Cuisine

“ The official tasted each article offered to him, evidently more as a matter of form than of pleasure. I took this opportunity to ask some questions regarding the Martial cuisine, and learnt that all but the very simplest cookery is performed by professional confectioners, who supply twice a day the households in their vicinity; unmarried men taking their meals at the shop. ”

“ The same tract supplies us with a few other items germane to my subject: figs, almonds, long pepper, dates, prunes, and nutmegs. It is curious to watch how by degrees the kitchen department was furnished with articles which nowadays are viewed as the commonest necessaries of life.
In the 17th century the increased communication with the Continent made us by degrees larger partakers of the discoveries of foreign cooks. Noblemen and gentlemen travelling abroad brought back with them receipts for making the dishes which they had tasted in the course of their tours. ”

“ The treatise is divided into ten parts: cookery contains above an hundred receipts, pickles fifty, puddings above fifty, pastry above forty, cakes forty, creams and jellies above forty, preserving an hundred, made wines forty, cordial waters and powders above seventy, medicines and salves above two hundred ”

“ It is upon variety that the French cook confidently relies to make each dish of each meal not just something to eat because her family must have food, not merely a sop to the Cerberus-gnawings of hunger, but a delight to the eye, to the palate, to the stomach—truly a consummation devoutly to be wished for the American home table, and just as possible to attain as it is possible to procure from the grocer or the nearest pharmacist the ingredients by which these wonders are wrought. ”

“ There, men could dine, like gentlemen and Christians, upon all the friandises of the French kitchen, much cheaper and far more wholesomely than at their own tables upon the tough, half-sodden fibres of the national roast and boiled, or on the hazardous resources of hash, gravy soup, and marrow puddings. ”

“ Then they brought out of the china-closet the dishes which were to go into the kitchen to be heated: the dish for cereal, the small, deep plates to use with it, the plates and vegetable dish, and the round platter.
"Never serve a hot cereal in a cold dish, or use cold dishes to put it in on the table," said the aunt. "And never, never ask anybody to eat hot bacon and potatoes, or anything else which has just come from the fire, on a cold plate. It is no trouble to [Pg 39] warm everything, and it makes just the difference between a good meal and a poor one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This was the first time Elizabeth or I had sat down to dinner in a kitchen. Much we should have cared had it been in the scullery, the barn, or the hen-house! There is no appetite like that which comes from physical toil!
Glorious greed was a delicious sauce—if any sauce had been needed—to the plentiful and savoury farm-house meal that was provided for us of boiled bacon, potatoes, greens, butter, bread, buttermilk, fruit tart, and cheese. ”

“ The cook takes charge of the fish, soups and poultry; and the kitchen-maid of the vegetables, sauces and gravies. These she puts into proper dishes, while the scullery-maid waits on and assists the cook. Every dish must be timed so as to prevent its getting cold, whilst great care should be taken that no more time is lost between the courses than is absolutely necessary, for good serving, hot plates, gravy and sauces that have not been allowed to get cold and greasy, are vital factors in providing a good dinner. ”

“ Take out the tureen first, then the soup-plates, carrying out two at a time, one in each hand. Carry in all the hot dinner-plates at once, put them on the serving-table, and as you take up a service plate from the table put a hot dinner-plate in its place. Bring in the meat dish first and put it in front of the carver, and then bring in the vegetable dishes and place them on the serving-table or dinner-wagon. Pass meat and vegetables and see that every one has bread and that the glasses are filled. Return to the kitchen and wash the silver and china of the first course. ”

“ The very essence of home life is found in the preparation of suitable food in which to satisfy human appetites. Whether the kitchen is furnished with apparatus sufficient to cook for the inmates of a large institution, or with the more modest appliances with which a chop or a steak can be grilled or a small joint roasted in a gas oven, the basis of cooking operations is the same, and the cook requires an outfit of culinary utensils small or large, according to what she has been accustomed to use or considers necessary for her immediate wants. ”

“ In the French kitchen, a numerous class of culinary preparations, called entrées de dessert, or made-dishes of left things, are served even at grand entertainments.
At dinners of any pretension the first course consists of soups and fish, removed by boiled poultry, ham, or tongue, roasts, stews, &c.; and of vegetables, with a few made-dishes, as ragouts, curries, hashes, [95] cutlets, patties, fricandeaux, &c., in as great variety as the number of dishes permits. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The cooking consists in preparing dinner twice a week for six of the industrial girls and the mistress, (I allow 1s. worth of meat for each dinner, which with the vegetables and fruit from the garden, with a little rice, is quite sufficient,) in making soup and puddings of various kinds, which are sent out to the sick in tin dishes, and are paid for out of the offertory, and in making twice a week, a number of meat and apple pies, which have a ready sale among the parents of the children. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The penetrating odors of meat cookery which announce their presence by escape from the kitchen, and will pervade the air of other rooms in any private house but a large one, and which are encountered in clubs, restaurants, and hotels without stint, alone suffice to blunt the inclination for food of one who, returning from daily occupation, fatigued and fastidious, desires food easy of digestion, attractive in appearance, and unassociated with any element of a repulsive character. ”

“ Of the same importance as the cooking is neatness in serving the dinner, for there is a vast difference in its appearance if neatly and properly arranged in hot dishes, the vegetables and sauces suitable to the meat, and hot—there is a vast difference between a dinner so served, and one a part of which is either too much or too little cooked, the meat parting from the bone in one case, or looking as if barely warmed through in the other case ”

“ It is the kitchen that you must enter first, and through it alone can you pass into the rest of the house. Caterina, the maid-of-all-work, stands before the dresser, rolling out the paste for minestra. Beans and potatoes, sliced gourd and mushrooms, tomatoes, sweet herbs, and the unfailing garlic are already cooking, so that the kitchen is filled with a fragrant odour. ”

“ The kitchen is almost always on the first floor; and here one may stand by the wood fire and see the dinner cooked in a mysterious fashion in a number of little earthen jars planted here and there among the embers; whilst one admires the small but precious array of quaint crockery on the shelves, and tries to induce the cooking-maid to add somewhat less of the usual flavouring to one at any rate of her stews! ”

“ Combine them with different vegetables, cooked in the broth, and serve as the principal dish at a meal, or occasionally serve dumplings composed of a mixture of flour and milk, cooked in the broth, to extend the meat flavor. Frequently serve a dish of rice, hominy, cornmeal and oatmeal, dried beans and peas. These are all nutritious, nourishing foods when properly cooked and attractively served. And remember, Mary, to always serve food well seasoned. Many a well-cooked meal owes its failure to please to a lack of proper seasoning. This is a lesson a young cook must learn. ”

“ Besides innumerable restaurants, a flying kitchen travels about, with every thing cooking as it goes along, and clean-looking men, with white aprons, to serve the food; one ringing a bell, and looking out in every direction, to see what is wanted. ”

“ The kitchen-maid should be a good plain-cook, and clever in making the dishes suitable for children. Much of the elementary cooking for the dining-room, such as the foundation for sauces and soups, and the roasted and boiled joints, is required of her, and she also cooks the servants' dinner, which should be an entirely different meal from that served in the dining-room. ”

“ Now, you ladies who have a cupboard full of clean dishes to use when you commence to prepare a meal, and a table to prepare it on and a cook book to guide you, and a sink for the trash, and shelves full of handy ingredients, and when the meal is ready every dish has been used and every utensil stands neglected with traces of its having fulfilled a mission belonging to it, and who sigh because there are so many pots, stewpans and table dishes to wash and dry after the meal is over,—just watch the frontier method. ”

“ 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 gradual advance and increase in the furnishings{126} of the kitchen have been the outcome of development and progress in culinary art. Since the introduction of scientific cooking and the establishment of schools of cookery, the hired cook and the mistress who dons the apron and assumes the role of the economic housewife have learned to appreciate the use of modern culinary appliances, lighter in weight and convenient to handle. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No dining-room for the servants. We take our meals in the kitchen, at the same table where, during the day, the cook does her dirty work, carves her meats, cleans her fish, and cuts up her vegetables, with fingers fat and round as sausages. Really, that is scarcely proper. The fire in the stove renders the atmosphere of the room stifling; odors of old grease, of rancid sauces, of continual fryings, circulate in the air. ”

“ A dinner interlarded with a row of extra entrées, Roman punch, and hot dessert is unknown except at a public dinner, or in the dining-room of a parvenu. About thirty-five years ago such dinners are said to have been in fashion!
The Balanced Menu
One should always try to choose well-balanced dishes; an especially rich dish balanced by a simple one. Timbale with a very rich sauce of cream and pâté de foie gras might perhaps be followed by French chops, broiled chicken or some other light, plain meat. ”

“ Indeed, in summer we should accustom ourselves to think more of the vegetable food than of meat; to arrange our dinner in this department primarily, considering what dainty dishes we may concoct of flour and vegetables fried, boiled, and baked, dressed with oil or milk, herbs or spices, incidentally adding the meat—in fact, reversing our usual order of proceedings, where we construct our dinner plan of solid meat, only throwing in vegetables or fruit by way of garnish. ”

“ For a home dinner, it is always desirable to serve for first course a soup; second course, meat or fish, with potatoes and two other vegetables; third course, a vegetable salad, with French dressing; fourth course, dessert; fifth course, crackers, cheese, and café noir.
At a ladies’ luncheon the courses are as many as at a small dinner. In winter, grape fruit is sometimes served in place of oysters; in summer, selected strawberries in small Swedish Timbale cases. ”