Layingto your conduct the line and plummet of the Golden Rule, never pay a visit (I use the word in contradistinction to “call”) without notifying your hostess-elect of your intention thus to favor her.
Perhaps once in ten thousand times, your friend—be she mother, sister, or intimate acquaintance—may be enraptured at your unexpected appearance, travelling-satchel in hand, at her door, to pass a day, a night, or a month; or may be pleasantly surprised when you take the baby,and run in to tea in a social way. But the chances are so greatly in favor of the probability that you will upset her household arrangements, abrade her temper, or put her to undue trouble or embarrassment, by this evidence of your wish to have her feel quite easy with you, to treat you as one of the family, that it is hardly worth your while to risk so much in order to gain so little.
Mrs. Partington has said more silly things than any other woman of her age in this country; but she spoke wisely in declaring her preference for those surprise-parties “when people sent word they were coming.” Do not be ashamed to say to your nearest kin, or the confidante of your school-days—“Always let me know when to look for you, that I may so order my time and engagements as to secure the greatest possible pleasure from your visit.” If you are the woman I take you to be—methodical, industrious, and ruling your household according to just and firm laws of order and punctuality, you need this notice. If you are likewise social and hospitable, your rules are made with reference to possible and desirable interruptions of this nature. It only requires a little closer packing of certain duties, an easy exchange of times and seasons, and leisure is obtained for the right enjoyment of your friend’s society. The additional place is set at table; your spare bed, which yesterday was tossed into a heap that both mattresses might be aired, and covered lightly with a thin spread, is made up with fresh sheets that have not gathered damp and must from lying packed beneath blankets and coverlets for may be a month, for fear somebody might happen in to pass the night, and catch you with the bed in disorder. Towels and water are ready; the room is bright and dustless; the dainty dish so far prepared for dinner or tea as to be like Mrs. Bagnet’s greens, “off your mind;” John knows whom he is to seeat his home-coming; the children are clean, and on thequi vive—children’s instincts are always hospitable. The guest’s welcome is half given in the air of the house and the family group before you have time to utter a word. It may have appeared to her a useless formality to despatch the note or telegram you insisted upon. She knows you love her, and she would be wounded by the thought that she could ever “come amiss” to your home. Perhaps, as she lays aside her travelling-dress, she smiles at your “ceremonious, old-maidish ways,” and marvels that so good a manager should deem such forms necessary with an old friend.
If she had driven to your house at nightfall, to discover that you had gone with husband and children to pass several days with John’s mother, in a town fifty miles away, and that the servants were out “a-pleasuring” in the mistress’ absence; if she had found you at home, nursing three children through the measles, she having brought her youngest with her; if you were yourself the invalid, bound hand and foot to a Procrustean couch, and utterly unable even to see her—John, meanwhile, being incapacitated from playing the part of agreeable host by worry and anxiety; if, on the day before her arrival, your chambermaid had gone off in a “tiff,” leaving you to do her work and to nurse your cook, sick in the third story; if earlier comers than herself had filled every spare mattress in the house;—if any one of these, or a dozen other ills to which housekeepers are heirs, had impressed upon her the idea that her visit was inopportune, she might think better of your “punctilio.”
But since unlooked-for visitors will occasionally drop in upon the best regulated families, make it your study to receive them gracefully and cordially. If they care enough for you to turn aside from their regular route to tarry aday, or night, or week with you, it would be churlish not to show appreciation of the favor in which you are held. Make them welcome to the best you can offer at so short a notice, and let no preoccupied air or troubled smile bear token to your perturbation—if you are perturbed. If you respect yourself and your husband, the appointments of your table will never put you to the blush. John, who buys the silver, glass, china, and napery, is entitled to the every-day use of the best. You may have—I hope this is so—a holiday set of each, put away beyond the reach of hourly accidents; but if this is fit for the use of a lord, do not make John eat three hundred and sixty days in the year from such ware as would suit a ditcher’s cottage. If your children never see bright silver unless when “there is company,” you cannot wonder, although you will be mortified, at their making looking-glasses of the bowls of the spoons, and handling the forks awkwardly. Early impress upon them that what is nice enough for Papa, is nice enough for the President. I have noticed that where there is a wide difference between family and company table furniture, there usually exists a corresponding disparity between every-day and company manners.
Especially, let your welcome be ready and hearty when your husband brings home an unexpected guest. Take care he understands clearly that this is his prerogative: that the rules by which you would govern the visits of your own sex are not applicable to his. Men rarely set seasons for their visits. They snatch an hour or two with an old chum or new friend out of the hurry of business life, as one stoops to pluck a stray violet from a dusty roadside. John must take his chances when he can get them. If he can walk home, arm in arm, with the school-fellow he has not seen before in ten years, not only fearlessly,but gladly, anticipatory of your pleasure at the sight of his; if, when the stranger is presented to you, you receive him as your friend because he is your husband’s, and seat him to a family dinner, plain, but nicely served, and eaten in cheerfulness of heart; if the children are well-behaved, and your attire that of a lady who has not lost the desire to look her best in her husband’s eyes—you have added to the links of steel that knit your husband’s heart to you; increased his affectionate admiration for the best little woman in the world. Many a man has been driven to entertain his friends at hotels and club-rooms, because he dared not take them home without permission from the presiding officer of his household. The majority of healthy men have good appetites and are not disposed to be critical of an unpretending bill of fare. The chance guest of this sex is generally an agreeable addition to the family group, instead ofde trop—always supposing him to be John’s friend.
As to party and dinner-giving, your safest rule is to obey the usage of the community in which you live in minor points, letting common sense and your means guide you in essentials. Be chary of undertaking what you cannot carry through successfully. Pretension is the ruin of more entertainments than ignorance or lack of money. If you know how to give a large evening party (and think it a pleasant and remunerative investment of time and several hundred dollars)—if you understand the machinery of a handsome dinner-party, and can afford these luxuries, go forward bravely to success. But creep before you walk. Study established customs in the best managed houses you visit; take counsel with experienced friends; now and then make modest essays on your own responsibility, and, insensibly, these crumbs of wisdom will form into a comely loaf. There is no surer de-appetizer—tocoin a word—to guests than a heated, over-fatigued, anxious hostess, who betrays her inexperience by nervous glances, abstraction in conversation, and, worst of all, by apologies.
A few general observations are all I purpose to offer as hints of a foundation upon which to build your plans for “company-giving.” Have an abundance of clean plates, silver, knives, &c., laid in order in a convenient place,—such as an ante-room, or dining-room pantry,—those designed for each course, if your entertainment is a dinner, upon a shelf or stand by themselves, and make your waiters understand distinctly in advance in what order these are to be brought on.
Soup should be sent up accompanied only by bread, and such sauce as may be fashionable or suitable. Before dinner is served, however, snatch a moment, if possible, to inspect the table in person, or instruct a trustworthy factotum to see that everything is in place, the water in the goblets, a slice of bread laid upon a folded napkin at each plate, &c. Unless you have trained, professional waiters, this is a wise precaution. If it is a gentleman’s dinner, you can see to it for yourself, since you will not be obliged to appear in the parlor until a few minutes before they are summoned to the dining-room. If there are ladies in the company, you must not leave them.
To return, then, to our soup: It is not customary to offer a second plateful to a guest. When the table is cleared, the fish should come in, with potatoes—no other vegetable, unless it be stewed tomatoes. After a thorough change of plates, &c., come the substantials. If possible, the carving of game and other meats is done before they are brought in. One or more vegetables are passed with each meat course. Salad is a course of itself, unless when it accompanies chicken or pigeon. If wine be used, it isintroduced after the fish. Pastry is the first relay of dessert, and puddings may be served from the other end of the table. Next appear creams, jellies, charlotte-russes, cakes, and the like; then fruit and nuts; lastly, coffee, often accompanied with crackers and cheese. Wine, of course, goes around during the dessert—if it flows at all.
Evening parties are less troublesome to a housekeeper, because less ceremonious than dinners. If you can afford it, the easiest way to give a large one is to put the whole business into the hands of the profession, by intrusting your order, not only for supper, but waiters and china, to a competent confectioner. But a social standing supper of oysters, chicken-salad, sandwiches, coffee, ice-cream, jellies, and cake, is not a formidable undertaking when you have had a little practice, especially if your own, or John’s mother, or the nice, neighborly matron over the way will assist you by her advice and presence. The “Ladies’ Lunch” and afternoon “Kettle-Drum” are social and graceful “modern improvements.”
We make this matter of company too hard a business in America; are too apt to treat our friends as the Strasburgers do their geese; shut them up in overheated quarters, and stuff them to repletion. Our rooms would be better for more air, our guests happier had they more liberty, and our hostess would be prettier and more sprightly were she not overworked before the arrivals begin, and full of trepidation after they come,—a woman cumbered with many thoughts of serving, while she is supposed to be enjoying the society of her chosen associates. It is so well understood that company is weariness, that inquiries as to how the principal agent in bringing about an assembly has “borne it,” have passed into a custom. The tender sympathies manifested in such queries, the martyr-like air with which they are answered, cannotfail to bring to the satirical mind the Chinaman’s comment upon the British officers’ dancing on shipboard in warm weather.
“Why you no make your servants do so hard work, and you look at dem?”
We pervert the very name and meaning of hospitality when we pinch our families, wear away our patience, and waste our nervous forces with our husbands’ money in getting up to order expensive entertainments for comparative strangers, whose utmost acknowledgment of our efforts in their behalf will consist in an invitation, a year hence it may be, to a party constructed on the same plan, managed a little better or a little worse than ours. This is not hospitality without grudging, but a vulgar system of barter and gluttony more worthy of Abyssinians than Christian gentlefolk.
I oncereceived a letter from the wife of an Eastern man who had removed to the Great West, in which bitter complaints were made of the scarcity of certain comforts—ice-cream and candy among them—to which she had been accustomed in other days. “My husband shot a fine deer this morning,” she wrote, “but I could never endurevenzon. Can you tell me of any way of cooking it so as to make it tolerably eatible?” I did not think it very singular that one whose chief craving in the goodly land in which she had found a home was for cocoanut cakes and chocolate caramels, should not like the viand the name of which she could not spell. Nor did I wonder that shefailed to make it “eatible,” or doubt that her cooking matched her orthography. But I am amazed often at hearing really skilful housewives pronounce it an undesirable dish. In the hope of in some measure correcting this impression among Eastern cooks, who, it must be allowed, rarely taste really fresh venison, I have written out, with great care and particularity, the following receipts, most of which I have used in my own family with success and satisfaction.
The dark color of the meat,—I mean now not the black, but rich reddish-brown flesh,—so objectionable to the uninitiated, is to the gourmand one of its chief recommendations to his favor. It should also be fine of grain and well coated with fat.
Keep it hung up in a cool, dark cellar, covered with a cloth, and use as soon as you can conveniently.
If the outside be hard, wash off with lukewarm water; then rub all over with fresh butter or lard. Cover it on the top and sides with a thick paste of flour and water, nearly half an inch thick. Lay upon this a large sheet of thin white wrapping-paper well buttered, and above this thick foolscap. Keep all in place by greased pack-thread, then put down to roast with a little water in the dripping-pan. Let the fire be steady and strong. Pour a few ladlefuls of butter and water over the meat now and then, to prevent the paper from scorching. If the haunch is large, it will take at least five hours to roast. About half an hour before you take it up, remove the papers and paste, and test with a skewer to see if it is done. If this passes easily to the bone through the thickest part, set it down to a more moderate fire and baste every few minutes with Claret and melted butter. At the last, bastewith butter, dredge with flour to make a light froth, and dish. It should be a fine brown by this time. Twist a frill of fringed paper around the knuckle.
For gravy, put into a saucepan a pound or so of scraps of raw venison left from trimming the haunch, a quart of water, a pinch of cloves, a few blades of mace, half a nutmeg, cayenne and salt to taste. Stew slowly to one-half the original quantity. Skim, strain, and return to the saucepan when you have rinsed it with hot water. Add three tablespoonfuls of currant jelly, a glass of claret, two tablespoonfuls of butter, and thicken with browned flour. Send to table in a tureen.
Send around currant jelly with venisonalways.
This is roasted precisely as is the haunch, allowing a quarter of an hour to a pound.
This is also a roasting-piece, but may be cooked without the paste and paper. Baste often with butter and water, and toward the last, with Claret and butter. Do not let it get dry for an instant.
Extract the bones through the under-side. Make a stuffing of several slices of fat mutton, minced fine and seasoned smartly with cayenne, salt, allspice, and wine, and fill the holes from which the bones were taken. Bind firmly in shape with broad tape. Put in a large saucepan with a pint of gravy made from the refuse bits of venison; add a glass of Madeira or Port wine, and a little black pepper. Cover tightly, and stew very slowly three or four hours, according to the size. It should be very tender.Remove the tapes with care; dish, and when you have strained the gravy, pour over the meat.
This is a most savory dish.
These are taken from the neck or haunch. Have your gridiron well buttered, and fire clear and hot. Lay the steaks on the bars and broil rapidly, turning often, not to lose a drop of juice. They will take three or four minutes longer to broil than beef-steaks. Have ready in a hot chafing-dish a piece of butter the size of an egg for each pound of venison, a pinch of salt, a little pepper, a tablespoonful currant-jelly for each pound, and a glass of wine for every four pounds. This should be liquid, and warmed by the boiling water under the dish by the time the steaks are done to a turn. If you have no chafing-dish, heat in a saucepan. Lay each steak in the mixture singly, and turn over twice. Cover closely and let all heat together, with fresh hot water beneath—unless your lamp is burning—for five minutes before serving. If you serve in an ordinary dish, cover and set in the oven for the same time.
If you wish a plainer dish, omit the wine and jelly; pepper and salt the steaks when broiled, and lay butter upon them in the proportion I have stated, letting them stand between hot dishes five minutes before they go to table, turning them three times in the gravy that runs from them to mingle with the melted butter. Delicious steaks corresponding to the shape of mutton chops are cut from the loin and rack.
Trim the cutlets nicely, and make gravy of the refuse bits in the proportion of a cup of cold water to half a poundof venison. Put in bones, scraps of fat, etc., and set on in a saucepan to stew while you make ready the cutlets. Lard with slips of fat salt pork a quarter of an inch apart, and projecting slightly on either side. When the gravy has stewed an hour, strain and let it cool. Lay the cutlets in a saucepan, with a few pieces of young onion on each. Allow one onion to four or five pounds. It should not be flavored strongly with this. Scatter also a little minced parsley and thyme between the layers of meat, with pepper, and a very little nutmeg. The pork lardoons will salt sufficiently. When you have put in all your meat, pour in the gravy, which should be warm—not hot. Stew steadily twenty minutes, take up the cutlets and lay in a frying-pan in which you have heated just enough butter to prevent them from burning. Fry five minutes very quickly, turning the cutlets over and over to brown, without drying them. Lay in order in a chafing-dish, and have ready the gravy to pour over them without delay. This should be done by straining the liquor left in the saucepan and returning to the fire, with the addition of a tablespoonful of currant jelly, a teaspoonful Worcestershire or other piquant sauce, and half a glass of wine. Thicken with browned flour, boil up well and pour over the cutlets. Let all stand together in a hot dish five minutes before serving. Venison which is not fat or juicy enough for roasting makes a relishable dish cooked after this receipt.
The remains of cold roast venison—especially a stuffed shoulder—may be used for this dish, and will give great satisfaction to cook and consumers. Slice the meat from the bones. Put these with the fat and other scraps in a saucepan, with a large teacupful of cold water, a smallonion—one of the button kind, minced, parsley and thyme, pepper and salt, and three or four whole cloves. Stew for an hour. Strain and return to the saucepan, with whatever gravy was left from the roast, a tablespoonful currant jelly, one of tomato or mushroom catsup, a teaspoonful of anchovy sauce, and a little browned flour. Boil for three minutes; lay in the venison, cut into slices about an inch long, and let all heat over the fire for eight minutes, but do not allow the hash to boil. Stir frequently, and when it is smoking hot, turn into a deep-covered dish.
Clean, wash thoroughly; stuff with a good force-meat made of bread-crumbs, chopped pork, pepper and salt, a little grated nutmeg, the juice of a lemon. Moisten with water and cream, bind with beaten egg and melted butter. Sew up the fawn, turning the legs under, and binding close to the body. Cover with thin slices of fat pork, bound on with pack-thread, crossing in every direction, and roast at a quick fire. Allow twenty-two minutes to a pound. Twenty minutes before it is dished, remove the pork, and set down the fawn to brown, basting with melted butter. At the last, dredge with flour, let this brown, froth with butter, and serve.
Garnish with abundance of curled parsley, dotted with drops of red currant jelly. A kid can be roasted in the same way—also hares and rabbits.
This is a name dear to the heart of the Englishman since the days when Friar Tuck feasted the disguised Cœur de Lion upon it in the depths of Sherwood Forest, until the present generation. In this country it is comparatively little known; but I recommend it to thosewho have never yet been able to make venison “tolerably eatable.”
Almost any part of the deer can be used for the purpose, but the neck and shoulders are generally preferred.
Cut the raw venison from the bones, and set aside these, with the skin, fat, and refuse bits, for gravy. Put them into a saucepan with a shallot, pepper, salt, nutmeg and sweet herbs, cover well with cold water, and set on to boil. Meanwhile, cut the better and fairer pieces of meat into squares an inch long, and cook in another saucepan until three-quarters done. Line a deep dish with good puff-paste. That for the lid should be made after the receipt appended to this. Put in the squares of venison, season with pepper, salt, and butter, and put in half a cupful of the liquor in which the meat was stewed, to keep it from burning at the bottom. Cover with a lid of the prepared pastry an inch thick. Cut a round hole in the middle, and if you have not a small tin cylinder that will fit this, make one of buttered paper; stiff writing-paper is best. The hole should be large enough to admit your thumb. Bake steadily, covering the top with a sheet of clean paper so soon as it is firm, to prevent it from browning too fast. While it is cooking prepare the gravy. When all the substance has been extracted from the bones, etc., strain the liquor back into the saucepan; let it come to a boil, and when you have skimmed carefully, add a glass of Port wine, a tablespoonful of butter, the juice of a lemon, and some browned flour to thicken. Boil up once, remove the plug from the hole in the pastry, and pour in through a small funnel, or a paper horn, as much gravy as the pie will hold. Do this very quickly; brush the crust over with beaten egg and put back in the oven until it is a delicate brown, or rather, a golden russet. The pie should only be drawn to the door of the oven for these operations, and everythingshould be in readiness before it is taken out, that the crust may be light and flaky. If you have more gravy than you need for the dish, serve in a tureen.
Dry and sift the flour and cut up half the butter in it with a knife or chopper until the whole is fine and yellow; salt, and work up with ice-water, lastly adding the yolks beaten very light. Work out rapidly, handling as little as possible, roll out three timesverythin, basting with butter, then into a lid nearly an inch thick, reserving a thinner one for ornaments. Having covered in your pie, cut from the second sheet with a cake-cutter, leaves, flowers, stars, or any figures you like to adorn the top of your crust. Bake the handsomest one upon a tin plate by itself, and brush it over with egg when you glaze the pie. After the pasty is baked, cover the hole in the centre with this.
If these directions be closely followed the pasty will be delicious. Bake two or three hours, guiding yourself by the size of the pie. It is good hot or cold.
These are eaten raw, and will not keep so long as other smoked meats.
Mix together in equal proportions, salt and brown sugar, and rub them hard into the hams with your hand. Pack them in a cask, sprinkling dry salt between them, and let them lie eight days, rubbing them over every daywith dry salt and sugar. Next mix equal parts of fine salt, molasses, and a teaspoonful of saltpetre to every two hams. Take the hams out of the pickle, go over them with a brush dipped in cider vinegar, then in the new mixture. Empty the cask, wash it out with cold water, and repack the hams, dripping from the sticky bath, scattering fine salt over each. Let them lie eight days longer in this. Wash off the pickle first with tepid water, until the salt crystals are removed; then sponge with vinegar, powder them with bran while wet, and smoke a fortnight, or, if large, three weeks. Wrap in brown paper that has no unpleasant odor, stitch a muslin cover over this, and whitewash, unless you mean to use at once. Chip or shave for the table.
Chop the meat very small, season, and pack in skins or small stone jars. Hang the skins, and set the jars, tied down with bladders, in a cool, dry place.
Fry as you do other sausages.
The tame rabbit is rarely if ever eaten. The wild hare of the South—in vulgar parlance, “old hare,” although the creature may be but a day old—exactly correspondswith the rabbit of the Northern fields, and when fat and tender may be made into a variety of excellent dishes.
Hares are unfit for eating in the early spring. There is thus much significance in “Mad as a March hare.” The real English hare is a much larger animal than that which is known in this country by this name. To speak correctly, all our “old field hares” are wild rabbits.
Clean, wash, and soak in water slightly salted for an hour and a half, changing it once during this time. It is best to make your butcher or hired man skin it before you undertake to handle it. Afterward, the task is easy enough. Parboil the heart and liver, chop fine, and mix with a slice of fat pork, also minced. Make a force-meat of bread-crumbs, well seasoned, and working in the minced meat. Stuff the body with this, and sew it up. Rub with butter and roast, basting with butter and water until the gravy flows freely, then with the dripping. It should be done in an hour. Dredge with flour a few minutes before taking it up, then froth with butter. Lay in a hot dish, add to the gravy a little lemon-juice, a young onion minced, a tablespoonful of butter, and thicken with browned flour. Give it a boil up, and serve in a tureen or boat.
Garnish the rabbit with sliced lemon, and put a dot of currant jelly in the centre of each slice. Cut off the head before sending to table.
Clean a pair of nice rabbits; soak in cold salt and water for an hour, to draw out the blood; put on in a large saucepan with cold water enough to cover them, salt slightly, and stew until tender. Slice into another pot halfa dozen young onions, and boil in a very little water until thoroughly done. Drain off the water, and stir the onions into a gill of drawn butter, pepper to taste, and when it simmers, add the juice of a lemon. Cut off the heads of the hares, lay in a hot dish and pour over them the onion-sauce. Let the dish stand in a warm place, closely covered, five minutes before sending to table.
Clean two young rabbits, cut into joints, and soak in salt and water an hour. Put into a saucepan with a pint of cold water, a bunch of sweet herbs, an onion finely minced, a pinch of mace, one of nutmeg, pepper, and half a pound of fat salt pork, cut into slips. Cover, and stew until tender. Take out the rabbits and set in a dish where they will keep warm. Add to the gravy a cup of cream (or milk), two well-beaten eggs stirred in a little at a time, and a tablespoonful of butter. Boil up once—when you have thickened with flour wet in cold milk—and take the saucepan from the fire. Squeeze in the juice of a lemon, stirring all the while, and pour over the rabbits. Do not cook the head or neck.
Cut off the head—joint, and lay in soak for an hour. Season the pieces with pepper and salt, dredge with flour, and fry in butter or nice dripping until brown. Take from the fat, lay in a saucepan, and cover with broth made of bits of veal or lamb. Add a minced onion, a great spoonful of walnut catsup, a bunch of sweet herbs, a pinch of cloves and one of allspice, half a teaspoonful of cayenne. Cover closely, and simmer for half an hour. Lay the pieces of hare in order upon a hot dish and cover to keep warm. Strain the gravy, return to the saucepan, thickenwith browned flour, put in a tablespoonful of butter, squeeze in the juice of a lemon, pour over the rabbits, and send to table.
Cut off the head and divide the body into joints. Lard with slips of fat pork; put into a clean hot frying-pan and fry until half done. Have ready some strained gravy made of veal or beef—the first is better; put the pieces of rabbit into a saucepan, with a bunch of sweet herbs, a minced onion, and some pepper. Stew, closely covered, half an hour, or until tender; take out the rabbits and lay in a hot covered dish. Strain the gravy, add a tablespoonful of butter, the juice of a lemon, and thicken with flour. Boil up and pour over the meat.
They must be very tender for this purpose. Cut into joints; soak for an hour in salt and water; dip in beaten egg, then in powdered cracker, and fry brown in nice sweet lard or dripping. Serve with onion sauce. Garnish with sliced lemon.
Clean and wash the rabbit, which must be plump and young, and having opened it all the way on the under-side, lay it flat, with a small plate or saucer to keep it down, in salted water for half an hour. Wipe dry and broil whole, with the exception of the head, when you have gashed across the back-bone in eight or ten places that the heat may penetrate this, the thickest part. Your fire should be hot and clear, the rabbit turned often. When browned and tender, lay upon a very hot dish, pepper and salt and butter profusely, turning the rabbit over and over to soak up the melted butter. Cover and set in the oven for fiveminutes, and heat in a tin cup two tablespoonfuls of vinegar seasoned with one of made mustard. Anoint the hot rabbit well with this, cover and send to table garnished with crisped parsley.
The odor of this barbecue is most appetizing, and the taste not a whit inferior.
Cut a pair of rabbits into eight pieces each, soak in salted water half an hour, and stew until half done in enough water to cover them. Cut a quarter of a pound of fat pork into slips, and boil four eggs hard. Lay some bits of pork in the bottom of a deep dish and upon these a layer of the rabbit. Upon this spread slices of boiled egg, peppered and buttered. Sprinkle, moreover, with a little powdered mace, and squeeze a few drops of lemon-juice upon each piece of meat. Proceed in this order until the dish is full, the top layer being pork. Pour in the water in which the rabbit was boiled, when you have salted it and added some lumps of butter rolled in flour. Cover with puff-paste, cut a slit in the middle, and bake one hour, laying paper over the top should it brown too fast.
The large gray squirrel is seldom eaten at the North, but is in great request in Virginia and other Southern States. It is generally barbecued, precisely as are rabbits; broiled, fricasseed, or—most popular of all—made into a Brunswick stew. This is named from Brunswick County, Virginia, and is a famous dish—or was—at the political and social pic-nics known as barbecues. I am happy to be able to give a receipt for this stew that is genuine andexplicit, and for which I am indebted to a Virginia housekeeper.
Put on the water with the salt in it, and boil five minutes. Put in the onion, beans, corn, pork or bacon cut into shreds, potatoes, pepper, and the squirrels, which must first be cut into joints and laid in cold salt and water to draw out the blood. Cover closely and stew two and a half hours very slowly, stirring frequently from the bottom. Then add the tomatoes and sugar, and stew an hour longer. Ten minutes before you take it from the fire add the butter, cut into bits the size of a walnut, rolled in flour. Give a final boil, taste to see that it is seasoned to your liking, and turn into a soup-tureen. It is eaten from soup-plates. Chickens may be substituted for squirrels.
Skin, clean, and quarter a pair of fine young squirrels, and soak in salt and water to draw out the blood. Slice an onion and fry brown in a tablespoonful of butter. Stir into the frying-pan five tablespoonfuls of boilingwater, and thicken with two teaspoonfuls of browned flour. Put the squirrels into a saucepan, with a quarter of a pound of bacon cut into slips; season with pepper and salt to taste, add the onion and gravy, and half a cupful of tepid water. Cover and stew for forty minutes, or until tender; pour in a glass of wine and the juice of half a lemon, shake around well, and turn into a deep covered dish.
Clean and soak to draw out the blood. Wipe dry and broil over a hot, clear fire, turning often. When done, lay in a hot dish and anoint with melted butter, seasoned with pepper and salt. Use at least a tablespoonful for each squirrel, and let it lie between two hot dishes five minutes before sending to table.
The real pheasant is never sold in American markets. The bird known as such at the South is called a partridge at the North, and is, properly speaking, the ruffled grouse. The Northern quail is the English and Southern partridge. The wild fowls brought by the hundred dozen from the Far West to Eastern cities, and generally styled prairie-fowls, are a species of grouse. The mode of cooking all these is substantially the same.
Clean, truss, and stuff as you do chickens; roast at a hot fire, and baste with butter and water until brown; sprinkle with salt, dredge lightly at the last with flour to froth the birds, and serve hot. Thicken the gravy with browned flour, boil up, and serve in a boat. Wash theinside of all game—prairie-fowls in particular—with soda and water, rinsing out carefully afterward with fair water.
Clean, wash, and split down the back. Lay in cold water half an hour. Wipe carefully, season with salt and pepper, and broil on a gridiron over a bright fire. When done, lay in a hot dish, butter on both sides well, and serve at once.
Broiled quails are delicious and nourishing fare for invalids.
Clean, truss, and stuff as usual. Cover the entire bird with thin slices of corned ham or pork, binding all with buttered pack-thread. Roast three-quarters of an hour, basting with butter and water three times, then with the dripping. When quite done, dish with the ham laid about the body of the bird. Skim the gravy, thicken with browned flour, season with pepper and the juice of a lemon. Boil up once.
Proceed as with the grouse, but cover the ham or pork with a sheet of white paper, having secured the slices of meat with pack thread. Stitch the papers on, and keep them well basted with butter and water, that they may not burn. Roast three quarters of an hour, if the fire is good. Remove the papers and meat before sending to table, and brown quickly. This is the nicest way of cooking quails.
Cut cold roast partridges, grouse, or quails into joints, and lay aside while you prepare the gravy. This is made of the bones, dressing, skin, and general odds and ends, after you have selected the neatest pieces of the birds.Put these—the scraps—into a saucepan, with one small onion, minced, and a bunch of sweet herbs; pour in a pint of water, and whatever gravy you may have, and stew, closely covered, for nearly an hour. A few bits of pork should be added if you have no gravy. Skim and strain, return to the fire, and add a little brown Sherry and lemon-juice, with a pinch of nutmeg; thicken with brown flour, if the stuffing has not thickened it sufficiently, boil up, and pour over the reserved meat, which should be put into another saucepan. Warm until all is smoking-hot, but do not let it boil. Arrange the pieces of bird in a symmetrical heap upon a dish, and pour the gravy over them.
This may be made of any of the birds named in the foregoing receipts. Grouse and quails together make a delightful Christmas pie. Clean and wash the birds; cut the quails in half, the grouse into four pieces. Trim off bits of the inferior portions, necks, lower ribs, etc., and put them with the giblets into a saucepan, with a pint and a half of water, if your pie requires six birds. While this is stewing make a good puff-paste and line a large pudding-dish, reserving enough for a lid half an inch thick. When the livers are tender, take them out, leaving the gravy to stew in the covered saucepan. Lard the breasts of the birds with tiny strips of salt pork, and mince a couple of slices of the same with the livers, a bunch of parsley, sweet marjoram, and thyme, also chopped fine, the juice of a lemon, pepper, and a very small shallot. Make a force-meat of this, with bread-crumbs moistened with warm milk. Put some thin strips of cold corned (not smoked) ham in the bottom of the pie, next to the crust; lay upon these pieces of the bird, peppered and buttered, then a layer of the force-meat, and so on, untilyou are ready for the gravy. Strain this, return to the fire, and season with pepper and a glass of wine. Heat to a boil, pour into the pie, and cover with the upper crust, cutting a slit in the middle. Ornament with pastry leaves, arranged in a wreath about the edge, and in the middle a pastry bird, with curled strips of pastry about it. This last should be baked separately and laid on when the pie is done, to cover the hole in the middle.
Bake three hours if your pie be large, covering with paper if it threaten to brown too fast.
Clean, truss, and stuff the birds. Loosen the joints with a penknife, but do not separate them. Parboil them for ten minutes, while you prepare a puff-paste. Line a deep dish with this; put in the bottom some shreds of salt pork or ham; next, a layer of hard-boiled eggs, buttered and peppered; then the birds, sprinkled with pepper and minced parsley. Squeeze some lemon-juice upon them, and lay upon the breasts pieces of butter rolled in flour. Cover with slices of egg, then with shred ham; pour in some of the gravy in which the quails were parboiled, and put on the lid, leaving a hole in the middle. Bake over an hour.
Clean and wash very carefully, then lay in salt and water for an hour. Rinse the inside with soda and water, shaking it well about in the cavity; wash out with fair water and stuff with a force-meat made of bread-crumbs and chopped salt pork, seasoned with pepper. Sew up the birds, and put on to stew in enough cold water to cover them, and allow to each a fair slice of fat bacon cut into narrow strips. Season with pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. Boil slowly in a covered saucepan until tender; take fromthe gravy and lay in a covered dish to keep warm. Strain the gravy, add the juice of a lemon and a tablespoonful of currant jelly, thickening with browned flour. Boil up and pour over the pigeons.
This is made precisely as is quail pie, except that the pigeons are cut into four pieces each, and not stuffed. Parboil and lay in the dish in alternate layers with the bacon and boiled eggs. Make the gravy richer than for the quails, by the addition of a good lump of butter, rolled in flour, stirred in and boiled up to thicken before you put it on the fire. Wild pigeons are usually tougher and leaner than the tame.
Nearly all wild ducks are liable to have a fishy flavor, and when handled by inexperienced cooks, are sometimes uneatable from this cause. Before roasting them, guard against this by parboiling them with a small carrot, peeled, put within each. This will absorb the unpleasant taste. An onion will have the same effect; but, unless you mean to use onion in the stuffing, the carrot is preferable. In my own kitchen I usually put in the onion, considering a suspicion of garlic a desideratum in roast duck, whether wild or tame.
Parboil as above directed; throw away the carrot or onion, lay in fresh water half an hour; stuff with bread-crumbs seasoned with pepper, salt, sage, and onion, and roast until brown and tender, basting for half the time with butter and water, then with the drippings. Add to the gravy, when you have taken up the ducks, a tablespoonfulof currant jelly, and a pinch of cayenne. Thicken with browned flour and serve in a tureen.
Parboil ten minutes, when you have drawn them, and put in a raw carrot or onion. Lay in very cold water half an hour. Cut into joints, pepper, salt, and flour them. Have ready some butter in a frying-pan, and fry them a light brown. Put them in a saucepan and cover with gravy made of the giblets, necks, and some bits of lean veal. Add a minced shallot, a bunch of sweet herbs, salt, and pepper. Cover closely and stew half an hour, or until tender. Take out the duck, strain the gravy when you have skimmed it; put in a half-cup of cream or rich milk in which an egg has been beaten, thicken with browned flour, add a tablespoonful of wine and the juice of half a lemon, beaten in gradually not to curdle the cream; boil up and pour over the ducks. This is about the best way of cooking wild ducks.
This stately stalker of Southern forests and Western prairies is eagerly sought after by the lovers of good eating in those regions. The dark meat and game flavor proclaim his birthright of lordly freedom as truly after he is slain and cooked, as did his lithe grace of figure, lofty carriage, and bright eye while he trod his native wilds. I have heard sportsmen declare that when they have inveigled him up to a blind by imitating the call of his harem or younglings, they have stood in covert, gun at shoulder and finger on the trigger, spell-bound by pitying admiration of his beauty. But I have never seen that sensibility curbed appetite while they told the story at the tableadorned by the royal bird; have noted, indeed, that their mouths watered rather than their eyes, as he crumbled, like a dissolving view, under the blade of the carver.
Draw and wash the inside very carefully, as with all game. Domestic fowls are, or should be, kept up without eating for at least twelve hours before they are killed; but we must shoot wild when we can get the chance, and of course it often happens that their crops are distended by a recent hearty meal of rank or green food. Wipe the cavity with a dry soft cloth before you stuff. Have a rich force-meat, bread-crumbs, some bits of fat pork, chopped fine, pepper, and salt. Beat in an egg and a couple of tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Baste with butter and water for the first hour, then three or four times with the gravy; lastly, five or six times with melted butter. A generous and able housekeeper told me once that she always allowed a pound of butter for basting a large wild turkey. This was an extravagant quantity, but the meat is drier than that of the domestic fowl, and not nearly so fat. Dredge with flour at the last, froth with butter, and when he is of a tempting brown, serve. Skim the gravy, add a little hot water, pepper, thicken with the giblets chopped fine and browned flour, boil up, and pour into a tureen. At the South the giblets are not put in the gravy, but laid whole, one under each wing, when the turkey is dished. Garnish with small fried sausages, not larger than a dollar, crisped parsley between them.
Send around currant jelly and cranberry sauce with it.
Clean and truss, but do not stuff. Lay in rows in the dripping-pan, or tie upon a spit, sprinkle with salt, andbaste well with butter, then with butter and water. When they begin to brown, which will be in about ten minutes, cut as many rounds of bread (without crust) as there are birds. Toast quickly, butter, and lay in the dripping-pan, a bird upon each. When the birds are done, serve upon the toast, with the gravy poured over it. The toast should lie under them while cooking at least five minutes, during which time the birds should be basted with melted butter seasoned with pepper.
The largest snipe will not require above twenty minutes to roast.
This is the most delicious of small birds, and may be either roasted or broiled.
The English do not draw woodcock, regarding thetrailas abonne bouche, and I have known American housekeepers who copied them in this respect. In this case roast precisely as you would snipe or plover, only putting the toast under the birds so soon as they begin to cook, to catch the trail.
To my taste, a better, and certainly to common sense people a less objectionable plan, is to fill the birds with a rich force-meat of bread-crumbs, peppered and salted, shortened with melted butter. Sew them up and roast, basting with butter and water, from twenty minutes to half an hour. When half done, put circular slices of buttered toast beneath, and serve upon these when you take them up.
Split down the back, and broil over a clear fire. Butter, pepper, and salt when done, and let them lie between two hot dishes for five minutes before sending to table. Small snipe are nice broiled in this way; also robins and doves.
Clean and half-roast the birds; cut in quarters, and put in a saucepan with gravy made of the giblets, necks, and some bits of fat pork, stewed in a little water. Add a minced button onion, salt, and a pinch of cayenne, and stew fifteen minutes or until tender, closely covered. Take out the birds, and pile neatly upon buttered toast in a chafing-dish. Strain the gravy and return to the fire, adding some small pieces of butter rolled in flour, the juice of a lemon and a little wine. Boil up, and pour over the salmi.
may be roasted or broiled. A good way is to roll an oyster in melted butter, then in bread-crumbs seasoned with pepper and salt, and put into each bird before roasting. Baste with butter and water three times, put the rounds of toast underneath, and baste freely with melted butter. They will require about twenty minutes to cook, and will be found delicious.
Draw so soon as they come into your possession; rinse with soda and water, then with pure cold water; wipe dry, and rub them lightly with a mixture of fine salt and black pepper. If you must keep them some time, put in the cavity of each fowl a piece of charcoal; hang them in a cool, dark place, with a cloth thrown over them. Small birds, unless there are too many of them, may be kept in a refrigerator after you have drawn, washed, and wiped them.
The charcoal is an admirable preventive of decomposition.
These are no longer the appendages of the rich man’s bill of fare only. A general knowledge of made sauces, as well as the more expensive ones imported from abroad and sold here at high prices, is a part of every intelligent housekeeper’s culinary education. Few are so ignorant as to serve a fish sauce with game, orvice versâ. From the immense number of receipts which I have collected and examined, I have selected comparatively few but such as I consider “representative” articles. The ingenious housewife is at liberty, as I said before, elsewhere, to modify and improve upon them.
First,par excellence, as the most important, and because it is the groundwork of many others, I place
Put the flour and salt in a bowl, and add a little at a time of the water or milk, working it very smooth as you go on. Put into a tin cup or saucepan, and set in a vessel of boiling water. As it warms, stir, and when it has boiled a minute or more, add the butter by degrees, stirring all the time until it is entirely melted and incorporated with the flour and water. Boil one minute.
Mix with milk when you wish to use for puddings, with water for meats and fish.
Wet the flour to a thin smooth paste with cold water, and stir into the hot, which should be in the inner vessel. When it boils, add the butter by degrees, and stir until well mixed. Boil one minute.
Wet the flour to a smooth paste with a little cold milk, and add to the hot water in the inner vessel, stirring until thick. Have ready the beaten egg in a cup. Take a teaspoonful of the mixture from the fire, and beat with this until light; then another, and still another. Set aside the cup when this is done, and stir the butter into the contents of the inner saucepan gradually, until thoroughly mixed, then add the beaten egg in the same way. There is no danger of clotting the egg, if it be treated as I have described.
Chop the yolks only of the eggs very fine, and beat into the hot drawn butter, salting to taste.
This is used for boiled fowls and boiled fish. For the former, you can add some minced parsley; for the latter, chopped pickles, capers, or nasturtium seed. For boiled beef, a small shallot minced fine.
Omit the boiled eggs, and beat up two raw ones very light, and put into the drawn butter instead, as directedin No. 3. For boiled beef or chicken, you may make the drawn butter of hot liquor taken from the pot in which the meat is cooking, having first carefully skimmed it.
Put the water into the inner saucepan, chop the anchovies and shallot, and put in with the pepper and salt. Boil two minutes, and strain back into the saucepan when you have rinsed with hot water. Now add the flour wet smooth with cold water, and stir until it thickens; put in the butter by degrees, and when it is thoroughly melted and mixed, the vinegar; lastly, the capers and a little nutmeg.
Make drawn butter by receipt No. 2, but with double the quantity of flour, and use, instead of water, the liquor in which the fish was boiled. Add four tablespoonfuls of milk, in which a shallot and a head of celery or a pinch of celery-seed has been boiled, then strained out. Boil one minute, and stir in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley.
Stew the oysters in their own liquor five minutes, and add the milk. When this boils, strain the liquor and return to the saucepan. Thicken with the flour when you have wet it with cold water; stir it well in; put in the butter, next the cayenne (if you like it), boil one minute; squeeze in the lemon-juice, shake it around well, and pour out.
Drain the oysters dry without cooking at all; make the sauce with the liquor and other ingredients just named. Chop the raw oysters, and stir in when you do the butter; boil five minutes, and pour into the tureen. Some put in the oysters whole, considering that the sauce is handsomer than when they are chopped.
Oyster sauce is used for boiled halibut, cod, and other fish, for boiled turkey, chickens, and white meats generally.
Make the drawn butter as usual, and stir in the milk. Pick the meat from the crab, chop very fine, season with cayenne, mace, and salt to taste; stir into the drawn butter. Simmer three minutes, but do not boil.
Lobster sauce is very nice made as above, with the addition of a teaspoonful of made mustard and the juice of half a lemon. This is a good fish sauce.
Soak the anchovies in cold water two hours; pull them to pieces, and simmer in just enough water to cover them for half an hour. Strain the liquor into the drawn butter (No. 3), boil a minute, add the wine; heat gradually to a boil, and stew five minutes longer. You may substitute two teaspoonfuls of anchovy paste for the little fish themselves.
Serve with boiled fish.
Beat the butter to a cream, adding gradually the vinegar, salt, and pepper. Boil a bunch of parsley five minutes, chop small; beat into the butter; lastly the sugar and mustard. The butter must be light as whipped egg.
Simmer the sliced onion in the milk until tender; strainthe milk and pour over the bread-crumbs, which should be put into a saucepan. Cover and soak half an hour; beat smooth with an egg-whip, add the seasoning and butter; stir in well, boil up once, and serve in a tureen. If it is too thick, add boiling water and more butter.
This sauce is for roast poultry. Some people add some of the gravy from the dripping-pan, first straining it and beating it well in with the sauce.
Boil the celery tender in salted water; drain, and cut into bits half an inch long. Thicken the gravy from the fowl—a teacupful—with the flour; add the butter, salt, and nutmeg, then the milk. Stir and beat until it is smooth; put in the celery; heat almost to boiling, stirring all the while; serve in a tureen, or, if you prefer, pour it over the boiled meat or fowls.
Peel the onions, boil tender, press the water from them, and mince fine. Have ready the hot milk in a saucepan; stir in the onions, then the butter, salt, and pepper. Boil up once.
If you want to have it particularly good, make nice melted or drawn butter (No. 3); beat the mashed onioninto it; add a teacupful of cream or new milk, season, boil up, and serve.
Draw the butter (No. 2); boil the parsley three minutes; take it out and lay in cold water five minutes, to cool; chop and stir into the butter; squeeze in the lemon-juice, the pepper and salt; beat hard with an egg-whip, return to the fire, and boil up once.
This is a “stock” sauce, being suitable for so many dishes, roast or boiled.
Chop the mint, put the sugar and vinegar in a sauce boat, and stir in the mint. Let it stand in a cool place fifteen minutes before sending to table.
Stew the mushrooms in barely enough water to cover them until tender. Drain, but do not press them, and add the cream, butter, and seasoning. Stew over a bright fire, stirring all the while until it begins to thicken. Add theflour wet in cold milk, boil up and serve in a boat, or pour over boiled chickens, rabbits, etc.
Boil the cauliflower in two waters, changing when about half done, and throwing away the first, reserve a teacupful of the last. Take out the cauliflower, drain and mince. Cook in another saucepan the onion and celery, mincing them when tender. Heat the reserved cupful of water again in a saucepan, add the milk; when warm put in the cauliflower and onion, the butter and seasoning—coating the butter thickly with flour; boil until it thickens.
This is a delicious sauce for boiled corned beef and mutton.
Boil the tender heads in a very little salted water. Drain and chop them. Have ready a pint of drawn butter, with two raw eggs beaten into it; add the asparagus, and season, squeezing in the lemon-juice last. The butter must be hot, but do not cook after putting in the asparagusheads. This accompanies boiled fowls, stewed fillet of veal, or boiled mutton.