salt.

Put two tablespoonsful of lard in a deep pot and heat. To this add a chopped onion. When the onion is about half cooked add the meat. Stir well until the meat has boiled down in its juice. When it starts to fry add about one and a half pints of hot water, three tablespoonsful of Gebhardt’s Eagle Chili Powder and a few buttons of chopped garlic. Simmer and stir well until the meat is tender.

XLIX

_William De Leftwich Dodge_

RAGOUT DE MOUTON

I think my favorite dish is “Ragout de Mouton,” or, I would say, the one I cook the best.

The way it’s done is this:

Cut up lamb in small pieces and fry it in a frying pan. Slice three or four carrots and onions and fry them with it. When these are nicely browned, put into a pot, cover with water, and let boil slowly for an hour. Then put in a few potatoes and turnips (cut up in small pieces), and boil until done. Season as you see fit.

L

_Montague Glass_

BOUILLEBAISSE

Bouillebaisse is my favorite dish. I make it according to the recipe of Valentine Blanc, our cook in Nice, where we lived some years ago. Valentine could neither read nor write, nor could a story tell, but her Bouillebaisse was ever so much better than that they make in Marseilles (and I venture to say in Thackeray’s old restaurant either).

Melt about a half pound of butter in a sauce pan. I’m aware that in Marseilles they use oil, but Valentine used butter. Don’t let the butter burn. Have ready two large chopped onions—i. e.—onions chopped fine, and two “dents” of garlic also chopped fine.

Cook these in the butter until tender and without burning. Have ready three perch and one haddock. That is to say: cut off the heads and tails. Some people use eels instead of haddock. I detest eels. Cut into a large saucepan the heads and tails of the fish with about a quart of water and let simmer until well cooked, say about half an hour. Strain out the heads and tails and give them to the cat.

Add the cooked onions and garlic,—butter and all—to the strained bouillion from the heads and tails and allow to simmer for half an hour more, after seasoning to taste with salt and white pepper. Add about a gill of dry white wine of any variety,—Chablis, Cotes du Rhone or what not,—the cheaper the wine the better. Now take two smallish lobsters, alive, and if you have the heart, cut them into segments and take off the claws and cut _them_ into segments. Cook the massacred lobster for about a quarter of an hour in the liquid or liquor or bouillon above described and add a saltspoonful of dried Spanish saffron, while the whole is cooking together. If you can get mussels, cook also with the entire mess, a dozen or so,—in their shells if the shells be well scrubbed in advance. Somewhere in this process add about a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Last of all, add the fish cut into convenient slices rather small, and let cook until done, but not long enough so that the fish becomes disintegrated. Remember there ought to be no violent boiling.

Before serving strain off most of the liquor and serve it first as soup with a slice of toast in the bottom of the plate. If the toast has been fried in advance in good butter, so much the better, but this is not necessary. Then eat all the solid part except the shells and sop up all the remaining gravy with bread, using your fingers to do the job and not a fork. Don’t leave a bit of it.

There ought to be enough of this stew for four people, but I can usually manage the whole thing myself with only the slightest assistance from my wife. Wine ought to be drunk with the meal, a good Burgundy Beaune or Chambertin. Later one should eat an artichoke cold vinaigrette, then some fruit and cheese and two small cups of well made black coffee. After this it is necessary to smoke a Corona Corona not too mild, and drink a small glass of Cointreau Sec. The bread ought to be _Pain Riche_ in flutes. The fruit may be fresh apricots, a few green almonds and perhaps some green gages.

The coffee ought to be drunk and the cigar smoked in the garden which must be in the vicinity of Mount Boron on the Grande Corniche or it may be in the Parc Imperial. God ought to be thanked either during or after the meal, and when it becomes a little too cold in the garden a fire should be built in the small living room and one should read Somerville & Ross’ _Recollections of an Irish R. M._, or Neil Lyon’s _Simple Simon_, or Belloc’s _Path to Rome_, or Richard Ford’s _Gatherings from Spain_ until bedtime.

Repeat the whole process on the following Friday.

God! How hungry I am.

LI

_John Philip Sousa_

PELOTAS Á LA PORTUGUESE

“_This serves from six to eight people and is my favorite dish._”

One quart can of tomatoes. Put in kettle on top of stove, simmer or let boil slowly for one and a half hours. Add pepper, salt, two onions cut in fine slices, four allspice and four cloves. The cloves and allspice to be added after it starts to boil. After two and a half hours add:

Two pounds chopped beef; add one onion, chopped fine, two cups bread crumbs, a little parsley, salt and pepper. Make into meat balls about the size of a plum. Put into sauce and boil one and one-half hours slowly. This makes fully three hours’ slow boiling for the sauce.

SPAGHETTI

Use a package or a pound of spaghetti; not macaroni. Have a large pot of boiling water with about one tablespoonful of salt. Slide the spaghetti into the water. Do not break it. Boil exactly twenty minutes. Must be tender, not tough nor doughy.

To sauce, add three bay leaves one hour before taking off the stove.

Serve spaghetti on large platter, pouring tomato sauce over it. Serve pelotas on smaller platter, allowing a small quantity of sauce to remain on them.

Serve grated Parmesan cheese on side. Use a piece of cheese to grate, not bottled cheese.

LII

_Will Hays_

CHICKEN PILAU

_“Get a fat hen—the fatter the better.”_

Because this recipe comes from a Southern cook, there are no accurate measurements.

Sam would always recommend a “fat hen”—“the fatter the better,” and “’nough rice and plenty of pepper.”

This I know: The chicken is cut up and boiled in the water until tender. Should be cooked in a good sized flat bottom kettle. When the chicken is tender there should be enough of the stock to come up well around it, but not to cover it. Then put in with the chicken about a scant pint of well washed rice. This should be stirred ONCE, Sam says, and allowed to steam slowly an hour. Use plenty of pepper to season and salt to taste. Each grain of rice should be fat and juicy. Successfully made it is delicious.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—The Chicken Pilau recommended by Mr. Hays is delicious. A variation perhaps equally good, may be had by substituting broken spaghetti, or vermicelli for the rice.

LIII

_Frank Ward O’Malley_

RUM-TUM-TIDDY

“——_has the best Welsh rabbit backed off the stove._”

Take one country home in New Jersey. One dependable apple-jack bootlegger. One cook who threatens to leave unless she can begin her nightly visits to her daughter in the village as early as seven-thirty o’clock.

Take three or four acquaintances who drop in for apple-jack cocktails just as your cook is about to put the steak on to broil. Then have your guests linger near the cocktail shaker until you, your wife and especially your delayed cook are approaching hysteria.

“Why not stay,” you now announce to your guests in desperation, “and we’ll all make a rum-tum-tiddy?”

You now tell your grateful cook not to bother preparing a meal. You next take one flivver and hurriedly drive her to her daughter’s in the village. Then you buy in the village one and one-half pounds of American cheese, one can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup and a dozen bottles of beer—real beer, if you can get it, Volstead beer if you can’t.

_NOW_:—

Pry your guests away from the cocktail shaker and shoo them into the kitchen. Everybody from this on who is not occupied in mincing the green pepper in a chopping bowl is busy cutting the American cheese into cubes about an inch square. Everybody else beats two fresh eggs—whites and yolks together.

Drop a lump of butter into a saucepan to prevent “sticking.” Begin to melt the pound and one half of diced cheese in the saucepan, stirring the lumps to prevent burning. When the cheese is fairly well melted, pour into it the can of tomato soup and the two beaten eggs. Stir into the mixture about one-third of a bottle of beer. Pour in also the finely chopped green pepper and continue stirring until smooth.

Have hot dinner plates ready, each plate containing a large slice of hot, unbuttered toast. Place at least one bottle of beer—two if it’s real—beside each plate.

Holler “Ready, people!” and pour on each piece of toast enough of the contents of the saucepan to form a pinkish overflow of rum-tum-tiddy on the plate.

That’s all—except to shake ’em up a semi-final cocktail and then start right back to the village in the flivver for another pound and one half of cheese, another pepper and more beer to make another immediately when the first rum-tum-tiddy is gone. One calls for two, often three.

Serve preferably in the kitchen. Serve in any room far from the kitchen if you want leg work exercise. Eat until gorged.

LIV

_Charles Evans Hughes_

CORN BREAD

“_My favorite dish is corn bread and honey._”

And here is a recipe for corn bread:

2 cups of flour 3 cups of cornmeal 4 heaping teaspoonsful of baking powder 2 eggs well beaten 1 teaspoonful salt 1 tablespoonful sugar 1 pint of milk 2 tablespoonsful of melted butter

Mix the meal and flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Beat the eggs until they are light, then add the eggs and milk to the meal. Beat to a light smooth consistency and add the melted butter. Bake in a shallow pan (greased) for about twenty-five minutes.

Eat while hot and use plenty of fresh butter and honey.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—There is a white meal and a yellow. Expert appraisers of corn bread have said that the white meal is preferable. Still the golden hue of a pan of hot corn bread is not to be passed up lightly.

LV

_Walter Prichard Eaton_

MINCE-PIE

“_Made any other way it’s not mince-pie._”