Part 5

My favorite dish, and the best food in the world, is King Canute Pudding, but I shall not tell anybody how to make it, because that is a family secret. I am descended from Canute, and this was the pudding he ate and which made him feel so good that he went out and bade the tide to cease rising. The recipe is handed down in each generation of my tribe. It was my paternal grandmother who had it to pass on. She lived to be ninety-nine, thanks to her own wonderful cooking and a cantankerous disposition. Her mince-pie was a thing to write sonnets about. It was the second best food in the world. For ten years after I went to New York I lived on the memory of that pie and shuddered at the horrendous messes masquerading under the same name which were offered to me.

Then I moved back to New England and achieved a cook who, by the grace of God and the right bringing up could make a pie like it. For six years I knew happiness again. Then we lost Kate, the incomparable. My only hope was my wife and that was a feeble hope, indeed. She was born not in the pie belt, but in New York. She had never cooked. She was an Episcopalian. I approached the next Thanksgiving breakfast with gloomy forebodings.

But lo, a miracle. It was an orthodox mince-pie. It was Katie’s mince-pie. It was grandmother’s mince-pie—in short, it was mince-pie. Here is the way to make it. Made any other way it’s not mince-pie.

_The Filling_

Affix the grinder firmly to the edge of the table. What the palette is to the artist so is the grinder to the creator of mince meat. Then pass the following ingredients through the grinder, and from thence into a large kettle and let the latter and its glorious contents simmer on the stove for the best part of a morning, stirring them frequently so that no portion shall be neglected and fail to come into close union with the soothing heat that mellows all into one fragrant whole. Take from the stove and store in stone crocks or glass jars in the dark, and keep tightly covered. When about to fashion a pie take out as much of the meat as you desire, wet it with boiled cider and with fresh cider, too, if possible, so that it is not stiff, and bake between the crusts whose ingredients are given below. Eat hot with soft dairy cheese and coffee.

The meat should be thoroughly boiled the day before the mince meat is made, and the cider should be boiled down at home—not bought—until it is the consistency of molasses. Boil enough to last all winter and put in glass jars. Now, alas, that no liquors may be had, it is well to bottle fresh cider and put it away where it is cool, so that with luck it may still be fresh when in March you scrape the last jar for the last pie. Only use care when it is opened, or perchance it will be the ceiling rather than the pie which will be wet down.

5 cups cooked beef; after grinding 2½ cups suet 7½ cups apples 3 cups cider ½ cup vinegar 1 cup molasses 5 cups sugar ¾ pound citron 2½ pounds raisins 1½ pounds small raisins (not to be put through grinder) salt to taste juice and rind of 2 lemons juice and rind of 2 oranges 1 tablespoon mace and nutmeg (or 2 nutmegs grated) 2 tablespoons each of cinnamon, cloves and allspice 2 tablespoons lemon extract 1 teaspoon almond extract 3 cups liquor in which beef was cooked

If you have wine or brandy put in a cupful after taking from the fire.

_The Crust_

2 cups pastry flour sifted with teaspoon salt. ½ cup (generous) of lard mixed in with fingertips till the combination is fine and powdery.

Wet with cold water, mixing with knife, and cutting, till you can take the dough from the bowl without sticking to it. Divide in half, pat gently on floured marble slab, and roll out thin. Lift lower crust carefully, place in tin and trim off edges. Roll out from trimmings a strip half an inch wide and place on top of lower crust, around edge, first wetting edge slightly with cold water. Put in filling, place upper crust on top, first wetting edge of rim slightly with cold water, press together with tines of fork and trim off overhanging of upper crust. Prick a large T. M. on the top crust and bake in hot oven till brown.

(The T. M. stands for “’Tis Mince” to distinguish it from the pies labeled T. M. for “’Tain’t Mince.”)

LVI

_W. T. Benda_

POLISH SPECIALTIES

In following my Polish recipes you will find a practical use for the geometry of your school days. If you have forgotten the axioms of Euclid, take a correspondence course before attempting “Ushka.”

It is simple when you finally master it—and marvelously good. Don’t forget the line B D. Everything hinges on that.

BARSHCK WITH USHKA

_Barshck. (Or Polish Beet Soup)_

If you are brave, put three large beets, peeled and quartered into a glass jar and pour on them a quart of water, add a teaspoonful of salt and a slice of rye bread. Keep this in a warm place for about five days. There will form a sour red-wine-like juice with a whitish mold skin on the top. Don’t lose your courage, take this skin off and pour off the juice.

Then prepare a quart of beef, pork and vegetable stock and while it is hot add to it all your beet juice and a bottle of cream which you previously have beaten with a teaspoonful of flour. Heat and stir it all just to boiling point, but do not let it boil, and serve with or without “Ushka” which are fully described in the next paragraph.

_Ushka_

Barshck is really not complete without “Ushka,” and as they are a very simple dish to prepare you should never omit them.

To make “Ushka” prepare first a fine hash of half a pound of boiled pork and beef with one small onion, a tablespoonful of flour, salt and pepper.

Make white sauce of butter and flour and a little water, mix this with your hash, let it stew for a while, then add one raw egg and stir it madly.

Now mix a dough, using half a quart of flour, one egg, two tablespoonfuls of water, half a teaspoonful of salt, and butter of the size of a walnut. Knead this vigorously for half an hour, or until it is quite smooth.

Roll the dough out into a sheet 1/8 of an inch thick and cut it into 2½ inch squares. Put on each dough square a teaspoonful of your hash; fold them diagonally along the line BD (Fig. 1) and press the edges together, thus joining the edge AB unto the edge CB and AD unto CD. You will thus obtain the right angle triangle ABD (Fig. 2) with the hash inside. Now curve this triangle along the hypotenuse BD until the 45 degree corner D meets the 45 degree corner B. Let these two corners overlap a little and press them together until they stick. The shape resulting from this operation resembles a pig’s ear, as depicted in Figure 3.

Now put these _pig’s ears_ or _Ushka_ into boiling water; they will sink, but that should not distress you. Leave them there until they come to the surface. Put the Ushka on a platter and pour on them brown butter with crumbs and serve them as a side dish with _barshck_.

BURACHKI

(_Beets à la Polonaise_)

Boil eight little beets, skin them and chop them (not too fine).

Take one level tablespoonful of butter, and one tablespoonful of flour. Brown it until it is of a golden hue. Stir into this half a cupful of vinegar, two tablespoonsful of sugar, half a teaspoonful of salt and a little pepper. Bring it to boiling, then mix this with your beets.

LVII

_Captain Edward A. Salisbury_

SAUCE FOR SPAGHETTI

This sauce for spaghetti is a real Italian mixture—and wonderful. This is how I learned to make it in Italy:

Place in a cup or bowl a half teacup full of _dried_ mushrooms. Pour boiling water over them and just let them stand until thoroughly softened, say—about a half hour.

In the meantime cover the bottom of your frying pan or skillet with butter or olive oil (I prefer the butter). Chop one big onion and cook slowly, stirring frequently. In another pan or kettle place two cans of tomatoes. Stew them for half an hour. Then make three small cakes of Hamburg steak or chopped beef and put them in to cook, with the onions. Cook thoroughly. Add at the same time the mushrooms which have been softened and chopped into fine particles.

When the meat is cooked through mash the cakes up with a fork—mixing well with onions and mushrooms.

Now add the stewed tomatoes and, in doing this, press them through a sieve or colander. Stir well.

Place on back of stove and let steep for one hour after adding two teaspoons of Eagle Chili Powder (if available) or two teaspoons of Lea & Perrins sauce with five dissolved cubes of beef or chicken bouillon.

To cook the spaghetti, place it, unbroken, in well salted boiling water. Put it in end first. Boil exactly twenty-three minutes. Drain. Hold under cold water tap for a second or two and drain again. Keep warm on stove until served. This cold water treatment is important. It removes all gumminess and leaves the spaghetti in perfect condition. Use the imported spaghetti if available.

EGGS À LA SALISBURY

Here is a dish that is easy to make and delicious.

I poach the desired number of eggs until they are just solid. Then I place them on hot, crisp toast, covering the eggs with beautifully done bacon.

Over the lot, I pour hot cream until the eggs are floating.

Salt, pepper and paprika to taste.

Try this for breakfast.

FISH À LA COMMODORE

Say you are cooking a six pound bass or some similar fish—do it this way for a change:

Rub the fish well with salt and pepper. Don’t be afraid to rub. Then open the flesh in three places and insert in each opening a clove of garlic.

Next slice six large onions—six small green peppers—and six large tomatoes. Now take your Dutch oven or baking pan and cover the bottom with Mazola oil or olive oil—add a tablespoon of butter.

When this is _hot_ put in your fish and cover the fish with the sliced vegetables. Salt and pepper the vegetables.

Cook until the vegetables are done or about one hour. Baste frequently to avoid scorching the vegetables. To the basting add two teaspoons of Lea & Perrins sauce and one-half wine glass of cooking Sherry when half done.

When serving put plenty of juice and sauce on each portion and make them come back for more. This recipe can be used for many kinds of large fish.

TO COOK TROUT

Dip trout in beaten egg, salt and pepper. Roll in flour and drop into very hot and very deep Mazola oil. Remove when golden brown. The trout will be perfectly free from oil and every bit of the delicate trout flavor will be sealed up inside. Try it!

VENISON STEAK

Venison steak is fairly poor steak at best. But there is one way to cook it that makes you forget all past experiences with venison. And remember this is really the only way to cook it that’s worth a damn.

Take the venison and strip out _all of the white sinews_ that lay between the muscles or lean parts. Strip and cut this white part all away. Then cut your venison into small strips about the thickness of a finger. Now you are on your way. Beat up an egg or two and beat in a bit of salt and pepper. Dip your strips of venison in the egg, then roll them in flour. Fry in butter and serve immediately.

Every hunter or guide who has tried this sticks to it. It’s the one way to cook venison.

GOOSE

There is only one way for a man, or any one else, to cook a goose. Listen: Never pick a goose! Just pull the skin right off—every inch of it.

Then take a sharp knife and follow down the breast bone on both sides. Strip the breast meat clear away from both sides. Split each side of breast into two thin steaks (if large goose).

Dip these steaks in beaten egg, salt and pepper. Roll in flour and fry over a medium fire. That’s new to most folks for goose and it’s going to give you a new idea about geese when you try it.

A MAYONNAISE AND A SALAD DRESSING

Take yolks of two eggs, beat well and add slowly (drop at a time) olive oil. If your mixture is too thick lighten with dash of lemon or vinegar.

Now into a half pint of this mayonnaise put three tablespoons of Chili sauce; three tablespoons of Blue Label Ketchup; one tablespoon of finely chopped pimento; one tablespoon of finely chopped blanched sweet peppers.

To this add one-half teaspoon of salt—pepper and Hungarian paprika to taste.

Then add, slowly, Tarragon vinegar to taste—say about one and one-half tablespoons.

Serve this on shrimps, lobster, lettuce or tomato salad.

DUCKS AND LARGE FOWL

Ducks, such as Mallard, Canvasback and Redhead, should be baked. If you once learn how to bake in a Dutch Oven you have found the secret of successful camp cookery.

Take a Mallard, for instance. Rub it with salt and pepper (I might add here: pick ’em dry and keep ’em dry—no water near a duck!), then put an onion well up in the body cavity. Fill the remaining space with celery, wild or domestic.

Get your oven, or Dutch oven, very hot before the duck goes in. Use no grease and no water—just your dry pan or oven. A big Mallard will cook perfectly in twenty minutes. Do not open oven or take lid from Dutch oven after starting to cook. Serve with currant jelly.

TEAL, PARTRIDGE AND SMALL FOWL

Pick, without breaking the skin. Cut open the back and break out flat for grilling or broiling. Broil bone side to the fire for _eight_ minutes. Souse frequently with melted butter.

Turn and broil, flesh side to the fire, for _four_ minutes, using more butter. Salt and pepper thoroughly at time of turning.

Serve with currant jelly.

BEANS

Get a deep pot for beans. A heavy iron one is mighty good.

Take a half pound of salt pork and cut it into very small pieces. Fry them until brown.

Clean your beans and soak them for at least two hours—or more. Then boil the beans for two hours, after which add the pork and one can of Mexican Chili Sauce. If this is not available, make your own by frying with the salt pork: four tomatoes, three onions, two bell peppers and one red pepper, all chopped.

Now you’ve got your mixture and after it’s all together put in six beef bouillon cubes; salt and pepper to taste.

It’s a good idea to have enough water in the pot so that when the beans are done a fine soup may be enjoyed before the beans are eaten. Altogether three to four hours of cooking is necessary for the best results with beans.

ITALIAN RICE

First, a word about cooking rice. Buy the best head rice. Wash it thoroughly,—six waters. Drop rice slowly into well salted, boiling water, and boil for twenty-three minutes. Drain off three-quarters of water and hold rice under cold water faucet for a moment; this will leave each grain firm and perfect. Drain thoroughly.

Now the sauce. Place in your skillet olive oil to cover the bottom; also tablespoon of butter. Chop one large Spanish onion. Place it in the skillet and cook slowly. Stir often.

After ten or fifteen minutes, a piece of white fish (sole preferred) about the size of your four fingers, from the palm down—see? When the onions are a golden color add one finely chopped clove of garlic. When fish is thoroughly cooked, mash it up with a fork and stir well. Now add one or two cans of tomatoes which have been stewing slowly for half an hour or more. Add them through a sieve and push with a spoon so as to get the thick part through. Mix well.

Place this on the back of the stove where it will simmer for one hour. Add a pinch of saffron or thyme—salt and pepper to taste.

This sauce can be used for only one meal, as it sours after a few hours. Sauce should be applied by each person as desired until it’s all gone.

STEAK SAUCE

Have a large platter very, very hot—really hot!

Then the minute the steak is done, put it on the platter and work fast. Over the steak sprinkle a very little bit of dry English mustard. Then a squeeze or two of lemon. Now several thin slices of butter, a little Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper and paprika. Rub all this in with a broad knife. Turn steak and repeat the operation. Now tip platter on edge and quickly whip the sauce into a froth, using a fork. Serve two or three tablespoons of sauce with each piece of steak.

LVIII

_Thomas H. Ince_

CHICKEN HALIBUT

(_Baked and with Parmesan_)

Boil some slices of halibut in court bouillon, lay in baking dish a border of potato croquette—either hard or shaped with hand. Have layer of bechamel on bottom of dish—then one of shredded fish, another layer of bechamel and one more of fish, finishing with the bechamel; sprinkle with bread crumbs and grated Parmesan. Pour over a little butter and brown in the oven.

_With Parmesan._ Prepare same and make solid paste by mixing together butter and Parmesan cheese with pinch paprika. Work well and roll out one-eighth inch thick. Cover last layer bechamel with this and brown in hot oven.

_Bechamel Sauce._ Prepare roux of butter and flour, let cook few minutes while stirring—not allow to color—remove to slower fire and leave it to cook 15 minutes. Then dilute gradually with half boiled milk.

ONION SOUP AU GRATIN

Cut into small 1/8 inch squares two medium onions, fry them in butter and add two dessert spoons flour and moisten with two quarts of broth, adding bunch of parsley garnished with chervil, bay leaf and clove and garlic. Season with a little salt, pepper and some meat extract, boil for 20 minutes—then remove the bouquet—pour the soup over very thin slices of bread placed in a metal soup tureen in intervening layers of bread and cheese—Parmesan—finishing with the Parmesan and sprinkle a little over the top of the soup. Bake in hot oven or boil ten minutes and thicken with raw yolks of two eggs diluted in cream.

RICE Á LA MANHATTAN

Chop two onions—fry in butter, add a pound of rice and beat together. When very hot, add enough broth to triple quantity—let boil and cook in slack oven for 20 minutes. Add when done, six ounces grated Parmesan. Pour ⅔ of this into casserole, make hole in center and fill with shrimps and minced mushrooms; around sides lay fillet of sole, pour over lean Spanish sauce—reduced with essence of mushrooms—mix well and cover whole with remainder of rice—put in hot oven for fifteen minutes and serve.

Sauce:—1 quart of stock—melt ¼ pound of butter—stir in same amount of flour—making clear paste—add stock—brown slowly.

LIX

_George Ade_

“SCOLLOPED” OYSTERS

If I must make a decision, I think I shall have to vote in favor of escalloped oysters. Back home we call them “scolloped.” The restaurant and hotel article is not the real thing. The portions are stingy and the oysters are heated just enough to render them helpless and they lie embedded in some dry packing, evidently meant to be an article of food. Escalloped oysters, as prepared at home, came in a deep pan which had been subjected to great heat. The oysters were used with the greatest prodigality. They were cooked in cracker crumbs or corn meal and they were cooked until the delicious flavor of the bivalve had permeated all parts of the dish. Milk or cream and real country butter had been used unsparingly, so that the whole compound was moist and the seasoning had been well distributed, and the whole result was, in my opinion, a triumph. For some reason, the real “scolloped” oysters attain their perfection only when prepared by women past thirty years of age.

I am not undertaking to give the recipe. Probably it is something secret—beyond the reach or comprehension of any man, but the dish itself is worthy of all the complimentary adjectives.

EDITOR’S NOTE:—Here is the way to do it—first butter the bottom and sides of a pan (deep) or baking dish, then cover the bottom with those little, round, old-fashioned oyster crackers, all crisp and salty. Next place a layer of oysters, fresh or cove. If you don’t know what cove oysters are ask some one who was raised in the Middle West. Now a layer of crackers crushed; then more oysters and so on until the pan is full. Season each layer of oysters with salt and pepper. Put little bits of butter all over the cracker layers. Now fill the pan with milk and cream to which has been added a bit of the oyster liquor. Cover the top well with crushed crackers. Put a cover on the dish or pan and slip it into the oven. Some folks add a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce to the milk and cream. Bake until the juices bubble up. Don’t let too much of the moisture bake away. At the last minute take the cover off the dish and brown the top.

The richer the cream and butter the better the result.

The dish is even better than Mr. Ade would lead you to believe, and it _can be made_ by an amateur male cook—that’s why Mr. Ade’s contribution is printed in spite of the rank heresy to which he professes.

LX

_Lyman Abbott_

DEEP APPLE PIE

Dr. Lyman Abbott’s favorite dish is a Deep Apple Pie, which is made like the deep fruit tarts so plentiful in England.

Here is a thoroughly satisfactory way to make Dr. Abbott’s specialty: Line a deep pie tin with a rich crust, fill with tart, juicy apples sliced very thin. Sprinkle sugar and a little cinnamon over them. Scatter bits of butter over the apples, about a tablespoonful in all. Also sprinkle with a tablespoonful of water. Use four or five tablespoonsful of sugar. Cover with top crust and bake slowly for a half, or perhaps three-quarters of an hour.

For the real _deep dish_ pie put the apples, sugar and butter (above proportions) in the individual deep dish and cover with top crust. Bake the same. The spices may be varied to taste.

LXI

_Terry Ramsaye_

LETTUCE (à la Red Creek)

In behalf of my favorite fodder, the tender leafling lettuce that’s newly sprung in June, I am pleased to present a method of introducing it to the human system with a maximum effectiveness.

WILTED LETTUCE:—It is said that this dish comes to us from the Hessians. If this be treason let us make the most of it.

Having obtained the lettuce, young and tender and fresh from the patch, plucked before it is yet headstrong, toss it into a bucket of cold water to crisp it.

Repairing to the kitchen, place on the hot stove a skillet and heave into it a good sized cupful of chopped bacon. Let it fry thoroughly. Add a dessert spoonful of salt, a pinch of mustard, a couple of tablespoonsful of granulated sugar and good cider vinegar in quantity slightly in excess of the bacon fat. Let it simmer smartly until well blended. Meanwhile lay out the lettuce in noble heaps on the plates on which it is to be served. Chop up a handful of green onions, a bit of the tops will do no harm, and at the last moment stir them into the concoction in the skillet.

While the whole is sizzling and boiling vigorously, pour the mixture over the lettuce, using a spoon to apportion the nifty bits of bacon about, and serve forthwith.

By this method one can take aboard amazing quantities of lettuce, which is most desirable in view of the fact that this gentle herb contributes strongly to the summer languor when taken in adequate quantities.

LXII

_R. L. (Rube) Goldberg_

HASH

All joking aside, my favorite dish is hash.

I have never actually been in the kitchen to see hash pass through the various stages of its epicurean development, but I imagine hash is manufactured something like this:

First the father must eat a big lunch, the mother must fill herself up on cake in the afternoon and the children must have spoiled stomachs. This condition of affairs ruins the evening meal completely and there is plenty of meat left over for hash the next day.

The cook takes the beef or veal or whatever it is and throws it into the electric fan. The flying bits of meat are caught on ping pong rackets by experts and knocked back into a pot that contains a large quantity of mashed potatoes. Then the fire is lighted and the cook can go out to an afternoon movie.