The Project Gutenberg eBook, Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book, by Marion Harland

Transcriber’s Note

In the section Pickled nutmeg melons, melons change to mangoes part way through, viz.

“Lay the _mangoes_ in strong brine for three days. Drain off the brine and freshen in pure water for twenty-four hours. “Green” as you would cucumbers—that is, have a kettle lined with green vine leaves, and lay the _mangoes_ evenly within it, scattering powdered alum over the layers. A piece of alum as large as a pigeon’s egg will be enough for a two-gallon kettleful. Fill with cold water; cover with vine leaves, three deep; put a close lid or inverted pan over all, and steam over a slow fire five or six hours, not allowing the water to boil. When the _mangoes_ are a fine green remove the leaves and lay the melons in cold water until cold and firm.”

This has been corrected.

Marion Harland’s
Complete Cook Book

MARION HARLAND

Marion Harland’s
Complete Cook Book

A PRACTICAL AND EXHAUSTIVE MANUAL OF
COOKERY AND HOUSEKEEPING

CONTAINING

THOUSANDS OF CAREFULLY PROVED RECIPES—PREPARED FOR THE
HOUSEWIFE, NOT FOR THE CHEF—AND MANY CHAPTERS
ON THE CARE AND MANAGEMENT OF THE HOME—THE
FINAL EXPRESSION OF HER
LIFE’S EXPERIENCE

By MARION HARLAND
Author of
Common Sense in the Household, Etc.

NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1903
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
June

Copyright 1906
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
March

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Marion Harland’s
Complete Cook Book

DEDICATORY PREFACE

To My Fellow Housekeepers, North, East, South and West:

Thirty-one years ago I wrote, dedicated to you, and sent to press, Common Sense in the Household.

The daring step was taken in direct opposition to the advice of all who knew my purpose. I was assured that I should lose the modest measure of literary reputation I had won by novels, short stories and essays if I persisted in the ignoble enterprise.

One critic forewarned me that “whatever I might write after this preposterous new departure would be tainted, for the imaginative reader and reviewer, with the odor of the kitchen.”

He may have been right. I do not know nor do I care whether his judgment or mine was the better. I gave my first cook-book to you because I knew from my own experience, as a young, raw and untaught housekeeper, that you needed just what I had to say. The hundreds of thousands of copies which have been sold, the thousands of grateful letters received from my toiling sisters, testify to that need and that to me was appointed the gracious task of supplying it.

Under the impulse of a conviction as solemn and as strong I offer you now a work embodying the best results of mature Housewifery. Or, as I would rather name it, Housemotherhood. Before I put pen to paper I stipulated that the contract with the publishers of The Complete Cook Book should contain a clause forbidding me to prepare and issue any book of a similar character during the next ten years.

Whatever I have to say to you through the medium of a printed and bound volume in all these years must be said here.

I have had this thought in my mind with the writing of every page. In every page, in every line, in every word I have done my best to serve you. I know you well enough to be assured that you will not forget this. If such a thing might be I would have every dish compounded according to my directions a souvenir to each of you of one who has given thirty-odd of the best years of a busy life to the task of dignifying housewifery into a profession, and ennobling the practice of it in your eyes.

For the fair degree of success which has followed these efforts I am thankful. Thankful, too, to those of you whose appreciation of my aim and my work has held up weary hands and stayed the failing heart.

This talk, made purposely as “familiar” as if I were face-to-face with each of you, is not a valedictory, but an au revoir. The book in your hands contains the gleanings of an active decade. Housewifery keeps pace with other professions in the swinging march of an Age of Wonders. I have faith in it and in myself to believe that I shall go on with the fascinating work of accumulating. I add, hopefully, I have also faith in you that, in the future as in the thirty years overpast, you will aid me in that accumulation.

Marion Harland.

MARKETING

Mutton and BEEF may be called the Marketer’s Perennials. They are in season all the year round.

In buying mutton see that the fat is clear, very firm and white; the flesh close of grain, and ruddy. Buy your meat fresh, even if you mean to hang it in the cellar for a week—or longer in cold weather. “Begin fair!”

The best cuts of mutton are loin, saddle and leg. French chops are cut from the rib, the fat taken off and several inches of the bone cleaned from meat. They are nice to look at, good to eat—and expensive. You can do the trimming at home when you have once seen it done and save the extra cent or two paid for the word “French.” Loin chops are cheaper and usually more tender and better-flavored.

A more economical piece than the leg for the housewife who does her own marketing is the fore-quarter. You can bone and stuff part of it for a roast; the chops are almost as good as those cut from the loin, and the bones, when removed, make good stock for broth. The meat is really more juicy and sweet than that of the leg, and the cost from two to three cents a pound less.

Lamb is in season from May to November. What is sold under that name in winter is undersized mutton, and usually tough and dry.

Beef—the Englishman’s main-stay—is quite as important in the American kitchen. Seek, in purchasing, for rosy, red meat, “shot” with cream-colored suet, dry and mealy, and a good outer coat of fat. Press the meat hard with the tip of your thumb. If it be flabby, and, after yielding to pressure, retains the dent, let it alone.

The rib roast is a choice cut. It is more comely when the bones are removed, the meat rolled and bound into a round. In which case insist upon having the trimmings sent home. You pay for them, and, when you order soup-meat, for that as well. Have the bones cracked, buy one pound of coarse lean beef for perhaps ten cents, and you have foundation for a good gravy soup, or stock enough for several hashes and stews.

The round costs about two-thirds as much as a rib-roast and half as much as a sirloin, and serves admirably for à la mode beef, or a pot-roast.

The sirloin steak is far more economical than a porterhouse. Remove the bone before cooking. This cut often contains really more of the coveted tenderloin than the porterhouse, and the rest of the steak is more tender, as a rule, than the dearer cut. Have the steak cut at least an inch thick.

Summer FRESH PORK is less desirable than winter lamb. It should be barred from the market after the first of May, and not allowed there before December first, if then. The lean should be pink, the fat pure white and solid, the skin like white, translucent parchment. That it is cheap and “goes far” recommends it to many people.

The chine, the spare-ibiss and loin are the best cuts for roasting. Pork chops are popular, and pork tenderloins much affected, even by epicures. Children and invalids should never touch unsalted pork at its best estate.

Veal comes into market earlier than genuine spring lamb, and is seasonable all the summer through. Be sure it is not that most objectionable variety of what is rated by dieticians as a decidedly objectionable meat—known in slang usage as “bob-veal.” No calf should be slaughtered until at least six weeks old. The meat should be a clear, pale red, the fat very white, the texture firm. Veal may be innutritious, but the knuckle and, indeed, all the bony parts are invaluable for soups, containing much gelatinous matter. The breast, the fillet and loin are the most popular roasting pieces. Veal chops are really better eating and cheaper than the cutlet, and should be better known to the frugal housewife.

A calf’s head, scraped free of hair and well-cleaned, may be bought in country markets for fifty cents, and can be made into a dainty dish fit for John and John’s unexpected friend.

Sweetbreads are an acknowledged delicacy, and liver, properly cooked, will be approved by all.

By the way, lamb’s liver costs less than calf’s liver, and is more toothsome.

In choosing POULTRY, slip your bare forefinger under the wing where it joins the body and press hard with the nail. If the skin breaks easily, the fowl is probably young. Then try the tip of the breast-bone. If the cartilage gives readily and springs back slowly, the signs are still favorable. Next, look for hairs on the body and hard horny scales on the legs; for scrawny necks and a livid hue in the flesh—all unfavorable indications. Tough fowls should be cheaper far than tender. If your market-man calls them frankly “fowls,” commend his honesty, and if you contemplate a fricassee or chicken pie, reward his integrity by a purchase. Chickens may be “fowls,” yet good,—that is, nourishing and amenable to judicious “tendering.”

A veteran housewife, with a reputation to support, tells me she has but one method of securing really excellent meats for her table: “When a market-man sells me tough flesh, or superannuated poultry, or ancient fish, I give him warning. At the second offense, I transfer my custom to another dealer. The rule works well!”

It is especially useful when one would be certain of getting FRESH FISH. Now that fish and oysters are bedded in ice until the wiliest connoisseur may be mistaken in their age, it behooves the housemother to know, first of all, that she is dealing with a man with a conscience as free from reproach as she would have her halibut, salmon and oysters.

CARE OF HOUSEHOLD STORES

Apples, POTATOES, TURNIPS, CARROTS, BEETS, etc., if stored in bins or barrels, should be picked over every week. The defective should be thrown away, and if there be any sign of sweating, the good should be spread out on the floor for a day or two to dry before they are repacked. Fruit should be handled with care. Bruises are incipient decay.

Particularly FINE FRUIT—apples and pears—should be wrapped, each separately, in soft, unprinted paper and, when packed, covered with fine, dry sand. Thus protected, they will keep plump and sweet for months, and need no overhauling meanwhile.

When practicable, keep VEGETABLES in large quantities elsewhere than in the cellar under your dwelling. Putrefying roots, cabbages and apples were responsible for much of the winter and spring diseases that puzzled our forefathers and mothers. Even now many a farmhouse reeks with “cellar smells,” as subtile and dangerous as sewer gas.

Keep EGGS in a cool place, yet not where they will be liable to freeze. If you store them in large quantities, pack in dry salt, the small end down. As an additional precaution, grease the shells, and pour melted lard upon the topmost layer of salt.

Dried beans and peas should be kept in wooden or tin boxes with close tops.

Have canisters with tight lids for COFFEE AND TEA, and keep them shut. Coffee loses strength and flavor when exposed to the air. Tea softens and molds.

In buying CRACKERS give the preference to those packed in tin cases. If they come in paper boxes, set these in tin receptacles, or in stone crocks with snugly fitting tops. Never throw away a tin cracker-box. It is always useful.

After CHEESE is cut, wrap in tin-foil, or in soft (unprinted) paper and keep in tin, or in stoneware.

Crusts, bits of toast, broken crackers and stale slices of bread should be kept in the kitchen closet until perfectly dry; then set in a moderate oven for an hour before crushing them with a rolling-pin. Keep these crumbs in a glass jar with a close top. They are invaluable for breading chops and croquettes, and for scallops.

Brown FLOUR by the quantity, and when cool put into glass jars ready for use.

Salt cakes and hardens in damp weather. Store it in your warmest and driest pantry. In very wet weather mix a little corn starch with that you put into the table salt-cellars.

Flour can not be kept too dry, nor can Indian oatmeal, and all kinds of sugar. Pulverized sugar is as susceptible to humidity as salt. Tin boxes are absolutely necessary for keeping it tolerably free from lumps.

Spices, pepper and dried herbs must also be shut up closely, and never be kept in open receptacles. Some brands of BAKING-POWDERS actually effervesce when exposed for days at a time to the open air. All are injured seriously by such exposure.

For all these staples and ingredients, have closely-fitting lids—and keep them on!

Store DRIED FRUITS in stone jars with covers; CANNED FRUITS AND PICKLES in glass jars; tumblers of JELLY AND MARMALADE should be kept in the dark. The light acts chemically upon the contents. If your storeroom be light, wrap jars and tumblers in thick paper tied on with strings.

As soon as MEAT comes home from market remove every bit of the brown paper enveloping it, and lay upon a clean dish near the ice—never upon it. Fish does not suffer from contact with ice. Meat does, becoming flabby and viscid. If your refrigerator is so arranged that you can hang the meat up, that the air can get at all sides of it, it will keep far better than when laid on a platter.

A good meat preserver is a box, as large as you can make room for in the refrigerator, the top and bottom of which are of wood, the sides of wire netting. Stout hooks are screwed into the inside of the top, and one of the netted sides is hinged, like a door. Meat hung in this box will remain untainted and sweet much longer than when hung upon the side of the refrigerator. If you have a cool cellar, keep the meat box, thus prepared, upon a shelf in the darkest corner. The netting excludes insects, yet allows the air to enter, and by drying the surface forms an impervious coating which will keep in the juices.

Get large tin boxes for BREAD AND CAKE. Scald them frequently, drying thoroughly in the sun, and have clean, dry cloths in which to wrap each fresh batch of cake and baking of bread and biscuits.

It is an excellent plan to make cotton bags in which to put LETTUCE, CELERY, TOMATOES, SPINACH and other green things you wish to store in the refrigerator. The shelves and ice-box are kept clean, the esculents fresh. Many housewives have adopted the expedient within a few years, and none has abandoned it after a trial. The bags are of coarse, light cotton cloth, or of cheese-cloth, and go into the weekly wash.

Table butter, wrapped in dampened cheesecloth squares, keeps sweet and firm. These squares are as large as a child’s pocket handkerchief, and hemmed to prevent raveling. Half a dozen will last a year, unless the “hired gurrel” takes them for dish-cloths.

Butter, made into balls for the table, should be kept in a bowl of cold water in the refrigerator, and the water changed every morning.

Keep in your own mind, and so far as you can, impress upon the conscience of servants, that whatever has been once in the refrigerator must be returned to cold storage, unless used. Meats soften and taint, butter turns rancid, fruits and vegetables decay when this precaution is neglected.

KITCHEN UTENSILS

It is not my purpose to discourage the housewife by a list of culinary furniture.

The readers of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” may recall that Mr. St. Clair declared the evolution of irreproachable course dinners through such means as his negro cook employed in a smoky little kitchen with scanty store of pots and kettles—to be “nothing short of genius.” I have, before now, visited kitchens environed with pot-closets, where hung a glittering assortment of every conceivable patented “indispensable”—and sat down in the dining-room to greasy, watery soups, scorched meats, soggy bread and curdled custards.

It is well to have a plentiful supply of tools. If there be not sense and skill behind them, failure is a foregone conclusion.

The object of this brief chapter is to tell our housemothers how to keep such pots and kettles, griddles and pans in working order, and how to make them last a reasonable time.

To begin with—get good ware. The clumsy iron vessels that gathered grime and soot over the fires kept up by our grand-dames have been pushed aside by lighter and cleaner utensils of various sorts. Coppers—that must be as bright outside as they were within, and gathered unto themselves murderous verdigris, if not cleaned before each using, with salt and scalding vinegar—were banished, and righteously, long ago, in favor of galvanized, porcelain, granite, agate-iron and nickel-steel-plated wares that neither rust nor green-mold. These wares are as easily kept clean as stone china, and if less durable than iron and copper that descended from mother to daughter and even down to the third generation, last reasonably well when properly handled.

Pots, kettles and the like should be set upon the range—not thumped and banged. A nicked cooking utensil is a disgrace to the handler thereof.

Cracks and scaling-off are still oftener the result of sudden overheating and of allowing an empty vessel to stand over the fire. The teakettle boils dry, the soup seethes and simmers until bones and meat stick to the bottom of the pot. To complete the wreck, the ignorant or indifferent cook snatches off the misused utensil and runs with it to the sink, turning the cold-water faucet upon the heated metal. Yet the mistress marvels at the semi-yearly necessity of replenishing kitchen tools!

Never put away a vessel which is not both clean and dry. Wash with hot water, good soap, and household ammonia. Use mop and soap-shaker, if you would spare your hands and do justice to bottoms, seams and sides of pot and pan. Rinse off the suds, wipe and set, upside down, upon the range for thirty seconds to make assurance doubly sure.

Hang up everything that furnishes the semblance of a loop by which it may be suspended. And always in its own place, so that you could find each in the dark.

Cover the shelves of the crockery closet with strips of scalloped oilcloth that come for the purpose, and the shelves on which you keep metal pie-plates and pans with stout paper, pinked at the edges.

If you use tin milk-pans, have them seamless, scald daily with boiling water into which you have stirred a little baking soda, rinse with pure water and stand in the sun.

Wooden ware should be scrubbed with a clean, stiff brush and soda-and-water, rinsed well, wiped and dried near the fire or in the open window.

Buy three qualities of dish-towels—the finest for glass, silver and china; the second best for crockery used in kitchen work; the third for heavy kettles, griddles, etc., and have them washed every day. Even when no grease adheres to them they have a musty odor if used several times without washing.

Rub gridirons and griddles with dry salt before each using, wiping it off with a clean towel.

Never undertake to polish your stove until it is quite cold, and do not rekindle the fire too soon when the polishing is done.

Next to the range, or stove, the sink is the most important feature of the kitchen.

“Let me see a woman’s sink, and I will tell you what sort of a manager she is!” was the saying of a shrewd housemother who had seen much of life and of cooks.

The waste-pipe should be flushed every day when the water in the boiler is hottest. During the flushing two tablespoonfuls of strong ammonia should be poured down the grating over the waste. Once a week in summer add a handful of crushed washing-soda. And keep the sink, itself, clean all the time!

Grease should never accumulate upon the sides and in the corners; tea leaves and other débris never be clotted over the vent.

A stout whisk-brush must hang above the sink and be used freely in scrubbing it. When the whisk becomes stained and flabby, burn it up and get another. A dirty brush, mop or dish-cloth makes—not removes—dirt.

Follow these directions, and if the outer drain-pipes are properly built, you will have no occasion to employ disinfectants and deodorizers.

The old New England kitchen was the family sitting-room in winter, and in thousands of farm-houses, this is still the custom. Since no device can make the sink and its appurtenances ornamental, or passably comely, have a tall folding screen that may be drawn in front of it when the day’s work is done. The mistress who never sits in her own kitchen, but wishes that her maids should have a pleasant resting-place in the evenings, may offer the screen for their use. The better class of “girls” will appreciate the kindly thought.

CHEMISTRY IN THE KITCHEN

Here again I shall be brief and practical. Nobody would read this page were I to prate learnedly (apparently) of proteids, phosphates, dextrine, hyposulphites and computed chemical and dietetic values. The purpose of the honest cook-book is to help, not hinder.

A few facts relative to chemical effects and changes in every-day cookery should be tabulated.

For example, the mission of the much-used and oft-abused bicarbonate of soda—familiarly called “baking-soda”—is imperfectly apprehended by those who handle it most frequently. The average cook does this handling heavily. “Soda makes bread and biscuits rise,” is the sum of her knowledge and the aim of her practice in this direction.

Soda should be measured as accurately as if it were a potent drug, and never used except in combination with an acid. Even then, lean to the side of mercy in measuring. One even teaspoonful of soda to two rounded teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar, one even teaspoonful of soda to two cupfuls of buttermilk, or “bonny clabber,” one even teaspoonful of soda to one cupful (one-half pint) of molasses, cause what may be considered an equitable effervescence, liberating gases that lighten dough and batter without making them unwholesome. The “greeny-yellowy” streaks in farmhouse quick biscuits are poisonous, but the alkali is not in fault. Soda should never be driven in single harness.

The first stage of incipient decomposition is acidity. If, when a slightly-suspected fowl or cut of meat is to be boiled or stewed, a teaspoonful of soda be thrown into the pot as soon as the boil begins, violent effervescence will attest the presence of the disturbing acid. This subsiding will leave the meat free from unpleasant taint.

Beefsteak and chops, which are just a trifle “touched,” may be restored to sanity by a bath of soda and water, well rubbed in. Butter that has suffered in quality through the neglect of the maker in not working all the milk out may be made tolerable for kitchen use by working it over in iced water in which a little soda has been dissolved. After which the butter should be wrapped in a salted cloth with a lump of charcoal in the outer fold.

Ammonia is another beneficent agent in correcting natural or artificial deficiencies. A bottle of household ammonia should be as invariably an adjunct to the kitchen sink and that of the waitress’s pantry as the soap-dish. It “kills” grease by a chemical combination with it, and lends luster to silver by the same.

Dry soda, laid upon a burn or scald, heals, but not merely by excluding the air. Flour would do that as well. The alkali acts directly upon the decomposing skin and vitiated juices of the flesh. The sting of a bee, wasp or hornet is formic acid; that of a mosquito something akin to it. Ammonia, applied instantly, neutralizes the venom and eases the smart.

In the composition of salad dressing, stirring the oil, vinegar, salt, pepper and dash of mustard together, long and skilfully, makes a chemical emulsion smoother and more palatable than the hasty slap-dash mixture too often served as “French dressing.”

Bread-dough which has begun to sour can be brought to terms by working into the batch a little saleratus dissolved in boiling water, which is then allowed to become lukewarm before it is kneaded faithfully through the dough. A like solution should be beaten hard into griddle-cake batter that has a pungent smell.

Vinegar and lemon juice are invaluable aids in the business of “tendering” tough meats. Beefsteak, covered for some hours with vinegar or lemon juice, and olive oil, is made eatable by the action of the acid upon the fibers which are further “suppled” by the oil.

Vinegar put into the water in which a fowl or mutton is boiled will serve the same purpose, and a dash of vinegar in boiling fish removes the strong oily taste that would otherwise cling to it.

Powdered alum stirred into turbid water—an even tablespoonful to four gallons—will cause a precipitate and a settlement. The clear water may be drawn off cautiously and used for washing and even for drinking, having no perceptible taste of the alum.

A bag of powdered charcoal sunk in a pork barrel will keep the brine sweet through the winter, without blackening it or the meat.

Javelle water, invaluable for removing mildew and rust-stains, may be made at home in the following manner:

Place four pounds of bicarbonate of soda in a large granite or porcelain-lined can, and pour over it four quarts of hot water.

Stir with a stick until the soda has dissolved, add a pound of chloride of lime and stir until this also has dissolved.

Allow the liquid to cool in the pan, strain the clear portion through thin cloths into wide-mouthed bottles or jugs and cork tightly for use.

The part that contains the sediment may also be bottled and used for cleaning sinks, kitchen tables, etc.

An excellent detersive for cleansing and sweetening a kitchen sink is washing soda. Dissolve a couple of handfuls in hot water and when boiling hot pour down the drain.

To prevent oil-lamps from smoking or giving forth a disagreeable odor, boil the wicks in vinegar, then dry in the sun.

CARVING

The present mode of serving meats after the manner of the table d’hôte—the carving done in the kitchen, and the results placed upon the platter to be served to the guests by butler or waiter—has in large measure done away with the demand for hints to the master or mistress of the home upon the art of carving. To those who adhere to the earlier custom, directions can be merely outlines; for the single means by which one may become an adept as a carver is in the repeated practice which is required for skill in any work of manipulation.

A prerequisite to carving is appropriate implements. The knife, the edge of which has been dulled upon the bread-board, or hacked in the offices of the kitchen, where it has been employed as the scullion’s tool, may puncture and tear, but it will not carve. In the hand of even the most skilful it is exasperation.

The mistress of the home owes it to the head of the table, as well as to the ease of mind of her guests, to see that the carving set—the knife and its companion fork—shall be in the best condition for their work.

To carve a roast of beef

This will depend upon the form in which the roast is placed upon the platter. If it include several ribs, furnishing sufficient room for a base of bone, it may be so put before the carver that he may cut perpendicularly in thin slices, passing the knife in a line parallel with the ribs. If, however, the roast be laid upon the side, as is usual, the same direction is to be observed as to the cutting in lines parallel to the ribs.

Where a tenderloin roast is to be carved—having but the one large bone which divides the tenderloin from the more solid portion—there is little choice whether the knife is drawn with or transversely to the grain: the tenderness of the meat is assured in either case. It may be more convenient to sever entirely the tenderloin from the firmer part of the roast before beginning to slice. This will leave the carver at liberty to serve a portion of each quality of the meat to every guest, as the tenderloin may not be of sufficient size to serve to all.

To carve a leg of lamb or mutton

If the small ribs—which are generally taken off for chops—are left with the leg, the carver is free to ask the preference of each guest for the rib or solid slice. The chops may be detached by drawing the point of the knife between the ribs, and—if the butcher has properly done his part—in severing the light cartilage at the backbone, as in parting vertebræ. The fleshy portion of the leg will be more tender if cut in slices at a right angle with the bone, as one would carve a ham; that is, across the grain. Some carvers, however, prefer to cut lamb or mutton with the grain, as it enables them to serve a portion more or less thoroughly cooked, according to the preference of those to be helped. These directions apply equally to carving a haunch of venison.

To carve poultry

The fowl—whether turkey, chicken or duck—should be placed on its back upon the platter. This will permit the carver to transfix the breastbone firmly with the fork; for, upon the stanchness of the hold here will depend the success of all further operations. The wing from the nearer side should first be dissevered by a gash of the knife underneath the socket. This, if the fowl be tender, is easily accomplished with a single cut. The first and second joints of the leg may next be separated, and the second or upper joint removed from its junction with the body, as was the wing. This is easily effected by a slight cut and pressure of the bone outward. The sidebone may be taken off by running the blade directly along the backbone; for it adheres only by a filament of skin and the soft fat that attaches to it on this line.

These joints having been taken off, the breast is now entirely exposed, and further carving is a very simple matter. The removal of the leg has laid bare the cavity, from which the dressing may be lifted with a spoon, and the cutting of a few slices from the breast, near the neck, will open the crop with the stuffing usually placed there to plump the fowl. The main joint and the pinion of the wing may be severed by cutting the cartilage at the junction of the two bones.

To carve fish

There is an art in carving fish, and it is confined to a single direction. It is to open with a knife at the back, drawing the blade the whole distance from head to tail just above the backbone, and pressing the meat loose from its fastening. Portions may then be served by cutting transversely with the backbone. Fish so carved is freed from the intricate mass of small bones which are sure to mingle with the flesh if it be cut in any other way. The head, if not already removed, should first be taken off, and the collar or shoulder-bone lifted from the fish.

SERVING AND WAITING

If a butler be engaged to do the family serving and waiting, he understands his business, or he should not apply for the place. The rules written out here are for the benefit of households where but one or, at the most, two maids are kept. I assume that the waitress takes charge of the table after the mistress has once shown her how it is to be set.

By the way, I hope you call her a “maid,” not a “girl.” The latter word has been so rubbed and soiled by persistent usage on the part of domesticated foreigners, who shed the name of “servant” as soon as they stamp upon American soil, and by the handling of would-be “genteel” housewives, that people of refinement hesitate to touch it. What the old-fashioned New Englanders called “hired help” would shake the dust off the soles of the shoes they are not yet quite used to wearing, were you to allude to them as “servants.” “Maid” sounds well, bearing to their tickled ears a certain dignity not unsuited to their new estate.

Beginning with the first meal of the day, we will suppose a cereal, fruit, one dish of meat, bread and butter, potatoes, hot muffins, tea and coffee—a typical American breakfast, in fact.

A fruit-plate, holding a doily, on which is a finger-bowl half-filled with water, cold in summer, tepid in winter, is set for each person. If fruit that requires paring or cutting is to be eaten, lay a fruit-knife on the plate. If oranges are served, add an orange-spoon. At the right of the plate are the water tumbler, a knife, with the sharp edge toward the plate, and a cereal-spoon, bowl upward. At the left should be the bread-and-butter plate, the fork, tines upward, and a folded napkin.

In front of each plate are a pepper-cruet and a salt-cellar.

In the center of the board have a bowl of flowers, or something green and growing, all the year round. At the foot, carving-knife and fork, a steel or other “sharpener,” and a tablespoon; unless you have a polished table, cover it with a neat breakfast-cloth, using napkins (“serviettes”) to match. If your table-top be at all presentable, lay a hemstitched or embroidered square of linen—sold as a “breakfast or luncheon square”—in the center, and under each plate a doily of the same style. A thick mat to protect the varnish against the heated meat dish; a carafe, or glass pitcher, of ice-water on each side of the table, and the tea and coffee equipage at the head, complete the preparations for serving.

The basket, or dish of fruit, is handed from the sideboard where are arranged tablespoons, the glass or silver tub of broken ice to replenish glasses, and, if there are no carafes on the table, a pitcher of iced water, with a relay of knives and forks in case an extra supply should be required on account of accidents.

At the last minute, before the mistress is told at the sitting-room door that “breakfast is on,” the glasses are filled with iced water, a firm ball of butter and a freshly-cut slice of bread are laid upon the small plate at the left of each place.

When the family and guests are seated, the waitress, dressed in a neat gingham or print gown, a clean apron, with bretelles, bib and full skirt, and a white cap pinned above orderly hair (not used to cloak unkempt elf-locks), passes the fruit basket or dish to the mistress of the house from the left side; then to each person at table.

The fruit eaten, let the waitress, beginning as before, at the head of the table, take from the right side of each person, plate, knife and spoon in one hand, finger-bowl in the other, and remove to a side table, or to the “waitress’s pantry,” where they are to be washed. Never pile plates and saucers upon one another, or upon a tray. The habit is slovenly and lazy. Still more displeasing is the scraping of plates at the side table, or within hearing of the eaters.

If the cereal be cooked, it is usually served by the mistress of the house. In this case set the hot dish upon a mat beside or before her, when you have put a cereal saucer with a plate under it before each person. Have a tray, with a napkin or doily within it, ready to receive each saucer as it is filled; offer to the eaters from the left, and when all are served pass sugar and cream on the tray.

When the cereal has been discussed, remove first the dish, then the saucers, and bring in hot plates, quickly and dexterously setting one before each person. They should have been warmed through slowly in the kitchen, but not be so hot as to draw the varnish through the doilies. Next set the dish of hot meat, chicken or fish, in front of the carver. As each portion is laid upon a plate, the plate is set upon the tray you hold. Taking the plate in your hand when you reach the mistress of the house, set it down before her from the right.

There need be no confusion in this much-debated question of “left and right” if the waitress will bear in mind one simple rule:

When plate, cup or other article is to be taken from the tray by the eater, or he is to help himself from an offered dish, the waitress must stand on his left, that he may use his right hand freely. What the waitress puts upon the table with her own hand must be done from the right.

For example, the plate with meat on it is set down from the right of the person who is thus served. He takes his cup of coffee and helps himself to sugar and cream from the left.

Before the waitress leaves the breakfast-room for the pantry, if she does not remain throughout the meal, let her replenish glasses with water and ice, pass bread or muffins a second time, and if cups are emptied, offer her tray to take them back to the head of the table to be refilled. Should she begin to wash plates and saucers in the adjoining pantry to save time, let this be done very quietly. The rattle of china is not a musical accompaniment to table-talk.

The manner of setting the table and waiting at luncheon is substantially the same as at breakfast. Dinner demands certain variations, while the general principles are the same.

The waitress of to-day has a dinner uniform, decorous in all, becoming to a large majority of women. She wears a black gown, deep white cuffs and collar, and an apron of finer material and somewhat more ornate in fashion than in the forenoon.

Under the damask table-cloth is laid a covering of felt made for this purpose—sold as “table-felt,” or a “silence-cloth.” The linen cover lies more smoothly over this and appears to be of better texture than when spread upon bare boards. Besides the damask table-cloth, a “carving square” is laid at the foot of the table, and under it a thick mat on which the hot dish may stand. On this are carving-knife, fork and “steel;” also tablespoon and gravy ladle, leaving room between for the large dish. A cold plate stands at each place, to be taken up when the hot is set down by the waitress. At the right of the plate lie the soup-spoon, bowl uppermost, two knives, edges turned toward the plate, and a fish-knife (if there is to be fish) beyond the dinner-knives. A tumbler for water, and, if wine is used, glasses for this, stand also on the right, a little beyond the array of knives.

Some prefer to lay the soup-spoon at right angles to the knives, and back of where the plate is to be.

At the left of the plate have two large forks; then one for fish, and outside of this an oyster-fork, if there are to be raw oysters. The napkin, folded flat, and inclosing a slice of bread, cut thicker and narrower than for breakfast, lies also on the left.

Plates for the several courses are in array on the sideboard, except such as must be brought hot from the kitchen. Salad plates and those for dessert stand in order. Saucers for ices are set upon plates lined with doilies. Fruit plates are also supplied with doilies, on which are finger-bowls half-full of water.

A side table is reserved for vegetable dishes. They are not placed upon the principal table now, even at the daily family dinner. Pickles and olives are on the dinner-table; carafes of water, and always flowers.

Some housewives have soup served in hot plates directly from the kitchen. If the tureen be used instead, the mistress preferring to pour it out herself, have a carving-cloth at that end of the table also. The soup ladle lies at her right. As she ladles out the soup it is set on the waitress’s tray. She takes it off with her hand and puts it from the right before any guest who may be present; then the family in turn. At a dinner party, those on the right of the hostess are served first. The soup-plate is set upon the cold plate in front of the eater, and when removed is taken from the right, leaving the lower stationary cold plate in its place, until the fish comes, when it is exchanged for a hot one.

In clearing the table after each course the soup-tureen, and in its turn the large dish at the foot of the table go out first, the soiled plates afterward.

Before the dessert is brought in, crumb the table, using a clean folded napkin, when you have cleared the cloth of salt, pepper, pickles, etc.

After the sweets comes the coffee. This is often sent to the guests into the drawing-room. In this case, the waitress covers a large tray with a white napkin, arranges the filled cups, smoking hot, upon it, sets the sugar in the middle and takes the whole into the room where the party is assembled.

Liqueur-glasses follow the coffee, and are also carried into drawing-room or library. In announcing to the mistress, in sitting-room or elsewhere, that a meal is ready, the waitress says, “Breakfast is on,” or “Luncheon is ready,” or “Dinner is served”—according to modern usage. One frightened unfortunate, on duty at a trial-dinner party, filled the hostess with confusion, the guests with secret amusement, by rattling off all three formulas in a breath.

It is impossible to write out rules that will meet every form and exigency of “entertaining.” The hostess who, having mastered the leading principles here given, trains her waitress into the daily practice of them, insisting that her family shall be served three times a day in the right order, and as punctiliously as if a state banquet were the business of the hour, need fear no embarrassing “situations,” no matter how large the number, nor how important the stations of her guests.

AMONG THE LINENS

Everything commonly classed under this head should be carefully aired before it is put away. Even when this duty has been conscientiously performed, real linen, made of pure flax, has marvelous properties for absorbing humidity. And humidity is the parent of that relentless foe to housewifely peace—mildew. Table-cloths, napkins and linen sheets that have been packed securely—as the owner supposed—in closets, drawers and chests, sometimes present to our horrified eyes a collection of small blotches, like dark freckles, and as ineradicable, and the folds, when opened, smell musty. The walls of the closet were not quite dry, or the chest has stood in a damp room, or the sideboard drawers have gathered must in an unaired basement dining-room.

It is a matter of common prudence to overhaul the contents of linen closets, and especially linen drawers and chests, once a month, if only to make sure that the contents are keeping well. At the same time be on the lookout for rents, broken threads and thin places.

Never buy cheap linen. If you can not afford the finest, you may secure that which is “all linen,” round-threaded and evenly woven. A little practice in the purchase of these treasures will initiate you into the art of judicious choosing. Having bought good “material,” take care of it. A break in a table-cloth or napkin, or towel, if neatly darned, will give you several more weeks of wear out of it—perhaps months. Hemstitched articles are liable to “give” first in the drawn work, and a stitch here in time, saves ninety.

You may keep napery in drawers, if more convenient than elsewhere, or upon shelves in a roomy sideboard. When at all practicable have a light, airy closet for bed linen. My own linen-room, built to order, has a southern window, unshuttered, through which the sun streams all the afternoon on fine days. Except in wet weather this window stands open for an hour of every day—not longer, lest dust should blow in.

Suffer another personal paragraph:—Not a sheet, towel or pillow-case is taken from this closet except by myself. Each pile has place and meaning. Each set of towels belongs to an especial apartment. Heavy bath towels; soft damask for the leastest baby’s use; big, rough huckaback for the boys’ lake baths, and the orderly heaps of different styles and textures, every one marked with embroidered letter or monogram designating chamber or owner—are known familiarly to but one person in the family.

I modestly commend this rule to each housemother. Let the linen shelves be the especial charge of some one particular keeper. If not yourself, one of your daughters. This is rendered almost necessary by the system of rotation that should regulate the use of sheets, pillow-cases, counterpanes and towels. Those which come from the wash this week should be kept by themselves. In laying out clothes for the beds, and towels for the various rooms, select from the bottom of the pile of those laundered one, two or four weeks ago, working gradually upward, week by week, until all have gone through the wash and consequently, all are evenly worn. Never make up a bed with freshly washed linen, no matter how well aired it may seem to be.

Sheets, pillow-cases, towels, table-cloths—all folded linens—should be laid upon the shelves with the open and hemmed ends toward the wall, the round folds outward. The effect is neater to the eye, and articles are more easily taken out.

There should be no smell in this airy closet except the indescribable sweet sense of freshly laundered linen—not strong enough to be called an odor. Lavender, scented grasses, and dried rose leaves are poetical in the writing and the hearing thereof, but the sleeper between smooth cotton or linen sheets sickens of artificial smells. They are neither “goodly,” nor wholesome.

THE CHILDREN

Our forefathers and foremothers were dressed, in infancy, precisely like their fathers and mothers. As we see by the portraits treasured among our curios, they were abridged copies of the adults of a hundred years ago. Parents were then consistent in feeding their progeny with food they considered convenient for themselves.

When the royal father ate fermenty for breakfast it is upon record that a baby prince, suffering from marasmus, was nourished (!) upon barley, boiled soft with raisins. They sat up to late functions—those wretchedly dissipated princelings—and the cotter’s children went to bed at the same time with himself.

He who doubts whether or not our times are better than the former would be converted to steadfastness of conviction by patient study of the nursery habits of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

We have children’s outfitters nowadays, who fashion garments utterly unlike those worn by be-corseted, be-trained, and be-pantalooned grown people. The cotter’s wife clothes her boys in knickerbockers and blouses, her girls in loose waists and brief skirts, all designed expressly—although she does not know it—to allow free and healthful growth of the immature creatures.

I wish I could add that reform as radical and commonsensible had been wrought in children’s diet, and children’s hours of rest and sleep.

Mothers who have thought deeply upon these matters and acted upon meditation, appreciate the hygienic law that children require sleep to promote growth, as well as to repair the waste of waking—which are working—hours. If an adult needs seven hours’ slumber, the infant of days—under seven years of age— requires ten to satisfy wants his senior has outgrown. Up to the age when the child ceases to add inches, if not cubits, to his stature yearly, provision must be made for the steady drain upon vital and nerve forces.

The aforesaid canny mothers call in the little ones from play before sundown in summer, bathe them, endue them in nightgowns and pajamas, put dressing-gowns over these, and loose slippers upon the tired feet, then set them down to a supper of bread and milk, or buttered bread with a dash of jam or jelly, and good, sweet milk, with once in a while a plain cooky as an afterthought. Supper over and prayers said, the darlings are laid in bed by the time the west begins to blush at the sun’s nearer approach. In winter, the six o’clock supper is served in the nursery or dining-room, and the bairnies disposed of comfortably to themselves and to the rest of the household before “grown-uppers” sit down to the “hearty” supper or dinner dividing the working day from an evening as busy, and sometimes almost as long.

To borrow from the slang dictionary—the child needs the ten or twelve hours’ sleep in his business of growing tall and robust, steady of nerve and sane of mind. Furthermore, he needs food adapted to his needs. Plenty of cereals; plenty of milk; plenty of ripe fruit in the season thereof; meat once a day; nourishing broths and a few green vegetables. No fried things whatsoever; neither tea nor coffee. No pastry; no mince pie nor plum pudding, nor highly seasoned entrées. Time enough for these delicacies when the inches (and feet) are all in, the muscles in splendid working order, the gray matter of the brain “all there,” and ready to do the duties of a man’s brain for fifty years to come.

One branch of a child’s education, sorely neglected in tens of thousands of homes, is mastication. As soon as he cuts his teeth teach him why they were given him. Make him chew everything he takes into his mouth. Able dieticians are proclaiming boldly that milk should be chewed, a mouthful at a time, if one would not have it change to curd about the diaphragm. The child’s meat should be finely minced for him until he can cut it up for himself, and bolting be reckoned as a breach of decent behavior. He may forget the truism that “gentlemen eat slowly” after he joins in the great American rush for fortune. Obedience to it for a term of years will lay the foundation of sound digestion. He will have a better chance of long life and no dyspepsia, than if he had been allowed to gulp down milk by the glassful without drawing breath, and to gobble steaks and chops in two-inch chunks.

Insist that the child shall behave decorously at the table, as well as eat properly, from the time he can comprehend an order conveyed in the simplest language. Do not let him make porridge of his soup by crumbing bread into it, or churn crackers into mush in his milk, or dip toast into his cocoa, or work vegetables and gravy into a mound, using the knife as a trowel. He should be reproved for sipping soup and other liquids audibly, and for loud inspirations after drinking. Line upon line and precept upon precept, gently but regularly enforced, will make a well-bred boy of him. And right habits learned in childhood last a lifetime.

There is common sense in each of the conventions at which vulgarians scoff.

DIET AND DIGESTION

The second depends upon the first. The two make up a whole which is Health.

“Food values” is so emphatically a technical term that I would not employ it here if it did not express just what I mean, when used untechnically.

What we eat has many and differing values. It is possible, without degenerating into dietetic cranks, to appraise them properly and to apply the knowledge thus gained to the building up of these bodies of ours and the consequent up-building of the immortal better part they encase.

Digestions are so many and so diverse, the one from the other, that it is rank folly to prescribe bills-of-fare warranted to agree with everybody.

Take, for example, milk. It has won from the ablest writers on dietetics the title of the One Perfect Food for the human race. Specialists on dyspepsia prescribe an almost exclusive milk diet for obstinate cases. In typhoid fevers it is the specific regimen. One man consumes inordinate quantities, by advice, to increase adipose tissue. A woman lives upon skim milk, swallowed very slowly, to reduce her flesh. And so on through multifarious cases—all acting upon the recommendation of experts.

All the time, as each of us knows, certain stomachs can not digest milk, or even retain it long enough to test its nutritive properties, while in others it causes intense heartburn and engenders bile.

Toast and tea are the stock invalid diet, the civilized world over. Yet Medical Daniels (M. D.’s) are rising up by the score to protest against ruining stomachs with tannic acid and burdening digestive organs by forcing what is no better than dry sawdust upon them.

Chocolate is freely prescribed as digestible, and so nutritious that one could live and not lose flesh, eating nothing else, for weeks together.

I am acquainted personally with ten people at least, to whom any form of chocolate is poisonous and abhorrent to every sense.

Natives of the land where the cocoa palm grows virtually subsist upon the nuts, and many in other lands devour the imported cocoanut with impunity. The fatty flesh acts upon some stomachs with the virulence of glass filings, producing terrible cramps and even convulsions.

A noted teacher of culinary lore strenuously recommends our native nuts, walnuts, filberts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, and so forth, raw, and cooked in various ways as a substitute for meat. The innovation is daring, and opposed to the conclusion based upon the observation and experience of scores of other writers, to the effect that nuts are hurtful to six people out of ten, the oils, and the cells which contain the oils, difficult of digestion by any save the strongest stomach.

It is much the fashion with writers upon domestic economy to extol fish as more economical and more easily digested than flesh, besides being rich in the phosphates needed to repair the waste of brain force.

Some people who would scout the imputation of invalidism can not eat even fresh fish without experiencing symptoms not unlike ptomaine poisoning. I recall the case of one woman who was extremely fond of oysters, yet dared not touch them for fear of fatal consequences. I once saw her faint away an hour after she had eaten half a dozen.

Who shall decide when dietists and individual digestions disagree so radically as is indicated by these and hundreds of other examples? And by what standard of gastronomic morality shall we gage personal conduct in the government of appetite? Since man must eat to live, and an unimpaired digestion is wealth inestimable—what shall we eat?

Certain combinations of materials are manifestly iniquitous. Cooked fats, fried fats in particular; soggy bread, especially when fresh from the oven; hot cakes, (“sinkers”), viscid with griddle grease and swimming in butter; tough doughnuts, reeking with lard; leathery pie-crust; underdone fish and rare pork and veal; cabbage that has been cooked in but one water; turnips that have been left in the ground until they are stringy pith; tough meats of all kinds that resist mastication; unripe fruits—none of these should ever enter human mouths, or be imposed upon the long-suffering digestive apparatus.

The housemother who studies wisely the properties of the fare she puts before her family will adjust food-values to the several needs of those to whom she ministers. The child of weak intestines must have neither oatmeal, hominy, nor mush for his breakfast cereal. Rice, rightly cooked, thickened milk, well boiled, and arrowroot porridge, will heal irritation, and, as it were, tighten the tension of the machine. He may not indulge in the apple-sauce and cracked wheat which are better than laxative drugs to his hale brother.

A bilious girl should not drink milk unqualified by a dash of lime water, and never take coffee. Her languid, appetiteless mother will be refreshed in nerve, stimulated in brain, by a demi-tasse of strong coffee taken without cream after her dinner. It is doubtful whether or not creamed coffee is a wholesome beverage for any one. It is an established fact that the addition of cream works a chemical change, and for the worse, in that which, taken clear, is a valuable digestive agent.

An important branch of the mother’s profession is to acquaint herself with the stomachic idiosyncrasies of each member of her household. Certain compounds and some simples do not agree with one person, while others thrive upon them. To be cognizant of the peculiarities of each constitution is to be forewarned of the danger of gastronomic experiments. Lay down as a positive law that it is wrong—a sin against the body given by God—to eat what one is sure will disagree with one. Tabulate for your own convenience a code of “kitchen physic.”

To wit, that Indian meal is laxative; oatmeal, heating; wheat-flour, binding; that tea is slightly astringent, and coffee, creamed, a gentle aperient; that sweets and rare beef engender gouty acid in those disposed to rheumatism and constitutional headache; that candies and other confectionery ferment into sharp acid in an empty stomach, and should, therefore, never be eaten unless as a dessert. The same is true of pickles. Except when eaten in combination with meats and other oily foods, they are actively unwholesome. The schoolgirl habit of champing pickled cucumbers and pickled limes, as a starving pauper might gnaw a crust, is pernicious and disgusting. The skins of raisins and grapes are indigestible. Figs are a well-known cathartic, a fact the housemother should avail herself of where a doctor, if summoned, would prescribe a drug. It is always better to control digestive irregularities by diet than by medicines, each of which is a poison which cures one ill by creating another.

Pears dispose one to constipation. Ripe peaches and ripe apples regulate the bowels in a vast majority of cases; an orange, eaten at bed time, is a gentler agent than Rochelle salts, and does as good work.

The veteran practitioner who insisted fifty years ago that “cupboard cures” were safer and surer than those wrought by materia medica was in advance of his age. The twentieth century is just growing up to his standard.

I have spoken of qualifying milk with lime water for bilious people. Other articles of food unwholesome to some constitutions may be modified with wholesomeness by the use of certain condiments which act as correctives to hurtful qualities.

For example, nuts may be eaten freely when salted. Thus treated they are introduced at dinner as digestive agents and appetizers. When accompanied by fruits, nut-oils are readily assimilated by the gastric juices. Hence, nuts and raisins go naturally together upon the menu.

Cayenne pepper makes oysters and fish a safe enjoyment for those with whom they disagree actively if this be not used, and lemon-juice further counteracts the evil effects of fish-oil and the dreaded ptomaine.

THE IMPROMPTU LARDER

Some of her friends call it “The Emergency Pantry.” The owner objects to the term because it conveys an idea of bandages and styptics. Whereas, the cozy closet devoted to the comfort of possible guests—to be welcomed and fed, although unexpected—contains substantial food and appetizing delicacies.

She belongs to the great and growing host of suburbanites dependent upon peripatetic butcher and baker, and the nearest “general store.” The keeper of the typical general store never orders so much as one jar of marmalade or a pound of fancy biscuits until the last is sold, and has never a twinge of mortification in saying: “Just out! Expect new lot next week.”

So our hospitable housewife stocks and keeps filled her reserve shelves.

John has a way of bringing home a chance guest to dinner when the notion strikes him, and Mrs. Notable’s town friends have their way of happening to be in dear Mary’s neighborhood about lunch time, and, having come all the way out from town, it is hardly worth while to go home when there are afternoon calls to be paid in the suburbs. When one of these calls chances to be upon Mrs. Notable, afternoon tea must be served. Mrs. Notable’s daughters join theater and concert parties, going early into the city and coming out late and hungry. Iced lemonade, ginger ale, cake and sandwiches refresh them and their attendants in summer, and on winter nights something hot and savory from “mother’s chafing dish.”

Back of all this stands mother’s Impromptu Larder. One shelf holds the best brand of canned soups, chicken, tongue and boned ham; another sardines, anchovies in oil, anchovy paste and pâté de foie gras, soused mackerel, and mackerel with tomato sauce. Baked beans, plain, and baked beans with tomato sauce, have honorable place among potted foods; also dainty jars of fancy cheeses, ready for use at a second’s notice, and bottles of grated Parmesan. Olives, including pimolas, stand in line with “pin-money pickles” and catsups. There is a brave array of homemade jellies, marmalades, brandied and pickled peaches; a case of imported ginger ale, bottles of domestic liqueurs, and glass cans of apple-sauce and tomatoes, put up in Mrs. Notable’s own kitchen. A fair proportion of each kind of pickle and preserve is set aside for the Impromptu Larder and not touched for family consumption.

Fancy biscuits of many sorts have several shelves for their own; sweet and unsweetened cheese biscuits, sea-foams and snowflakes and zwieback; hard crackers and soft crackers; plain wafers, fruit wafers and cream wafers; lady-fingers and ginger-snaps—make a goodly show to the eye and stay the mistress’s surprised soul when the impromptu luncheon or supper must be more sudden and abundant than usual.

“My strong tower!” she once called this pantry, laughingly.

In winter she finds room for nuts, raisins, apples and oranges; in autumn, for baskets of grapes. These last named may be called “transients,” the supply being renewed frequently.

Mrs. Notable is not a rich woman. She is obliged to make each dollar do the full work of one hundred cents. To this end she keeps an “expense book,” setting down every article purchased and the cost thereof.

In the account of necessary outlays that for replenishing the stores in the strong tower is registered under the head of “HOSPITALITY.”

FAMILIAR TALK

BREAKFAST

Common sense would decide that we should begin the day with the glad alertness with which the sun smiles at us over horizon, or housetops. He rejoices as a strong man ready—that is, rubbed down, supple and light—to run a race.

There are still writers of “goody” books and works on hygiene who extol the morning mood. According to them, the whole human machine is then at its best. The head is clear, the stomach is vigorous, the spirits are buoyant, life is a joy.

In reality—the reality of the every-day life of respectable people who have not tarried long at the wine, or eaten Welsh rarebits over night—the hard pull of the day is at the beginning.

The head of the average man or woman ought to be clear, the digestive organs active, limbs and joints in excellent working order. There should not be what one comedian describes as a “dark-brown, fuzzy taste” in the mouth, or the feeling that the cranium is stuffed with cotton wool, and the diaphragm should not loathe all manner of food.

But such things are. Where one man tells you that breakfast is the best meal of the day, fifty account the ceremony of the earliest meal of each new day as a hollow mockery. A celebrated judge left upon record the saying: “No man should be hanged for a murder committed before breakfast.” Another, almost as famous, openly and officially declared his unwillingness to condemn a prisoner convicted of manslaughter of whom his physician had testified that he was a chronic dyspeptic. “A dyspeptic,” urged the judge, whose own diet had consisted of mush and milk for ten years, “is never quite sane.”

Not one of his three daily meals is “comfortable” to him whose alimentary apparatus is out of order. To one in tolerable health the business of “stoking” the engine for the drive of the forenoon should not be irksome.

Thus common sense and hygienic general principles. Now for facts.

A brilliant woman summed up the popular judgment on the subject in an after-luncheon speech before other literary women, in the assertion that “the human machine needs to be wound up and lubricated and regulated by bath and breakfast before it is fit to work with other machines, or, indeed, to go at all. Breakfast, partaken of in the company of one’s nearest and dearest, is a blunder of modern civilization. It is an ordeal over which each should mourn apart.”

A young man of education and breeding, who lives in bachelor chambers with three other “good fellows,” confesses that, while the seven o’clock dinner hour is always full of cheer and good-will, the four friends seldom exchange a syllable at the breakfast table beyond a brief salutation at entering the room, and a curt “good day,” in separating to their various places of business.

“Thanks to this sensible silence, we have lived together three years without quarreling,” he wound up the story by saying. “Every man is a brute until he has had his morning coffee.”

Much of this is talk for talk’s sake, and some of it is Temper. It is not easy for one to get full command of oneself before the relaxed nerves are braced by tea or coffee, and the long-empty stomach is brought up to concert pitch by food. If we have slept too heavily, we are stupid; if too little, irritable.

I admit that the American’s first meal of the crude day, with the accompaniment of the rush for car, or boat, or train, that turns out—or in—dyspeptics by the hundred thousand yearly, is not conducive to domestic happiness, or the preservation of table etiquette. The householder, devouring porridge, two cups of scalding coffee, rolls, steak and fried potatoes, at discretion, with one eye on the clock, and both feet braced for the jump and run he knows are imminent if he would catch the train, is in the first or fortieth stage of what a witty essayist diagnoses as “Americanitis.” His children’s railroad speed of deglutition and the scurry for school are along the same lines of discomfort and disease.

Upon the mother’s hands and head rests the responsibility of “getting them off for the day,”—a battle renewed with each morning until she “fairly loathes the name and the thought of breakfast.”

The remedy for the domestic disgrace—for it is nothing if not that—is so simple that I have little hope it will be respected, much less accepted.

It is, get up fifteen minutes earlier in the morning!

The plain truth is that your system is not “ready for breakfast,” when you announce that you are. The racer, to whom Scripture compares the smiling God of Day, never takes the first lap at a rush. He warms gradually to his work, having at the outset paid as diligent heed to the “Make ready!” as to the “Go!”

If you rise usually at seven, have the hot water and cleaned boots brought to the door at a quarter before seven, and get up when you are called. A brisk bath and a smart rubbing with a crash towel, preceded by fifty gymnastic strokes, such as arm-swinging and general flexing of the muscles; twenty-five deep breaths that pump the morning air down to the bottomest well of your lungs and clear the respiratory passages of effete matter lodged there during the night—these, with a general disposition to speak charitably toward, and to speak civilly to companions and competitors in the race, correspond to “make ready.” Clean, supple, and in good heart, come to the table as to preliminary refreshment you have time and appetite to enjoy.

At least seven-tenths of the twaddle over the horrors of the family breakfast are affectation and indolence. Breakfasting in bed is an imported fashion, and to my notion, is not a clean practice. The tray brought to an unaired room, a tumbled bed and an unwashed body, looks well in French engravings, but is a solecism in an age of hygienic principles, much ventilation and matutinal baths. The inability to be in charity with one’s fellow mortals, to smile genially and to speak gently before the world is well started upon its diurnal swing, and the complainant’s physical system is toned and tuned and oiled by eating, is degrading in itself. The confession of it is puerile.

BREAKFAST EQUIPAGE

Force yourself to speak pleasantly if you can not at once bring your spirits up to the right level. Study to be a man, or a woman, although breakfastless. To be thrown in the first round of the day by the sluggish flesh and the devil of ill-humor, before the world has a chance to grapple with you, is cowardly and sinful.

One word of friendly counsel to my fellow brain-workers, who are also sister-women, may not be amiss in this connection:

Never write or study in the morning until you have broken your fast. A physiologist of note estimates that the draft on the nervous forces and the eyesight of working on an empty stomach is equivalent to the labor of lifting thirty pounds dead weight.

However this may be, stay that long-suffering organ with a few morsels—a slice of bread and butter, moistened by a cup of tea, if your rising is in advance of that of the rest of the household and you meditate an hour’s work before the family breakfast.

BREAKFAST FRUITS

The imported fashion of beginning breakfast with fresh fruit has become an American custom. The assuasive effect of the generous juices upon the coat of the stomach, usually clogged at early morning with a mucous deposit, is a wholesome preparation for digestive processes—a “toner” to just-awakened energies. To commit suddenly to the long-suffering stomach, as yet inert, and but dimly aware of what is expected of it, a “feed” of beefsteak, potatoes and hot breads, is always an unwelcome surprise. Sometimes the abused organ turns with the proverbial blind wrath of the patient, and revenges itself, if not speedily, surely and fiercely. It would fain be awakened kindly and gently. To this end, stay it with oranges, comfort it with apples and grapes.

Oranges

1. Cut in half, crosswise, and dig out the pulp with a silver or gold orange spoon.

2. They are yet nicer prepared beforehand by running a sharp knife on the inside, close to the rind, thus severing the membranes that divide the lobes. Take these membranes out carefully, leaving the pulp in the two cups of the halved orange. It can be then eaten as easily as a custard could be. Set on ice until you are ready to serve.

3. Peel the oranges; separate the lobes and cut each into three pieces. Serve in a chilled glass dish, passing powdered sugar for those who like it.

Breakfast fruits are far more wholesome when eaten without sugar.

Grapes

Keep them on ice for an hour before sending to table, even in winter, and scatter cracked ice over and among them. This has the double advantage of cooling and of cleansing them. Pass grape scissors with the dish of fruit.

Peaches, pears and apples

Wash and dry pears and apples with a soft cloth. Have a silver fruit knife at each plate, and let the eaters pare the fruit for themselves. Peaches should be left with the fur (and bloom) on.

Berries

These should never in any circumstances be sugared in the dish. Let each person sweeten his portion for himself, after which they should be eaten immediately, before the sugar has time to draw out the juice and thereby wither the berries.

Strawberries should be eaten at breakfast with the caps on. Choose the finest fruit for this meal, using the stem as a handle, and dipping the berry into powdered sugar, if not sweet enough to be eaten without.

Raspberries and blackberries

Never wash these, or strawberries, unless they are intolerably gritty. Water is ruin to flavor and integrity, where the more delicate berries are concerned. Set on ice for an hour or more before sending to table. Pass sugar for those who wish it, and in helping out each portion avoid bruising the berries. “Mashed” berries suffer an instant change in flavor. The air begins at once to act chemically upon the liberated juices.

Huckleberries and gooseberries

Wash, drain and leave on ice for two hours. Pass sugar with huckleberries for such as wish it. They are better without at breakfast. Gooseberries are always eaten without. The large English varieties are delicious and very healthful.

If cream be eaten with breakfast fruit, it should be as an after-course—or dessert. It loses character and effect as an assuasive and persuasive agent.

Melons

Cantelopes and nutmeg melons are prime favorites as an introductory step to the weightier business of the morning meal. They deserve their popularity.

Cut those of small and medium size in half; scrape out the seeds and put a lump of ice in each half. The larger may be divided into thirds, and a piece of ice laid upon each piece. Pass salt and pepper, also sugar with them. Many epicures prefer to eat them au naturel.

Stewed fruits

In the late winter or early spring-time, when apples are scarce and dear, and oranges have not yet come to their full plenteousness and flavor, the human system needs anti-bilious food. Our foremothers compounded a villainous preventive against spring “humors,” of sulphur and molasses, stirred together to a cream and administered before breakfast to each shuddering creature who had pains in the bones, headache and nausea at rising, and a general sensation of good-for-nothingness. “Advanced” matrons added cream of tartar to the villainous preventive, and gave their families to drink of cream-of-tartar lemonade. According to these wise and worthy women, “spring fever” was as inseparable from the opening season as robin song and pussy willow.

Even now, cooling medicines are advised by physicians and believed in by families. The careful student of hygiene, a science the prime principle of which is prevention, and not cure, shows us a more excellent way. The kindly fruits of the earth never merit their name more truly than when winter is going and spring-time is coming; when benevolent bile, balked in its rightful channels, becomes a baleful agency to be fought as an acknowledged foe. In fruit and in succulent vegetables we find our cooling medicines, “indicated” by the great physician, Nature. If fresh fruits be wanting, we must accept substitutes.

Stewed rhubarb

Wash, scrape and cut the stalks into inch lengths. Leave in cold water for an hour. Put over the fire in the inner vessel of a double boiler, set in cold water, bring to a boil and simmer gently until tender and clear. Keep the inner vessel closely covered that the steam may do its work. Remove from the fire, sweeten to taste—not heavily—turn into a bowl and cover until cold.

As a breakfast dish, this is refreshing and most wholesome. Cooked as above, you get the benefit of the anti-bilious juices, undiluted by water. Set on ice for an hour before eating. Some add a handful of sultana raisins to the raw rhubarb.

Prunes

Wash and soak for two hours. Drain, put over the fire with just enough cold water to cover them, and cook tender. Turn out and cover until cold. Put on the ice for an hour before sending to the table. No sugar should be added to prunes when they are to be eaten at breakfast time.

They are slightly laxative and anti-bilious.

The unfortunate few who can not begin breakfast with acid fruits “may, with pleasure and profit, conclude the meal with oranges, apples, grapes or melons.” One family I know of eats, the year around, fresh uncooked fruit as a last course to the breakfast that is invariably inforced with oranges, melons or grapes, each in its season.

And there is not a dyspeptic among them!

BREAKFAST CEREALS

Some dietetists, who are neither cranks nor simpletons, disbelieve in cereals of whatsoever sort as a first course at breakfast. They urge that to spread a hot poultice all over the lining of the stomach is to relax and weaken that organ; that it goes to sleep, as it were, and is too inert to dispose properly of the rest of the meal.

Others are strenuous in the belief that the act of chewing is necessary to the proper assimilation of even semi-solids, and since few people think of chewing porridge, the value of it as nutriment is doubtful.

There is force in the latter demur. Children should be taught to chew porridge of all kinds, also bread and milk. One zealous dietist insists that milk—“the one and only perfect food”—ought to be masticated. The motion of the jaws excites the salivary glands, he says, causing the flow of a secretion most favorable to digestion.

As to the “hot poultice,” there is a grain of reason in the objection. As I have explained in urging the propriety of beginning breakfast with fruit, the coat of the stomach is masked, after the sleep of the night, by a thin mucus, which interferes with the task of the digestive agencies. If fruit is not eaten, a draft of cold water, not iced, will do the work in part. A few swallows of really hot water are better still. A sip of tea or coffee—or, perhaps, best of all, vichy, apollinaris or other good mineral water, may precede the nourishing cereal.

That it is nourishing when the stomach gets hold of it, is undeniable. Oatmeal builds up bone, and muscle, and brain; Indian meal mush and hominy are gently laxative and cooling to the blood; preparations of wheat are less laxative, and therefore safer in hot weather, and for teething children, than oatmeal in any form. Rice boiled tender in milk is both palatable and wholesome. Each and all of these should be eaten with cream, and except as a dessert, never with sugar. Children who are trained to eat porridge and milk, or cream, without sugar, find the addition of this unpleasant. It certainly tends to acidity of the stomach.

Every cereal, with the exception of rice, that needs any cooking needs a great deal of it. Soaking over night is indispensable to the excellence of most of them. Four hours of boiling make oatmeal good; eight hours make it better; twenty-four hours make it “best.”

Oatmeal

Soak over night. Even the varieties which are advertised “to require no soaking, and but fifteen minutes’ cooking,” are improved by this process. Turn a deaf ear to the charmer who would persuade you to the contrary. “Steam cooked” is often a delusion and a snare. Put your oatmeal into the inner vessel of your farina kettle, cover deep in cold water, put on the lid and set at the back of the range at bedtime. In the morning add boiling water, salt to taste, and draw to the front, filling the outer kettle with hot water. Cook steadily for an hour and as much longer as you can. My own taste is for oatmeal boiled to a jelly. It is as far superior to the ordinary preparation of the cereal as creamed cauliflower is to Dutch cabbage.

Send to table and eat with cream.

Never throw away oatmeal “left-overs.” Cook again, and yet again, always in a double boiler.

Hominy

Soak all night; cover with boiling water, slightly salted, in the morning, and cook for an hour. A delicious preparation of hominy is effected by cooking it in plenty of salted water until tender, turning off the water and supplying its place with cold milk. Bring to a boil and serve.

Cracked wheat

Cook as you would oatmeal. An hour’s boiling suffices.

Milk porridge

Heat a pint of milk to boiling. Into a pint of cold milk stir four tablespoonfuls of flour, and when this is smooth stir it into the hot milk. Cook in a double boiler for an hour, add salt to taste, and serve with cream.

Meal-and-flour porridge

Mix together two tablespoonfuls of Indian meal and the same quantity of flour, wet them with cold water, and stir into a cup of boiling water. Cook in a double boiler for half an hour, stirring often. Add salt, and beat in slowly a pint of scalding milk, cook, stirring constantly for fifteen minutes longer. Serve with cream.

Brewis (as made by our grandmothers)

Dry bread in the oven and crush with the rolling-pin into crumbs. Heat two cups of slightly salted milk, and when it boils, stir in a cupful of the dried crumbs. Add a tablespoonful of butter, and cook, beating steadily for five minutes. Serve hot with cream, or an abundance of sweet milk.

Rice

Wash a cupful of rice in two waters, then drop it slowly into two quarts of salted boiling water. The water should be at a galloping boil. Do not stir the rice once during the twenty minutes in which it must cook steadily. At the end of that time test a grain to see if it is tender, and if it is, turn the rice into a colander; shake this hard that the air may reach all the kernels, and set in the open oven five minutes before dishing. Each grain should stand separate from the rest.

This is the South Carolinian way of cooking rice, and the one and only right way.

Indian meal mush

Moisten a cupful of corn-meal with enough cold water to make it into a paste. Stir this paste into a quart of salted, boiling water, and cook, beating it hard and often, for an hour at least. If the mush becomes too stiff, add from time to time more boiling water.

Farina

A good, inexpensive cereal, which seldom appears upon the breakfast table. Yet it should have honorable mention.

Soak overnight. In the morning, stir it into boiling water, slightly salted, and cook half an hour, stirring up well from the bottom.

Each patented breakfast cereal has its champion. It would be invidious to name any of them here. Nearly all are founded upon wheat, corn, rye, barley or rice. Each is accompanied by full directions for the preparations of the same for the table.

Oatmeal, rice, mush, farina—any of the cereals that must be cooked before they are eaten—are delicious and nutritious when committed to the “hay-store” of which we are hearing so much.

The soaked cereal is cooked for five minutes after the boil begins, and the bubbling pot, closely covered, is set immediately in a nest made by hollowing out the hay with which a box is packed. The hay is pressed closely all around the pot, an old quilt is spread over all and the whole left untouched for five, six or ten hours. The cereal will be hot when served, and tender beyond compare.

BREAKFAST BREADS

Beginning with the most important and difficult form of bread-making, I offer three methods of preparing and baking the wholesome home-made loaf, fondly recollected by those whose early lives were spent in regions where bakers’ sawdusty cubes and parallelograms were not delivered at the back door in lieu of the genuine staff of life.

Potato sponge bread (No. 1)

Boil and mash, while hot, four potatoes of fair size, beating into them a tablespoonful, each, of cottolene or other fat and of white sugar. Beat smooth, adding, gradually, one and one-half pints of lukewarm water. Strain through a colander upon a pint of sifted flour. When you have a lumpless batter, add half a cake of compressed yeast, dissolved in four tablespoonfuls of warm water.

This is your sponge. Set in a moderately warm place in a bread-bowl with a perforated cover. If you have not this cover, throw a double fold of mosquito net or cheese-cloth over the bowl.

In four hours in summer, and six in winter, the sponge should be light and the top broken by air bubbles. Have ready in another deep bowl or tray five pints of dried flour of the best quality, sifted with a tablespoonful of salt. Hollow a space in the middle and work the sponge gradually into the flour with a clean, cool, bare hand, well floured to hinder the dough from sticking to it.

The dough should be just stiff enough to handle. When you can lift it to the kneading-board without spilling, it is ready. Rinse the bowl out with a little warm water and work into the dough in order to get all the sponge. Flour the board and knead the ball of dough, always working from the outside of the ball toward the middle. After ten minutes’ hard work, turning the dough over and over and around and around, the dough should be so elastic that if you deal it a smart blow with your fist the indentation will fill up again instantly.

Return to the mixing bowl, cover and leave as before, out of drafts in a steady temperature. When it has risen to double the original bulk—in four or six hours—return to the board and knead again, quickly and vigorously, for eight or ten minutes. Make into loaves and set to rise in pans, filling each half-full. Cover with a cloth, let all rise for an hour, or until the pans are two-thirds full, and bake.

Have a steady fire, with coal enough to last until the baking is over. See that the ovens are “just right” by holding your naked arm in one. If you can hold it there comfortably for one whole minute and not more, you may put in the bread. Or try the oven with a little flour put upon a tin plate and set well back in the closed oven. It should be delicately touched with brown in five minutes if the oven be right.

In ten minutes open the oven door very cautiously, and if you see the pans filled to the top, cover with light-brown “grocer’s paper” to prevent the crust from hardening before the heart of the loaf is done. Ten minutes before the hour for baking is up remove the papers and let the top crust brown.

Turn out the loaves carefully upon a cloth, propping them against a pan or other clean object, that they may not get sodden in cooling. Do not put into the bread-box until they are entirely cold. The box should have a cloth in the bottom, and another thrown over the bread before the box is closed.

Bread with plain sponge (No. 2)

Chop a tablespoonful of cottolene or other fat, or butter, into a quart of flour; wet with a quart of warm water; add a tablespoonful of sugar, and half a yeast-cake dissolved in warm water. Beat all together hard for ten minutes, as you would cake batter. Cover, and set aside to rise as with potato sponge. In the morning work into two quarts of salted flour and proceed as directed in last recipe.

Milk bread (No. 1)

Sift two quarts of flour with a tablespoonful of sugar and an even teaspoonful of salt. Have ready a pint of boiling water into which you have stirred an even tablespoonful of butter. Add, while the water is boiling, two cups of milk, and take from the fire at once. When a little more than blood-warm, stir into the milk-and-water half a cake of compressed yeast, dissolved in half a cupful of warm water. Make a hole in the sifted flour, pour in the mixture and work quickly with a wooden spoon to a soft dough. Flour your hands, make the dough into a manageable ball and knead hard and steadily for ten minutes. Let the dough rise to double the original bulk in your covered bread-bowl, make into loaves when you have kneaded it for five minutes, and proceed as already directed.

Milk bread (No. 2)

Sift two quarts of flour into a large bowl and stir into it a teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar. Into this flour stir a pint of warm milk, to which has been added a scant tablespoonful of melted butter, a pint of warm water, and half a yeast cake dissolved in a gill of blood-warm water. Work to a dough; turn upon a floured pastry-board and knead for fifteen minutes. Put the dough in the bread-raiser and set to rise over night. Early in the morning divide into loaves, knead each for five minutes, put the loaves into greased pans and set in a warm place to rise for an hour before baking in a steady oven. Cover the bread for the first half-hour it is in the oven. It should be baked in an hour.

Whole wheat bread (No. 1)

Dissolve a cake of yeast in half a cupful of warm water. Pour two cups of boiling water upon two cups of milk, and stir into them a teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar. When they are about blood-warm add the yeast. Into this stir a quart of whole wheat flour. Of course, flour varies in its thickening powers, but there should be enough to make a good batter. Beat hard for five minutes, then stir in more flour until you have a dough that is as soft as it can be handled. Knead for ten minutes on a floured board and set to rise for three hours. Knead again for five minutes; make into loaves and let these rise. When light, bake. If the loaves are small they will bake in three-quarters of an hour.

Whole wheat bread (No. 2)

One tablespoonful of cottolene or other fat and the same of sugar. One cup, each, of boiling water and of hot (not boiling) milk. One yeast-cake dissolved in half a cup of warm water. One cup of white flour and three cups of whole wheat flour, or enough to make a soft dough. Knead for ten minutes; cover and let it rise until it is twice its original bulk. Make into small loaves; let it rise for an hour, or until very puffy, and bake.

Graham bread (No. 1)

Set a sponge over night, as for white bread, and in the morning work into it a cup of salted whole wheat flour, three cups of graham flour and three tablespoonfuls of molasses. Knead long and hard, and set to rise. When very light make into loaves and set in a warm place for an hour longer. Bake in an even oven. The loaves should be covered with thick wrapping-paper during the first half-hour they are in the oven, then allowed to brown. This bread is especially nice when made with a potato sponge, keeping fresh and sweet much longer than when the plain sponge is used.

Graham bread (No. 2)

Make a sponge as for white bread, over night, and in the morning add to it three scant tablespoonfuls of molasses and enough graham flour to make a soft dough. Knead thoroughly, and after forming into loaves and putting these into well-greased pans, set them to rise. When risen, bake in a tolerably hot oven.

Old-fashioned rye bread

Dissolve half a cake of yeast in a quarter-cup of lukewarm milk, with a small teaspoonful of white sugar. Pour this into a wooden bowl, add a pint of lukewarm water, a heaping teaspoonful, each, of salt and caraway seed, and a pint of rye flour. Stir well with a wooden spoon and set to rise in a warm place for two hours. When sufficiently risen it will be full of bubbles. Add then flour enough to make a very stiff dough. Beat this for at least ten minutes and set to rise for two hours more. Knead on a floured board, let it rise in the pan again until it begins to crack. Dip your hand in cold water, wet the loaf and put it into the oven. It must bake one hour. Do not open the door for ten minutes after it goes in. The oven should be very hot at first, and as soon as the bread is browned it should be covered with stout paper.

If you like, you may omit the caraway seeds. Some people dislike them exceedingly. Others would not relish rye bread “all of ye olden time” without them.

Rye and Indian bread

Make a soft sponge of potatoes, or a plain sponge. (See Bread No. 2.) When light, sift together two cupfuls of rye flour with one of Indian meal, a teaspoonful of salt, an even teaspoonful of soda. Make a hole in the middle, pour in the sponge, and when the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated beat in half a cupful of molasses. Should the molasses thin the dough into a batter, add rye flour. Knead until it is as light as a rubber ball, set aside in a covered bread-bowl and let it rise six hours. Work ten minutes more, make into loaves, and when they are well up in the world bake in a slow oven. The loaves will require three hours to bake properly. Cover with paper for the first two hours.

The dear old grandaunt from whom I got this ancient and honorable recipe had baked her “rye and Indian” for fifty years in the brick oven of a homestead two hundred years old. She covered her loaves with leaves from an oak near the door. The oak overshadowed a well dug in 1640.

Steamed Boston brown bread

Mix thoroughly a cup, each, of graham flour, wheat flour and corn-meal, and stir in a teaspoonful of salt. Warm together a cup of milk, in which is dissolved a small teaspoonful of baking soda, and a teacupful of molasses. Pour over the mixed flours and meal a cupful of boiling water, and then add the warmed milk and molasses. Beat hard and long, and turn into a greased pudding-mold with a closely-fitting top. Cook in an outer vessel of boiling water for three hours. Remove from the water, take the cover from the mold and set in the oven for ten or fifteen minutes, or until the bread is dry about the edges. Turn out, wrap in a napkin, and send to the table.

“Salt-rising” bread (No. 1)

(An old Virginia recipe)

Dissolve a half-teaspoonful of salt in two cups of scalding water, and beat in gradually enough flour to make a very soft dough. Beat for ten minutes, cover and set in a very warm place for eight hours. Now stir a teaspoonful of salt into a pint of lukewarm milk and add enough flour to make a stiff batter before working it into the risen dough. Mix thoroughly, cover, and set again in a warm place to rise until very light. Turn into a wooden bowl and knead in enough flour to make the batter of the consistency of ordinary bread dough. Make into loaves and set these to rise, and, when light, bake.

“Salt-rising” bread (No. 2)

(Contributed)

Put a quart of warm water,—not scalding hot, but at blood-heat,—into a pitcher, deep and of narrow mouth. Beat into it one teaspoonful of sugar, one-half teaspoonful of salt, a lump of soda not larger than a pea and (not necessarily, but preferably) a tablespoonful of corn-meal, with enough flour to make a rather thick, but not really stiff, batter. Set your pitcher, well covered, into a stone jar or other deep vessel, and surround it with blood-warm water, setting it where such temperature will be quite evenly maintained. Never allow it to reach scalding heat. In two and a half hours, or, at the very most, three and a half, you will have foaming yeast. Now take a pan of flour, make a hole in the center, pour in the foaming yeast with as much water, gradually mixed with the yeast and flour, as will make the number of loaves desired. Do not make the dough very stiff. It should quake visibly when the pan is shaken. Cover well with dry flour and clean cloths, set in a warm place (temperature 80 degrees or 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or thereabouts), and, as soon as light, knead into loaves, which will soon rise enough for baking. Do not delay baking after the last rising, or your bread may have a slightly sour taste. Bake thoroughly, and no better or more wholesome fermented bread could be asked for.

Sweet potato bread

Dissolve one cake of compressed yeast in one-fourth cup of lukewarm water, add one cup of scalded milk (blood-warm), one tablespoonful of salt, one-half cup of sugar and one full cup of sweet potato, roasted, scraped from the skins, worked to a cream with three tablespoonfuls of melted butter, then allowed to cool. Beat all together until light, and stir in with a wooden spoon flour to make a soft dough. Throw a cloth over the bread-bowl and set in a warm place until well risen. Make into small loaves; let them rise for an hour, and bake in a brisk oven.

This is also a Virginia recipe. You may substitute Irish for sweet potatoes if you like.

Buttermilk bread

Into a chopping-bowl put a quart of flour which has been sifted three times with half a teaspoonful of baking powder, the same quantity of baking soda, and a quarter of a teaspoonful of salt. Chop into this flour a heaping tablespoonful of butter until the shortening is thoroughly incorporated. Work in gradually a pint of buttermilk—or enough to make a soft bread dough. Turn into a greased bread tin and bake in a steady oven for an hour. Cover with paper for the first half-hour, that the bread may have an opportunity to rise before the crust forms. Turn out and send to the table while very hot. Cut with a sharp knife into slices, which must be generously buttered. While perhaps this bread is not to be recommended to people who suffer from weak digestions, it will be liked by those whose gastric apparatus is in proper working order.

If you can not get buttermilk, loppered milk will do as well.

German coffee bread

Heat a cup of milk to scalding, but do not let it boil. Stir into it while hot two tablespoonfuls of cottolene (never lard), or butter, two tablespoonfuls of sugar and a little salt. Let it cool to blood-warmth, when add half a yeast-cake dissolved in one-quarter cup of blood-warm milk, and flour to make a stiff batter. Cover, and let rise until light. Add one-half cup of seeded raisins, cut into pieces. Spread one-half inch thick in a buttered dripping-pan; cover and let rise. Brush with melted butter, and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake in a moderate oven for half an hour. Cover for half of that time with thick paper.

Graham bread without yeast

To three and one-half cups of graham flour add two cups of sour milk, one cup of New Orleans molasses, a pinch of salt and one teaspoonful of soda dissolved in hot water. Bake in a slow oven one hour.

HOT BREAKFAST BREADS

Hot breads—comprising griddle-cakes, biscuits, muffins, Sally Lunns and crumpets—may not be wholesome for everybody. I seriously incline to the belief that they are not, especially in warm weather, and if partaken of too freely.

But the best types of these are good, and their appearance upon the board where John had looked for stale bread, or charred toast, is a means of breakfast grace not to be underrated by the wise housewife. She is a canny woman who runs down into the kitchen for ten or fifteen minutes on a stormy morning, or when the bread is especially dry, or John is “a wee bit blue,” and tosses up (always by rule and measure) ingredients that come out of a quick oven, puffy, hot, delicious, to gladden the boys’ hearts and give their father pleasanter food for consideration than business worries. If the men of any family were called upon for their opinion of what a dietetic crank, better versed in anatomy and chemistry than in courtesy, once anathematized at my breakfast table as “rank poison, madam! and nothing short of a sin!” they would say of his tabooed hot breads—“Naughty! but nice!”

One John—who hankers for the buckwheat cakes and sausage of his boyhood as the wanderers in the wilderness, their souls a-weary of manna, lusted for Egyptian flesh-pots—maintains, upon fairly tenable hygienic principles, that warm bread is made unwholesome because it is not masticated properly.

“We chew stale bread,” he says. “We bolt griddle-cakes and muffins because they are soft and easily swallowed. Give the salivary glands a chance to act upon them and they will not harm you.”

The prescription is easily tried.

Breakfast rolls (No. 1)

Sift a quart of flour with a half-teaspoonful of salt and a teaspoonful of sugar, rub into it a tablespoonful of butter, add a cup of warm milk and a third of a yeast-cake that has been dissolved in three tablespoonfuls of warm water, and knead this dough for twenty minutes. Set to rise for six or eight hours, make into rolls, put these into a greased baking-pan, and let them rise for half an hour longer before baking.

Breakfast rolls (No. 2)

Sift a quart of flour and stir into it a saltspoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of sugar, a cup of warm milk, two tablespoonfuls of melted cottolene or other fat, and two beaten eggs. Dissolve a quarter of a cake of compressed yeast in a little warm milk and beat in last of all. Set the dough in a bowl to rise until morning. Early in the morning make quickly and lightly into rolls, and set to rise near the range for twenty minutes. Bake for about an hour.

Parker house rolls

One cup of scalded milk (not boiled) left to cool until a little more than blood-warm, one-half yeast-cake dissolved in four tablespoonfuls of warm water, one tablespoonful of butter, three cups of flour, or a little less, one even tablespoonful of sugar, one-half teaspoonful of salt.

Melt the butter in the milk, add salt, sugar and yeast with rather less than half the flour. Make a sponge of these ingredients, beat hard for five minutes and set in a warm, sheltered place to rise.

It should be quite light in an hour and a half in winter, an hour in summer. Work in the rest of the flour until you have a soft dough. Knead three minutes and set to rise with a folded cloth over the bowl to exclude the air. When it has doubled its original bulk, turn out upon your kneading-board, and work quickly, but lightly, with fingers, not fists, for one minute. Roll with quick strokes and few into a thick sheet, rub over with melted butter (not hot). Roll up and knead one minute longer to incorporate the butter. Pull off bits of the dough three times as large as a walnut, and roll on the board into the desired shape. Arrange close together in the baking-pan. Cover and let them rise for half an hour, again doubling their size; then bake in a brisk, steady oven. Twenty minutes should suffice. When they have been in five minutes cover with whitey-brown grocer’s paper. Five minutes before the time is up take this off and brown.

Vienna rolls

Set a plain bread sponge at six o’clock in the evening. At bedtime make out a dough as directed for home-made bread. Cover in your mixing-bowl and set in a moderately warm place until six o’clock next morning. Make into round rolls as large as a small egg; set in a floured baking-pan so far apart that they will not touch as they rise; cover and leave for an hour. Just before they go into the oven cut half through the middle of each with a floured, sharp knife. Bake in a moderate oven to form a good crust. Cover at the end of ten minutes with paper. Remove this fifteen minutes later and brown.

Raised apple biscuits

(An old Virginia recipe)

One cup of scalded milk left to become blood-warm; one tablespoonful of butter melted in the milk; one tablespoonful of sugar; one-half teaspoonful of salt; one-half teaspoonful of baking-soda; one-half cake compressed yeast, dissolved in warm water; one cupful of grated apple; enough flour for making soft dough.

Mix the sugar with the butter and milk, and add the yeast. Sift salt twice with a cupful of flour. Make a hole in the middle and pour in the liquid. Beat into a batter and let it rise four hours. When light, sift the soda twice with another cupful of flour; grate the just-pared apple into the batter and beat in before it can change color. Finally, work in the sifted flour and soda. Let it rise for an hour, make into round, flat cakes with your hand; set close together in a pan, and when very light bake in a moderate oven. They are very good split open while hot, and buttered and sugared.

Sally Lunn

Sift together a pint of flour, a half-teaspoonful of salt and the same of powdered sugar.

In a large bowl beat stiff two eggs, pour on them a half-cup of warm milk, three tablespoonfuls of butter, melted, and a quarter of a tablespoonful of baking soda dissolved in a tablespoonful of hot water. Now slowly beat in the sifted flour and a quarter of a yeast-cake dissolved in half a cup of warm water. Whip to a smooth batter, and turn into a large greased mold to rise. In the morning set the mold in a steady oven and bake for half an hour, or until a straw pierced through the center of the loaf comes out clean. Turn out and serve at once.

Dried rusk

(An old Dutch family recipe)

Mix together a pint of milk, four tablespoonfuls of melted butter, a teaspoonful of salt and a half-cake of yeast dissolved in a half-cup of lukewarm water. Add enough flour to make a thick batter, beat it in well, cover the bowl containing this, and set in a warm place for two hours. Now work in the beaten eggs, and, when these are incorporated, add enough flour to make a dough that can easily be rolled out. Set to rise for two hours longer, then turn upon a floured board, roll out and cut into round biscuits. Lay in a baking-pan and set these near the range to rise for half an hour. Bake, and when done leave in the open oven to dry out. See that the fire is so low that the rusk will dry, not brown or burn. If you can spare the oven so long leave the rusk in it for six or eight hours; then set in a dry closet for several days before using. When you wish to use them lay in a deep bowl, pour iced milk upon them and let them soak until soft. Serve very cold with butter.

They are delicious for summer-morning breakfasts.

Caraway biscuits

(Contributed)

Sift together three pints of flour, one teaspoonful of salt and one and one-half teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Rub into this four tablespoonfuls of shortening. Add two tablespoonfuls of caraway seed, two eggs, well beaten, and one pint of milk. Mix this into a smooth, firm dough. Knead quickly; roll out to about a quarter of an inch in thickness and cut with a large biscuit-cutter. Prick with a fork, lay on greased baking tins and bake in a hot oven fifteen minutes.

Egg biscuits

(Contributed)

Sift together a quart of flour and two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Rub into this a piece of butter the size of an egg. Add two well-beaten eggs, one teaspoonful of sugar and one teaspoonful of salt. Mix together quickly with one cup of milk or more if needed. Roll to one-half inch thickness, cut into biscuits and bake at once in a quick oven twenty minutes.

French rolls

(Contributed)

To three cupfuls of sweet milk add a cup of shortening and one-half cake of compressed yeast and one teaspoonful of salt. Add flour enough to make a stiff dough. Let this rise over night. In the morning add two well-beaten eggs; knead thoroughly and let rise again. Make into balls about as large as an egg and then roll between the hands. Place close together on well buttered pans. Cover, let rise again, then bake in a quick oven to a delicate brown.

Fruit rolls

(Contributed)

Sift two cupfuls of flour, two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder, one-half teaspoonful of salt thoroughly together and mix with two-thirds cup of milk. Roll to a quarter of an inch thickness. Brush over with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Mix together one-third cupful of stoned raisins, chopped fine, two teaspoonfuls of citron, chopped fine, two teaspoonfuls of sugar and one-third teaspoonful of cinnamon. Spread this mixture over the dough, roll up like a jelly roll, cut in pieces three-fourths of an inch in thickness, and bake in quick oven fifteen minutes.

Hot cross buns

(Contributed)

To three cups of milk add flour enough to make a thick batter. Into this stir one cake of compressed yeast dissolved in warm water. Set this to rise over night. In the morning add a few spoonfuls of melted butter and one-half spoonful of grated nutmeg, one saltspoon of salt, one teaspoonful of soda, and flour enough to make a stiff dough like biscuit. Knead well and let rise five hours. Roll to one-half inch thickness, cut in round cakes and put in buttered baking pans. Let stand until light. Make a deep gash in each with a knife. Bake in moderate oven till light brown. Brush over the top with the beaten white of an egg and powdered sugar.

Currant buns

Warm a cupful of cream in a double boiler, take it from the fire and stir into it a cupful of melted butter which has not been allowed to cook in melting. Beat three eggs very light, add them to the cream and butter, then stir in a cupful of sugar. Dissolve a half-cake of yeast in a couple of tablespoonfuls of water, sift a good quart of flour, make a hollow in it, stir into it the yeast and then, after adding to the other mixture a teaspoonful, each, of powdered mace and cinnamon, put in the flour and yeast. Beat all well for a few minutes, add a cupful of currants that have been washed, dried and dredged with flour, pour into a shallow baking pan, let it rise for several hours until it has doubled in size, bake one hour in a rather quick oven. Sprinkle with fine sugar when done.

Raised muffins

In a quart of warm milk dissolve thoroughly half a yeast-cake. Stir into this two tablespoonfuls of sugar, a teaspoonful of salt, and a tablespoonful of melted cottolene or other fat. Add enough flour to make a quite stiff batter—not dough—and set to rise over night. In the morning whip into the batter four well-beaten eggs and turn into heated and greased muffin-tins. Bake at once.

English muffins

Bring a pint of milk to the boiling point and stir into it a teaspoonful of cottolene or other fat. Set aside until the mixture is lukewarm, then add two cups of flour into which a teaspoonful of salt has been sifted. Now beat in half a yeast-cake dissolved in a quarter of a cup of warm water, and set the batter aside to rise all night. In the morning add a cup of sifted flour, and with floured hands make lightly into round muffins and set to rise in greased muffin-tins for half an hour. Slip the rings and their contents on to a greased griddle and bake, first on one side, then on the other, until done.

English crumpets (No. 1)

Mix together three gills of lukewarm water, a half-teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar and a teaspoonful of melted butter; then dissolve a quarter of a yeast-cake in this mixture. Into this stir enough flour to make a very stiff batter. Beat for ten minutes, adding as you do so enough lukewarm milk to make batter just stiff enough to be poured slowly from the bowl. Grease shallow muffin-rings, place these on a soapstone griddle, and when hot pour the batter into them to the depth of a quarter-inch and bake slowly, not turning until brown on the under side. Then turn for just a few minutes.

English crumpets (No. 2)

On baking-day take a pint of dough from your bread-bowl an hour before breakfast. Put into a bowl and make a hole in the middle. Have ready two eggs beaten very light, and work them into the dough. Then thin it with milk and water to the consistency of griddle-cakes; beat it well, let it rise until breakfast, bake them on a hot griddle, butter and send to the table hot.

QUICK BISCUITS, ETCETERA

Milk biscuits

One quart flour, three cups of milk, one tablespoonful mixed butter and cottolene or other fat, one heaping teaspoonful of baking-powder, half-teaspoonful of salt. Sift the salt with the flour, chop in the butter and cottolene or other fat, add the baking-powder and the milk and mix to a soft dough. Handle as little as possible. Roll out into a sheet an inch thick, cut into rounds and bake in a floured pan.

Milk-and-water biscuits

Make as in the preceding recipe, but using one and one-half cups of milk and the same quantity of water. Some housewives prefer these to the all-milk biscuits, alleging that the milk tends to make the dough heavy.

Quick Sally Lunn

A quart of flour sifted twice with a teaspoonful of baking-powder, one cupful of milk, one-half cupful of melted butter, four eggs, beaten light; one teaspoonful of salt. Add the sifted flour last, in great handfuls, stirring all the time, as long as you can use a spoon. The dough should be very soft; in fact, almost a batter. Bake in a mold with a funnel in the middle, and eat while hot.

Potato biscuits

Boil and mash six or eight potatoes. While warm, lay on a floured pastry-board, and run the rolling-pin over and over them until they are free from lumps. Turn into a bowl, wet with a cup of sweet milk, add a teaspoonful of melted butter; when well mixed work in half a cup of salted flour, or just enough to make a soft dough. Return to the board, roll out quickly and lightly into a thin sheet, and cut into round cakes. Bake in a quick oven. Butter as soon as they are done, laying one on top of the other in a pile. Eat before they fall.

The excellence of potato biscuits depends very greatly upon the softness of the dough, light handling, and quick baking. If properly made, they will be found extremely nice. They are a favorite Irish dish.

Graham biscuits

Stir together in a chopping-bowl a pint of graham flour and a half-pint of white flour. To this add a teaspoonful of salt, one of sugar, and two rounded teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Mix thoroughly, and chop into the mixture two tablespoonfuls of cottelene or other fat. Add a pint of milk, and if the mixture is then too stiff to handle, add enough water to make into a soft dough. Turn upon a floured board, roll out, and cut into biscuits, handling as little and as lightly as possible. Bake in a steady oven.

Virginia beaten biscuits

One pint of flour, one cup of water, one teaspoonful of salt. Mix into a stiff dough; transfer to a floured block of wood and beat with a rolling-pin, steadily, for ten minutes, shifting the dough often and turning it over several times. In the olden days half an hour was the regulation time, but ten minutes are enough if one has a strict eye to business. Cut into round cakes, prick with a straw and bake in a brisk oven.

MUFFINS AND THEIR CONGENERS

Whole wheat muffins

Into a quart of whole wheat flour stir a teaspoonful of salt and two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Beat three eggs light and stir them into three cups of rich milk. Add these to the flour, stir in a tablespoonful of melted cottolene or other fat, and beat very hard for at least five minutes. Turn into greased muffin-tins and bake in a quick oven.

Oatmeal muffins

(Contributed)

To one cup of oatmeal mush add one-half cup of milk, one well-beaten egg, one teaspoonful of butter, one tablespoonful of sugar and one cup of flour in which has been sifted two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Stir well together and bake in hot muffin-pans.

Sally’s muffins

One egg; a tablespoonful of sugar; one-quarter cup of butter. Beat all together thoroughly. Add one cup of milk, a little salt and one cup of flour into which is sifted two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Now add enough flour to make a batter a little stiffer than for griddle-cakes. Bake in well-buttered, hot muffin-tins.

Risen brunette muffins

Cream together two tablespoonfuls of brown sugar and one tablespoonful of butter and add to it three cups of warm (not hot) milk. Sift into a bowl three cups of graham flour and one of white, with a teaspoonful of salt. Pour into this the butter, sugar and milk mixture and add a cup of warm milk in which half a yeast-cake has been dissolved. Beat thoroughly and set in a warm place to rise for at least six hours. Butter muffin-tins, half fill with the mixture, and set on a stool by the range to rise for fifteen minutes before baking in a steady oven.

Graham puffs

Thoroughly beat the yolks of four eggs, and whip the whites to a stiff meringue. To the yolks add a pint of milk, a teaspoonful of salt, three teaspoonfuls of melted cottolene or other fat, and a tablespoonful of sugar. Sift two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder into a quart of graham flour and stir this gradually into the milk and yolks. Beat until all lumps are gone and you have a smooth batter, then, with a few strong strokes, add the stiffened whites of the eggs. Half fill deep heated muffin-tins with the batter and bake at once in a hot but steady oven.

Graham gems (No. 1)

Into a quart of warm milk stir four eggs that have been beaten only a little, add a tablespoonful, each, of melted butter and sugar. Add now, gradually, three cupfuls of graham flour that has been sifted with a heaping teaspoonful of baking-powder. Beat very hard for seven or eight minutes and bake in greased and heated gem pans.

Graham gems (No. 2)

Into a pint of warm milk whip three unbeaten eggs, one tablespoonful of melted butter and a teaspoonful of sugar. Gradually stir in a cup and a half of graham flour and beat hard for several minutes. Turn into heated gem pans, and bake in a very hot oven. Serve immediately.

Rice muffins

Make a batter of a quart of milk, three beaten eggs, a tablespoonful of melted butter, a teaspoonful, each, of salt and sugar, and two cups of prepared flour. Mix thoroughly and beat in a cup of cold boiled rice. Beat very hard and bake in a quick oven.

Graham muffins

Rub to a cream a tablespoonful of sugar and two of butter. Into this beat four eggs. Sift a teaspoonful of baking-powder into three cups of graham flour, add the butter and egg mixture, and beat very hard. Turn into heated and greased muffin-tins and bake in a very hot oven.

Popovers

Two cups of flour, sifted twice with one teaspoonful of baking-powder; half a teaspoonful of salt; two cups of milk; one egg, beaten very light. Beat for four minutes and bake in hot, buttered pâté, or gem pans, in a brisk oven. Serve at once.

WAFFLES

Risen waffles

Four eggs; two cups of milk; three tablespoonfuls of melted butter; one tablespoonful of sugar; three cupfuls of flour, sifted with half a teaspoonful of salt; one-half yeast-cake dissolved in warm water. Beat well and long; set in a warm place to rise and bake in waffle-irons.

Rice waffles

One cup of boiled rice; one pint of sweet milk; two eggs; one teaspoonful of baking-powder; one teaspoonful of salt; a tablespoonful of butter and flour to make a thin batter. Sift salt, baking-powder and one scant cup of flour twice together; add milk and eggs, beat in butter and rice. Beat two minutes.

Quick waffles

Two cups of flour sifted twice with one teaspoonful of baking-powder and the same of salt. Three eggs; one tablespoonful of butter or cottolene or other fat. Two cupfuls of milk.

Beat the yolks smooth, add the milk, and turn this upon the prepared flour. Whip lightly and quickly for one minute, add the stiffened whites and drop by the spoonful into heated and greased waffle-irons.

GRIDDLE CAKES

If you can get a soapstone griddle, use no other. Cakes are baked—not fried—upon it, and are thereby made comparatively wholesome. Set the griddle at the side of the range to heat gradually at least one hour before you begin to bake the cakes. If heated suddenly it is liable to crack. Clean with dry salt, then wipe with a clean cloth and it is ready for use. Never allow a drop of grease to touch it.

If you have an iron griddle, lubricate with a bit of salt pork, leaving just enough grease on the surface to prevent sticking. The popular prejudice against griddle-cakes is founded mainly upon the fact that dough or batter soaked in grease is abhorrent to dietetic ethics.

Soapstone and iron griddles alike need tempering or seasoning in order to do their work well. They are seldom “just right” at the first trial. Give them time and handle them patiently.

Buckwheat cakes (No. 1)

Mix together a quart of buckwheat flour, four tablespoonfuls of yeast, a handful of Indian meal, two tablespoonfuls of New Orleans molasses, a teaspoonful of salt and enough water to make a thin batter. Beat hard and set to rise in the warm kitchen. A pint of this may be left over in the morning after the baking of the cakes and used as a sponge the following night, the flour, etc., being added. If the batter seems sour, add a very little baking-soda. This batter may be kept in a stone crock for a week or longer.

Buckwheat cakes (No. 2)

One cup of milk and same of boiling water; two tablespoonfuls of molasses; half cake of compressed yeast dissolved in warm water; one-half teaspoonful of salt; two cups of buckwheat flour, or enough for a good batter.

Beat five minutes, and set in a warm place to rise. In the morning beat hard for one minute; if it be sour, add a little soda, and let it rise near the fire for half an hour before baking.

Quick buckwheat cakes

Two cups of buckwheat and half a cup of corn-meal; two cups of warm milk and half a cup of warm water; two tablespoonfuls of molasses, two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder; one even teaspoonful of salt.

Mix milk, water and molasses together. Sift meal and flour three times with the baking-powder and salt. Make a hole in the center of the flour, stir in the milk and water quickly and lightly until you have a good batter—not too stiff—and bake.

Sour milk buckwheat cakes

Make as in preceding recipe, substituting loppered milk or buttermilk for sweet, and a rounded teaspoonful of baking-soda for the baking-powder.

Whole wheat griddle-cakes

Sift a quart of whole wheat flour, a teaspoonful of baking-powder and one of salt well together. Stir into this a tablespoonful of melted butter, a tablespoonful of sugar, two beaten eggs and two cupfuls of milk. Beat all together and bake upon a soapstone griddle.

Lizzie’s flannel cakes

Two cups of flour; two cups of sweet milk; one egg; one teaspoonful of baking-powder; a generous pinch of salt. Beat the egg very light; add the milk and, lastly, with just enough beating to mix all together, the flour, sifted twice with salt and baking-powder. Bake at once.

After several years trial of this simple recipe, I can recommend it unhesitatingly as the best, cheapest and most wholesome way I know for preparing breakfast cakes. The excellence of the cakes depends upon quick mixing and baking. A soapstone griddle, which is never greased, should be used.

Waffles may be made in the same way mixed a little thinner by using less flour.

Huckleberry griddle-cakes

(Contributed)

To one cup of milk add one-half teaspoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of baking-powder, one tablespoonful of sugar and two well beaten eggs. Add sufficient flour to make a batter. Stir into this one pint of huckleberries rolled in flour. Fry on hot griddle. Butter them hot and serve.

Feather griddle-cakes

Add to a pint of water and milk a teaspoonful of salt, a half-teacupful of yeast and flour enough to make a batter. Let stand all night. In the morning add one cupful of thick sour milk, two eggs well beaten, one level tablespoonful of butter, one level teaspoonful of soda and flour enough to make the consistency of pancake batter. Let stand twenty minutes and then bake.

Rice griddle-cakes

Scald one pint of milk and let stand until cold. Then add one-half cake of compressed yeast, one teaspoonful of salt, one cup of boiled rice and about one and one-half cups of flour. Beat continuously for three minutes. Cover and let stand in warm place till morning. In the morning beat two eggs separately until they are very light. Add first the yolks and then the whites. Mix thoroughly and let stand fifteen minutes and then bake on hot griddle.

Peas griddle-cakes

Take two cups of cooked green peas and rub through a strainer. Pour into this one cup of boiling milk. Add a teaspoonful of butter and one of sugar and one of salt. When cold add one egg beaten till light and one cup of flour into which has been sifted three level teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Fry on a soapstone griddle.

French pancakes

To the yolks of three eggs add one cup of milk, one-half teaspoonful of salt and one teaspoonful of sugar. Pour one-third of this mixture on one-half cup of flour and stir to a smooth paste; then add the remainder of the mixture and beat well. To this add one-half teaspoonful of salad oil. Pour enough of the batter into a hot buttered frying-pan to cover the pan. When brown turn and brown the other side. Spread with butter and jelly, roll up and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Sour milk griddle-cakes

Into a quart of loppered milk stir a quart of flour, a teaspoonful of salt and two beaten eggs. Mix thoroughly, then add as much flour as will be needed to make a good batter. Last of all, add a teaspoonful of baking soda dissolved in a tablespoonful of hot water. Bake at once on a very hot griddle.

Stale bread griddle-cakes

Let two cupfuls of dry bread crumbs soak for an hour in a quart of milk. Into this beat a tablespoonful, each, of molasses and melted butter, a teaspoonful of salt and three well-beaten eggs. When thoroughly mixed, add half a cupful of flour which has been sifted with a half teaspoonful of baking-powder. Bake on a soapstone griddle if possible.

Hominy griddle-cakes

One cup of cold boiled hominy beaten to a smooth paste with a tablespoonful of melted butter, then whipped light with the yolks of the eggs; two eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately; one cup of milk; one tablespoonful of flour sifted twice, with an even teaspoonful of baking-powder and a teaspoonful of salt; one tablespoonful of molasses. Stir molasses into the milk, add to the hominy, butter and yolks; lastly, put in prepared flour and the whites of the eggs.

Sweet corn griddle-cakes

One cup of sweet corn fresh or canned, chopped fine and run through a vegetable press; one cup of hot milk; one tablespoonful, each, of butter and sugar; half teaspoonful of salt; one cup of flour sifted twice with a rounded teaspoonful of baking-powder and a little salt; two eggs. Mix as you would hominy cakes.

Corn-meal and graham griddle-cakes

Two cups of corn-meal and one cup of graham flour. The flour should be sifted three times with one even teaspoonful of baking-powder and a little salt. One quart of scalding milk. One tablespoonful of butter and the same of molasses, stirred to a cream. One even teaspoonful of salt. Two eggs—whites and yolks beaten separately.

Scald the meal with the milk, beat in butter and molasses and let it cool to blood warmth before adding the beaten yolks and the prepared flour alternately with the stiffened whites. If too stiff, thin with cold milk. Beat hard and bake. Wholesome and palatable if properly made.

Graham griddle-cakes

Two cups of graham flour; two tablespoonfuls of butter, or one of butter and one of cottolene or other fat; one of molasses; three cups of milk; four eggs; one teaspoonful of baking-powder and twice as much salt sifted twice with the flour; half a cup of white flour mixed thoroughly with the brown. Stir shortening and molasses to a cream, beat in the yolks of the eggs, then the milk, a little at a time, lastly the mixed flour alternately with the whites of the eggs. The batter should be like thick cream before you bake it.

VARIOUS BREAKFAST BREADS OF INDIAN MEAL

Corn bread made of northern meal

Two cupfuls of corn-meal; one cupful of flour; two and a half cupfuls of milk; three eggs; a tablespoonful, each, of butter and white sugar; one teaspoonful of salt; two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder.

Melt the butter and stir it into the eggs, which should have been beaten very light, and after sifting the salt, sugar and baking-powder with the meal and flour, put in the milk, eggs and butter. Beat hard and bake for half an hour in a greased pan in a steady oven.

Corn bread made of southern meal

Beat two eggs light; stir half a cupful of cold boiled rice into a pint of milk and add to the eggs, rice and milk a tablespoonful of melted butter. Sift a teaspoonful of salt into two cups of Indian meal; stir all together and bake in shallow pans. Eat hot.

This is the Southern batter bread, or “egg bread.”

Indian meal crumpets

Heat a quart of milk to scalding and pour it gradually upon two full cups of corn-meal. When thoroughly mixed, stir into this a tablespoonful of granulated sugar and a quarter of a yeast-cake dissolved in a little warm milk. Cover the bowl or batter with a clean cloth and set to rise. Early in the morning add a tablespoonful of melted cottolene or other fat and beat hard for a moment before pouring the batter into muffin-tins. Set near the range for twenty minutes and bake.

Steamed corn loaf

Mix together in a bowl a pint of corn-meal and a half-pint of flour. Make a hole in the center of the mixture and pour into this three large cupfuls of sour milk. Beat hard and stir in a tablespoonful of melted butter, two tablespoonfuls of sugar and a teaspoonful of baking-soda dissolved in a tablespoonful of boiling water. Beat for several minutes, turn into a greased mold with a tightly-fitting cover and steam for two hours. Turn out upon a platter, set in the oven for five minutes, and send to the table.

Sour milk corn bread

Mix together in a bowl three cups of corn-meal and one cup of graham flour. Stir in a teaspoonful of salt, a tablespoonful of sugar, a tablespoonful of melted butter and three cups of sour milk. Now beat in three eggs, whipped light, and a small teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little boiling water. Beat for five minutes, then pour into a greased mold with a funnel in the center. Bake for an hour, or until a straw comes out clean from the thickest part of the loaf.

Sour milk corn-meal griddle-cakes

One-half cup of white corn-meal and the same of flour; one and a half cups of loppered milk or buttermilk; one tablespoonful of molasses and the same of melted butter; one rounded teaspoonful of soda and half as much salt sifted twice with flour and meal; one egg beaten very light. Beat molasses and butter to a cream; add the milk, the egg, lastly the prepared meal and flour. Beat hard one minute.

Buttermilk corn bread

Two cups of buttermilk; three well-beaten eggs; two scant cups of Indian meal (white); one rounded teaspoonful of soda; one tablespoonful of sugar.

Beat the eggs separately, sift the soda twice through the meal and add one teaspoonful of salt. Beat the ingredients well together, adding the whites last of all. Bake in a moderate oven in muffin-rings, with a large spoonful of the batter to each, and cook to a golden brown.

Dinah’s corn bread

Sift two cups of corn-meal twice with an even teaspoonful of soda and as much salt. Beat two eggs very light. Mix one teaspoonful of sugar in three cups of buttermilk or loppered milk, add the eggs and a tablespoonful of melted butter, lastly, the prepared flour. Have ready three well-greased deep jelly-cake tins (warmed), divide the batter between them and bake in a quick oven. Eat hot.

Corn-meal gems

Sift together a half-cup of flour, a cup of Indian meal, a teaspoonful of baking-powder and a half-teaspoonful of salt; into a pint of milk whip three beaten eggs, a tablespoonful of melted cottolene or other fat and two tablespoonfuls of granulated sugar. Make a hole in the meal and flour mixture and gradually pour the liquid into this, beating steadily. Beat hard for about five minutes, pour into greased and heated gem pans and bake in a good oven. Remove from the tins and send immediately to the table.

Two-and-two Indian meal muffins

One full cup, each, of Indian meal and white flour; two cups of milk; two eggs; two tablespoonfuls of melted butter; two teaspoonfuls of sugar; two even teaspoonfuls of baking-powder; two saltspoonfuls of salt. Sift meal and flour together three times with baking-powder and salt. Add beaten yolks to the milk, then the butter and sugar beaten together, lastly the prepared flour and meal. If too stiff thin with milk. Bake in hot muffin-tins or in gem pans.

Johnny-cakes

(Contributed)

Sift with two-thirds of a cup of flour, one tablespoonful of sugar, two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder and one teaspoonful of salt. Pour two cups of boiling milk over two cups of cornmeal and when cool add two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, the yolks of two eggs well beaten and the sifted flour. Beat the mixture and just before putting in the oven add the whites of two eggs whipped light and dry. Bake in a shallow pan and serve hot.

Corn pone

(Contributed)

Mix with cold water one quart of sifted corn-meal, one teaspoonful of salt and one tablespoonful of melted butter. Mold into oval cakes with the hands. Bake in a hot oven in well-greased pans. The crust should be brown.

Hominy cake

(Contributed)

Take one cupful of hot boiled hominy, add one teaspoonful of salt and yolks of two well-beaten eggs. Add slowly one cupful of milk, one cupful of corn-meal and the whipped whites of two eggs. Bake in a flat tin in a hot oven twenty or thirty minutes.

Corn waffles

(Contributed)

Sift together one cup of white flour, one cup of corn-meal, two teaspoonfuls of baking-powder and one-half teaspoonful of salt. Beat the yolks of three eggs until thick, add one and a fourth cups of milk and stir into the flour mixture. Then add one tablespoonful of melted butter and the whites of three eggs beaten stiff. Bake on a hot waffle-iron and serve with caramel sauce.

DIVERS KINDS OF TOAST

Buttered toast

Cut the crusts from thin slices of stale bread and toast them over a clear fire to a delicate brown; spread lightly with butter and pile upon a hot plate; keep in the open oven until sent to the table.

German toast

Pare the slices and cut into strips twice as wide as your middle finger and about as long. Toast quickly on both sides, butter lightly and serve very hot.

Baked milk toast

Trim off the crust from slices nearly half an inch thick; toast to a uniform light brown. Have on the range a pan of boiling water, salted. As you remove each slice from the toaster dip quickly into the boiling water and lay in a well-buttered pudding dish; buttering the toast while smoking hot and salting each slice. When all the soaked toast is packed into place, cover with scalding milk in which has been melted a tablespoonful of butter. Cover closely and bake fifteen minutes.

This is so far superior to the usual insipid preparation of milk toast that no one who has eaten the first can enjoy the poor parody.

Cream toast

Toast, and proceed as in last recipe, but dipping each slice in hot salted milk instead of water, and when in the dish covering with a mixture one-third milk, two-thirds cream, made very hot. Add a pinch of soda to the cream to prevent curdling.

Cream toast, baked, is delicious and nutritious. Either of these dishes can be made of graham bread.

Fried toast

Cut rather thick slices of stale bread round with a cake cutter; spread upon a platter and pour over them a mixture of one cup of milk with an egg beaten into it, then salted slightly. Turn the slices until saturated, drain carefully and fry as you would doughnuts in deep hot cottolene or other fat, turning when half done. Lay scrambled or poached eggs or a nice mince upon them for breakfast.

Tomato toast

Prepare precisely as directed in recipe for baked milk toast, but pour over the pile of slices in the dish a rich strained tomato sauce, lifting the toast with a fork, that the sauce may get at each piece. Cover and bake. Serve in the dish as an accompaniment to chops, omelet or hash.

Anchovy toast

Cut stale bread into strips an inch and a half wide and three inches long; toast, butter and spread with anchovy paste, as a foundation for scrambled or poached eggs.

Sardine toast

(Contributed)

Butter rounds of toast and set in the oven to brown. Drain the oil from a box of sardines and flake with a silver fork. Put into a saucepan one tablespoonful of butter, one teaspoonful of lemon juice and one-half teaspoonful of onion juice. Stir until hot and then add the flaked sardines. Stir until the fish is hot. Spread on the hot rounds of bread and serve at once.

Cheese custard toast

(Contributed)

Sprinkle hot toasted bread with grated cheese. Set in the oven until the cheese melts. Take out and arrange in layers in a pudding dish and pour over it an unsweetened custard. Put in a moderate oven until the custard is done. Serve at once.

Oyster toast

(Contributed)

Put twelve oysters into a saucepan with their own liquor and one-quarter teaspoonful of white pepper, one glass of milk and two cloves. Boil for three minutes. Mix one ounce of butter with one-half ounce of flour; put this in a pan and stir well. Add one teaspoonful of lemon juice and, when boiling, pour the mixture over the toast and serve.

Mushroom toast

(Contributed)

Cut the stems of mushrooms fine and stew in a little milk. Slice, in quarters, the tops. Cook five minutes in plenty of butter. Then add cream enough to make a sauce; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Let the stems simmer until tender, adding some cream, if needed. There should be sauce enough to moisten the toast. Pour on toast and serve.

Ham toast

(Contributed)

Mince the lean of two slices of cooked ham very finely. Beat the yolks of two eggs, mix with the ham, adding enough cream or stock to make it soft. Keep it on the fire long enough to warm through, stirring all the time. Have ready some buttered toast cut in rounds. Lay the ham mixture neatly on each piece.

EGGS

“The following method of determining the age of eggs is practised in the markets of Paris. About six ounces of common cooking salt is put into a large glass, which is then filled with water. When the salt is in solution an egg is dropped into the glass. If the egg is only one day old, it immediately sinks to the bottom; if any older it does not reach the bottom of the glass. If three days old, it sinks only just below the surface. From five days upwards it floats; the older it is the more it protrudes out of the water.”—German Newspaper.

Boiled eggs (No. 1)

Be sure the water is at a rapid boil. Wash the eggs in warm water, leaving them in it just long enough to take off the chill. If you put them on to boil while cold you must allow twenty seconds for the shells to get warm. Boil steadily three minutes and a half, take out, wrap in a warmed napkin and send immediately to table.

Boiled eggs (No. 2)

Wash in warm water; lay in boiling water and remove the saucepan promptly from the fire to the side of the range where it will hold the heat, but can not possibly boil. Cover closely and leave thus for seven or eight minutes, according to the size of the eggs. It will be of a custard-like consistency all through, and be far more digestible than when the white is firm and the yolk soft.

Poached eggs

Add a little vinegar to the water in which you poach eggs, to prevent the whites from spreading. Breaking each one into a shallow cup about a quarter of an hour before it is to be cooked is also a good plan.

EGGS
OMELET
BAKED EGGS

Be sure the water is boiling and free from specks. If you have no egg-poacher, use a clean frying-pan. Fill with boiling water; draw to the side of the range, slip the eggs, one by one, upon the surface, set carefully back over the fire and boil gently three minutes, or until the whites are firm. Take up with a flat perforated spoon, lay upon rounds of buttered toast, trim off ragged edges and dust lightly with salt and white pepper. Celery salt gives a pleasant flavor to poached eggs, and some relish a drop of onion juice upon each.

Eggs poached in milk

Proceed as with those poached in water, using boiling milk instead. When done, transfer to slices of hot buttered toast laid upon a platter and pour over all a white sauce—plain drawn butter, or butter drawn in stock of some kind. Chicken stock is particularly good for this.

Scrambled eggs

Have a tablespoonful of butter hissing hot in the frying-pan. Break six eggs into a bowl; add, without breaking the eggs, two tablespoonfuls of cream, or, if you have none, of milk in which half a teaspoonful of corn-starch has been wet; add pepper, salt, and a little finely minced parsley; turn all into the pan, and stir incessantly in all directions, until you have a creamy mass.

Turn out upon buttered toast or into a hot water dish and serve before the mass hardens.

Scrambled eggs in cups

With a rather large tin “shape” cut round out of slices of stale bread an inch thick. With a small “shape” cut more than half through these rounds and dig out the crumb carefully, leaving bottom and sides a quarter of an inch thick. Set in a pan on the upper grating of the oven to crisp. When of a delicate brown, butter the insides and edges of the “cups” and leave in the oven three minutes longer. Arrange on a dish and fill with scrambled eggs prepared as in the last recipe.

Fried eggs

Fry slices of bacon quickly, take out the meat and keep it hot; strain the fat that ran from them, add a tablespoonful of cottolene or other fat or dripping, bring to a boil and break into the pan as many eggs as you need. Slip a spatula under each, as soon as it is fairly “set” and reverse it dexterously if you like “turned” eggs.

Trim ragged and discolored edges, arrange in the center of a hot platter and lay the bacon about them.

Fried eggs with brown sauce

Put a good lump of butter into the frying-pan, and when it hisses sharply, cook the eggs as directed in the last recipe. When done, dish and keep them hot over boiling water. Now put two more tablespoonfuls of butter into the pan; fry brown, then add one tablespoonful of vinegar and a little onion juice with pepper and salt. Boil the whole together for two minutes, pour it over the eggs, and serve.

Deviled eggs

Boil six eggs hard, cut carefully in half, and take out the yolks. Rub these to a paste with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, one-half teaspoonful of Chili sauce, and a saltspoonful, each, of salt, pepper and French mustard. Form this mixture into balls that will fit into the halved whites. Set these halves on end on a hot platter, put a yolk-ball in each, and keep hot while you make the sauce to pour about them. To make this, cook together a teaspoonful of butter and one of flour, and pour over them a half pint of hot milk with a pinch of soda stirred in it. When this sauce is thick and smooth, add to it one beaten egg and a tablespoonful of finely minced parsley. Remove immediately from the fire and pour around the eggs.

Mince of tongue and eggs

Boil a fresh calf’s tongue, let it get cold, and mince fine. Heat a half-pint of soup stock, and cook together in a frying-pan a tablespoonful of butter and one of browned flour. On this pour the hot soup stock, and cook until you have a thick, brown sauce. Into this turn the chopped tongue, and toss and stir until smoking hot. Season with a teaspoonful of tomato catsup, a teaspoonful of onion juice, salt and pepper. Have ready slices of toast on a heated platter, pour the hot mixture over these; put a poached egg in the center of each slice of toast, and serve.

Kidneys are delicious cooked in this way.

Mince of ham and eggs

Prepare as above, but using cold boiled and minced ham in place of the tongue. A mixture of cold liver and ham is very palatable.

Savory eggs

Dissolve a pinch of soda in a cup of cream and heat the cream. In another vessel heat a pint of stock. Turn into the stock six beaten eggs, season to taste with salt, pepper and minced parsley; cook until the eggs begin to thicken, stirring all the time; add the cream and serve on slices of lightly buttered toast.

A curry of eggs

Put into a saucepan one tablespoonful of butter, and when this has melted, stir into it a tablespoonful of flour mixed with a teaspoonful of curry powder. When these are thoroughly blended with the butter pour slowly into the saucepan a cupful of veal, mutton or chicken stock, half a teaspoonful of onion juice, and season with salt. Stir until you have a smooth sauce, then lay in it six hard-boiled eggs cut into slices about half an inch thick. Cook until the eggs are thoroughly heated.

A simple omelet

(Contributed)

Beat the yolks and whites of six eggs separately, and stir three tablespoonfuls of milk into the yolks. Melt a tablespoonful of butter in a hot frying-pan. Stir the yolks and whites very lightly together; pepper and salt them, and turn the frothed mass into the frying-pan. Keep the omelet from sticking to the bottom and sides of the pan by frequently slipping a knife or cake-turner around the sides and under the bottom of the egg mixture. When the omelet is set, slip it off upon a hot platter, and, as you do so, fold it over quickly and lightly. Serve at once.

An English omelet

Break six eggs, and separate the yolks from the whites. Beat the yolks until they are thick. Add a saltspoonful of salt to the whites, and whip them until they are very stiff. Now, with quick strokes, lightly stir the whites into the yolks. Have a tablespoonful of butter melted in a frying-pan and turn the beaten eggs into this. With a knife keep the omelet loosened from the sides and bottom of the pan, and take care that it does not scorch on the bottom. When “set” slip the omelet upon a hot platter, and, as it leaves the pan, fold it over upon itself, sprinkle with salt, and send at once to the table.

Omelet with tomato sauce

Make what is known in cookery as a “white roux” by cooking in a saucepan a tablespoonful of butter and one of flour, and, when they bubble, pouring over them a cupful of strained and seasoned tomato juice. Keep this sauce hot while you make an omelet by the foregoing recipe; dish it, and after it is on the platter pour the tomato sauce over and around it.

A bread omelet (baked)

Soak three tablespoonfuls of stale crumbs in a cupful of milk for two hours. Beat six eggs—whites and yolks separately —very light. Into the yolks stir the soaked crumbs, and season the mixture with salt and pepper. Last of all, stir in with a few light strokes the stiffened whites. Butter a deep pudding dish, pour the mixture into this, set it on the lower grating of a quick oven and bake until light and brown. Sift brown crumbs over the top and serve the omelet as soon as it is removed from the oven.

Omelet aux fines herbes

Chop finely parsley, thyme, summer savory, chives, or any green herbs you fancy; make two tablespoonfuls in all; season with paprika and celery salt. Make an omelet in the usual way, pour into the pan, and, before it forms, sprinkle the herbs over the surface, stirring gently to mix them. Cook then as you would a plain omelet. A parsley omelet is made according to this recipe, using no herbs except parsley.

Oyster omelet

Before putting your omelet over the fire, have ready the filling. Chop a dozen oysters into tiny bits. Stir together over the fire a large spoonful of butter and one of flour. When smooth and bubbling draw to the side of the range and add gradually three tablespoonfuls of cream (with a pinch of soda), and the same quantity of strained oyster liquor. Set back over the fire and stir until it boils. Season with paprika and salt; add the chopped oysters, and bring again to a boil. Set in boiling water while you make the omelet. When this is ready to fold over, cover with the cooked oysters, fold, and turn out upon a very hot dish.

Clam omelet is made in the same way.

Baked mushroom omelet

Peel and cut into quarters a dozen fresh mushrooms and put them into a saucepan with a tablespoonful of butter, pepper and salt to taste, and a few drops of lemon juice. Cover the pan and simmer slowly for ten minutes. Add one cupful of thickened chicken or veal stock, and cook slowly ten minutes longer. Then stir in six eggs, well-beaten, turn into a buttered bake-dish, sift browned crumbs over the top, and set upon the upper grating of a quick oven until the eggs are “set.” Five minutes should be enough. Serve at once in the bake-dish.

Daffodils

Chop the whites of six hard-boiled eggs fine, then run through a vegetable press. Have ready a cup of drawn butter, seasoned with pepper, salt and onion juice. Mix the whites with this, and keep hot over boiling water. Have ready eight rounds of toast, buttered and slightly moistened with gravy—chicken, veal or turkey. Arrange on a hot platter and cover each round with the white mixture, flattening it on top.

Run the yolks through the press, reducing them to a yellow powder, season with salt and pepper, and put a spoonful in the center of each white round.

Nesting eggs

Boil six eggs hard, and throw into cold water. When cold, strip off the whites and shred them into long straws. Heat a flat dish—one that will bear fire—and arrange the shreds around the inner edge. Have ready a handful of celery (shredded like the eggs), which has been stewed tender in a little milk, then seasoned. Lay this inside of the lines of white shavings, and put a few spoonfuls of melted butter over both. Set in the oven until very hot.

Pick to pieces a cupful of cold boiled or baked fish, and run the yolks of the eggs through the colander or vegetable press. Mix with the fish, moisten with drawn butter, and mold into egg-shaped balls. Dispose these neatly within the “nest,” and pour over them a cupful of drawn butter to give the desired whiteness. Shut up in the oven for a few minutes to get them heated through, and serve.

This is a less elaborate dish than would seem at first reading.

DAFFODILS
SCALLOPED OYSTERS
CHICKEN OMELET

If you have stewed celery left from yesterday’s dinner, and cold fish, the rest is easy enough.

Chicken or other meat may be substituted for the fish.

Cheese omelet

Make a plain omelet, and when nearly done, strew powdered Parmesan cheese over it. Fold, transfer to a hot dish, strew more cheese on top, and hold a red-hot shovel near enough to scorch the cheese.

Baked soufflé of eggs (No. 1)

Scald a cup of milk, putting in a tiny pinch of soda. Beat the yolks of six eggs until light and creamy, and the whites till stiff enough to stand alone. Add one-half teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper and one rounded tablespoonful of butter to the milk and stir it into the yolks; then beat in the whites very quickly. Pour into a deep, buttered pudding dish and bake in a moderate oven ten minutes, or to a delicate brown. Serve immediately in the bake-dish.

Baked eggs soufflé (No. 2)

Beat six eggs light, whites and yolks separately. Heat one cupful of milk, add one teaspoonful of corn-starch, one-half teaspoonful of salt, and the whipped yolks of the eggs. Cook in a saucepan until as thick as cream, add the whites, beaten stiff, put into a well-buttered frying-pan, set in a hot oven and bake well until browned slightly, then slide off upon a hot platter.

Eggs and tomatoes

Cook a tablespoonful of butter and one of flour together in a saucepan until smooth and hot. Add a cupful of tomatoes, canned or raw, chopped fine, and strained from the juice. Season with paprika, celery salt, a half teaspoonful of sugar, and a teaspoonful of onion juice. Cook five minutes. Have ready on a bowl six eggs, beaten—whites and yolks together; take the saucepan from the fire and add the contents gradually to the eggs. Set back over the fire, stir for one minute, or until the eggs are set, and serve in a hot, deep dish.

Olla podrida omelet

Make a roux of one tablespoonful of butter and the same of browned flour in a deep frying-pan. When hissing hot stir in one cupful of canned tomato, one-half cupful of canned mushrooms, sliced fine, the same quantity of minced ham, tongue or chicken. Season with onion juice, paprika and salt to taste. Let it simmer five or eight minutes, then stir in four beaten eggs. Stir carefully as it thickens, and when the eggs are set serve on buttered toast.

Scrambled eggs with cheese

(Contributed)

Break ten eggs and slip them into a saucepan. Beat them with one-fourth of a pound of butter, one-fourth of a pound of grated cheese and salt and pepper to taste. Butter a saucepan and when hot, pour in the mixture and allow it to cook for five minutes over a light fire, stirring all the while. When the mixture becomes quite thick, pour into a deep dish, and serve with fried toast.

Scrambled eggs with asparagus tops

(Contributed)

Cut the tender tops of asparagus into pieces one-half inch long. Cook them in salted water for about ten minutes, then let them drain. Scramble the eggs and when they are cooked add the asparagus tops and serve on toast. Lobsters, cooked and cut into dice, may be substituted for the asparagus tops.

Rice omelet

(Contributed)

To one cupful of cold boiled rice add one cupful of warm milk, one tablespoonful of melted butter, one teaspoonful of salt and a dash of pepper; mix well and add three well-beaten eggs. Heat a tablespoonful of butter in a frying-pan and when hot pour in the omelet and set the pan in a hot oven. When it is thoroughly cooked fold it double, turn out on a hot dish and serve at once.

Fish omelet

(Contributed)

Make about a half pint of white roux, add a piece of butter about the size of an egg, twelve shelled and cooked shrimps; season with salt and pepper; let it cook for two or three minutes, stirring all the time, then add half of a green sweet pepper, chopped fine, and cook for one minute. Make an omelet of six eggs; when brown, turn up and fill with this mixture. Serve at once on a hot platter.

Frizzled beef and eggs

(Contributed)

To every half pound of chipped beef allow half a pint of milk, one tablespoonful of butter and one tablespoonful of flour. Put the butter into a frying-pan; when hot add the beef and stir for about two minutes, or until the butter begins to brown, then dredge in the flour. Stir well, add the milk and a little pepper, and just before taking from the fire whip in two well-beaten eggs.

Ham omelet

(Contributed)

Make an omelet in the usual way; pour into an omelet pan and before the egg sets sprinkle over the top one teacupful of finely minced, cold, cooked ham.

Egg croquettes

(Contributed)

Cut hard-boiled eggs into one-quarter inch dice. Add one-fourth as many chopped mushrooms and turn into a thick white sauce. When cold, mold into croquettes, dip into egg, then in bread crumbs and fry in deep fat.

Eggs in cases

(Contributed)

Make little paper cases of buttered writing paper; put a small piece of butter in each and a little chopped parsley or onion; pepper and salt. Put the cases upon a gridiron over a moderate fire of bright coals, and when the butter melts break a fresh egg into each case. Strew over them a few buttered bread-crumbs, and when almost done glaze the tops with a hot shovel.

Minced eggs

(Contributed)

Chop up, but not too fine, four or five hard-boiled eggs. Put over the fire, in a saucepan, one tablespoonful of butter, and when it begins to bubble, stir into it one tablespoonful of flour; cook one minute, then add one cupful of hot milk. When it cooks thick like cream, put in the minced eggs. Stir it for a few minutes, and serve garnished with sippets of toast.

Scalloped eggs

(Contributed)

Slice in rings twelve hard-boiled eggs. Cover the bottom of a well-buttered baking dish with fine bread-crumbs; over this put a layer of eggs, some small pieces of butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Alternate in this way until the dish is filled, being careful to have bread-crumbs on top. Add two tablespoonfuls of rich milk or cream and bake in a moderate oven.

Shirred eggs

Butter small “nappies” and drop an egg carefully into each, taking care not to break the yolk. Set the nappies in a pan of boiling water on the range, and cook until the white is set. Put on each egg a bit of butter, and a dash each of pepper and salt. Serve at once.

FAMILIAR TALK
WHO RULES THE HOME?

The question is seldom put so baldly. Indulgent husbands yield the point in verbal gallantry. Politic wives make it a point of conscience and etiquette to speak of their husbands as owners of house and contents and lawful directors in all pertaining thereunto. At heart, the complaisant Benedict knows his will to be potent, if not supreme, in home and family. The wedded Beatrice is secretly conscious that she can wind her boastful Benedict about her taper finger, and he will not suspect.

An old, old ballad, warbled with sly smiles by our foremothers, thus sums up her view of the matter:

“Now, sisters, since we’ve made it plain

That the case is really so,

We’ll even let them hold the rein,

But we’ll show them the way to go!”

Honest John, while his sinewy fingers feel the taut rein between them, believes himself master of the situation. He pays for house, food and servants, and often works hard for the money that secures these for his family. Upon general principles he has a right to know that the money is wisely spent and husbanded; a right to be well lodged and fed and made as comfortable when at home as his means will allow. If he sees furniture abused, food badly—hence unwholesomely—cooked, and needless waste in any department, he has an unquestionable right to direct his wife’s attention to the existing state of things, and insist that it be amended. On the other hand, in giving his wife his name, he has made her the managing, as he is the financial, partner of the firm matrimonial.

She is not his hireling.

Failure to comprehend this vital truth wrecks the happiness of more married couples than incompatibility of temper, fickleness and intemperance, all put together.

A reasonably good wife earns so much more than her own living that the surplus ought to go to her credit. If not in money, in a hundred other ways. When John stoops to captious surveillance of her methods, and personal inspection of her work, he degrades her to the position of a suspected menial, and sinks his manhood into Bettyishness. “Bettyishness,” according to lexicographers, is the synonym for “womanishness,” and for John to be “womanish” is to be unmanly; Mary would rather have him savage, now and then.

I saw a spotless reputation discounted the other day, and many rare, amiable traits of disposition shrivel as waste paper in the fire, under a single sarcastic utterance of a society woman who had her own reasons for disliking the person under discussion.

“Yes!” she said, dubiously, to the praise an elderly matron had given an excellent son and brother. “But, then, he is such a ladylike person!”

The epithet was apt. Not one of us could deny it. Every woman present, while she laughed, would have preferred to have her husband called a brute.

John takes ugly risks when he tempts his hitherto loyal spouse to name him to her confidential self as “Bettyish,” “Miss Nancy-ish” or a “Mollycoddle.” They all mean the same thing. As a sloven he may be forgiven in consideration of the solid manliness back of personal carelessness. We wink at rusty shoes, and collars awry, and tousled hair, and missing sleeve-links. For the same reason we condone crossness, and even a touch of savagery. When he comes home “in a temper,” he has had a trying day down town, or he is hot, or headachy, or hungry. Womanly ingenuity is set to work to soothe down the inclement mood, and womanly love glides to the front with the mantle of tenderest charity to hide the fault from others, and put it out of our own minds when it is past.

I know a man—squarely-built, robust and keen-eyed—who carries the keys of the store-room, and lends them to his wife at night and morning to give out the supplies needed for the daily meals. He registers in day-book and ledger every pound of butter and box of crackers and quart of vinegar brought into the house, with the date of purchase.

I knew another (who ceased from his labors ten years ago), who visited kitchen, pantries and store-room several times every week to see that everything was clean and orderly. He used to smell milk-pans, run a critical finger around the insides of kettles and pots and inquire into the destination of scraps—and all without a blush or misgiving. In each case it was, of course, impossible to keep servants who could get any other place. Wives belong to the class that can not give warning.

If either of these men would have tolerated the apparition in his counting-room or office, at stated, or irregular, periods of his wife—bent upon inspection of accounts and sales, the clerks undergoing examination, or standing as witnesses of his humiliation—then he was justified to his conscience for his policy of home rule.

Mary would go to prison for her John, and to the scaffold with him. She springs to arms in his defense if her nearest of kin dare to intimate that he is not the pink of perfection she would have them believe. His grossest eccentricities are graces so long as they are masculine.

But let him prowl into the pantry, peep into the bread-box, criticize the arrangement or derangement of china-shelves, pull open linen drawers, spy out dusty rungs of chairs, take down, sort, and hang in better order the contents of clothes-hooks and hat-racks—and he may shift for and shield himself. With lofty scorn the wife of his immaculate shirt bosom leaves him to the fate he deserves.

In which course there is some reason and a little unreason. For which of us does not draw upon John’s sympathies in her domestic distresses? He must not undertake the management of Bridget, or Daphne, or Marie. These be womanish matters, in which a man should not intermeddle. It may be the most temperate of suggestions, such as, “My dear, I don’t like to find fault, but if you would speak to Margaret about meddling with the papers upon my table when she dusts the library?” It is a distinct trespass upon wifely preserves. Margaret is under the protection of her mistress’ wing. The interests and credit of the two are identical. But there comes a day when the league snaps in two, like scorched twine. The maid gives warning, and company is expected, and the mistress “did think she had a right to expect better things from Margaret, after all the kindness she has shown her in sickness and in health, and the excellent wages she has given her, and here, at the most inconvenient time she could have chosen, the creature is deserting her!”

Thus runs the torrent of talk into the ears of a man who left a much worse complication behind him in his office when he set his face toward home and imaginary peace. Had he found fault with Margaret a week ago, he would have been a “Molly.” Should he withhold sympathy from the mistress to-day, to the extent of commending the ingrate’s past services, and wondering if there may not be possible palliation somewhere for her present behavior—he is unfeeling, and—“a MAN!” When a woman brings out the monosyllable in that accent, she may as well go a semi-tone higher and say, “Monster!”

To be explicit, John must dance when his spouse puts the pipes to her lips, and not presume to mourn but at her lamenting. As her sister, my sympathies topple dangerously toward her. As an impartial chronicler I can not deny that much may be said in his defense, even when he is convicted of womanish meddling. He is but a passenger upon the domestic craft in fair weather, a paying passenger, who is expected, nevertheless, to be smilingly content with his accommodations, to eat as he is fed, sleep upon the bed as it is made, and to complain of nothing until the sea gets rough, and another and a stout hand is needed on deck and in the rigging.

The principle should work well both ways, or it will go to pieces of its own weight.

FISH FOR BREAKFAST

A modern Peter Magnus, always on the alert for coincidences, once called my attention to the singular fitness of the height of the fish season and the coming of Lent.

“It happens uncommonly convenient, at any rate. How very, very awkward it would be if there were no fish in the market just when the Church forbids meat!” prosed my interlocutor, whose nationality I need not specify.

I might have replied, had there been any hope of his seeing the point of the story, with the anecdote of one of his countrymen who invited me to view the total eclipse of the moon through his telescope, and, while I gazed, remarked upon the happy accident that this particular eclipse “had taken place at the full of the moon.”

Dame Nature adjusts kindly and cleverly all seasons and happenings to the need of her children. Fish, easily digested and rich in phosphates, are in their delicious prime as winter suddenly relaxes her hold upon our world and our systems. We needed fats to keep up animal fats in cold weather. The first warmer days ease the taut running-gear of muscles, nerves and digestive apparatus. She cries, “’Ware meat!” peremptorily. However deaf we may be to the Church’s behest, we can not afford to disregard the Great Mother’s.

The breaking up of winter, the general letting down of physical energies and the abundant supply of food precisely adapted to the season’s needs, form a “coincidence” that the most stupid must perceive. The like principle of demand and supply might, one might imagine, be recognized in the matter of breakfast foods. Fish, rightly cooked, tempts the appetite and does not overload the stomach. Another recommendation which should have weight with commuters and “hustlers,” is that the yielding fibers require less strenuous mastication than those of steaks, chops and rashers.

The truism that as a nation we are inordinate flesh-consumers is tattered by much wear. Since vegetarianism comes as a hard lesson to the mass of our race, and the exacting palate demands more definite flavors than those of eggs in any form, resort to crustacean and finny delicacies should follow as a matter of course and of common sense.

Shad

Sturgeon is known in England as the “Queen’s Own Fish.” Hiawatha names him as the “King of Fishes.” The American epicure has transferred this title to the more delicately flavored salmon. If a vote of native-born gourmands of all ranks of society were taken, I think the shad would be the elect favorite—the dainty queen of fishes, the more royal for the wealth of roes that bespeak her prime.

Planked shad

Have your fish cleaned and split down the back. Wash and wipe dry. Have ready a clean oak or hickory plank, about two and one-half inches in thickness and of such a length that it will go easily into your oven. Set it in the oven until it is heated through. Rub your shad on both sides with an abundance of butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Lay it, open side up, on the hot plank and fasten it firmly into place by putting a tin tack at each of the four corners. Lay the plank on the upper grating of the oven, and rub the fish with butter every few minutes until done. You can tell when this point is reached by testing with a fork. Carefully withdraw the tacks and slip the fish upon a hot platter. Serve with melted butter, and garnish with slices of lemon and sprigs of parsley.

Broiled shad with sauce piquante

Split the fish down the back, wash, wipe dry, and lay it open on a well-greased gridiron. Broil over clear coals, taking care to turn the fish often, as it burns easily. If the shad is a thick one it will take about twenty minutes to cook thoroughly. Remove carefully from the gridiron, lay on a hot fish platter, butter well and sprinkle with pepper and salt. Pass with the fish a sauce made in the following manner:

Rub to a cream three tablespoonfuls of butter and two teaspoonfuls of lemon juice. Whip into this two teaspoonfuls of finely minced parsley. The sauce should be light green in color. Keep in a cold place until time to serve it with the fish.

Fried shad

Mrs. S. T. Rorer, whose authority on culinary counsels few dare dispute, says: “Shad, being rich in oils, should never be fried.”

In tide-water Virginia, where shad are eaten in their perfection and within a few hours after they are drawn from the river, frying is a most popular method of preparing them. Some cooks there rid the fish of all suspicion of an oily taste by holding it up by the gills and pouring a pint or so of boiling water over it. After the shower-bath it is immediately laid in ice water to keep the flesh firm. Then have the shad split down the back, and cut each half of the fish into four pieces. Wash quickly and wipe dry. Roll in beaten egg and cracker crumbs, lay the pieces, side by side, on a platter and set in the ice-box for two hours. Fry to a golden brown in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. Drain all the grease off in a colander; arrange the fish in neat order on a folded napkin laid in the bottom of a fish platter. Garnish with slices of lemon and sprigs of parsley. Serve Bechamel sauce with the fish.

Shad croquettes

Flake the remains of yesterday’s fish into bits with a silver fork. There should be about a cupful of the picked fish. Cook together a tablespoonful of flour and one of butter and pour upon them a cup of milk. Stir to a thick sauce; pour this gradually upon the beaten yolks of two eggs, mix well, add the flaked fish, season to taste, and turn upon a platter to cool and stiffen. When the mixture is cold and firm form it into small croquettes and roll these, first in cracker dust, then in beaten egg, and once again in cracker dust. Set aside in a cool place for two hours, and fry in deep boiling cottolene or other fat brought slowly to the boil. Serve with sliced lemon.

Scalloped shad

Pick cold shad into bits, removing skin and bones. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a frying-pan and fry a sliced onion in this. Remove the onion, stir in a tablespoonful of browned flour, and, when this is blended with the butter, pour upon it slowly a cup of clear beef-stock. Stir to a smooth sauce, season with pepper and salt, a very little kitchen bouquet, and a half-cup of tomato liquor. When smooth and as thick as cream, add the fish, stir and toss for a moment and remove from the fire. Turn into scallop shells, sprinkle with crumbs and bake, covered, for twenty minutes; then uncover and brown.

Broiled shad roes

Parboil the roes in salted water as soon as they are taken from the fish. Cook ten minutes and leave in ice water until cold and firm. “Marinade” them in bath of lemon juice and salad oil for one hour. Wipe lightly and broil to a nice brown, turning several times. Pass with lemon sauce.

Fried shad roes

Parboil as directed, let them get chilled in ice water, wipe dry, roll in beaten egg and salted cracker crumbs and fry in deep hot cottolene or other fat heated gradually to the boiling point before the roes go in.

Scallops of shad roes

Parboil and blanch. When perfectly cold break up and pass through a colander or vegetable press. Season with lemon juice, kitchen bouquet, paprika and salt. Have ready a cup of rich drawn butter. Stir the roes into it, beat up well, pour into scallop shells or pâté-pans, sift fine crumbs over the top and bake quickly upon the upper grating of the oven.

Shad roe croquettes

Proceed as with the scallops, except that you make the drawn butter rather thicker, and add a well-beaten egg, together with a tablespoonful of fine crumbs, to give the croquettes consistency. Let the mixture get perfectly cold; mold into croquettes, roll in egg and cracker crumbs and leave on the ice over night. In the morning renew the crumbs and fry in deep hissing cottolene or other fat which has been brought gradually to the boil.

Fried smelts with lemon sauce

Clean, wash and dry the smelts. Roll in salted and peppered flour, and leave in a cold place for an hour to get firm. Fry in deep cottolene or other fat to a light brown, laying each in a hot colander as you take it from the pan, to drain off the grease. Serve in a hot dish. A pretty way of serving them is to fringe several thicknesses of white tissue paper at both ends, and lay in the bottom of the dish, the fringe showing beyond the heap of fish. Serve with—

Lemon sauce

Heat (not melt) three tablespoonfuls of butter until you can beat it to a cream. Whip into it the strained juice of one large or two small lemons, with a heaping tablespoonful of finely-minced parsley. It should be like a light-green cream when done. Fill with this mixture the halves of lemons, from which all the pulp and inner skin have been scraped, and garnish the dish of smelts with them, serving one of the “cups” with each portion of fish.

Fried trout

Clean, wipe inside and out, pepper and salt; roll in egg and cracker crumbs and fry in deep, hot cottolene or other fat, always recollecting to heat this gradually to boiling point before the fish go in.

Or, having cleaned and dried them, roll in salted and peppered meal; then fry.

Fried perch and other pan-fish

Cook as directed in last recipe. It is always well to have the fish on ice for an hour or more after they are egged and breaded, or rolled in meal.

Fish cutlets

Mince cold boiled or baked salmon, haddock, cod, or any other firm-fleshed fish. Season to taste and mix well with a little rich drawn butter, made quite thick with corn starch. Spread upon a broad platter, and, when stiff, cut into the desired shape with a tin “form.” Roll in fine crumbs, then in egg and in cracker crumbs again; leave on the ice to get firm, and fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat which has been heated slowly.

Lobster and crab cutlets

Are made in the same way.

Salmon steaks

Have the steaks cut nearly an inch thick. Wipe with a damp cloth and lay in salad oil for an hour. Drain and put upon a gridiron over a clear fire. Broil slowly, rubbing with butter from time to time. They will take at least twenty minutes to cook, and must be watched carefully that they do not scorch. When done, put upon each steak a generous lump of butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Salmon loaf

Flake cold boiled salmon and moisten it with a gill of cream, a half-gill of milk and two beaten eggs. Stir in a handful of fine crumbs, the juice of half a lemon, a tablespoonful of butter, salt and pepper to taste, and a tablespoonful of minced parsley. Mix thoroughly, turn into a greased pudding-dish, and bake in a steady oven for about three-quarters of an hour, then turn out upon a hot platter. Serve with a white sauce. You may also boil this in a covered mold.

Salmon croquettes

With a silver fork flake the contents of a can of salmon, or two pounds of fresh salmon, into bits—removing all pieces of skin and bone—and season to taste with salt, pepper and a few drops of lemon juice. Cook together a tablespoonful, each, of butter and flour, and when they bubble pour upon them a cup of milk. Stir to a smooth, white sauce, add slowly a raw egg, then turn in the salmon mixed with two tablespoonfuls of fine crumbs. When the salmon is heated remove from the fire and set aside to cool. When cold, form into croquettes, roll these in beaten egg and cracker crumbs and set in the ice-box for an hour before frying in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat, which has been heated gradually.

Scalloped salmon

With a silver fork pick into bits the contents of a can of salmon, rejecting all particles of skin and bone. Make a sauce of a half-pint of milk, thickened with a white roux, and turn the salmon into this. Stir and toss over the fire until smoking-hot; season to taste, put into a greased pudding-dish. Strew thickly with crumbs, dot with bits of butter and bake for twenty minutes.

Broiled haddock

Haddock is not popular among “good livers” in the United States. For some reason it is ranked as a second-hand and plebeian fish. Yet it can be made good although cheap.

Clean, wash and wipe well, and gash the back with a sharp knife. Then “marinade” as you would his patrician brethren: i. e., cover him with salad oil and vinegar, or lemon juice, and let him lie in the bath for an hour. Wipe and broil, turning when half done. Transfer to a hot dish, anoint with butter, lemon and chopped parsley, and send to table.

Haddock fillets

Two pounds of what the cooks call “the thick of the fish” will make four fillets, about four inches long by two wide. Skin each piece with a sharp knife; trim into shape and leave in a marinade of oil and vinegar with a tablespoonful of minced chives, or, if you have none, a tablespoonful of onion juice. Let the fillets lie there for an hour. Then drain well, roll in a good batter, afterward in fine crumbs, and fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. Drain upon hot tissue paper, and send to table very hot. Send around tomato sauce with it.

Halibut fillets

May be cooked in the same way.

Broiled halibut steak

Rub well with salad oil and lemon juice on both sides, wipe, and broil over a clear fire, turning three times. Pepper and salt, lay upon a hot dish and butter well. Send Bearnaise sauce around with it. (See Sauces.)

Fried halibut steaks

Marinade for an hour; drain, roll in salted flour, then in beaten egg, lastly in salted and peppered crumbs. Leave on ice for an hour, and fry in clarified dripping, or in cottolene or other fat.

FISH
FRIED PERCH
FRIED SMELTS
HALIBUT STEAK

Fried pickerel with cream sauce

Clean, wash and wipe dry. Roll in white cornmeal or in flour, and lay aside in a cold place while you fry slices of fat salt pork quickly almost to a crisp. Strain the fat and return to the pan; lay in the fish and brown, turning once. When done, remove to a heated, covered dish and keep hot over boiling water. To the fat left in the pan add a tablespoonful of butter and a little boiling water; boil up and stir in a tablespoonful of flour. When it begins to bubble add four tablespoonfuls of cream with a tiny pinch of soda. Stir until smoking-hot, and strain over the fish.

Fried catfish

Skin and clean; lay the fish in very cold water for a few minutes, then wipe them dry. Dredge thoroughly with flour, or roll them first in beaten egg, then in cracker crumbs, and fry to a delicate brown.

Fried frogs’ legs

Have them carefully skinned, wash well, wipe perfectly dry, roll in cracker or bread crumbs, dip in well-beaten egg, then roll again in the crumbs and fry in butter to a golden brown.

Fricassee of frogs’ legs

Skin and wash well, drain; lay in boiling water for five minutes. Put over the fire in enough warm milk to cover them and simmer until tender. Then drain, and lay in a hot dish, buttering well. In another saucepan make drawn butter, using milk instead of water; season with salt, paprika and minced parsley, with a dash of lemon juice; remove from the fire and stir in two well-beaten eggs. Cook one minute, stirring all the time, and take from the range. Pour over the frogs’ legs, cover, and set over hot water for a few minutes before serving. They will be found delicious.

Stewed frogs’ legs

Skin and lay in a marinade of lemon juice and salad oil, with a dash of onion juice or of minced chives, for one hour. Heat two tablespoonfuls of butter in a saucepan, add a teaspoonful of minced onion, one minced tomato and one green pepper chopped fine. Cook for five minutes. Add the frogs’ legs, cover closely and cook ten minutes. Add a little browned flour and cook until tender. Season and serve.

Clams on toast

Chop a dozen clams and boil them for five minutes in their liquor; drain, and add to them two tablespoonfuls of fine crumbs, a tablespoonful of butter, salt and pepper to taste, and a gill of milk in which a heaping teaspoonful of cornstarch has been dissolved. Stir constantly over the fire until the mixture boils, then add a gill of cream; stir for a moment longer and pour upon the toast.

Deviled clams

Slice an onion and fry it to a light brown in a large spoonful of butter. Strain out the onion and put the hot butter back upon the fire. Chop two large (peeled) tomatoes fine, season with salt, half a teaspoonful of sugar, a good dash of paprika and the same of nutmeg. Stir into the hissing butter; stir for three minutes, and add a teaspoonful of butter rolled in half as much flour. Have ready the clams, drained and chopped fine, and mix them with the butter and tomatoes. Fill buttered scallop-shells, or clam-shells, or a buttered pudding-dish with the mixture; sift fine-crushed cracker over all, dropping tiny dabs of butter on top, and cook until delicately browned.

Fried clams

Drain the clams and dry them by laying them on a soft napkin. Season with a dust of paprika. Beat two eggs light in a soup-plate and have ready in another deep plate an abundance of cracker crumbs. Dip each clam in the egg, and then in the crumbs, until thoroughly coated. Lay side by side on a large platter and set in a cold place for an hour. Fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat to a golden brown, drain in a colander, then transfer to a hot platter. Garnish with slices of lemon and sprigs of parsley.

Clam scallop

Drain the liquor from two cupfuls of soft clams and set aside while you chop the clams fine. Moisten two cupfuls of cracker crumbs with equal parts of clam liquor and milk, season with paprika and a tablespoonful of melted butter, and lastly, add three beaten eggs, and the chopped clams. Mix thoroughly, and turn into a greased pudding-dish. Bake until brown and serve from the dish in which the scallop was cooked.

Clam fritters

Make a batter of a pint of flour sifted twice with an even teaspoonful of baking-powder and half as much salt; one cup of milk, half a cup of clam liquor and two well-beaten eggs. Chop two dozen soft clams fine; season with salt and pepper, add to the batter, and drop by the tablespoonful into deep, boiling cottolene or other fat which has been heated slowly. They are made more digestible and, to my taste, more palatable by cooking the batter, as you do griddle-cakes, upon a soapstone griddle.

Fried scallops

Parboil in hot salted water for five minutes; drain and set them upon ice to get cold and firm. Roll them in salted flour, next in beaten egg, then in fine crumbs. Set on ice for half an hour and fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat, which has been gradually heated to the boil.

Curried scallops

Stew the scallops in just enough oyster liquor to cover them. (Your fish merchant will give you all the oyster liquor you want and be glad to get rid of it.) Bring gradually to the boil, after which cook two minutes. Have ready in another vessel a roux made by stirring into a great spoonful of hissing hot butter a tablespoonful of white flour and a teaspoonful of curry powder. Add to these, when smooth and all a-bubble, the hot liquor from the scallops, a little at a time, keeping the spoon busy until all is in. Lastly, put in the scallops; boil one minute and serve. Garnish with rice croquettes, serving these instead of plain boiled rice. Send around sliced lemons with this dish. The lovers of scallops will enjoy it.

Soft-shelled crabs

Remove the fringe, or loose shell, from each side of the crab, and the sandbag; then cut off the eyes. Wash the crabs well, dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper and roll in flour. Fry in butter, turning frequently. When nicely browned they are done.

Creamed codfish

Flake cold boiled cod into bits with a silver fork. Cook together a tablespoonful of flour and one of butter, and pour upon them a cup of milk. Season to taste and, when smooth, stir in the flaked fish. Stir and toss until very hot, add salt and pepper and serve.

Fish-balls

If salt cod be used, shred it finely and soak six hours. Boil half an hour and let it cool. Mash potatoes to a cream; allow half as much potato as you have fish. Mix and heat by setting in a pan of boiling water over the fire, stirring frequently. When hot, beat in an egg, whip the mixture smooth; let the paste get cold, make into cakes or balls, roll in flour and set on ice. Of course, this should be done over night. In the morning fry in deep boiling beef dripping, clarified, or in cottolene or other fat. Cold fresh cod makes delicious “balls.” Proceed as with the salt, leaving out the soaking, and salting to taste.

Boiled salt mackerel

Wash and go all over the fish with a stiff whisk to dislodge salt crystals. Put on to soak in warm water, exchanging this three hours later for warmer, and leave all night. In the morning cover with hot water and set at the side of the range. Half an hour before breakfast drain and put into boiling water to which a tablespoonful of vinegar has been added, and boil gently for twenty-five minutes. Drain and lay upon a hot dish. Cover with a white sauce into which a finely-chopped boiled egg has been stirred, and serve. You may substitute tomato sauce for white, if you like. It is very nice when milk is used instead of water in boiling it.

Broiled salt mackerel

Soak and proceed as in the last recipe. Early in the morning take the fish from the hot water, cover with ice-cold water for five minutes; wipe dry, “marinade” in olive oil and lemon juice for half an hour, drain and broil. Serve with sauce tartare.

Fried eels

Skin, clean well, taking especial heed of the fat, which must be removed to the last bit. Cut into short pieces, marinade in salad oil and vinegar for an hour; roll, first in salted flour, then in beaten egg, then in rolled cracker, and fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. Drain, dish and garnish with parsley and lemon.

Stewed eels

Skin and clean; cut into short lengths, lay in cold water for half an hour; then put over the fire in cold water, just enough to cover them, and cook slowly for half an hour, or more, according to their size. A large eel may require an hour to make it tender. Turn off the water, cover the eels with a good white sauce seasoned with paprika, onion juice, salt and minced parsley; simmer five minutes and serve.

Roe herring (smoked)

Soak over night when you have washed it well. In the morning lay in hot water for half an hour, then in ice-cold water for ten minutes, wipe dry and grill on a gridiron over a clear fire. It is most appetizing. Pass corn bread with it.

Finnan haddie

Wash the fish thoroughly, leave in cold water for three-quarters of an hour, then lay in scalding water for five minutes. Wipe very dry, rub butter and lemon juice well into the fiber of the fish and broil over a clear fire for fifteen minutes. Serve with a hot butter sauce, or with sauce tartare.

Broiled smoked salmon

Wash a piece of smoked salmon in several waters, and soak it for an hour. Cover with lukewarm water in a saucepan and simmer for twenty minutes. Drain and wipe very dry, then broil on a buttered gridiron until browned on both sides. Transfer to a hot dish, rub with butter, sprinkle lightly with pepper and minced parsley, garnish with sliced lemon, and serve.

Fried smoked salmon

Wash, soak and parboil the salmon as in the former recipe. Wipe very dry, roll in egg and cracker dust, and set in a cold place for an hour before frying in hot salad oil or in cottolene or other fat. Serve with sauce tartare.

FAMILIAR TALK
WHERE WE EAT

“We eat to live; we do not live to eat,” is a time-stained saying. It is almost invariably uttered complacently, and seldom in absolute sincerity. There is something wrong, physically, with the man who “does not care what he eats.” There is a twist in the moral make-up of the woman who finds catering for the appetites of those she loves “a wretched bore, don’t you know?”

Next in importance to the “house-place” in the estimation of the wise and tender mother of the home comes the dining-room where, three times a day, she has her brood under the wings of her comforting, provident and nourishing love. Whatever may be said as to the merits of the “food products” that fly at the masthead of the company the motto—“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are”—there is a potent grain of truth in the legend.

So much of a man’s temper and morals during the day depends upon what he has had for breakfast that the mother may well give serious thought to the composition of the meal. So much depends upon where and how he eats his breakfast, that the wonder grows in the philosophic mind that the eating-room and the appurtenances thereof are a third-rate consideration with so many otherwise excellent managers.

The housemother who can let sunshine into the morning meeting-place of the family scores an important point in favor of the success of her pious scheme. Since this can not always be, her aim should be to simulate the blessed sunbeams as far as she can. Walls of pale buff, the flash of a gilt frame here, and a bit of bright drapery there; yellow silk sash curtains, and, on the sideboard, the glitter of silver and glass will go far to relieve the depressing influence of an apartment where the sun never falls.

Thanks to the ingenious florist whose name is preserved in the “Wardian case,” it is quite possible to have a window-garden in the dining-room on the shady side of the house. A stanch framework of wood, filled in with glass on the sides and on the hinged top, with a zinc-lined bottom on which are spread first a layer of broken flower-pots or other crockery, mixed with charcoal, and on this a stratum, two inches deep, of garden mold, supply the foundation for the undertaking.

Stock with ferns, tradescantia, English and German ivy, fill the spaces between the roots with moss, water well, and close. Your gardening is done for the season, except that, once a day—say while you are at breakfast—the lid is raised a little way to admit a supply of air, and once in a fortnight it would be well to water the plants. Shield from the sun, which, striking through the closed glass, would scald the succulent greenery that will soon fill the case. Hang the canary’s cage above it for an added touch of cheer.

Always have flowers upon the family table. A pot of ivy, a geranium, a fern borrowed from some other room at meal times, will serve the desired end if you can not afford cut flowers in winter. If you have no window plants, manage to get a vase of evergreen sprays—something to lift the gracious ceremonial of eating together above the sordid commonplace. If you “eat to live,” let that living be comely and pleasant.

There is no excuse nowadays for setting a table with coarse, thick stoneware, even when there is no “company” (hateful phrase!) present. Graceful designs may be had in ware so cheap as to be within the reach of any woman who can spread a table of her own.

In the matter of napery, modern fashion comes benevolently to the help of the poor in purse. Have the top of your table polished with a mixture of raw linseed oil and turpentine—three parts of oil, one of turpentine—rubbed in long and well. Then set for breakfast and for luncheon with a linen square—embroidered or simply hemstitched—laid diagonally to the table corners, in the middle, with doilies of the same under the plates; a carving-cloth before the master of the house, and a tray-cloth before the mistress. The effect is pleasing and decorative, the more agreeable to the housewifely eye because the weekly wash is materially lessened thereby.

If your table has not a polished top, you would better have for breakfast and luncheon one of the pretty colored lunch-cloths with napkins to match, which come in divers patterns and at varying prices.

If your china-closets are insufficient to hold all your china, and especially if the walls of the room are ungracefully bare, run a shelf a foot wide near the ceiling and set in graceful array upon it some of your pretty and odd pieces. The device elevates them to the dignity of a bric-a-brac, relieves the burdened closet shelves and produces a frieze-like effect that will further detract from the business-like look of the apartment.

Tax your ingenuity in every way to make the place tempting to eye and to thought, as well as to appetite. A place where one is disposed to linger over one’s meals for social converse and social enjoyment, instead of bolting food in hungry silence, preparatory to bolting from the place he calls “home,” through custom and courtesy, to return not until the approach of the next feeding time.

Since the dining-room chairs are higher than those in the sitting-room and parlor, women of medium height sit with their feet barely touching the floor, and short women dangle their toes helplessly and painfully, the weight of the lower limbs depending from the weary spine.

Provide for each of the shorter sex a footstool or hassock, and reap your reward in the shallowed lines in brow and cheek, the happier light in the eyes, the cheerful ring in the voice.

BREAKFAST MEATS

BREAKFAST BACON

Mrs. Mary J. Lincoln—than whom there is not a more trustworthy authority upon everything pertaining to cookery—says in a sprightly chapter upon breakfast bacon:

“It has been offered me frequently in thick slices, swimming in grease, browned almost to blackness, and salt as the briny waves. You will seldom find a market-man who will take the time and pains to slice it as thin as it should be, even though they are supposed to have knives especially adapted for thin slicing. For that reason I prefer always to buy it by the strip, and slice it as needed.

“With a strong, sharp knife, begin at one end, trim off the outside strip of lean, the smoked edges and the rind, down about three or four inches; then shave off in thinnest possible slices, as thin as can be cut, and have them whole. When you come to the rind, trim off more of it if more slices are needed. Some prefer to turn the strip over and slice from the lower side down to the rind, but not dividing from the rind until sufficient is sliced. But whichever way you do it, keep the strip entire—that is, do not cut off three inches, or half a pound, and then trim and slice that amount, for the last slice will be quite difficult to hold firmly enough to slice uniformly.

“It can be cut thin much easier if very cold. By wrapping it securely in thick brown paper and changing the paper frequently, it may be kept in the refrigerator without affecting the other food.

“Have a smooth frying-pan hot, and everything else ready. Lay in the bacon and turn it frequently as it changes to the transparent stage, moving it about so all portions will cook equally. The heat should be sufficient to cook it quickly, but not to brown it. As soon as it loses the transparent appearance and begins to crisp, draw it from the liquid fat toward the edge, and you will soon tell by the way it dries off and the sound whether it is cooked enough to be crisp.

“Tilt the pan so the fat will run down away from the bacon, and let it drain thoroughly in the pan. By watching and turning it carefully, every piece will be of a uniform light and color, more or less curly, crisp as a Saratoga potato, and so dry and free from grease that it might be picked up with gloved fingers and leave no stain.

“It is less likely to brown when a little of the fat from a previous frying, or a bit of lard, is put in the pan first, as this keeps the bacon from sticking to the pan.”

I seldom borrow a recipe, for two reasons: First, because I have a few old-fashioned prejudices as to the rights of proprietorship in such products; secondly, because, to be frank, I seldom find one upon which I think I could not improve in the matter of simplicity and directness. I could not write out more clearly my ideas on the subject of cutting and cooking breakfast bacon than my distinguished fellow-laborer has expressed them. I hereby grant her permission to honor me by abstracting the same number of words from any of my printed pages.

Bacon and apples

This is a favorite southern dish, and good enough to be transplanted.

Slice bacon thin and fry it crisp. Transfer to a platter and keep it hot while you fry thick slices of unpeeled sweet apples in the bacon fat. When these are tender, drain and put in the center of a hot platter. Lay the fried bacon about the edge of the dish, sprinkle sugar over the apples, and serve.

Bacon and polenta

Wet a cupful of fine Indian meal with two cupfuls of cold water and stir it into a quart of boiling water. Add a teaspoonful of salt, beat up hard, and let it cook steadily for two hours, stirring up often to prevent lumping. Should it thicken too much, add boiling water.

When done, pour out into a broad platter and set aside until perfectly cold and stiff. If you are to have it for breakfast, cook it over night. Cut in squares, triangles or rounds, roll in raw meal (salted), and fry in plenty of boiling dripping or cottolene or other fat to a delicate brown. As each piece is done, transfer to a hot colander to drain. Serve in the center of a hot dish, with thin slices of fried bacon laid about it.

A pretty way of varying a plain but excellent dish is to pour the hot polenta into fancy molds wet with cold water, leaving it there until you are ready to cook it, when turn out and fry.

Bacon and sweet peppers

Cut the stem ends from green sweet peppers, handling very cautiously, lest the seeds should touch the walls of the peppers and make them “hot.” With a small sharp knife extract core and seeds and throw them away. Cut the peppers into rings, lay in ice-cold water slightly salted for half an hour. Fry sliced bacon in a clean pan, take up and keep hot. Dry the peppers by patting between two clean cloths and fry until clear and tender in the fat left in the pan. Arrange the peppers in the center of a hot dish, the bacon around them.

Barbecued ham

Fry slices of cold boiled ham on both sides. Transfer to a hot dish. Cook together in a frying-pan four tablespoonfuls of vinegar, a teaspoonful of granulated sugar, a teaspoonful of French mustard, and a dash of paprika. Stir until very hot and pour over the fried ham. If raw ham be used, cook for fifteen minutes in a frying-pan in boiling water to which has been added a tablespoonful of vinegar; lay in cold water for ten minutes, wipe dry and fry as directed.

Home-made sausages

Grind in a sausage-mill or meat-chopper six pounds of lean, fresh pork and three pounds of fat. Mix with this twelve teaspoonfuls of powdered sage, six, each, of black pepper and of salt, two teaspoonfuls, each, of ground cloves and of mace, and one nutmeg, grated. When the seasoning is well mixed with the meat, pack all down in stone jars and pour melted cottolene or other fat on top to exclude the air, or put into long bags of stout muslin. Dip these in melted grease and hang in the cellar.

They may be made in small quantities and used at once, and are much better than those we buy in market or shop.

Sausages and apples

Lay the sausages (“bulk sausage meat” is best) in a frying-pan, cover with hot water and bring quickly to a fast boil. At the end of five minutes pour off the water and fry on both sides, turning twice. Lift them, drain over the pan, and lay in a hot colander in the open oven, while you fry sliced and cored apples in the fat that ran from the sausages in frying.

If you use link sausage, prick each before boiling.

“Frankfurters”

Cover with boiling water and boil slowly until they rise to the surface of the water. Drain and rub over with a mixture of butter, lemon juice and made mustard.

Broiled pork chops

Are too heavy as breakfast food for any stomach save that of a hod-carrier or ditcher. But people will eat them in the “killing” season, and should have them properly cooked.

Trim away the fat and the skin from the small end; broil over clear coals, and thoroughly, for fear of trichinæ. Pepper and salt to taste. Send around tomato catsup with them.

Cutlets and spare-ribs are cooked in like manner.

Curried pork cutlets

Broil as in foregoing recipe and keep hot (covered) over boiling water. Heat a tablespoonful of butter in a frying-pan, and as soon as it hisses fry in it a tablespoonful of minced onion. When the onion has browned, strain it from the fat, return the latter to the pan, and pour in a cupful of boiling water, with half a cupful of apple sauce. Stir while it simmers for ten minutes. Cook two minutes, and pour over the chops. Leave covered in the oven for five minutes and serve.

TRIPE

A much-maligned article, meet for good men’s tables. It is despised and set at naught by people who should know better, because it is rarely cooked daintily. At its proper estate under the hands of a cook who recognizes its real worth it is said to be both nourishing and digestible. It is certainly palatable, if tender and properly prepared. Buy from your butcher the prepared tripe—that is, tripe which has been thoroughly cleaned and is ready for boiling. No matter how you intend to cook it, boil it first.

Boiled tripe

Lay the tripe in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Set at the side of the range, where it will come slowly to a boil, and simmer steadily for at least four hours. Drain, and set in a cool place until wanted.

Stewed tripe

Cook as in the preceding recipe, but cut the tripe in half-inch squares. At the end of four hours drain off all the water except a gill; add to this a cup of stewed and strained tomatoes, a dash of onion juice, salt to taste and a pinch of paprika. Rub together a heaping teaspoonful, each, of butter and flour, and stir into the tripe mixture. Stir until the sauce is smooth and thick. Some persons like a teaspoonful of Parmesan cheese added to this stew just before it is served.

Fried tripe

Lay cold, boiled tripe in a mixture of equal parts of salad oil and vinegar for two hours. Drain in a colander for fifteen minutes. Dip in egg, then in cracker crumbs, and set in a cold place for several hours. Sauté in a frying-pan to a light brown.

Or you may dip squares of cold boiled tripe into good fritter batter and fry in deep cottolene or other fat. When done, drain free of grease and serve with a sauce made according to the following recipe:

Into the yolk of an egg beat very slowly, a few drops at a time, a half-cup of salad oil. When as thick and smooth as cream add, still slowly, two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, a coffeespoonful of French mustard, a tablespoonful of minced parsley and salt and paprika to taste.

Stewed tripe and oysters

Drop three dozen oysters into their boiling liquor, cook for just one minute, and drain. Cut cold boiled tripe into pieces of uniform size. Put it over the fire with enough water to cover it and simmer for three-quarters of an hour. Drain off the water. Have ready a pint of fresh, scalding milk in a double boiler and drop the tripe into this. Cook for fifteen minutes; add two teaspoonfuls of flour rubbed into the same quantity of butter, and stir until smooth and thick. Season to taste, add the oysters and cook until they are heated through. Last of all, stir in very slowly one beaten egg, and remove at once from the fire.

Stewed tripe and celery

Cut into inch pieces enough celery to make a cupful, and stew tender in salted, boiling water. Drain and set aside while you stew the tripe, first in water, then in milk, as in the recipe for tripe and oysters. Instead of adding the oysters to the thickened milk, stir in the stewed celery, and cook for a minute before serving.

BEEFSTEAK

Rub the hot gridiron with a bit of suet before you lay the steak upon it. The fire should be clear and hot, and yourself at leisure to watch and to turn quickly when the meat begins to drip. There are houses in which a flavor of creosote would seem to be inseparable from a broiled steak. Turn swiftly to keep the smoke from it, and the juices in. Try with the point of a keen knife at the end of ten minutes. If the center of the steak be ruddy, and not purple, and the outside of a fine brown, it is done. Remove to a hot platter, pepper and salt and butter well on both sides. Fit a close cover on the dish and set in the open oven for five minutes to draw the juices to the surface.

Beefsteak with onions

Cook as just directed. Have ready three tablespoonfuls of minced onions, cooked for five minutes in hot butter. They should be tender and clear, but not crisp. After the steak is dished spread the hot onion thickly over it, let it stand in the open oven, with a close cover over it, five minutes.

Chateaubriand steak

Broil a neatly-trimmed tenderloin steak, transfer to a hot dish, butter generously and cover with broiled mushrooms cut into quarters.

Hamburg steaks

Chop a pound of lean beef very fine, and stir into it a beaten egg, a teaspoonful of onion juice, salt and pepper to taste, and a pinch of mace. Mix well, mold into flat cakes, dredge with salted flour, set on the ice for an hour, roll again in flour, and sauté in good dripping or butter.

Chilli con carni (No. 1)

(A Mexican dish.)

Beefsteak (round), one tablespoonful of hot dripping, two large red peppers (dry), two tablespoonfuls of rice, one-half pint of boiling water, salt, onions, flour.

Cut steaks into small pieces. Put into a frying-pan with hot dripping, hot water and rice. Cover closely, and cook steadily until tender. Remove seeds and part of rind from red peppers. Cover with the chilli water, add garlic and thyme. Simmer until cold, then squeeze them in the hand until the water is thick and red. If not thick enough, add a little flour. Season with salt and a little onion if desired. Heat and pour sauce on the meat. Serve very hot.

Chilli con carni (No. 2)

Provide for it two pounds of steak, six red chillies, two cloves, one tablespoonful of flour, a little garlic, thyme, dripping. Seed the chillies and cover with boiling water. Soak until tender and then scrape the pulp into water. Cut steak in small pieces and fry brown in dripping or butter; add flour and brown it. Cover with the chilli water, add garlic and thyme. Simmer until the meat is tender and the gravy of the right consistency.

Beef cakes

Scrape round steak, season to taste with salt and pepper; form with the hands into small, flat cakes and broil over a quick fire.

Stew of beef’s liver

Cut one pound of liver into slices. Chop a quarter of a pound of fat salt pork. Spread a layer of the pork in the bottom of the inside kettle of a double boiler. Cover the pork with slices of liver, sprinkle this with a teaspoonful, each, of minced onion and parsley, add more pork, more liver, onion and parsley until all the ingredients are in the pot. As you do this, sprinkle each layer lightly with pepper. Pour a half-pint of seasoned weak stock over all, cover the pot closely and keep the water in the outer pot at a gentle boil for two hours and a half. Now strain out the meat and keep hot while you return the gravy in the pot to the fire and thicken it with a brown roux. Boil up once and pour the gravy over the liver.

KIDNEYS

First of all, they must be perfectly fresh. If not, they have an odor, and a peculiar “tang” that the unfortunate eater never forgets, and which causes him to feel an aversion for kidneys henceforth and forever. Care should also be exercised in removing all bits of fat and gristle. Last of all, cook the kidneys in a savory way and spare no pains to make them appetizing.

Brown stew of kidneys

Split the kidneys, wash them, drain and cut into small pieces of uniform size. Pour cold water over these and set at the side of the range, where they will come slowly to a boil. Just before the boiling point is reached turn off the hot water, substitute cold, and bring to the boil. Drain the kidneys and keep them hot while you cook together a tablespoonful of browned flour and the same quantity of butter. When these are blended pour upon them a scant teacupful of salted boiling water, and stir until thick and smooth. Now add salt and pepper, a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, the same quantity of Worcestershire sauce, a half-teaspoonful of lemon juice and a tablespoonful of currant jelly. Turn the kidneys into this and stir until very hot.

Savory kidneys

Skin and slice three pairs of lambs’ kidneys. Cut into halves fourteen canned mushrooms. Heat together a cup of bouillon and a half-cup of the liquor from a can of mushrooms. Cook together in a saucepan a tablespoonful, each, of butter and browned flour, and when these bubble pour upon them the bouillon and mushroom liquor. Stir to a thick sauce and add a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce, the same quantity of tomato catsup, a half-teaspoonful of onion juice, salt to taste and a dash of paprika. Now stir in the mushrooms and sliced kidneys. Cook for five minutes after the boil is reached, stirring constantly.

Fried kidneys

Cut three pairs of lambs’ kidneys into halves. Fry eight thin slices of bacon until done; remove from the fire and keep hot while you fry the halved kidneys in the bacon fat. Cook slowly for ten minutes, turning often. Remove the kidneys and keep hot with the bacon while you stir a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce and the same quantity of catsup into the gravy left in the pan.

Put crustless slices of toasted bread on a platter, lay the kidneys on these, pour the gravy over them and dispose the crisp slices of bacon about the edge of the platter.

Broiled kidneys

Cut the kidneys into thick slices. Melt a little butter and stir into it a saltspoonful of mustard and a dash of lemon juice. Dip each slice of kidney in this, roll in cracker dust, and set aside until this coating stiffens. A half-hour will be long enough. Broil on a small gridiron over a clear fire, turning often that the kidneys may not burn. Be sure they are thoroughly done. Serve very hot.

Stewed kidneys

Cut the kidneys in halves, remove all the fat and cover the kidneys with hot water, bring to the boil and drain. Cover with more hot water, again bring to the boil and drain. Repeat this process a third time. Remove them from the liquor, slice thin, and thicken the gravy with browned flour rubbed smooth with two teaspoonfuls of butter. Return the kidneys to the gravy, and when very hot add pepper, salt, two tablespoonfuls of mushrooms, minced, two teaspoonfuls of Worcestershire sauce, a little lemon juice, and two tablespoonfuls of sherry. Serve immediately.

Kidneys sautés

Split the kidneys, trim off all fat and cut each kidney into quarters. Melt three tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan, sprinkle the kidneys with pepper and salt and roll each piece in flour before laying it in the frying-pan. Cook, turning often, until brown. Lay upon a hot platter and add to the grease in the pan a wineglassful of sherry, a quarter of a teaspoonful of onion juice and a tablespoonful of mushroom catsup. Boil this sauce up once, and pour it over the kidneys.

Kidneys à la brochette

Split the kidneys, put over the fire in cold water, and bring to a rapid boil. Drain, wipe and slice each half. Cut the same number of thin slices of bacon the same size and freed from rind and hard lean. Arrange the bacon and kidney slices alternately on small skewers or stout straws, and broil them quickly. Send to table on the skewers.

SWEETBREADS

Said a maid to me once: “Indeed, mem, I niver see sich another as yersel’ for cookin’ wild things and innards!”

The “wild things” to which she referred were quail, woodcock and hare, while the “innards” of which she spoke with such scorn were sweetbreads, kidneys and brains. I may remark, en passant, that the lower classes seldom like viands most prized by the epicure, and the cooking of them, to be done properly, must be performed by the mistress—not the maid—unless the latter be an accomplished cook.

Broiled sweetbreads

Wash a pair of sweetbreads, throw them in boiling salted water, and cook for ten minutes. Drain, and lay in iced water until thoroughly cold. This process is called “blanching” the sweetbreads, and should be done as soon as the perishable dainties are brought home from the butcher’s. Wipe them dry, rub with butter, and broil them over a clear fire. Watch them that they do not scorch. When done, put them on a hot dish, pour a little melted butter over them, sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper and serve.

Fried sweetbreads

Blanch and split each sweetbread in half, lengthwise. Dip in beaten egg, roll in cracker crumbs, and set in a cold place for this coating to harden. At the end of an hour, fry in deep cottolene or other fat brought slowly to a fast boil.

Broiled sweetbreads with mushrooms

Blanch the sweetbreads and cut them in half, lengthwise. Grease a small gridiron, lay the split sweetbreads on this, and broil over a clear fire, turning frequently and watching carefully lest they scorch. When done, lay on rounds of crustless toast, rub thoroughly with butter, salt and pepper to taste, and cover with minced mushrooms fried in butter.

Sweetbread cutlets

Parboil, blanch and mince enough sweetbreads to make two cupfuls. Put into a saucepan with a little white stock and bring to a boil. Thicken with a white roux, and when smooth stir in gradually two beaten egg yolks; then turn the mixture upon a dish to cool and stiffen. Form with floured hands into cutlets, and fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat.

Creamed sweetbreads

Blanch and cut two pairs of sweetbreads into neat dice. Cook together in a saucepan two tablespoonfuls, each, of butter and flour, and pour upon them a pint of cream. Stir to a smooth sauce, add the sweetbreads and cook, stirring steadily until very hot. Season with salt, pepper, and a teaspoonful of minced parsley.

LIVER

It is not known to all housewives, even to those who practise economy from necessity or from choice—sometimes from both—that lamb’s liver, which costs one-fourth as much as calf’s liver, is quite as palatable—some say better than the more expensive viand. The hint may be borne in mind in studying the following recipes.

Liver and bacon

Slice the liver, sprinkle each slice with salt and pepper, and roll in salted flour. Set on ice while you fry twice as many thin strips of bacon as you have slices of liver. Remove the bacon from the pan and lay in the floured liver. Fry slowly until done, turning often. It should cook for at least fifteen minutes. Drain the liver, holding each piece over the pan that the grease may drip off, and arrange on a heated platter, the bacon around it.

Broiled liver en brochette

Cut the bacon thin and the slices of liver into pieces of the same length and width. Run a wooden skewer or stout straw through each piece of liver and, alternately, through a slice of the bacon. Proceed in this way until each slice of bacon is fastened to a slice of liver, and each skewer is full. Lay on a broiler and broil over a clear fire. When done lay the liver and bacon, still skewered together, on a hot platter.

Fried liver

Cut the liver into strips half an inch wide and four inches long. Heat two tablespoonfuls of butter—or dripping—in a frying-pan and fry a sliced onion in it. Strain out the onion. Have ready the liver, peppered and salted and rolled in flour. Put this into the fat and cook, turning once. Take up the liver and keep hot over boiling water. Stir into the fat left in the pan two tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce, one teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, and a heaping teaspoonful of browned flour wet to a paste in cold water. Add salt and paprika to taste, boil up once, put in two tablespoonfuls of sherry and pour over the liver.

There is no nicer way of cooking liver for breakfast.

Mince of liver

Chop, very fine, one pound of calf’s liver. Put one tablespoonful of butter in a saucepan, add the liver with two tablespoonfuls of chopped bacon; cover and cook gently for one hour. When nearly done add a half-teaspoonful of salt, a quarter-teaspoonful of pepper, and two tablespoonfuls of boiling water. Serve on a platter upon buttered toast.

CHICKEN

Fried chicken

Joint a tender chicken as for fricassee. Dip each piece in beaten egg, then roll in salted cracker dust until thoroughly coated. Set aside for an hour before frying in boiling cottolene or other fat to a golden brown. Be sure to fry long enough for the thickest pieces of chicken to be cooked all the way through.

Virginia fried chicken

Prepare the chicken as directed in the last recipe. Fry half a pound of bacon, sliced thin. When crisp, but not burned, strain off the fat and return to the pan. Keep the bacon hot while you fry the chicken (prepared with egg and cracker dust) in the fat, turning twice. Should there not be fat enough, add dripping or cottolene or other fat. When done, arrange upon a hot dish and garnish with the bacon.

Fried chicken with cream gravy

(A Maryland dish.)

After dishing the chicken cooked as in foregoing recipe, strain the fat again, stir in a lump of butter rolled in flour that has been slightly browned, and, when it bubbles, a small cup of hot cream or milk to which a pinch of soda has been added. Stir for two minutes to prevent scorching, add a tablespoonful of minced parsley and pour over the chicken.

Broiled chicken

Use none but undeniably young chickens for broiling. Clean well and split down the back. Lay for an hour in a marinade of salad oil and lemon juice, if there is any doubt on this point.

If certain of your subject, wash over with butter and lay upon a greased and heated gridiron, breast uppermost. The fire should be red and strong. Broil about ten minutes to the pound, lifting when it begins to drip and turning four times to insure thorough cooking. When dished it should be sprinkled with pepper and salt and well buttered.

SOME WAYS OF COOKING COLD CHICKEN

Chicken fritters

Cook a heaping tablespoonful of flour in one tablespoonful of hot butter and one cup of chicken stock, added gradually. Season with celery salt and pepper and pour half of this sauce into a small, shallow, buttered pan. Chop one cupful of cold chicken quite fine, season and spread it evenly over the top of the sauce after it has thickened. Cover with the remainder of the sauce, place on ice, and when very cold and hard cut into rounds or squares. Dip them quickly into batter and fry in deep, hot cottolene or other fat, or in clarified chicken dripping.

These should be prepared over night. The fritters will keep their shape if left a long time before the paste is cut up.

Chicken omelet

Beat four eggs very light, season with salt and pour into a greased frying-pan. Have ready a cupful of minced chicken (heated) and a pint of hot white sauce in which a tablespoonful of minced parsley has been stirred. When the omelet is “set” and ready to be removed from the pan, sprinkle over it the minced chicken, fold it over and transfer to a hot platter. Pour the white sauce about the omelet.

Chicken mince on the half-shell

Cut fine sweet peppers in half lengthwise; remove core and seeds, taking care not to touch the sides of the peppers, and soak for an hour in cold water slightly salted.

Mince fine the cold meat of a chicken and add it to one-fourth as much fine crumbs as you have chicken; moisten with gravy or sauce; fill the peppers, sprinkle fine crumbs over the top, dot with bits of butter, bake half an hour covered, then brown.

Creamed chicken

Make a white roux of two tablespoonfuls of butter and half as much flour; when it bubbles add a cupful of cold chicken cut into dice, a teaspoonful of onion juice, salt and pepper to taste and enough stock to keep all from burning. Cook for ten minutes before stirring in two hard-boiled eggs chopped fine and a cup of rich milk heated with a pinch of soda stirred in.

Imitation terrapin

Proceed as directed in last recipe, adding at the last, the juice of half a lemon and a glass of sherry. Boil up and serve at once.

Turkey croquettes

Mince enough cold roast turkey to make two cupfuls, season with salt, pepper and a half pint of oyster liquor. Put into a saucepan and make scalding hot. Thicken a cupful of hot milk with a tablespoonful of white roux, stir it into the turkey mince, and when the boiling point is reached remove it from the fire. When cold and stiff form into croquettes, crumb these and set on the ice for two hours before frying to a golden brown in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat, or in clarified chicken drippings, if you have it.

Turkey scallops

Mince remnants of cold turkey rather coarsely and mix with it one-third as much stuffing or bread crumbs. Moisten with gravy, oyster liquor or stock, season well; fill scallop shells or pâté pans with the mixture, cover with fine crumbs, with dots of butter over all and bake in a quick oven.

Stewed calf-brains

Heat a great spoonful of butter in the frying-pan and when hot, stir in a tablespoonful of flour. Add a gill of cream with salt and pepper, chopped parsley and a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet. Put a pinch of soda into the cream. When heated, put in the brains, which have been previously blanched and cut into large dice. Cook ten minutes, stirring constantly, and serve hot.

Brain fritters

Blanch the brains by boiling them in salted water for ten minutes. Throw into ice-cold water and leave there for half an hour. When cold, mash to a paste with a wooden spoon. Stir into them two eggs, beaten light, a tablespoonful of melted butter, a half-teaspoonful of salt and enough flour to make a fritter batter. Beat hard for three minutes and drop this mixture into deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. When golden brown in color, drain free of grease in a hot colander. Serve very hot.

ENTREES
LAMB CHOPS
CROQUETTES
CHICKEN SCALLOP

Fried brains

Blanch as above directed, leave in cold water until firm, and wipe dry. Slice into pieces of uniform size; pepper and salt, roll in beaten egg, then in fine crumbs. Do this over night. In the morning roll again in egg and cracker-dust; leave on the ice for half an hour and fry quickly in hot cottolene or other fat. Drain free from fat and serve hot. Pass thin slices of crisp toast with them.

Broiled veal chops

Trim neatly and broil over a clear fire, turning several times. Allow ten minutes to the pound. Transfer to a hot dish and cover with a mixture of butter, lemon juice and minced parsley. Cover and set in a hot oven for a few minutes before serving.

Fried veal chops or cutlets

Dip in egg, then in cracker crumbs, and set on ice until morning. Repeat the process, leave on ice for half an hour and fry in deep, hot cottolene or other fat. Drain, dish and send to table with tomato sauce.

Veal cutlets and bacon

Chop raw lean veal fine, season well with celery salt and pepper, and with your hands mold into oval shape. Roll in egg and fine crumbs and leave on ice all night. In the morning fry thin slices of bacon, remove them to a hot dish and fry the cutlets slowly in the fat left in the pan. Drain, arrange on a platter and lay the bacon about them. Pass tomato sauce with them.

Lamb chops

Trim off the fat, broil carefully and arrange them around a mound of mashed potatoes. Garnish with a garland of parsley laid about the base of the mound.

Barbecued lambs’ tongues

Open a can of lambs’ tongues and spread on a platter. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and a little onion juice. Lay in a sauce made by stirring together three tablespoonfuls of salad oil and one of vinegar. Let them stand in this mixture over night. In the morning heat a little butter in the frying-pan, lay the tongues in this and sauté, turning often.

Mince of mutton

Chop the meat fine, removing bits of fat and gristle. Season with salt, pepper and a little onion juice. (It is always better to grate, than to slice onions for seasoning.) Mix with the minced meat one-fifth of its bulk of fine bread crumbs wet with the gravy and work in the beaten yolk of a raw egg to “bind” the mixture. Mold into flat cakes, dip these into a beaten raw egg, then in cracker crumbs and set in a cold place over night. Fry quickly, as you would doughnuts, in deep cottolene or other fat (never in lard) made very hot. Take up as soon as they are done, drain off every drop of fat and lay upon rounds of lightly browned toast in a heated dish. Garnish with sprigs of parsley.

Minced mutton and tomato toast

Make three cups of good well-seasoned tomato sauce, thickened with a heaping teaspoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter. Keep hot in a double boiler set at the side of the range.

Toast slices of bread, butter them, spread on a platter and put a tablespoonful of tomato sauce on each. Into the remainder of the tomato sauce turn two cupfuls of minced mutton, put the saucepan over the fire, stir until the meat is thoroughly heated, season to taste and pour upon the toast.

BREAKFAST GAME

Broiled rabbit

Have your butcher skin and clean the rabbit, remove the head and open it from end to end on the under side. Wipe it inside and out with a damp cloth and lay it open on a greased gridiron. Cut gashes across the back that the heat may penetrate to the thickest part. Broil over a clear fire, turning often. It should cook for about twenty minutes. Transfer to a hot dish, rub with butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve.

Barbecued rabbit

Cook precisely as in the last recipe and keep hot on a platter while you make a sauce of two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, two of melted butter, a dash of salt and a teaspoonful of French mustard. Pour this sauce over the hot rabbit and send to table. This is a delicious and savory dish.

Smothered rabbits

Skin and clean a pair of rabbits; lay in a covered roaster; pour a cup of boiling water over them and cook, covered, until tender. Baste five or six times with a mixture of butter and water mixed with a teaspoonful of onion juice. When the rabbits are done transfer to a platter and keep hot, while you thicken the gravy in the pan with a tablespoonful of browned flour rubbed up with one of butter. Cook one minute, add two teaspoonfuls of vinegar, a saltspoonful of paprika and a generous teaspoonful of made mustard. Boil up once, pour over the rabbits and leave, covered, over hot water five minutes before serving.