Cookbook

“ In any new cookery book, while no English receipt of approved excellence should be cancelled, yet there should also be given within a reasonable compass a short system of French, and a compendium of foreign, cookery. It is desirable that we should learn much from our neighbours, as I have said in a former chapter, in white and brown sauces, in veloutés, in the dressing of vegetables, in the seasoning and flavouring with ham instead of with salt, and in a more profuse use of eggs, oil, and butter. ”

“ Make a stuffing of parsley, boiled onion, breadcrumbs, dripping, salt, pepper and one egg; stuff the breast first,then fill the body.
The young cook will do well to study her cookery book, not merely to take recipes from it, but to learn the different seasonings, flavorings and stuffings that go with the various meats, and having mastered such details, experiment on her own account. If economy is necessary in the household, she must learn to make up all cold meats and to utilize cold vegetables and scraps of dry bread, in fact, every morsel of food that comes under her hand. ”

“ Another day I took her from the pitch to one of the kitchens in the village with some of the fish, till then always thrown away, and taught her cooking: for the only cooking-implement in the palace is the silver alcohol-lamp for coffee and chocolate. We both scrubbed the utensils, and boil and fry I taught her, and the making of a sauce from vinegar, bottled olives, and the tinned American butter from the Speranza, and the boiling of rice mixed with flour for ground-baiting our pitch. ”

“ A great part of any company dinner can be prepared the day before. The vegetables can be prepared and put in cold water, the game or meat be larded, the meat or fish cooked for croquettes and salads, the salad dressing made ready, and jellies, creams and cold puddings be made. If a clear soup (and that is always best) is to be served, it also should be made. In the morning the bread and cake can be baked, and the fish and other dishes prepared. ”

“ Economy, however, is not everything, and paper-bag cookery appeals also to the epicure, who does not consider cost in ordering a meal to his taste.
Food cooked in a paper bag acquires a richness and a delicacy of flavour imparted by no other means of cooking. All the juices of the meat are preserved; there is no greasiness, no dryness, no risk of burning; even tough meat is made tender. Until a joint cooked by this method has been tasted, the epicure has no idea of the exquisite flavour and delicacy which await him. ”

“ In the model kitchen is the exquisite range, with its polished batterie de cuisine. Every brilliant saucepan seems to say, "Come and cook in me;" every porcelain-lined pan urges upon one the necessity of stewing nectarines in white sugar; every bright can suggests the word "conserve," which always makes the mouth water; every clatter of the skewers says, "Dainty dishes, come and make me." All this is quite fascinating to an amateur.
No pretty woman, if she did but know it, is ever so pretty as when she is playing cook, and doing it well. ”

“ We have to secure an ancient roasting-jack and a large clear fire in our own kitchen, and to instruct our cook—since no woman has taught her what she ought to know—in the art of roasting and grilling, in the preparation of Yorkshire pudding, in the mystery of the marrow-bone and the proper and distinct use of garlic, onions, shalots, chives, chervil, tarragon, marjoram, basil, other herbs, and divers peppers, and finally to train her in the supreme accomplishment of the seasoning of a salad. ”

“ A flour-dredger and a pepper-pot, a potato-cutter, patty pans, and those little tall tins that you bake castle puddings in, the round wooden moulds with which dairy-maids imprint cows and swans upon pats of butter, the kitchen mortar, especially the big marble one, so heavy that cook does not care to use it, brown earthenware bowls and stewing-pots, the lids of tea-pots, clothes-pegs, jars that have held ginger, and jars that have held jam—especially the brownish corrugated kind of jar—all these things and many more you may glean in a kitchen whose Queen is kind. ”

“ I am, in the matters of the kitchen, as will be learned from the previous chapter, no admirer of the wisdom of our ancestors. Cookery is eminently an experimental and a practical art. Each day, while it adds to our experience, should also increase our knowledge. And now that intercommunication between distant nations has become facile and frequent; now that we may make an early breakfast in London and a late dinner in Paris, it cannot be permitted that cookery should remain stationary. ”

“ We were all equally ignorant of practical cookery, so the chief responsibility rested on my shoulders, and cost me some very anxious moments, I assure you, for a cookery-book is after all but a broken reed to lean on in a real emergency; it starts by assuming that its unhappy student possesses a knowledge of at least the rudiments of the art, whereas it ought not to disdain to tell you whether the water in which potatoes are to be boiled should be hot or cold. ”

“ Wood and more wood must be poked in the stove at every crucial moment. In the midst of beating up an omelette one must stop and pile on more fuel. Peeping in the oven the rolls may be rising in regular array with a faint blush of brown appearing on each rounded cheek; the batter bread may be doing as batter bread should do: the crust rising up in sheer pride of its perfection sending forth a delicious odor a little like popcorn;—but just then the joy of the vainglorious cook will take a tumble,—the fire must be fed.
"Now is this what you had planned for breakfast, Miss Maria? ”

“ The science of gastronomy made great progress under Louis XV., a brilliant epoch for the literature of gastronomy: together with the fashions, customs, freedom of opinion, and taste for equipages and horses brought from Great Britain—some new dishes taken from the culinary code of this country, such as puddings and beef-steaks, were also introduced into France. Thanks to the increasing progress and discoveries in chemistry, and to the genius of our artists, the art of cookery rose to the greatest height towards the end of the last century. ”

“ Do you see the crushed and soiled tablecloth, the cup and saucer rather wiped than washed, the fork with suspicious lack of clear outline along its prongs, hatefully reminiscent of previous meals, the knife powdered with brown from recent contact with the knifeboard, and the food itself untempting to the palate and not very nutritious to the system.
“Cooking comes by nature.”
Cooking comes almost by nature to the bachelor-girl. With a good stove-lamp, a frying-pan, a chafing-dish, and a boilerette, with a saucepan or two and a kettle, she has an all-sufficing batterie de cuisine. ”

“ She at once begins to make the dish, going to the recipe to look for each article required as she wants to use it. If some of the supplies have run short, she has perhaps to wait in the middle of her operations while she sends to purchase them. Moreover, when the cake, pastry, or whatever it may be, is made, the fire has very likely been forgotten. In this way, even if the dish has been properly prepared, it is spoiled in the cooking.
16 Those, too, who have some knowledge of the art and perhaps, can cook fairly well, will often find the work a great fatigue and toil. ”

“ Others ran in and out of the kitchen, bearing to the waiters, to be dispensed among the guests, interminable relays of the waffles of those times, golden brown, delicately rich, soft, yet crisp, of a peculiar lightness,—a kind that will be seen no more, despite the food inventions and dietetic improvements, for the artists of that choice cookery are all dead and their receipts only serve to mark the decadence of proficiency. ”

“ The difference between the elegance and refinement of one table and the vulgarity of another often lies merely in the manner of dishing and serving. Again, the step from plain to fancy cooking is very short. A simple and tasteful arrangement, or combination, of materials prepared in the ordinary way will make an ornamental dish. Minced chicken pressed into a ring mold to give it shape, and the center filled with a mushroom sauce, will make a more appetizing dish than if placed carelessly together with no regard to symmetry. ”

“ The setting forth of menus seems to me to be an entirely futile method of filling up a cook-book. No one ever follows them, because things never happen just so as to make all the materials simultaneously available. It is much better to dip here and there in a book—to choose a soup, a meat, and a salad; or a fish, a bird, and a savoury ”

“ It is just there that benefit is derived from European culinary skill; the judicious use of a few inexpensive sweet herbs, and savory sauces, will raise a side dish, made from the cheapest cut of meat, in gustatory excellence far [Pg 4] above a badly cooked porterhouse steak, or a large but poorly flavored roast. Because the art of utilizing every part of food is eminently French, the New York Cooking School plan has been to adapt foreign thrift to home kitchen use. To provide enough at each meal; to cook and serve it so as to invite appetite ”

“ There you will find, too, fifty or more dry seasonings, including 11anise, basil, saffron, savoury, clove or garlic, cassia buds, bay leaf, ginger root, pepper-corns, marjoram, mint, thyme, capers and so on.
Herein lie the “secrets” of French cookery which are, in truth, not secrets at all, but merely the application of common sense to the cuisine. The French have never allowed their taste to be restricted by prejudice, so they hail a new flavor with delight rather than registering an instinctive dislike because it is not familiar. ”

“ T. B. Peterson has just published 'Miss Leslie's New Cookery Book.' This will be a truly popular work. Thousands of copies will very soon be disposed of, and other thousands will be needed. It contains directions for cooking, preserving, pickling, and preparing almost every description of dish: also receipts for preparing farina, Indian meal, fancy tea-cakes, marmalades, etc. We know of a no more useful work for families. ”

“ Beat it all in a mortar,—a marble one if you have it,—adding a dessert-spoonful of mustard and a little salt and pepper. Toast some slices of bread, lay the paste upon them quite thick; put it into the oven a few minutes and send to the table hot.
VEGETABLES.
Much care in selecting vegetables is necessary, but still more in preparing them for the table. It is to be regretted that so little attention is given to this. Half the enjoyment that should be derived from the abundance of the best varieties which our farms and markets offer in every summer season is lost by unskillful cooking. ”

“ Accordingly, the art of cookery commences; and although the fruits of the earth, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fish of the sea, are still the only food of mankind, yet these are so prepared, improved and dressed by skill and ingenuity, that they are the means of immeasurably extending the boundaries of human enjoyment. Everything that is edible and passes under the hands of the cook is more or less changed, and assumes new forms. ”

“ But, notwithstanding all that has been done by South Kensington lectures in London and Miss Corson's Cooking School in New York to popularize the culinary art, one may go into a dozen houses, and find the ladies of the family with sticky fingers, scissors, and gum pot, busily porcelainizing clay jars, and not find one where they are as zealously trying to work out the problems of the "Official Handbook of Cookery." ”

“ The construction of ornamental pieces is as interesting as other fancy work. Making puff-paste, ice-creams, fancy molding of desserts and salads, boiling sugar, etc., are in reality simple processes, and with very little practice found to be as easy to prepare as dishes which from familiarity have come to be called plain cooking. Skill and dexterity of hand may be enjoyed in boning, trussing, and larding, and taste shown in decorating with truffles and other articles, in molding with flowers and fruits, in [39] icing cakes, in spinning sugar, and in making bonbons. ”

“ When one understands the principles of cookery this richness of flavor of meats cooked by the fireless method is not surprising. Every one knows the proverbial deliciousness of French cookery. The special peculiarity of the French cuisine is the long, slow simmering of meats in closely covered earthen pots called casseroles. The principle is essentially that of the fireless cooker, but the casserole not being insulated, the French cook is obliged to keep on supplying a sufficient degree of heat to keep the casserole warm and its contents simmering. ”

“ So it is with recipes,—without the key, how can any one cook? to be told what goes into a pot, and to ‘stew it gently’ so long, and you don’t know what gentle stewing is! You are told to put your meat in the oven and bake it ‘beautifully brown,’ and you don’t know that to brown beautifully your oven must be just so hot when it goes in, and that if you have water in your pan, it will steam, not bake ”

“ Pack in a jar, and keep cool. This butter is excellent for many purposes. For salad, beaten with oil, vinegar, and yolks of eggs, as for mayonnaise, it makes a delicious dressing. For cold meat or fish it is excellent, and also for chops.
Two or three other articles serve to simplify the art of cooking in its especially difficult branches, and in the branches a lady finds difficult to attend to herself without remaining in the kitchen until the last minute before dinner; but with the aid of blanc and roux a fairly intelligent girl can make excellent sauces. ”