Part 8

Cut two pounds of beef from the neck into dice, and fry until brown. Break small two or three pounds of bones, and fry lightly. Bones from which streaked bacon has been cut make an excellent addition, but too many must not be used, lest the soup be salt. Slice and fry brown a pound of onions, put them with the meat and bones and three quarts of cold water into the soup pot; let it boil up, and having skimmed add two large turnips, a carrot cut in slices, a small bundle of sweet herbs, and a half a dozen pepper-corns. Let the soup boil gently for four or five hours, and about one hour before it is finished add a little piece of celery, or celery-seed tied in muslin. This is a most delicious flavour. When done, strain the soup and set it away for a night to get cold. Remove the fat and next day let it boil up, stirring in two spoonfuls of corn starch, moistened with cold water. Season with salt and pepper to taste, not too salt; add forcemeat balls to the soup, and you have a whole dinner in your soup.

An oxtail soup is made like the above, only adding the tail, which is divided into joints, which are fried brown. Then these joints should be boiled until the meat comes easily off the bones. When the soup is ready put in two lumps of sugar, a glass of port wine, and pour all into the tureen.

The Julienne soup, so delicious in summer, should be a nice clear stock, with the addition of prepared vegetables. Unless the cook can buy the excellent compressed vegetables which are to be had at the Italian warehouses, it is well to follow this order:--

Wash and scrape a large carrot, cut away all the yellow parts from the middle, and slice the red outside. Take an equal quantity of turnips and three small onions, cut in a similar manner. Put them in a stewpan with two ounces of butter and a pinch of powdered sugar, stir over the fire until a nice brown colour, then add a quart of clear, well-flavoured stock, and let all simmer together gently for three hours. When done, skim the fat off very carefully, and ten minutes before serving add a lettuce cut in shreds and blanched for a minute in boiling water. Simmer for five minutes and the soup will be ready. This is a most excellent soup if well made.

Mock-turtle soup is easily made:--

Boil the bones of the head three hours, add a piece of gravy meat cut in dice and fried brown, three onions sliced and fried brown, a carrot, a turnip, celery, and a small bundle of sweet herbs; boil gently for three hours and take off the fat. When it is ready to be served add a glass of sherry and slices of lemon. The various parts of a calf's-head can be cooked and used as forcemeat balls, and made to look exactly like turtle. This soup is found canned and is almost as good as the real article.

Dried-pea soup, _crème d'asperge_, and bean soup, in fact all the _purées_, are very healthful and elegant soups. The _purée_ is the mashed mass of pea or bean, which is added to the stock.

Boil a pint of large peas in a quart of water with a sprig of parsley or mint, and a dozen or so of green onions. When the peas are done strain and rub them through a sieve, put the _purée_ back into the liquor the peas were boiled in, add a pint of good veal or beef broth, a lump of sugar, and pepper and salt to taste. Let the soup get thoroughly hot without boiling, stir in an ounce of good butter, and the soup is ready.

A plain but quick and delicious soup may be made by using a can of corn, with a small piece of pork. This warmed up quickly, with a little milk added, is very good.

As for a _crème d'asperge_, it is better to employ a _chef_ to teach the new cook.

Mulligatawny soup is a visitor from India. It should not be too strong of curry powder for the average taste. The stock should be made of chicken or veal, or the liquor in which chickens have been boiled.

Slice and fry in butter six large onions, add four sharp, sour apples, cored and quartered, but not peeled. Let them boil in a little of the stock until quite tender, then mix with them a quarter of a pound of flour, and a small teaspoonful of curry powder. Take a quart of the stock and when the soup has boiled skim it; let it simmer for half an hour, then carefully take off all the fat, strain the soup, and rub the onions through a sieve. When ready to heat the soup for the dinner-table add any pieces of meat or chicken cut into small, delicate shapes. When these have been boiled together for ten minutes the soup will be ready; salt to taste. Boiled rice should be sent in on a separate dish.

Sorrel soup is a great favourite with the French people. We do not make enough of sorrel in this country; it adds an excellent flavour.

Carefully wash a pound of sorrel, and having picked, cut it in shreds, put it into a stewpan with two ounces of fresh butter and stir it over the fire for ten minutes. Stir in an ounce of flour, mix well together and add a pint and a half of good white stock made as for veal broth. Let it simmer for half an hour. Having skimmed the soup, stir in the yolks of three eggs beaten up in half a pint of milk or cream. Stir in a little pat of butter, and when dissolved pour the whole over thin pieces of toasted bread into the tureen.

With the large family of the broths every housewife should become acquainted. They are invaluable for the sick, especially broths of chicken and mutton. For veal broth the following is an elaborate, but excellent recipe:

Get three or four pounds of scrag, or a knuckle of veal, chopped into small pieces, also a ham bone, or slice of ham, and cover with water; let it boil up, skim it until no more rises. Put in four or five onions, a turnip, and later a bit of celery or celery seed tied in muslin, a little salt, and white pepper. Let it boil gently for four hours; strain the gravy and having taken off all the fat return the residue to the pot and let it boil; then slightly thicken with corn flour, about one teaspoonful to a quart of soup; let it simmer before serving. Three pounds of veal should make two quarts of good soup.

A sheep's-head soup is famous all over Scotland and is made as follows:--

Get the head of a sheep with the skin on, soak it in tepid water, take out the tongue and brains, break all the thin bones inside the cheek, and carefully wash it in several waters; put it on in a quart of water with a teaspoonful of salt and let it boil ten minutes. Pour away this water and put two quarts more with one pound of a scrag of mutton; add, cut up, six onions, two turnips, two carrots, a sprig of parsley, and season with pepper and salt. Let it boil gently for four or five hours, when the head and neck will not be too much cooked for the family dinner, and may be served either with parsley or onion sauce. It is a most savoury morsel. Strain the soup, and let it cool so as to remove every particle of fat. Rub the vegetables through a sieve to a fine _purée_. Mix a tablespoonful of flour in a quarter of a pint of milk; make the soup boil up and stir it in with the vegetables.

Have the tongue boiled until it is very tender, skin and trim it, have the brains also well cooked, and chop and pound them very fine with the tongue, mix them with an equal weight of sifted bread-crumbs, a tablespoonful of chopped green parsley, pepper, salt, and egg, and if necessary a small quantity of flour to enable you to roll the mixture into little balls. Put an ounce of butter into a small frying-pan and fry the balls until a nice brown, lay them on paper before the fire to drain away all the fat, and put them into the soup after it is poured into the tureen. Scald and chop some green parsley and serve separately on a plate.

Thackeray thought so much of a boiled sheep's head that he made it the point of one of his humorous poems.

"By that grand vow that bound thee Forever to my side, And by the ring that made thee My darling and my bride! Thou wilt not fail or falter But bend thee to the task-- A boiled sheep's head on Sunday Is all the boon I ask!"

In France, cabbage is much used in soup.

"Ha, what is this that rises to my touch So like a cushion--can it be a cabbage? It is, it is, that deeply inspired flower Which boys do flout us with, but yet--I love thee, Thou giant rose, wrapped in a green surtout. Doubtless in Eden thou didst blush as bright As these thy puny brethren, and thy breath Sweetened the fragrance of her spicy air; And now thou seemst like a bankrupt beau Stripped of his gaudy hues and essences, And growing portly in his sober garments."

The cabbage is without honour in America; and yet if boiled in water which is thrown away, having absorbed all its grosser essences, and then boiled again and chopped and dressed with butter and cream, it is an excellent vegetable. Its disagreeable odour has led to its expulsion from many a house, but corn-beef and cabbage are not to be despised.

Cauliflower, which Thackeray calls the "apotheosis of cabbage," is the most delicate of vegetables; and a _purée_ of cauliflower shall close our chapter on soups.

Boil in salted water, using a small piece of butter, two heads of cauliflower, drain and pass them through a colander, dilute with two quarts of sauce and a quart of chicken broth, season with salt, white pepper, and grated nutmeg. Add a teaspoonful of fine white sugar, then pass the whole forcibly with a wooden presser through a fine sieve,--the finer the sieve the better the _purée_. Put the residue in a stewpan, set it on the fire, stir all the while till it boils, let it boil for ten minutes, strain well, add a mixture made with the yolks of six eggs and half a pint of cream, finish with four ounces of table butter, and serve with small, fried, square _croûtons_.

A _purée_ of celery is equally excellent; but all these soups require an intelligent cook. It is better to have one's cook taught to make soups by an expert, for it is the most difficult of all the dishes, if thoroughly good. The plain soup, free from grease and well flavoured, is easy enough after a little training, "but the chief ingredient of soup is brains," according to a London _chef_. It is, however, a good practice for an amateur cook to experiment and to try these various recipes, all of which are practicable.

FISH.

What is thy diet? Canst thou gulf a shoal Of herrings? Or hast thou gorge and room To bolt fat porpoises and dolphins whole By dozens, e'en as oysters we consume? PUNCH.

The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open. HOTSPUR.

The Egyptians, strange to say, did not deify fish, that important article of their food. We read of the enormous yield of Lake Moeris, which was dammed up by the great Rameses, and whose draught of fishes brought him so enormous a revenue.

One of the most fascinating of all the Egyptian Queens, Sonivaphra, received the revenues of one of these fisheries to keep her in shoe-strings,--probably another name for pin money.

And yet the Egyptians, while mummying the cats and dogs and beetles, and such small deer, made no gods of the good carp or other fish which must have stocked the river Nile. They emblazoned the crocodile on their monuments, but never a fish. It is a singular foreshadowing of that great vice of the human race, ingratitude.

The Romans were fond of fish, and the records of their gastronomy abound in fish stories. We read of Licinius Crassus, the orator, that he lived in a house of great elegance and beauty. This house was called the "Venus of the Palatine," and was remarkable for its size, the taste of the furniture, and the beauty of the grounds. It was adorned with pillars of Hymettian marbles, with expensive vases and _triclinia_ inlaid with brass; his gardens were provided with fish-ponds, and noble lotus-trees shaded his walks. Abenobarbus, his colleague in the censorship, found fault with such luxury, such "corruption of manners," and complained of his crying for the loss of a lamprey as if it had been a favourite daughter!

This, however, was a tame lamprey, which used to come to the call of Crassus and feed out of his hand. Crassus retorted by a public speech against his colleague, and by his great power of ridicule turned him into derision, jested upon his name, and to the accusation of weeping for a lamprey, replied that it was more than Abenobarbus had done for the loss of any of his three wives!

In the sixteenth century, that golden age of the Vatican, the splendid court of Leo X. was the centre of artistic and literary life, and the witty and pleasure-loving Pope made its gardens the scene of his banquets and concerts, where he listened to the recitations of the poets who sprung up under his protection. There beneath the shadow of the ilex and the lauristines, in a circle so refined that ladies were admitted, Leo himself leaned on the shoulder of the handsome Raphael, who was allowed to caress and admire the Medicean white hand of his noble patron. We read that this famous Pope was so fastidious as to the fish dinners of Lent, that he invented twenty different recipes for the chowder of that day! Walking in disguise with Raphael through the fish-market, he espied a boy who, on his knees, was presenting a fish to a pretty _contadina_. The scene took form and immortality in the famous _Vierge au Poisson_, in which, conducted by the Angel Gabriel, the youthful Saint John presents the fish to the Virgin and child,--a beautiful picture for the church whose patron saint was a fisherman.

Indeed, that picture of the sea of Galilee, and the sacred meaning attached to the etymology of the word "fish," has given the finny wanderer of the seas a peculiar and valuable personality. All this, with the selection by our Lord of so many of his disciples from amongst the fishermen, the many poetical associations which form around this, the cheapest and most delicate form of food with which the Creator has stocked this world of ours, would, if followed out, afford a volume of suggestion, quotation, poetry, and romance with which to embellish the art of entertaining.

Fish is now believed to produce aliment for the brain, and as such is recommended to all authors and editors, statesmen, poets and lawyers, clergymen and mathematicians,--all who draw on that finer fibre of the brain which is used for the production of poetry or prose.

England is famed for its good fish, as why should it not be, with the ocean around it? The turbot is, _par excellence_, the fish for a Lord Mayor's dinner, and it is admirable _à la crème_ for anybody's dinner. Excellent is the whitebait of Richmond, that mysterious little dwarf. Eaten with slices of brown bread and butter it is a very delicious morsel, and the whiting, which always comes to the table with his tail in his mouth, beautifully browned outside, white as snow within, what so excellent as a whiting, except a _sole au gratin_ with sauce Tartare?

Fresh herrings in Scotland are delicious, almost equal to the red mullets which Cæsar once ate at Marseilles. The fresh sardines at Nice, and all along the Mediterranean, are very delicate, as are the thousand shell-fish. The langoose, or large lobster of France and the Mediterranean, is a surprise to the American traveller. Not so delicate as our American lobster, it still is admirable for a salad. It is so large that the flesh--if a fish has flesh--can be sliced up and served like cold roast turkey.

The salmon, king of fish, inspires in his capture, in Scotland rivers, in Labrador, in Canada, some of the best writing of the day. William Black, in Scotland, and Dr. Wier Mitchell, of Philadelphia, can tell stories of salmon-fishing which are as brilliant as Victor Hugo's description of Waterloo, or of that mysterious jelly-fish in his novel, "The Toilers of the Sea."

The New York market boasts the red snapper, the sheepshead, the salmon, the salmon-trout, the Spanish mackerel, most toothsome of viands, the sea bass, cod, halibut, the shad, the greatest profusion of excellent oysters and clams, the cheap pan-fish, and endless eels. The French make many fine dishes of eels, as the Romans did.

To be good, fish must be fresh. It is absolutely indispensable, to retain certain flavours, that the fish should go from one element to another, out of the water into the fire, and onto the gridiron or into the frying pan as soon as possible. Therefore, if the housewife has a fish seasonable and fresh, and a gridiron, she can make a good dish for a hungry man.

We shall begin with the cheapest of the products of the water, and although they may squirm out of our hands, try to bring to the table the despised eels.

An old proverb said that matrimony was a bag in which there were ninety-nine snakes and one eel, and the young lady who put her hand into this agreeable company had small chance at the eel. It would seem at first blush as if no one would care particularly for the eel. In old England, eels were exceedingly popular, and the monks dearly loved to feed upon them. The cellarist of Barking Abbey, Essex, in the ancient times of monastic foundations, was, amongst other eatables, to provide stewed eels in Lent and to bake eels on Shrove Tuesday. There were artificial receptacles made for eels. The cruel custom of salting eels alive is mentioned by some old writers.

"When the old serpent appeared in the guise of a stewed eel it was impossible to resist him."

Eels _en matelote_ should be cut in three-inch pieces, and salted; fry an onion brown in a little dripping, add half a pint of broth to the brown onion, part of a bay leaf, six broken pepper-corns, four whole cloves, and a gill of claret. Add the eels to this and simmer until thoroughly cooked. Remove the eels, put them on a hot dish, add a teaspoonful of brown flour to the sauce, strain and pour over the eels. Spatch-cooked eels are good.

_Fricasseed eels_: Cut three pounds of eels into pieces of three inches in length, put them into a stewpan, and cover them with Rhine wine, or two thirds water and one third vinegar; add fifteen oysters, two pieces of lemon, a bouquet of herbs, one onion quartered, six cloves, three stalks of celery, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and salt to taste. Stew the eels one hour, remove them from the dish, strain the liquor. Put it back into the saucepan with a gill of cream and an ounce of butter rolled in flour, simmer gently a few minutes, pour over the fish, and you have a dish for a king.

Stewed eels are great favourites with _gourmets_, cooked as follows:--

Cut into three-inch pieces two pounds of medium-sized cleaned eels. Rub the inside of each piece with salt. Let them stand half an hour, then parboil them. Boil an onion in a quart of milk and remove the onion. Drain the eels from the water and add them to the milk. Season with half a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, salt and pepper, and the smallest bit of mace. Simmer until the flesh falls from the bones.

Fried eels should be slightly salted before cooking. Do not cover them with batter, but dredge them with just flour enough to absorb all moisture, then cover them with boiling lard.

As for the thousand and one recipes for cooking an oyster, no one need tell an American hostess much on that subject. Raw, roasted, boiled, stewed, scalloped and baked in patties, what so savoury as the oyster? They should be bought alive, and opened with care by an expert, for the bits of shell are dangerous. If eaten raw, pieces of lemon should be served with them. Plates of majolica to hold five or seven oysters are now to be bought at all the best crockery stores.

To stew oysters well, cream and butter should be added, and the whole mixture done in a silver dish over an alcohol lamp. Broiled oysters should be dipped first in melted butter, then in bread crumbs, then put in a very fine wire gridiron, and broiled over a bright bed of coals. Scalloped oysters should be carefully dried with a clean napkin, then laid in a deep dish on a bed of crumbs and fresh butter, all softened by the liquor of the oyster; a layer of oysters and a layer of crumbs should follow each other, with little walnuts of butter put between. The mixture should be put in a very hot oven and baked a delicate brown, but not dried.

The plain fried oyster is very popular, but it should not be cooked in small houses just before an entertainment, as the odour is not appetizing. To dip them in egg batter, then in bread-crumbs, and fry them in drippings is a common and good fashion. A more elaborate fashion is to beat up the yolks of four eggs with three tablespoonfuls of sweet oil, and season them with a teaspoonful of salt, and a saltspoonful of cayenne pepper. Beat up thoroughly, dip each oyster in this mixture and then in bread crumbs, and fry in hot oil. The best and most elegant way of cooking an oyster is, however, "_à la poulette_."

Scald the oysters in their own liquor, drain them, and add to the liquor, salt, half an ounce of butter, the juice of half a lemon, a gill of cream, and a teaspoonful of dissolved flour. Beat the yolk of one egg, and add to the sauce, stir until the sauce thickens; place the oysters on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them, add a little chopped parsley and serve.

A simpler and more primitive but excellent way of cooking oysters is to clean the shells thoroughly, and place them in the coals in an open fireplace, or to roast them in hot ashes until the shells snap open.

When the oyster departs then the clam takes his place, and is delicious as an _avant goût_ or an appetizer at a dinner. If clams are broiled they must be done quickly, else they become hard and indigestible.