Eliza Leslie

“ In France, so little water is used in cooking vegetables, that they are rather stewed than boiled, and are the better for it. A puddle of greasy water in the bottom of every vegetable dish is a disgusting sight; and yet how frequently it is seen. If of every-day occurrence, it is a certain indication of a bad cook, or an inefficient mistress, or both.
Almost all green vegetables should be thrown into fast-boiling water, and cooked rapidly; first washing them carefully, and laying them for half an hour in a large pan of cold water. ”

“ OYSTER SAUCE.— Take a pint of the liquor of fresh oysters, and strain it into a sauce-pan. If your oysters are salt, and you can get no others, boil a pint of milk instead of the oyster liquor, seasoning with powdered nutmeg and mace, and enriching it with fresh butter dredged with flour. When it has come to a boil, put in the oysters (having removed from each the gristle, or hard part.) Let them simmer, but take them from the fire without letting them come to a boil, which will shrivel them, and render them tough and tasteless. ”

“ Meat that is too bad for any thing else, is too bad for soup. Cold meat recooked, adds little to its taste or nourishment, and it is in vain to attempt to give poor soup a factitious flavor by the disguise of strong spices, or other substances which are disagreeable or unpalatable to at least one half the eaters, and frequently unwholesome. ”

“ HOME-MADE BREAD.— You cannot have good bread without good flour, good yeast, good kneading, and good baking, all united. Like many other things, the best flour is always the cheapest in the end. There is none better than that which comes from the mills of Hiram Smith, Rochester, New York. All flour should be kept in a dry place, damp being always injurious to it. Good flour goes farther than that of inferior quality, and is both whiter and lighter. No skill will avail either in making or baking bread, if the flour is of bad quality. ”

“ ROAST GOOSE.— A goose for roasting should be young, tender, and fat; so tender, that the skin can easily be torn by a pin; the bill and legs smooth and of a light yellow color, and the toes breaking when bent under. If the skin is thick and tough, and the bill and legs a dark reddish yellow, rough and hairy, do not buy the goose. It is old, and no cooking can make it eatable. A goose, from its profusion of feathers, looks like a large bird when walking about; but when plucked and prepared for the spit, it will be found very deceptive. It is much more hollow than a turkey ”

“ English people usually make their fruit pies with a top-crust only, putting a turned down tea-cup under the centre of the lid to collect the juice, (of course removing the cup when the pie is cut.) It is a good method in a country where the cost of flour is high.
Too much economy in the shortening will infallibly make the crust very poor, hard, heavy, and unwholesome. If you cannot afford dessert paste, do not attempt pies at all; but substitute a plain charlotte, or slices of bread and butter, covered with stewed fruit, sweetened, and laid in a deep dish. ”

“ Bad butter tastes through every thing—spoils every thing, and is also extremely unwholesome, as decomposition (or in plain terms putrefaction,) has already commenced. Rather than use what makes all your food taste worse instead of better, try to substitute something else—such as beef or fresh pork drippings, suet, lard, or olive oil; or, molasses, honey, or stewed fruit. We know that with these it is possible to live in health for years, without tasting butter. Nevertheless, good butter is a good thing, and an improvement to all sorts of cookery. ”

“ Britannia ware is exceedingly unwholesome for any sort of cooking, as one fourth of the composition is copper. Block tin for a common tea-pot is less objectionable, and much cheaper. All tea-pots should, after using, be thoroughly emptied of the old leaves, and washed very clean in warm water, and set open in the sun and air for several hours. To make good tea, the tea itself, whether black or green, must be of excellent quality. There is no economy in buying that which is low-priced. Green tea, if fresh and good, and not adulterated will look green in the cup, and have a fragrant odor. ”

“ No sweetmeats can either look well or taste well unless the fruit and the sugar are of the best quality. As in all other branches of cookery, it is false economy to provide bad or low-priced ingredients. It has of late years been difficult to obtain very good sugar at any price, so much is adulterated with flour or ground starch. In the common powdered sugar the flour is so palpable that we are surprised at its having any sale at all ”

“ If thawed in water the least warm, the meat will spoil, and be rendered unfit to eat. Meat that has been frozen, requires a much longer time to cook, than if that accident had not happened. All frozen animals must be thawed in cold water previous to cooking. Cold roast-beef is much liked in England. In America, where meat is more abundant, and therefore less costly, it is not considered a proper dish to place before a visitor; therefore, in our country, a large piece is seldom cooked with a view to next day's dinner. ”

“ What there is of their own gravy, pour round them on the dish. Send it to table as hot as possible.
The English custom of eating what is called rare or underdone beef or mutton, is now becoming obsolete. To ladies, especially, all food is disgusting that is red and bloody-looking—and physicians have discovered, that nothing is wholesome unless well cooked. The introduction of French cookery has done that much good.
The onions may be stewed in butter or gravy, and served up in a sauce-boat, seasoned with nutmeg. ”

“ It is difficult to keep corn meal good for the whole year. Before the new corn meal is in market, the old is apt to become musty. If you live in a city it is best to buy it as you want it; a few pecks at a time. If in the country, sift your barrel of corn meal soon after it is brought; divide it, and keep it in several different vessels, always well covered.
SHORT CAKE.— As this requires no rising, it may be mixed and prepared at half an hour's notice. Take a quart and a pint of wheat flour, sift it into a pan, and divide into three parts three quarters of a pound of nice fresh butter. ”

“ Save the liver and heart to assist in the gravy, which ought to be made of some pieces of the lean of good fresh beef, seasoned with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, stewed in a small sauce-pan, till all the essence is extracted, adding the chopped liver and heart, and a bit of fresh butter, rolled in flour. Cold fresh meat, or meat that has to be recooked, is unfit for gravy, and so it is for soup. ”

“ FINE CAKES. PLUM CAKE.— In making very fine plum cake first prepare the fruit and spice, and sift the flour (which must be the very best superfine,) into a large flat dish, and dry it before the fire. Use none but the very best fresh butter; if of inferior quality, the butter will taste through every thing, and spoil the cake. In fact, all the ingredients should be excellent, and liberally allowed. Take the best bloom or muscatel raisins, seeded and cut in half. Pick and wash the currants or plums through two waters, and dry them well. ”

“ If hard in the centre they are unpalatable, and very unwholesome; even worse than underdone meat. Use but very little salt in cooking vegetables; too much renders them hard, and overpowers their real taste. Also, it is easy for the lovers of salt to add more when at table. When vegetables are done, and taken out the pot, drain them well through a cullender or sieve, carefully pressing out all the water that is about them. There is generally, in our country, too much water allowed to the vegetables. Merely enough to cover them well, and keep them from burning, is in most cases sufficient. ”

“ Corn meal requires long cooking. Turn the pudding twice with a fork. If the water boils away too much, replenish it from a tea-kettle of hot water, kept boiling for the purpose. If you pour in cold water the pudding will become hard and heavy, and be totally spoiled. Do not turn it out and send it to table till wanted at dinner. Then dip it for a moment in cold water, untie the string, and transfer it to a dish with a cover. Eat it with molasses and butter; or make a sauce of drawn butter, flavored with wine and nutmeg. ”

“ It is best at the season when the deer are fat and juicy, from having plenty of wild berries to feed on. I do not consider winter-venison worth eating, when the meat is poor and hard, and affords no gravy, and also is black from being kept too long. When venison is fresh and in good order it yields a fine soup, allowing a small quart of water to each pound of meat. When it has boiled well, and been skimmed, put in some small dumplings made of flour and minced suet, or drippings. ”

“ Soup may be colored yellow with grated carrots, red with tomato juice, and green with the juice of pounded spinach—the coloring to be stirred in after the skimming is over. These colorings are improvements both to its look and flavor. It may be browned with scorched flour, kept ready always for the purpose. Never put cloves or allspice into soup—they give it a blackish ashy dirt color, and their taste is so strong as to overpower every thing else. Both these coarse spices are out of use at good tables, and none are introduced [37] in nice cookery but mace, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon. ”

“ Paste made slowly is never light or flakey. Mix quick and roll quick. This is a good plain paste for fruit pot-pies or dumplings.
You may make common short cake for very healthy people, with two quarts of flour, a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, and a quarter of a pound of lard, mixed into the pan of meal with a very little cold water, and a second quarter of lard spread all over the sheet of paste, after rolling it out. Fold, sprinkle, and roll it out again into one round griddle cake, or two if you have enough of dough. ”

“ Lay the slices of liver into the gravy of the bacon that is left in the frying-pan, sprinkling it well with chopped parsley. It must be thoroughly done. Then dish with the bacon.
To those who like them, some onions will be thought an improvement to fried liver. First parboil the onions: then slice them, season them with a little salt and pepper, and fry them with the liver.
If lettuces are in season, quarter a fresh one, and lay it under the liver when you dish it, having previously removed the thickest part of the stalk. The liver of beef or sheep is not seen at good tables. ”

“ If not wanted for immediate use, cut it in pieces, and put it up in a jar well covered. Use it (instead of water) for stews and hashes; and if well seasoned the meat will be found nearly as good (for a breakfast dish,) as if not previously cooked. Whenever it is possible, make your hashes without any water; and if you have saved no gravy, substitute lard, or fresh butter. But gravy or drippings of the same meat is best. A hash of cold meat, stewed merely in water, and with no seasoning but salt and pepper, is a poor thing. Cold potatos, when re-cooked, always remain hard and indigestible. ”

“ When no more scum arises, and the meat is all in rags, dropping from the bones, it is time to put in the vegetables, seasoning, &c., and not till then; and if it should have boiled away too much, then is the time to add a little hot water from another kettle. Add also a large crust of bread or two. It may now be made to boil faster, and the thickening must be put in. This is a table-spoonful or more of flour mixed to a smooth paste with a little water, and enriched with a tea-spoonful of good butter, or beef-dripping. This thickening is indispensable to all soups. ”

“ The lean of good fresh beef is of a bright red color, a fine close grain, and feels tender to the touch on pinching it between your thumb and finger. The fat is firm and very nearly white. The suet about the kidney, firm and quite white. If, on the contrary, the lean is coarse, tough, and of a dull color, and the fat scanty, yellow, and moist, do not buy that meat for any purpose. The same rules will apply to mutton. If the weather is so cold that the meat is frozen, thaw it by lying it all night or early in the morning in a tub of cold water. ”

“ The best regulated families are sometimes taken a little by surprise by the untimely stepping in of a friend to dinner—to such, Miss Leslie is the friend indeed, ready as her book is with instructions for the hasty production of various substitutes for meals requiring timely and elaborate preparation. ”

“ Run it evenly into the meat, which will hang crooked if not well balanced. When first put down, take care not to set it at once too close to the fire, but place it rather more than two feet distant, that the meat may heat gradually. If too near the fire at first, the outside will scorch, and leave the inside red and bloody. Underdone meat (foolishly called rare) is getting quite out of fashion, being unwholesome and indigestible, and to most Americans its savour is disgusting. To ladies and children it is always so, and even the English have ceased to like it. ”

“ With all that can be done for a hare, it is, when cooked, black, dry, hard; and if it has been kept long enough to acquire what they call the "true game flavor," so much the worse. A fine fat well-fed tame rabbit is much better. In Virginia, the negroes frequently call a large rabbit "a hare"—or rather "a yar;" and though they know it to be young, they generally term it "that old yar." We opine that with them "yars" are not admired. If a rabbit is really old his ears are tough, and his claws blunt and rough with coarse hairs growing between them. ”

“ SHRIMP SAUCE.— Shrimps are the smallest shell-fish of the lobster species. Put them into salted boiling water. They are done when they have turned entirely red. When cold, pull off the heads, and peel off the shells from the bodies; or squeeze out the meat with your fingers. Have ready some nice drawn butter, and thicken it with the shrimps, either chopped or whole. Season the sauce with mace or nutmeg powdered, and give it one boil up. Shrimp sauce is eaten with salmon and other fine fish. ”

“ KISSES.— Having beaten to a stiff froth, till it stands alone, the whites of eight eggs, mix with it, gradually, three quarters of a pound of finely powdered loaf sugar, beating it in very hard, a spoonful at a time, and as you proceed flavoring it with extract of vanilla, rose, or lemon juice. If the meringue is not thoroughly beaten and very stiff, the kisses will lose their shape and run in baking. ”

“ Butter the steak, and dredge it with flour [541] . There must be meat enough to cover well the bottom of the pie dish. Lay the pigeons upon it, with the breast downward, (their heads and feet cut off, and their livers cut up, and put inside with the stuffing.) Fill up the dish with water. Roll out and put on the lid of the pie, which you may ornament with paste leaves or flowers, according to your taste. For company, pigeon pies are expected to look handsome. It is no longer fashionable to have the feet of the pigeons sticking out of the slit in the top of the paste. ”

“ For shrimp sauce, boil the shrimps, take off their heads, and squeeze out their bodies from the shells. Thicken with them the drawn butter. Nothing should go with salmon that will interfere with the flavor of this fine fish, or give it any taste that will overpower or weaken its own.
Many prefer salmon with nothing more than cold butter spread on after it is helped. We think, ourselves, that when the butter is very good, it is not improved (for salmon) by the addition of flour and water; and a very little is sufficient. You need use nothing from the castors except cayenne. ”

“ In winter, they are brought into the cities, lean, hard, dry, and black, and the meat infested all through with small threadlike white worms; showing that decomposition has commenced, and requiring the disguise of spices, wine, currant jelly, &c., to render it eatable, not wholesome, for every sort of food in the slightest degree tainted is utterly injurious to health, and cannot often be eaten with impunity. ”

“ When you have taken up the fish, keep it hot while you are finishing the gravy, which you should thicken and enrich by stirring in smoothly a piece of butter mixed slightly into a paste with flour, and seasoned with grated nutmeg. Serve up the gravy in a sauce-boat, and lay slices of lemon along the back of the fish, having, of course, removed the string that was wound around it to confine the stuffing. Send to table with the baked fish, a dish of potatos mashed with milk and butter, and browned on the surface with a salamander, or a red hot shovel. Always remove the seeds of lemon slices. ”

“ Apples for pies should be pared, cored, and sliced very thin. If green, stew them before they are baked.
If you have saved enough of the dripping of roast beef, veal, or pork, (skimmed and put away in a covered crock) it will be good shortening for common pies—far superior to salt butter, and much lighter. Salt renders pastry hard and heavy.
Never use suet for baked paste. It is only for dumplings and pot-pies. Bread dough, or any dough made with yeast, is not good when boiled, becoming tough and leathery, and being very unwholesome. ”

“ Peel off the skin, and trim off the sharp points of each end. Place them in a large baking dish, and lay among them some pieces of fresh butter; sprinkle powdered sugar profusely over them and among them, especially in the vacancies between the potatos. Set the dish into a moderate oven, and bake slowly till the butter and sugar are all melted and blended together, forming a nice crust. They should be eaten not with the meat, but after it. They make a good supper or luncheon dish, and a plain dessert at dinner for plain-living people. ”