Seisin

“ The sauce is either white sauce, plain or varied, or a cream soup. The starch may be noodles, spaghetti, macaroni, crackers, potatoes or potato chips, bread crumbs or a cereal. The protein food may be meat, fish, poultry or cheese. Often the vegetables and protein foods are leftovers which are cleverly combined to appear dressed-up in a new attire.
For the majority of casserole dishes, a medium white sauce is the right consistency—the proportions being 2 tablespoons butter to 2 tablespoons flour, 1⁄2 teaspoon salt, few grains pepper, and 1 cup milk. ”

“ I don't like a single dish or utensil in sight when the kitchen is in order. This roll of paper toweling here by the sink is very convenient for wiping off the table or taking grease off pans and dishes or even for drying glass and silver. A roll lasts a long time, and certainly does save dishcloths and towels.
"Do you use your fireless cooker often?"
"Every day of the year—I do believe. I cook breakfast food in it, and all kinds of meats except those that are boiled or fried. Then it is splendid for steaming brown bread and baking beans, and oh, so many other things! ”

“ It is a good plan to keep a supply of panure or dried bread-crumbs always ready. Cut any slices of baker's bread, dry them in a cool oven so that they remain quite colorless, or they will not do for the purpose. When as dry as crackers, crush under a rolling-pin, and sift; keep in a jar for use.
In no branch of cooking is excellence more appreciated than in that of frying. A dish of filets de sole or cutlets, crisp and golden brown, is an ornament to any table, and is seldom disdained by any one. ”

“ And so with sauces; they form an essential part of cookery, yet the innumerable variations of each class have to be skilfully adapted to the dishes with which they are amalgamated or served, in order to give some necessary flavouring or produce some desired effect. Every cook should endeavour to attain proficiency in this branch of cookery, a task by no means so difficult as the number of sauces would lead us to suppose, for, if the few which have for their base either oil, wine or fruit, are excluded, the remainder are simply variations of the two foundation sauces, white and brown. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the vegetables are used for flavouring only, they may remain in the soup all the time it is cooking. If, on the other hand, they are intended to be dished in the soup they should be put in only in time to be cooked thoroughly.
Every kitchen should contain in a cupboard always a bottle of cooking sherry, a bottle of mushroom catsup, one of Worcester sauce, one of tomato (bottled) sauce, some fresh lemons, vinegar, the best salad oil, a packet of sweet herbs, bovril, nutmeg, cloves, and spice. ”

“ Under an infinity of circumstances, a cook [69] may be in want of the substances necessary to make sauce; the above composition of the several articles from which the various gravies derive their flavor, will be found a very admirable extemporaneous substitute. By mixing a large tablespoonful with a quarter of a pint of thickened melted butter, or broth, five minutes will finish a boat of very relishing sauce, nearly equal to drawn gravy, and as likely to put your lingual nerves into good humor as anything I know. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the middle ages, the cook of a house of any note always seated himself in a high arm chair to give his orders; he held a long wooden spoon in his hand, with which he tasted, without quitting his place, the various dishes that were cooking on the stoves and in the saucepans, and which served him also as a weapon with which to chastise the idle and gluttonous. ”

“ RUSSIAN SAUCE.
Place a stew-pan on the fire, slice three onions, let them brown in one ounce of butter, a pinch of pepper and salt; cover with a tight cover till the onions are dissolved; add one ounce of flour, a cup of stock, a glass of cream; stir over the fire for five minutes; pass through a pointed strainer; keep hot in the banbery.
What is meant by a banbery for keeping sauces a young cook may not know. I will explain. Procure a square-topped pan almost like a roasting-pan, and fill it half-full of boiling water. ”

“ Including vegetables, and sweets, and cheese, I have counted sixty-seven dishes on the bill of fare at one time, so that you have plenty of choice. For a shilling you can get a perfectly splendid dinner. And for sixpence you can get soup, and bread and cheese and butter; and they bring you the soup in a silver basin which is full to the brim. ”

“ It is the French cook's knowledge of the subtleties, the nuances of seasoning that stands him in good stead. The American woman who has essayed to use some spice or savory unfamiliar to her and has turned out a dish which her family has declared “tasted like medicine” is, naturally enough, discouraged from wandering after that particular strange god again. ”

“ Whether the dish be carved on the family table, as it rarely fails to be when its head is interested in the cuisine, or whether it is handed in the presence of guests, the quality and the appearance of the dish greatly depend on the garnish. According to the meat, may be added with a view both to taste and appearance, some of the following—purées of sorrel, spinach, and other greens, of turnips, and of potatoes plain, in shapes, or in croquettes; cut carrots, peas, beans, endive, sprouts, and other green vegetables ”

“ A PATENT DISH-WASHING
"OH, my!" sighed Mary Frances, gazing at the great pile of dirty dishes on the kitchen table, where she had carried them after the company had gone. "Oh, my, cooking is fun—but washing dishes is another thing. I'm 'most tired enough to drop,—and there must be a hundred dishes to do! I'm glad Tea Kettle is full of hot water." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When you have neither meat nor pot-liquor, mix 2 or 3 oz. of dripping with an equal quantity of oatmeal, and stir it, by degrees, into the soup, or boil in it some dumplings of flour and suet.
In houses where a brick oven is heated once a week or oftener, for bread, it would give little additional trouble to bake a dish of some sort or other for a poor family. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When roasted in embers, it supplies the place of bread, better than any thing the country affords. After being baked in an oven, and pounded, it becomes an excellent substitute for flour and meal of every sort, and in this form is mixed in all their soups, and most of their other dishes. ”

“ For families who have their entrées placed upon the table at the same time as the soup and fish, a thin sauce is much preferable; for if even the sauce should retain the same degree of heat it was served at, it will become much thicker by standing ”

“ 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. ”

“ To this basis are added the flavor and seasoning suited to the dish with which it is to be served. For meats, it is the flavor of meat, vegetables, spices, and herbs; for entrées, it is the flavor of meat or chicken, and cream; for vegetables it is butter, cream or milk, and eggs; for fish, the same, with a little lemon-juice or vinegar to give piquancy. The basis of pudding sauces is butter and sugar.
Uses and variations of the white sauce. Sauces are easily made, and greatly improve the dishes they accompany. ”

“ Cook well-cleansed sheep’s or lamb’s brains in court-bouillon, and cool. Divide them up into thin and regular slices, and place them on a hors-d’œuvre dish. Rub the brain remains through a fine sieve, combine the resulting purée with a mustard-and-cream sauce, and add thereto a fine julienne of the white part only of celery. ”

“ Too often the fine china and glass must either be washed in the kitchen, or else in a dish-pan brought into the dining-room. When a pantry is lacking, there should be a butler's tray to hold the solid dishes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 numerous spices, vegetables, and condiments which enter largely into their composition naturally produce a more palatable dish than a hash that simply consists of slices of cold meat warmed in a thin, insipid liquid, which frequently represents an amateur cook's idea of a brown sauce. ”

“ The only advantage in a private family of making it thus thick is when, perhaps, two or three sauces are needed for a dinner; for example, a plain white sauce for a vegetable, caper, lobster, or cardinal for other purposes, and perhaps poulette, d’Uxelles, or other pale sauce for an entrée; but when one sauce only is required, it is best to make that one from the beginning ”

“ Apart from the simple processes of roasting, baking, boiling, and stewing, nearly all our cookery has been introduced from foreign sources. The French methods of dressing fish and vegetables, are now largely introduced into English kitchens, and French borugeoise dishes have become quite popular. ”

“ If she were familiar with the nature of the yeast plant, and the action of heat as applied in boiling, broiling, and frying, if she could make a sauce and clear a soup, her family would be relieved from the affliction of sour bread, burned meats, and muddy soup. An ordinary kitchen servant can do these simple things well, if she is once told how, and this basis would be a guide in other work, and a safeguard against many failures. ”