Eliza Leslie

“ Every sort of vegetable should be cooked till tender, as if the least hard or under-done they are both unpalatable and unwholesome. The practice of putting pearl-ash in the pot to improve the colour of green vegetables should be strictly forbidden, as it destroys the flavour, and either renders them flat and insipid, or communicates a very disagreeable taste of its own.
Every sort of culinary vegetable is infinitely best when fresh from the garden, and gathered as short a time as possible before it is cooked. They should all be laid in a pan of cold water for a while previous to boiling. ”

“ The lean of meat is much better for soup than the fat.
Long and slow boiling is necessary to extract the strength from the meat. If boiled fast over a large fire, the meat becomes hard and tough, and will not give out its juices.
Potatoes, if boiled in the soup, are thought by some to render it unwholesome, from the opinion that the water in which potatoes have been cooked is almost a poison. As potatoes are a part of every dinner, it is very easy to take a few out of the pot in which they have been boiled by themselves, and to cut them up and add them to the soup just before it goes to table. ”

“ Let all housekeepers remember that there is no possibility of producing nice dishes without a liberal allowance of good ingredients. "Out of nothing, nothing can come," is a homely proverb, but a true one. And so is the ancient caution against being "penny-wise and pound-foolish." By judicious management, and by taking due care that nothing is wasted or thrown away which might be used to advantage, one family will live "excellently well," at no greater cost in the end than another family is expending on a table that never has a good thing upon it. ”

“ If you like a little Indian in your wheat bread, prepare rather a larger quantity of warm water for setting the sponge; stirring into the water, while it is warming, enough of sifted Indian meal to make it like thin gruel. ”

“ Yet, I have heard some few ladies boast of that incapacity, as something meritorious, and declare that they considered the quality, the preparation, and even the taste of food, as things entirely beneath the attention of a rational being; their own minds being always occupied with objects of far greater importance. ”

“ Prepare a force-meat of grated bread crumbs, butter or minced suet, sweet marjoram and parsley chopped fine, a little grated lemon-peel, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to your taste, and some yolk of egg to bind the ingredients. Stuff the heart with the force-meat, and secure the opening by tying a string around it. Put it on a spit, and roast it till it is tender throughout.
Add to the gravy a piece of butter rolled in flour, and a glass of red wine. Serve up the heart very hot in a covered dish. It chills immediately. ”

“ If you cannot procure the fruit, you may flavour the cream with essence or oil of lemon; a tea-spoonful or more, according to its strength. The strongest and best essence of lemon is the white or whitish; when tinged with green, it is comparatively weak, having been diluted with water; if quite green, a large tea-spoonful will not communicate as much flavour as five or six drops of the white. After you have mixed the pint of cream with the sugar and lemon, beat it gradually and hard into the remaining cream, that is, the three pints. ”

“ It is not true that French cooks have the art of producing excellent soups from cold scraps. There is much bad soup to be found in France, at inferior houses; but good French cooks are not, as is generally supposed, really in the practice of concocting any dishes out of the refuse of the table. And we repeat, that cold meat, even when perfectly good, and used in a large quantity, has not sufficient substance to flavour soup, or to render it wholesome. ”

“ The cook should season the soup but very slightly with salt and pepper. If she puts in too much, it may spoil it for the taste of most of those that are to eat it; but if too little, it is easy to add more to your own plate.
The practice of thickening soup by stirring flour into it is not a good one, as it spoils both the appearance and the taste. If made with a sufficient quantity of good fresh meat, and not too much water, and if boiled long and slowly, it will have substance enough without flour. ”

“ Domestics who wait at table may soon, from looking on daily, become so expert that, when necessary, they can take a dish to the side-table and carve it perfectly well.
At a dinner party, if the hostess is quite young, she is frequently glad to be relieved of the trouble of carving by the gentleman who sits nearest to her; but if she is familiar with the business, she usually prefers doing it herself. ”

“ Every family should be provided with a coffee roaster, which is an iron cylinder to stand before the fire, and is either turned by a handle, or wound up like a jack to go of itself. If roasted in an open pot or pan, much of the flavour evaporates in the process. Before the coffee is put into the roaster, it should be carefully examined and picked, lest there should be stones or bad grains among it. It should be roasted of a bright brown; and will be improved by putting among it a piece of butter when about half done. ”

“ As the use of butter is designed to improve and not to spoil the flavour of cookery, it is better to omit it altogether, and to substitute something else, unless you can procure that which is good. Lard, suet, beef-drippings, and sweet oil, may be used in the preparation of various dishes; and to eat with bread or warm cakes, honey, molasses, or stewed fruit, &c. are far superior to bad butter. ”

“ When the cakes are cool, spread every one thickly over with grape jelly, peach marmalade, or any other sweetmeat that is smooth and thick; currant jelly will be found too thin, and is liable to run off. Lay the cakes smoothly one on another, (each having a layer of jelly or marmalade between,) and either grate loaf-sugar over the top one, or ice it smoothly; marking the icing with cross lines of coloured sugar-sand, all the lines meeting at the centre so as to divide the cake, when cut, into triangular or wedge-shaped slices. If you ice it, add the juice of a lemon to the icing. ”

“ Sift into a separate pan half a pound and two ounces of flour, and beat in another pan to a stiff froth, the whites only of seventeen eggs. Stir the flour and the white of egg alternately into the pan of butter, sugar and almonds, a very little at a time of each. Having beaten the whole as hard as possible, put it into a buttered tin pan, (a square one is best,) and set it immediately into a moderate oven. Bake it about an hour, more or less, according to its thickness. When cool, ice it, flavouring the icing with lemon juice. It is best the day it is baked, and should be eaten fresh. ”

“ The juices of the meat having been exhausted by the first cooking, the undue proportion of watery liquid renders it, for soup, indigestible and unwholesome, as well as unpalatable. As there is little or no nutriment to be derived from soup made with cold meat, it is better to refrain from using it for this purpose, and to devote the leavings of the table to some other object. No person accustomed to really [14] good soup, made from fresh meat, can ever be deceived in the taste, even when flavoured with wine and spices. ”

“ Unless the cows have been allowed to feed where there are bitter weeds or garlic, the milk cannot naturally have any disagreeable taste, and therefore the fault of the butter must be the fault of the maker. Of course, the cream is much richer where the pasture is fine and luxuriant; and in winter, when the cows have only dry food, the butter must be consequently whiter and more insipid than in the grazing season. Still, if properly made, even winter butter cannot taste badly.
Many economical housekeepers always buy for cooking, butter of inferior quality. ”

“ In preparing to make tea, let the pot be twice scalded from the tea-kettle, which must be boiling hard at the moment the water is poured on the tea; otherwise it will be weak and insipid, even when a large quantity is put in. The best way is to have a chafing dish, with a kettle always boiling on it, in the room where the tea is made. It is a good rule to allow two heaping tea-spoonfuls of tea to a large cup-full of water, or two tea-spoonfuls for each grown person that is to drink tea, and one spoonful extra. ”

“ The first thing to be done in making cake, is to weigh or measure all the ingredients. Next sift the flour, powder the sugar, pound or grind the spice, and prepare the fruit; afterwards mix and stir the butter and sugar, and lastly beat the eggs; as, if allowed to stand any time, they will fall and become heavy. When all the ingredients are mixed together, they should be stirred very hard at the last; and (unless there is yeast in the cake) the sooner it is put into the oven the better. ”

“ It is best to make yeast very frequently; as, with every precaution, it will scarcely keep good a week, even in cold weather. If you are apprehensive of its becoming sour, put into each bottle a lump of pearl-ash the size of a hazle-nut.
BRAN YEAST.— Mix a pint of wheat bran, and a handful of hops with a quart of water, and boil them together about twenty minutes. Then strain it through a sieve into a pan; when the liquid becomes only milk-warm, stir into it four table-spoonfuls of brewer's yeast, and two of brown sugar, or four of molasses. ”

“ FAMILY SOUP.
Take a shin or leg of beef that has been newly killed; the fore leg is best, as there is the most meat on it. Have it cut into three pieces, and wash it well. To each pound allow somewhat less than a quart of water; for instance, to ten pounds of leg of beef, nine quarts of water is a good proportion. Put it into a large pot, and add half a table-spoonful of salt. Hang it over a good fire, as early as six o'clock in the morning, if you dine at two. When it has come to a hard boil, and the scum has risen, (which it will do as soon as it has boiled,) skim it well. ”

“ Soup should always be made entirely of fresh meat that has not been previously cooked. An exception to this rule may sometimes be made in favour of the remains of a piece of roast beef that has been very much under-done in roasting. This may be added to a good piece of raw meat. Cold ham, also, may be occasionally put into white soups.
Soup made of cold meat has always a vapid, disagreeable taste, very perceptible through all the seasoning, and which nothing indeed can disguise. ”

“ The Portuguese pork, which is fed on chestnuts, is perhaps the finest in the world.
If the meat is young, the lean will break on being pinched, and the skin will dent by nipping it with the fingers; the fat will be white, soft, and pulpy. If the skin or rind is rough, and cannot be nipped, it is old.
Hams that have short shank-bones, are generally preferred. If you put a knife under the bone of a ham, and it comes out clean, the meat is good; but quite the contrary if the knife appears smeared and slimy. In good bacon the fat is white, and the lean sticks close to the bone ”