When only half fried, or soaked with grease, this vegetable is an abomination to the educated palate and the self-respecting stomach. When tender and thoroughly cooked, it is one of the most delicious of the summer and fall garden products.
Fried eggplant
Peel an eggplant and cut into slices half an inch thick. Lay in cold salt water for an hour; wipe each slice dry and dip, first in beaten egg, and then in cracker dust. Set in a cold place for an hour and fry in deep boiling cottolene or other fat. Drain in a heated colander before dishing.
Stuffed eggplant on the half-shell
Wash and wipe a large eggplant and parboil it in boiling salted water for ten minutes. Let it get perfectly cold, cut in half lengthwise, and scrape out the center, leaving the walls of the vegetable three-quarters of an inch thick. Chop the pulp fine and add to it a small cupful of minced chicken, half a cupful of minced ham, a quarter of a cupful of bread-crumbs, a tablespoonful of melted butter, salt and pepper to taste. Mix well, add enough soup stock to make a stiff paste, and fill the hollow sides with this. When full and rounded, sprinkle the forcemeat with bread-crumbs, and lay the halves, side by side, in a bakepan, pouring three cupfuls of soup stock around them. Bake nearly an hour, basting every ten minutes. Remove the eggplant to a hot platter, thicken the gravy left in the pan with browned flour, boil up once on top of the range, stirring constantly, and pour this browned sauce about the base of the halved eggplant.
Scalloped eggplant
Pare off the skin, cut into dice and lay in cold salt water for an hour. Then parboil for twenty minutes. Drain well and pack in a buttered bake-dish, alternately, with fine crumbs. Dot each layer with butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and strew with finely-minced sweet green peppers. Fill the dish in this order, cover with a layer of crumbs wet with cream; dot with butter, cover and bake half an hour, then brown.
Eggplant stuffed with tomatoes
Halve the eggplant and remove the insides as in the last recipe but one. Make a forcemeat of the eggplant pulp, a cupful of chopped ripe tomatoes, one chopped green pepper, and a cupful of bread-crumbs. Season with a tablespoonful of melted butter and salt and pepper. Fill the hollow sides with this mixture, bind the two halves together with wide tape, and bake, basting frequently with melted butter and hot water. When tender, transfer to a hot platter, cut and remove the tape, and pour hot tomato sauce about the eggplant.
Stewed eggplant, with sauce piquante
Prepare as for eggplant on the half-shell by halving and scooping out the pulp, leaving substantial walls. Chop the pulp and cover with hot water. Season with a tablespoonful of onion juice, salt and pepper, and simmer for fifteen minutes. Take from the fire, drain, turn into a bowl and work in two tablespoonfuls of soft bread-crumbs, one tablespoonful of finely-chopped capers, two tablespoonfuls of cold boiled tongue, minced, and, when well-mixed, add salt to taste.
Pack this forcemeat closely into each half, and fit the two parts together, binding securely together with tapes or soft twine.
Put into your covered roaster; pour enough weak stock around it to come one-third of the way up the side, bake, covered, half an hour, then turn and cook the other side. Undo the strings, lay the eggplant carefully in the middle of a hot dish, and pour a good sauce piquante over and around it.
HOMINY
The small-grained hominy, called at the South “samp,” after the manner of the aborigines who bequeathed it to us, must be used in the recipes which follow.
Plain hominy pudding
Soak a cupful of hominy for three hours in tepid water. Drain, and put over the fire in plenty of boiling water, slightly salted. Boil fast for thirty minutes or until tender; turn off the water and pour in a pint of hot milk, with a little salt. Cook for fifteen minutes, stir in a generous lump of butter and turn into a deep dish.
Eat with sugar and cream.
Baked hominy
Stir into a pint of milk a cupful of cold boiled hominy, and when this is smooth, add a tablespoonful of melted butter, a tablespoonful of sugar, a saltspoonful of salt and four well-beaten eggs. Beat very light, pour into a buttered pudding-dish and bake for about half an hour or until “set” and brown. This is a good accompaniment to roast beef.
Hominy croquettes
Into two cupfuls of boiled hominy work a tablespoonful of melted butter; when the cereal is free from all lumps, add to it two beaten eggs, and when these are thoroughly incorporated, season the mixture with salt and pepper. Flour your hands, make the paste into small croquettes, and set aside until stiff and very cold. Now dip each croquette into beaten egg, roll in cracker-crumbs, and when all are thoroughly coated set in the ice-box for two hours. Fry to a golden brown in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat.
Hominy fritters
Rub two cupfuls of cold boiled hominy to a smooth paste with one tablespoonful of melted butter. Next, thin with warmed milk, and add three well-beaten eggs. Finally, stir in a cupful of flour which has been sifted twice with a teaspoonful of salt and half as much baking-powder.
Drop by the spoonful into boiling, deep cottolene or other fat; or, better still, cook upon a soapstone griddle.
KALE
This vegetable, otherwise known as “sea-kale,” should be better known in our country. In England it takes high rank and holds it creditably.
Pick it over carefully, clip off the stems and lay it in cold water for an hour. Drain, and put it into a saucepan full of salted boiling water. Cook until tender, drain and chop fine. Return to the saucepan with three tablespoonfuls of melted butter, salt and pepper to taste. Serve very hot on squares of buttered toast.
MACARONI
Few articles of diet are more toothsome and more wholesome than macaroni in its various forms when properly prepared. Like rice, it is so often miserably cooked that its excellent qualities are not generally recognized. Macaroni may be bought in several shapes, the large, or pipe-macaroni being perhaps the most common. Besides this there are the smaller and more delicate vermicelli, spaghetti and the flat ribbon, or egg-macaroni. Recipes for the cooking of one may be used in the preparation of any of the divers phases of this food.
Baked macaroni (No. 1)
Break into inch-lengths half a pound of macaroni. Boil it until tender in weak broth. Drain off the liquor; put the macaroni into a pudding-dish that will stand the fire; pour over it a half cupful of the stock in which it was boiled, and put a tablespoonful of butter, broken into small pieces, here and there through it. Sift over it fine bread-crumbs and grated cheese; dot with bits of butter and brown in the oven.
Baked macaroni (No. 2)
Break half a pound of macaroni into short lengths; cook until tender in boiling, salted water. It must be clear and soft, but not broken. Drain and put a layer in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Dot with butter, sprinkle lightly with cayenne and salt to taste; cover with grated cheese, and on this dispose another layer of macaroni. Fill the dish in this order, having cheese for the top layer. Pour in a cupful of milk; cover, and bake half an hour. Uncover and brown.
Creamed macaroni
Put a cupful of macaroni into two quarts of boiling salted water and cook for twenty-five minutes, or until tender, but not broken. Drain off all the water and keep the macaroni hot in a covered dish while you make the cream sauce to pour over it. Cook together in a saucepan until they bubble, two teaspoonfuls of flour and the same quantity of butter; pour over them a pint of hot milk, and, as this thickens, stir into it two heaping tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese. Pour this sauce upon the macaroni just before serving, lifting the latter lightly with a fork that the creamy sauce may reach every part.
Macaroni with cheese sauce
Boil tender in salted water and drain. Cook together in a saucepan a great spoonful of butter and a cupful of grated Swiss cheese. As soon as the cheese is melted, turn the macaroni into the saucepan and stir and toss with a silver fork until thoroughly blended with the sauce. Serve at once.
Macaroni and chicken
Boil half a package of spaghetti tender, drain, drop into cold water, and drain again. Lay on a biscuit-board and cut into pieces about half an inch long. Thicken a pint of chicken stock with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter. Stir into this a cupful of cold boiled or roast chicken, chopped fine, and the cold macaroni. Last of all, beat in slowly a whipped egg, remove from the fire, season to taste, turn into a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle crumbs over the top and bake for half an hour.
Send around grated cheese with it. You may use veal if you have no chicken.
Macaroni and tomatoes (very nice)
Break half a pound of pipe macaroni into inch-lengths, and boil in salted water until tender. Drain, and put a layer of the macaroni in the bottom of a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle with pepper, salt, onion juice and grated cheese, and cover all with a layer of stewed and strained tomatoes that have been previously seasoned to taste. On these goes another layer of macaroni, and so on until the dish is full. The topmost layer must be of tomatoes sprinkled with crumbs and good-sized bits of butter. Set in a hot oven, covered, for twenty minutes, and then bake, uncovered, until the crumbs are well-browned.
Spaghetti with Swiss cheese
Break a half pound of spaghetti into bits not more than an inch and a half in length, and boil in slightly salted water for twenty minutes. Turn into a hot colander and set at the side of the range to drain. Grate enough Swiss cheese to make a generous half cupful and turn into a saucepan with three tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Stir well; add the hot spaghetti, toss and stir for a minute, or just long enough to melt the cheese; add a dash of paprika and serve in a hot dish.
Macaroni rissoles
Have ready a cupful of cold, boiled macaroni cut up small. Make a white sauce by cooking together a tablespoonful of butter and two of flour and stirring into them a cupful of hot milk. Stir until thick, add a large tablespoonful of grated cheese, and, gradually, the whipped yolks of four eggs, beating all the time. Work the macaroni into the sauce and set aside until the mixture is very cold. With floured hands form into small balls—not quite as large in circumference as a silver dollar—roll in beaten egg, then in fine cracker-crumbs, and set in the ice-box for two hours. Fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. Serve with tomato sauce.
Macaroni piquante
Break spaghetti into very small bits less than an inch in length. Boil these for twenty minutes, or until tender, in salted water. Drain and keep hot while you make the following sauce:
Cook together in a saucepan a heaping teaspoonful, each, of butter and browned flour, and when these are blended to a brown roux, pour upon them a pint of beef stock, and stir until smooth. Now add four tablespoonfuls of tomato catsup, six drops of Tabasco sauce, a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, a pinch of salt and a dash of paprika. Turn the boiled spaghetti into this sauce, stir all together, and pour the mixture into a greased pudding-dish. Sprinkle buttered crumbs and grated cheese over the top and bake until brown.
Macaroni á la Napolitaine
Have a long fish kettle half full of boiling, salted water, and lay a half pound of unbroken pipe-macaroni in this. Boil for twenty minutes or until tender. Carefully drain the water from the kettle and slip the macaroni gently upon a heated platter, where it may lie at full length. Set the platter in the oven to keep warm while you make a sauce by cooking together in a saucepan two tablespoonfuls of butter and one of flour, and pouring upon them a pint of strained tomato liquor. Stir to a smooth sauce, then season with onion juice, celery salt, pepper, and four tablespoonfuls of Parmesan cheese. Pour this sauce over the macaroni on the platter. When you serve, cut the mass with a sharp knife into manageable lengths.
MUSHROOMS
It is a pity there should be such a popular dread of the poisonous “toadstool” that his nutritious and innocuous brother—the edible mushroom—is shunned by thousands of rational creatures. The most wary need not fear this joy of the epicure when it is bought at market or at a responsible grocer’s shop. Trustworthy dealers run no risks in purchasing the wares from those whose business it is to cultivate and sell them. Mushrooms bought under these circumstances are no more to be feared than artichokes or Brussels sprouts. They form delicious entrées and tempt the most jaded appetite.
Broiled mushrooms
Peel carefully with a small knife and cut off the stems. Lay the mushrooms in a deep dish and pour melted butter over them. Remove them gently to a greased gridiron and broil over clear coals until delicately browned on both sides. Lay diamond-shaped slices of thin buttered toast in a dish, and the mushrooms upon these, sprinkle with pepper and salt and pour a little melted butter over all.
Fried mushrooms
Melt a great spoonful of butter in an agate frying-pan. Peel the mushrooms and cut off their stems, scraping the latter. Lay the mushrooms with their scraped stalks in the frying-pan and cook, turning often, until done. Serve very hot.
Stewed mushrooms
Peel the mushrooms and simmer gently in salted water until tender. Ten minutes should suffice. Drain and keep hot while you make a white sauce of a half pint of milk thickened with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter. Turn the mushrooms into this and stir over the fire until very hot. Season with salt, pepper, a dash of mace, and serve.
Baked mushrooms
Peel very large mushrooms and cut off their stems. Grease a shallow pudding-dish and put a layer of mushrooms, under sides upward, into this. Into each mushroom pour a few drops of melted butter. Do not put more than two layers in the dish. Bake, closely covered, in a quick oven until tender. This should be in about twenty minutes. When done, remove the cover, pour melted butter over the mushrooms, and serve very hot in the dish in which they were cooked.
Fricasseed mushrooms
Peel and remove the stems from large mushrooms. Make a forcemeat by chopping the white meat of a cold roast chicken fine with a few small mushrooms and moistening it with chicken stock. Grease a pudding-dish and lay the large mushrooms, tops down, in this. Fill the mushrooms and the space between them with the forcemeat. Sprinkle bits of butter over all. Pour in enough of the chicken stock to make the contents of the dish very moist, lay a few wafer-like slices of bacon on top of the scallop, and bake, covered, in a hot oven for a quarter of an hour. Uncover, and cook for five minutes longer. Serve in the dish in which they were cooked.
ONIONS
A once-despised vegetable which now takes rank as a highly-respectable edible upon good men’s—and women’s—tables. Delicate spinsters no longer faint at fumes of boiled onions, and finical housewives have forgotten the rusty joke about cooking onions in the middle of a ten-acre lot. There are ways of extracting the coarser flavor that once condemned them with dyspeptics. Cooks have learned that there is as much difference between a well-done and a parboiled onion as between half-cooked and mealy potatoes. Housewives and physicians now appreciate the nutritive values of the esculent bulb, and prize it for these as well as for the seasoning which nothing else supplies. Onion juice is indispensable to the flavor of ragouts and soups, and is obtained by grating, not chopping. The superiority of this mode of getting the essence of the vegetable can not be rightly estimated by one who has not tried it. Onion seasoning should be tasted, never seen.
Stewed young onions
Cut off the stalks, remove the skins and lay the onions in cold water for half an hour. Put them over the fire in hot, salted water and cook for twenty minutes. Drain off the water and return the onions to the fire with a cupful of hot milk, in which has been dissolved a bit of soda the size of a pea. Add a tablespoonful of flour and stew slowly until the sauce is like thick cream.
Boiled onions
Peel and lay for an hour in cold water. Boil in two waters until tender. Drain, sprinkle with pepper and salt; put into a deep vegetable-dish and pour over them a great spoonful of melted butter.
Baked onions (No. 1)
Peel the onions and boil for ten minutes. Drain, arrange in a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and pour over all a white sauce, to which a beaten egg has been added. Sprinkle with fine crumbs, set in the oven and bake, covered, for twenty minutes, then uncover and brown.
Baked onions (No. 2)
Cook tender in boiling water changed once after fifteen minutes; drain and arrange, side by side, in a baking-pan. Melt a tablespoonful of butter in a cupful of hot soup stock, season with salt and pepper and pour over the onions. Cook in a hot oven until the onions are brown, when they may be lifted with a perforated spoon and put into the dish in which they are to be served. Put the pan of gravy on top of the range, thicken the contents with browned flour and pour over the onions. Serve very hot.
Savory onions
Select young onions for this dish. Lay the onions in a saucepan with a very little salted water and simmer for ten minutes. Drain off the water; pour over the onions a small cupful of beef stock and cook for ten minutes longer. With a split spoon remove the onions to a hot dish, while you thicken the gravy left in the pan with a heaping teaspoonful of browned flour rubbed to a paste in the same quantity of butter. When you have a smooth brown sauce season it with a teaspoonful, each, of kitchen bouquet and tomato catsup, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour this sauce over the onions.
Stuffed onions, creamed
Boil eight large onions gently until quite tender, but not broken. Drain, and when cold, carefully remove the hearts or centers. Chop three of these hearts fine and mix with them a cupful of minced ham and season to taste. Moisten with rich cream and the beaten yolk of an egg. Fill the centers of the onions with the mixture, put a piece of butter in the top of each, set side by side, in a deep dish, pour a little milk about them and bake, covered, for twenty minutes. Then uncover, sprinkle with buttered crumbs and bake ten minutes longer. Serve hot.
Scalloped onions
Parboil onions and drain. When cold, cut into bits. Put a thick layer of these in the bottom of a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper and dot with bits of butter. Cover with a very thin layer of crumbs moistened with milk. Put in more seasoned onions and more crumbs, and proceed in this way until the dish is full. Then pour in carefully a little cream, cover and bake for half an hour; uncover and brown.
Onion custard
Cook the onions tender in two waters; drain, and lay in a deep pudding-dish. Thicken a pint of hot milk with a teaspoonful of corn-starch rubbed into two teaspoonfuls of butter and gradually pour this white sauce upon two beaten eggs. Season with pepper and salt and pour the mixture about the onions. Bake until the custard is set.
GREEN PEAS
They lose sweetness with every hour—I might say with every minute—that passes after they have been picked. The passage from garden to kitchen and from pod to pot should be made as short as possible. As you shell throw them into cold water, not holding them in the hand until they are heated and moist. As soon as the last is shelled, drain and cook.
Boiled green peas
Shell and lay in cold water for ten minutes. Drain, turn into slightly salted boiling water and cook for about twenty-five minutes, or until very tender, but not broken. Drain in a colander, put into a dish, stir into the peas a lump of butter, and sprinkle very lightly with salt and pepper.
Green pea pancakes
Boil a pint of shelled peas, and mash while hot, adding a tablespoonful of butter and salt and pepper to taste. Now beat in two whipped eggs, a half pint of milk and five tablespoonfuls of prepared flour. Beat hard and fry on a hot griddle. A soapstone griddle is best. Then they are baked—not fried.
Green pea soufflé
Boil a pint of shelled peas until very tender, and mash with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Beat three eggs light and stir into them a pint of milk and the mashed peas. Season with salt and pepper, beat hard and turn into a greased pudding-dish. Bake, covered, for twenty minutes; uncover and brown. Serve this soufflé as soon as it is removed from the oven.
Green pea fritters
Shell enough peas to make a quart without the pods. Lay the peas in cold water for a half hour; put over the fire in two quarts of boiling salted water and cook for half an hour, or until very tender, but not broken. Drain free of water, turn into a bowl and mash soft with two tablespoonfuls of butter and with salt to taste. Beat four eggs very light, add to them three gills of milk and a cupful of flour with which has been sifted a teaspoonful of baking-powder and a half teaspoonful of salt. Stir the mashed peas by the great spoonful into this mixture and beat until you have a smooth, light green batter. Have your soapstone griddle very hot and drop your batter by the spoonful upon this. When done on one side turn and bake to a delicate brown. Serve very hot as a vegetable to accompany any kind of meat or poultry.
STUFFED TOMATOES GARNISHED WITH RICE AND SHREDDED LEMON
GREEN PEAS GARNISHED WITH POTATOES
Green pea croquettes
Peas that are getting hard will do for these. Boil in just enough salted water to cover them well. While hot, run through the vegetable press. Beat to a smooth paste with a tablespoonful of butter and two of flour. Pepper and salt to taste, drop in a dash of onion juice; lastly, beat in a well-whipped egg. Stir in a vessel set within another of boiling water until hot all through, and set away until cold and stiff. Mold then into croquettes, dip in beaten egg and cracker-crumbs; leave on ice for half an hour before frying in boiling deep cottolene or other fat. Drain and serve very hot.
You may use canned peas if you can not get fresh.
PEPPERS
The large, green peppers, known to the green-grocer as “sweet peppers,” have grown rapidly into favor as a fresh vegetable, within the last decade. They must be seeded with the utmost care. A touch of the seeds against the green sides will ruin the latter for present use. Get hold of the inner stem and draw the clustered seeds through the opening at the stem end, without touching the inside walls.
Fried green peppers
Cut open lengthwise and extract all seeds and tough white fiber. Slice crosswise. Lay in cold salted water for ten minutes, then wipe dry. Melt four tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan and sauté the sliced peppers in this. Lay about broiled steak or chops.
Stuffed peppers
Make a forcemeat of a tablespoonful of minced ham, one of minced chicken, three chopped mushrooms and a cupful of boiled rice. Make this paste wet by adding to it a chopped tomato and enough melted butter to make it of the right consistency for stuffing. Smooth the stem-ends, cut the blossom-ends from green peppers and take out the seeds and inside fibers. Lay the green shells for three minutes in salted boiling water, then plunge into iced water. Let them lie in this for fifteen minutes. Drain and wipe dry. Fill with the forcemeat, replace the tips, and stand the peppers, side by side, in a dripping-pan containing a quarter of an inch of soup stock. Cook for twenty minutes, basting twice with a little salad oil. When done, stand the peppers on a platter and pour a little salad oil about them.
Peppers stuffed with fish
Trim the stem-ends of your green peppers so that they will stand up. Cut off the tips and, with a small keen knife, extract the seeds and as much of the tough fiber as will come away. Mince white fish fine, moisten it with a white sauce, season and fill the peppers with this mixture. Stand in the oven long enough to heat through, and serve.
Scalloped peppers au gratin
Cut large green peppers in half, lengthwise, extract core and seeds and fill them with minced cold cooked fish, well seasoned, mixed with one-third its weight of fine bread crumbs. The mixture (forcemeat) must be wet with gravy or tomato sauce. Round the contents of the halved pepper in the shape of the missing other half, sprinkle with fine crumbs, and bake to a light brown.
You may use for these scallops of cold chicken, lean lamb or veal. See that you do not get the forcemeat too stiff.
Scalloped peppers on the half-shell
Halve the peppers lengthwise, remove seeds and membrane, and parboil for five minutes. When cold, fill the halves with minced roast beef and fine bread-crumbs moistened with tomato juice. Bake in a covered pan, basting every ten minutes. At the end of a half hour remove to a hot platter and serve with tomato sauce poured over and around the halved peppers.
Peppers and rice
(A Creole dish.)
Cook half a cupful of rice in plenty of boiling water, a little salt, for twenty minutes hard. Drain in a colander and set at the back of the range to dry off. Heap within a deep dish.
Prepare your peppers as already directed. Slice as for frying in the usual way. When you take them from the cold salt and water, fry them in a great spoonful of butter. Lift them from the pan and chop rather coarsely. Add to the hot butter and peppers a teaspoonful of onion juice and two tablespoonfuls of stock. Boil up and pour upon the rice. Set in the oven, covered, for three minutes, and serve.
POKE STALKS
Cut as you would asparagus, when they are but a few inches high. They are then tender and succulent, and are thought by some imaginative vegetarians to resemble the “aristocrat” in flavor.
They are undeniably wholesome—also inexpensive.
Scrape the stalks and lay in cold water for an hour. Tie loosely together with a piece of soft twine, put over the fire with enough salted water to cover them, and boil until tender. Drain, sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper and lay upon a platter on slices of buttered toast. Pour white sauce over all.
POTATOES
“The Tyrant Potato” is not assailed ignorantly, nor yet flippantly. After careful study of its properties, its works and its ways, the utmost concession that is now made to peculiar prejudice is in the declaration that, since people will make potatoes nine-tenths of their vegetable diet, it is essential to the national digestion that the ninety-three parts of water and of starch contained in the tuber be cooked in such manner as shall render the esculent as palatable and as little hurtful as is practicable when the constituents are not to be ignored.
The above protest stands at the head of that section of the “National Cook Book” which is headed “Potatoes.” I wrote it ten years ago, and am “of the same opinion still.”
Talk against it as we may, the potato holds its sway in defiance of chemistry and dietetics, and our Johns, one and all, insist upon its daily appearance. As one weary housewife said to me:
“If I give my fingers to be burned in the preparation of a half dozen vegetables and have not potatoes in the number, my culinary and housekeeping skill are as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals—to my husband, at least. And I am so tired of the same old ways of cooking the same old potatoes!”
Her remark made me wonder why housekeepers adhere to the “same old ways.” Why not try new ones?
One hint may be acted upon with advantage to cook and to eaters.
One of the bugbears to the housewife is paring potatoes. It is not a pleasant task, and the necessity of performing it recurs with disagreeable frequency.
The housekeeper is wise if, while the potatoes are in the process of peeling, she pares and cooks more than enough for the repast for which they are intended, and by utilizing the cold left-overs does away with the necessity of peeling more of the tyrannical starch-and-water for the next meal.
A majority of the recipes herewith given are based upon the supposition that she has done this.
New potatoes with cream sauce
(Contributed)
Boil the potatoes in salted water until done. Drain and cover with a white sauce made as follows: Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan and when it begins to bubble add two tablespoonfuls of flour; let them cook for one minute, then add one pint of hot milk, season with salt and pepper and a half teaspoonful of chopped parsley.
Potatoes, boiled au natural
Wash, drop into boiling water slightly salted, and cook fast until a fork will pass easily into the largest. Turn off the water, throw in a handful of salt, and set the pot, uncovered, at the back or side of the range, to dry the potatoes “off.” Serve in their skins.
Boiled potatoes
Pare with a sharp knife, and as thin as possible. Much of the mealiness of the potato depends upon this. The scullion who slashes away chunks of her beloved edible really deprives it of its chief merit, and all its comeliness. Have a pot of boiling water ready, salt it slightly and boil fast until a fork pierces the largest readily. Throw off the water immediately, sprinkle with salt, and dry out as directed in last recipe.
Baked potatoes (No. 1)
Select fine potatoes of uniform size. Wash, wipe and bake until the largest yields to the pressure of thumb and finger. Serve wrapped in a hot napkin. If the eater will knead his potato skilfully between his fingers before breaking it open, he will find a mealy mass upon opening it. Never cut a baked potato. It makes it “soggy.”
Baked potatoes (No. 2)
Pare and parboil; then set in an open bakepan in the oven and bake about half an hour, basting freely with butter or dripping until you have a delicate brown “glaze” upon each.
These may be eaten as a separate dish, or as a garnish for roast beef.
Stuffed potatoes
Bake eight large potatoes until done. Cut off the tops with a sharp knife and scoop out the insides with a small spoon. Set aside the skins for future use. With the back of a spoon mash the potatoes smooth, rub into them two tablespoonfuls of butter, a gill of cream, two teaspoonfuls of finely minced onion, a teaspoonful of minced parsley and salt and cayenne pepper to taste. When you have worked these ingredients to a smooth mass, beat in the stiffened whites of two eggs. Fill the empty potato skins with this creamy mixture, heaping it high. Stand the potato cases on end, side by side, in a baking-pan and set in the oven until the potato protruding from the tops is a delicate brown.
Potatoes on the half-shell
Bake large smooth potatoes, and cut each carefully in half lengthwise. Scrape out the insides, leaving the skins whole. Beat what you have taken out to a cream with melted butter, cream or milk, season with pepper and salt, and fill the “shells,” rounding the potato on top. Put a dot of butter upon each and brown lightly upon the upper grating of your oven.
Potato soufflé
Into two cupfuls of mashed potato work three cupfuls of hot milk in which two tablespoonfuls of butter have been half melted. Beat out all the lumps until you have a smooth purée. Season with salt and pepper. Beat four eggs very light and whip them into the potato and milk. When thoroughly mixed pour into a deep greased pudding-dish and bake in a good oven until “set” and delicately browned.
Potato croquettes
Warm in a double boiler two cupfuls of mashed potatoes and stir into this two teaspoonfuls of butter and the beaten yolks of two eggs. Add enough milk to make the paste of the right consistency to handle easily. With lightly floured hands form into croquettes and set aside to cool. When cold, dip in beaten egg and roll in cracker-dust. Set in the ice-box for several hours longer and fry in deep cottolene or other fat.
Potato fritters
Peel and boil four large potatoes, and when they are cold cut into tiny bits. Make a batter of two eggs—beaten light—a cupful of milk and a cupful and one-half of flour sifted twice with a half teaspoonful of baking-powder. Now add the minced potatoes, mix well and season with salt. Drop this mixture by the spoonful into deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. When the fritters are done lift them out with a perforated spoon, and lay them in a hot colander to drain free of fat.
Scalloped potatoes
Put a layer of sliced cold-boiled potatoes in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish, sprinkle with crumbs and bits of butter. Put in another layer of potatoes and more crumbs until the dish is full, having the topmost layer of the buttered crumbs. Moisten all by pouring carefully into the dish a cupful of well-seasoned white stock. Bake for twenty minutes.
Stewed potatoes (No. 1)
Peel, cut into neat, small dice and lay in cold water for an hour. Put over the fire in boiling water, slightly salted, and cook tender. Turn off the water and pour in a large cupful of hot milk, in which you have stirred a pinch of soda. Boil one minute and stir in a tablespoonful of butter rubbed into one of flour. Pepper and salt, add a tablespoonful of onion juice and a tablespoonful of minced parsley. Simmer for another minute, and serve.
Stewed potatoes (No. 2)
Peel potatoes and cut them into neat squares. Lay in cold water for an hour, drain, and put them over the fire in salted boiling water. Stew until they are tender, but not soft. Turn into a colander to drain. Cook together in a saucepan a heaping teaspoonful, each, of butter and browned flour, and pour upon them a pint of weak beef stock. When you have a smooth, thick sauce, season with pepper, salt and a little onion juice, and mix with the potato dice.
Hashed and browned potatoes
Pare, cut very small and evenly, and put into a saucepan with a finely minced onion and a stalk of celery chopped into tiny bits. Cover with salted boiling water and cook tender. Drain off the water, supplying its place with milk, heated with a pinch of soda. Bring to a bubble and stir in a large tablespoonful of butter, rubbed to a cream with one of flour. Pepper, salt, mix well—but taking care not to break the potatoes—take from the fire, stir and toss for a moment, then turn all into a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle crumbs on the top and brown in a good oven.
Potatoes á la duchesse
Peel and boil enough potatoes to make a pint when mashed. Mix with them the yolk of an egg, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter and the same quantity of cream. Turn this mixture upon a pastry-board and press it flat and smooth. With a sharp knife cut the potato paste into squares of uniform size. Slip a cake-turner under each square and transfer it carefully to a greased baking-pan. Set in a cold place to stiffen, then sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese, and bake in a quick oven to a delicate brown.
Potatoes á la Lyonnaise
Cut cold boiled potatoes into tiny dice of uniform size. Put two great spoonfuls of butter into the frying-pan and fry two sliced onions in this for three minutes. With a skimmer remove the onions and turn the potatoes into the hissing butter. Toss and stir with a fork that the dice may not become brown. When hot, add a teaspoonful of finely chopped parsley and cook a minute longer. Remove the potatoes from the pan with a perforated spoon, that the fat may drip from them. Serve very hot.
Savory potatoes
Heat in a double boiler a quart of milk and put into it three sliced onions. Boil for ten minutes, strain out the onions, return the milk to the fire, and stir into it two teaspoonfuls of butter rubbed into two of flour, and two teaspoonfuls of minced parsley. When the milk is as thick as cream, add to it two cupfuls of sliced cold boiled potatoes. Season with pepper and salt, and as soon as the potatoes are hot, pour all into a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle bread-crumbs over the top and bake until brown.
Potatoes and corn
(A “left-over.”)
Cut the kernels from six ears of boiled corn. Cut eight cold boiled potatoes into small dice of uniform size. Put into a frying-pan a tablespoonful of butter and turn the potatoes and corn into this; salt and pepper. Fry, tossing and stirring constantly, for ten minutes.
Fried potato hash
Chop cold boiled potatoes, season with salt, pepper and onion juice. Have two tablespoonfuls of good dripping, hissing hot, in a frying-pan; put in the potatoes and pat smooth. Cook slowly, turning the frying-pan occasionally that they may brown evenly on the bottom. In about twenty minutes they should be nicely colored and crusted into a thick sheet. Reverse carefully upon a hot platter.
Brown creamed potatoes
Cut eight potatoes into small dice of uniform size, boil tender in salted water, drain and stir into a pint of milk which has been thickened with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter; season. Turn all into a deep dish and bake until brown.
Potatoes with cheese sauce
Boil a dozen potatoes and, while hot, mash soft with hot milk and melted butter, adding salt and white pepper to taste. Whip light and heap in the center of a fire-proof platter. Smooth the sides of the mound with a knife and carefully remove about a cupful of potato from the center of the mound, leaving a cavity in its place. Dip a feather or brush in the beaten white of an egg and wash the inside of the hollow and the top and sides of the mound with this. Now set in the oven to get very hot and to brown lightly. When done draw to the door of the oven and fill the hollow with the sauce—made according to the following recipe—sprinkle the potatoes and cheese with crumbs and return to the oven for five minutes before sending to the table.
Sauce for the above
Heat a cupful of milk with a generous pinch of soda; season with pepper, salt and onion juice, and thicken with a heaping tablespoonful of butter cooked to a roux with one of flour; cook one minute and add three large spoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese.
Mashed potatoes
Boil and mash white potatoes and whip to a cream with a cupful of hot milk and a tablespoonful of melted butter. Whip for fully five minutes with two forks, then pile upon a hot platter.
Potato hillock
Boil potatoes, dry at the back of the range, salting well, and rub through a vegetable press or colander upon a fire-proof platter. As they fall let them form a conical hillock in the middle of the platter. Grate cheese thickly over the hillock and brown lightly upon the upper grating of your oven.
Potatoes Parisienne
Parisienne potatoes are cut into small balls from raw potatoes with a French vegetable cutter or a round spoon. They may be either fried, or boiled and served with maître d’hôtel sauce.
French fried potatoes
Peel potatoes, cut into strips, and lay in iced water for at least an hour. Drain and pat dry between the folds of a clean dish-towel that should absorb every drop of moisture. Have ready a kettle of deep cottolene or other fat, heated gradually until it is boiling hot. Test this by dropping in a bit of the potato. It should rise to the top and brown immediately. Put in the potatoes, fry to a golden brown, drain, first in a hot colander, then shake in heated tissue paper before transferring to a hot dish lined with a napkin.
Saratoga chips
Peel the potatoes and proceed as directed in preceding recipe when you have cut them into slices as thin as shavings.
Potatoes au gratin
Slice potatoes thin and put in layers in a greased pudding-dish, sprinkling each layer with salt, pepper and bits of butter. When all are in, pour in a gill of hot water or hot milk, and sprinkle the top layer of potatoes thickly with cracker-crumbs mixed with salt and pepper and bits of butter. Bake, covered, for half an hour. Uncover and brown.
Potato omelet
Make an omelet in the usual way; have ready by the time it is done, and lay upon it, this mixture, then fold down:
Cook one small minced onion in one tablespoonful of dripping until yellow, add one cupful of cold boiled potatoes, chopped fine, and cook until slightly colored, stirring frequently. Shake into it a little pepper and salt and one teaspoonful of finely minced parsley.
Set into the oven to keep warm until the omelet is ready.
Potato dumplings (No. 1)
Grate ten or twelve large raw potatoes. Put the grated pulp into a muslin bag and press out the juice. Turn into a bowl and add one-third as much boiled potato that has been run through a vegetable press. Salt to taste and beat in a raw egg until you have a smooth, creamy paste. Make into dumplings with well-floured hands, and roll each in flour to prevent them from sticking together while they are boiling.
Have a pot of water at a hard boil, drop in the dumplings and cook from ten to twelve minutes. Test by taking one out and cutting in two to see if it is done in the center. Take up with a skimmer and serve at once, as they soon get heavy.
Serve them with any kind of roast meat, or alone with gravy.
Potato dumplings (No. 2)
Peel medium-sized potatoes that have been partly boiled (not quite soft). When cold, grate; to three parts of the potatoes take one part of grated wheat bread, and add small squares of wheat bread browned in butter, then crushed into crumbs.
To each pint of the above add two eggs, well-beaten, two ounces of melted butter and nutmeg to suit taste. Mix all thoroughly and form into round dumplings the size of an egg, or larger, as preferred. Roll in flour and boil in salted water until dry inside, or about fifteen minutes.
Serve with roast meats.
Always use mealy potatoes.
Potato balls (“Kartoffelklösse”)
(A German recipe.)
Peel, boil and mash potatoes; put aside to cool.
Three cupfuls of potatoes, one cupful of bread, two eggs, well-beaten, separately; pepper, salt and nutmeg to taste, and some chopped parsley that has been heated in butter. The bread should be prepared as for croutons, crusts removed, cut in squares, browned in butter in the oven, then crushed. The mixture should be very stiff. Mold into small balls and drop into boiling, well-salted water; keep water boiling for fifteen minutes, when the klösse should be about twice the original size and done to the center. They may be served with bread-crumbs browned in butter, placed on the top of each dumpling, or with tomato sauce. With chopped meat filling the center of the dumplings they can also be varied. If too moist, use flour or bread-crumbs in molding. A good cook has the knack of dropping from the spoon without molding, but this is hard to do. The klösse should be the size of small apples when finished. Americans very often use a trifle of baking-powder to insure lightness in these. Germans depend on good beating.
SWEET POTATOES
Boiled sweet potatoes
Wash and cook in boiling water until soft. Set in a moderate oven for ten minutes to keep them from being watery.
Baked sweet potatoes
They are seldom cooked in any other way at the South, where they are native to the soil, and at their best estate.
Wash and wipe and bake in a good oven until tender.
Glazed sweet potatoes
Parboil in their skins, peel and lay in a bake-pan. Cook, basting often with butter, until they are a golden brown.
Scallop of sweet potatoes and bacon
This is a good “left-over” when you have a little cold corned ham and some cold boiled or baked sweet potatoes. Mince the meat—the fatter the better—and put a layer in the bottom of a bake-dish. Cover with sweet potato dice, pepper, and put in more bacon. When all the materials are used up, cover with crumbs; add enough milk to wet the crumbs, cover and bake half an hour. Uncover and brown.
Sweet potatoes au gratin
Parboil the potatoes, peel and slice while hot. Butter a deep dish well; put in a layer of potatoes, sprinkle with sugar, salt, pepper, and dot with butter; then a stratum of fine crumbs; season in the same way, leaving out the sugar. The uppermost layer should be of crumbs and well buttered. Pour in four tablespoonfuls of warm water to generate steam, cover closely and bake half an hour. Uncover and brown.
This is an especially nice dish for a family dinner, and always liked by children.
Buttered sweet potatoes
Boil sweet potatoes and peel them. Lay in a deep dish and upon each potato put a teaspoonful of butter. Set in the oven and heat until the butter sizzles about the edge of the dish. Then send to the table.
Sweet potato croquettes
Into two cupfuls of boiled and mashed sweet potatoes beat a tablespoonful of butter, and stir in a saucepan over the fire until smoking hot. Now remove and add a tablespoonful of cream and the yolks of two eggs. When cold, form into croquettes and roll each croquette in beaten egg and cracker-crumbs. Arrange all on a platter and set in a cold place for several hours before frying in deep cottolene or other fat to a golden brown.
Sweet potato puff
Into two cupfuls of boiled and mashed sweet potatoes beat three whipped eggs, a cupful of milk, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter and seasoning to taste. Beat hard and bake in a greased pudding-dish.
Sweet potato and chestnut croquettes
Boil and mash enough sweet potatoes to make two cupfuls, and enough Spanish chestnuts to make one cupful. Rub the nuts and potatoes together while hot and beat into them two tablespoonfuls of butter, four teaspoonfuls of cream, two beaten eggs, and season to taste. When cold, form into croquettes, roll in egg and cracker-crumbs, and set in a cold place for an hour before frying in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat.
RICE
Boiled rice
Into three pints of hot salted water, when at a fast boil, throw half a cupful of raw rice, previously washed and picked over. Keep it at a furious boil for twenty minutes, when test a grain to see if it is done. If it is soft, drain away every drop of water; set the uncovered pot at the back of the range for two minutes to dry off the rice, and serve. Not a spoon should touch it while cooking, and each grain should be whole and apart from the rest.
This, the one and only way to boil rice properly, is also the easiest. Shake the saucepan up three times while the rice is in cooking, to make sure it does not clog.
Pasty rice is as abhorrent to those who have eaten it cooked according to this recipe as sodden, gluey potatoes.
Serve in a hot, uncovered dish. Eat with butter, salt and pepper, and you will not regret the tyrant potato, should he fail to appear.
Buttered rice
Spread three cups of cold boiled rice upon a platter and set in the open oven that every grain may dry. Meanwhile, heat a little butter in the frying-pan and fry a sliced onion in it. When the slices are browned remove them with a perforated spoon, and lay the rice by the spoonful in the pan. Stir until each grain is coated with the butter; turn the rice into a heated colander, shake hard, and set at the side of the range for five minutes. Serve in a deep vegetable dish.
Rice croquettes
Boil as directed in first recipe; drain, and beat in two whipped eggs, half a cupful of milk (or cream if you have it), a little butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, a little mace, pepper and salt. Set by until perfectly cold, form into croquettes, roll in egg and fine crumbs, leave on ice for an hour and fry in boiling deep cottolene or other fat.
You can make the croquettes of cold boiled rice if you have it, but it is hardly as good for the purpose as the hot. The croquettes seldom have the consistency of those made up while the rice is hot.
Rice and tomato croquettes
When the rice has boiled ten minutes drain off the water and cover the rice with tomato juice, already heated and seasoned with pepper, salt and sugar. Cook ten minutes more, or until the rice is tender. Take from the fire, add a great spoonful of butter and a teaspoonful of onion juice; the beaten yolks of three eggs, and, when you have beaten these in, two tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese. Set in a pan of boiling water and stir over the fire for five minutes. Turn out and let it get perfectly cold. Make into croquettes, roll in egg and cracker crumbs; set on ice for an hour and fry in hot, deep cottolene or other fat. Drain and serve.
Boiled rice with tomato sauce
Boil in the usual way, dish, and pour over it, loosening with a fork that the sauce may penetrate to every part, a generous cupful of rich tomato sauce, seasoned with pepper, salt, onion juice and sugar, and, finally, with two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese.
Savory rice
Prepare as in last recipe, but add a small cupful of good stock to an equal quantity of tomato sauce; cook together for two minutes and pour over the rice.
Rice pudding as a vegetable
Boil one cupful of raw rice twenty minutes, or until soft, but not broken. Beat four eggs light, and when you have stirred a tablespoonful of butter into the rice add these and season with pepper and salt. Stir in, gradually, a scant quart of milk; beat all well for one minute, turn into a buttered pudding-dish and bake, covered, half an hour; then brown.
It should be as light as a soufflé, and must be eaten at once. A pleasing accompaniment to roast poultry of any kind.
Savory rice pudding
Boil and drain a cupful of rice. Stir into it, while hot, a tablespoonful of butter and a cupful of hot milk with which has been mixed a teaspoonful of corn-starch dissolved in cold water. Add a well-beaten egg, salt and pepper, and spread upon a platter to cool. Meanwhile make ready two cupfuls of chopped meat of almost any kind—poultry, veal, lamb, mutton, beef, giblets, liver—or a mixture of several—whatever you have on hand. Chop half a can of mushrooms and work in; season highly with paprika, kitchen bouquet and onion juice. Some even put in a little curry. Moisten slightly with gravy and when the rice has cooled mix all well together. Butter a cake mold lavishly, put the pudding into it; fit on a close top and set in a pot of boiling water. Cook steadily for at least two hours. Dip the mold into ice-water to loosen the pudding from the sides, and turn out upon a hot platter.
Send tomato sauce, mixed with grated cheese, around with it, or any gravy you may chance to have left over.
Molded rice (No. 1)
Boil a cupful of raw rice ten minutes; drain and pour over it, in place of the water, two cupfuls of chicken gravy or stock made from chicken, duck or turkey bones, seasoned well with salt, pepper and onion juice. Set in boiling water uncovered, and cook gently until quite dry. Turn into a bowl wet with hot water, press down firmly and reverse the bowl upon a hot platter. Cover the mound with grated cheese, brush all over with beaten white of egg, sift grated cheese upon the egg, and set upon the top grating of your oven to color slightly.
Molded rice (No. 2)
Boil a cupful of rice in plenty of hot salted water until soft. Drain and dry off. Stir into it a great spoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of onion juice and the beaten yolks of two eggs, with salt and pepper to taste. Stir over the fire in a bowl set in boiling water for two minutes, using a fork that you may not break the rice to pieces. Turn into a round-bottomed bowl wet with cold water, and press down hard. Reverse the bowl upon a fireproof platter, cover the molded rice thickly with a meringue made of the whites of the eggs beaten stiff, and set upon the top grating of the oven for three minutes to form.
Eat with drawn butter.
Spanish rice (very nice)
Boil one cupful of rice until tender in plenty of boiling water, salted; drain and dry off. Chop a quarter of a pound of fat salt pork, and fry in a pan. When it hisses put into the pan two medium-sized onions, also minced. Chop two green sweet peppers (seeded, of course), and mix with the rice, then the pork and onions, and enough tomato sauce to moisten the mixture well. Butter a bake-dish, add salt and pepper, if needed, to the rice, and put into the dish. Coat thickly with fine crumbs and bake, covered, for twenty minutes; then brown.
Rice timbales
Pack hot boiled rice in slightly buttered timbale molds; let them stand in hot water for ten minutes; run a pointed knife around the sides; turn from the molds and serve as a garnish for curried meats or boiled fowl.
SALSIFY, OR OYSTER-PLANT
Stewed salsify
Scrape the roots, throwing them at once into cold water, that they may not blacken. Cut into inch lengths and put over the fire in boiling salted water. Stew until tender. Drain off the water and pour upon the salsify in the saucepan a cup of hot milk. After it has simmered five minutes add a tablespoonful of butter and three tablespoonfuls of cracker dust; season to taste and serve.
Mock fried oysters
Wash, trim and cook a bunch of oyster-plant (or salsify) in boiling salted water until tender. Drain and scrape off the skin. Mash well, and if stringy rub through a colander.
To one pint of the mashed salsify add one teaspoonful of flour, one tablespoonful of butter, one well-beaten egg, and salt and pepper to season highly. Take up a small spoonful and shape it into an oval about the size of a large oyster; dip each lightly in flour or very fine cracker crumbs, and brown on each side in hot butter.
Salsify fritters
Scrape the salsify and grate it fine. If you have a machine for grinding vegetables, use that, as the process of grinding is so rapid that there is not time for the salsify to discolor before it is prepared. Have made a batter of two beaten eggs, half a cupful of flour, a gill of milk, and salt to taste. Beat hard, and whip the grated salsify into this. Drop by the spoonful into deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. When the fritters are of the right shade of brown, drain them quickly in a hot colander to free them of superfluous grease. Serve very hot.
Scalloped salsify
Wash and trim, but do not scrape fine roots of salsify. Boil in salted water until tender. Drain, scrape, clean and cut into inch lengths. Pack into a buttered bake-dish, alternately with thick white drawn butter, well seasoned, and fine bread-crumbs, seasoned and buttered. The top layer should be crumbs wet with cream. Cover closely and bake half an hour; then brown delicately.
Not a bad imitation of scalloped oysters.
SPINACH
“Spinach is one of our most valuable vegetables. It contains salts and is slightly laxative. In order to retain all the nutritive value and the salts in the spinach it is best to cook in a steamer. It should be cooked just long enough to be tender, which is from ten to fifteen minutes. Spinach, if cooked too long, will lose its flavor and color.”
Thus writes an able authority upon dietetics. In three sentences we have here condensed the cardinal rules for preparing this queenly esculent for the use of the human animal. Opposed to one clause of the summary we have the story of a noted epicure who found spinach so much better when warmed up for the thirteenth time that he ordered his cook to cook it thirteen times on the first day of serving.
Boiled spinach, plain
Pick over the spinach, rejecting all yellow or dried leaves. Wash in four waters, letting it soak in the last cold bath for three-quarters of an hour. Put into a large pot over the fire with just enough cold water to cover it. Cook for twenty minutes, or until tender. Drain in a colander, then turn into a wooden chopping-bowl and chop very, very fine. Return the spinach to the saucepan, stir into it a great spoonful of butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Mound the spinach on a hot platter, and garnish with slices of hard-boiled eggs.
Spinach á la crême
Pick over and wash the spinach as in the last recipe. After soaking in the fourth water, put the leaves, with the moisture still clinging to them, into a large pot, and cover closely. The moisture on the leaves and the juice of the vegetables will form enough liquor to prevent scorching. Cook for twenty minutes, stirring well several times during the process. Sprinkle with salt and turn into a colander to drain. Press out the liquid, turn the spinach into a chopping-bowl and chop as fine as possible. Cook together in a saucepan one tablespoonful of flour and two of butter, and, when they are blended, pour the spinach upon them. Season and cook for several minutes, stirring constantly. Pour upon the spinach a small cupful of cream in which a pinch of soda has been dissolved, and cook three minutes longer, still stirring. Now add pepper and salt to taste and a pinch of nutmeg, and beat hard for three minutes. Serve smoking-hot, garnished with small triangles of toast.
Spinach puff
Boil as in the former recipe, chop “exceeding small,” and beat in a tablespoonful of melted butter, salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. Set aside until cool, then stir in a gill of cream, the whipped yolks of two eggs and the stiffened whites of three. Beat hard and turn into a deep, greased pudding-dish. Bake for twenty minutes, and serve at once.
Spinach soufflé
Boil the spinach and chop fine. Add the beaten yolks of two eggs, a tablespoonful of melted butter, salt and pepper to taste. Set this mixture away to cool. When cold, beat into it a half-gill of cream and the frothed whites of three eggs. Turn into a buttered pudding-dish, and bake quickly in a hot oven to a light brown. Serve as soon as it is removed from the oven.
Spinach pátés
Boil the spinach, press out every drop of water and chop fine. Cook together in a saucepan a tablespoonful of butter and two of flour. Add the spinach with pepper and salt to taste; cook for five minutes. Butter the insides of muffin-tins or pâté-pans, and press the spinach hard into these. Set in the oven to keep hot while you make a white sauce. Carefully turn out the forms of spinach on a hot platter, lay a slice of hard-boiled egg on the top of each form and pour the white sauce around it.
SQUASH
The summer squash differs from the winter variety in having a tender shell and in being very juicy. Both may be cooked in a variety of ways, and form many appetizing dishes. In opening the winter squash it is often necessary to exert great strength to break through the outer rind—some housekeepers using a small saw for the purpose. The summer vegetable may be easily peeled or sliced with an ordinary case-knife.
Boiled squash
Wash two summer squashes, pare them, and cut into pieces about an inch square. Put them over the fire in a saucepan of boiling water and boil steadily for twenty-five minutes. Drain in a colander, pressing hard to extract the water, turn into a wooden bowl and mash with a potato-beater until free from lumps. Now beat in a heaping tablespoonful of butter; salt and pepper to taste. Return to the fire just long enough to get very hot, stirring all the time. Serve in a deep vegetable dish.
Baked squash
Peel, boil and mash two small squashes. When cold, beat in two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, two whipped eggs, a gill of cream and salt and pepper to taste. Turn into a greased bakedish, sprinkle with bread-crumbs and bake for a half-hour. A good way to use squash left over from yesterday.
Creamed squash
Peel two summer squashes and cut into dice of uniform size. Boil for fifteen minutes in salted water, or until tender, but not broken. Drain carefully in a colander and keep hot while you cook together two heaping teaspoonfuls of butter and the same quantity of flour until they bubble; then pour upon them a cupful and a half of sweet milk. Stir until smooth; turn in the squash dice, season liberally with salt and white pepper, and serve.
Scalloped squash
Peel, wash and boil three summer squashes according to directions given in the recipe for boiled squash. Beat two eggs light, and whip into them a small cupful of rich sweet milk, and a tablespoonful of melted butter. Beat this mixture into the mashed squash, season with salt and pepper and turn all into a greased pudding-dish. Sprinkle with bread-crumbs and bits of butter, and bake.
Squash pancakes
Boil and mash two squashes, and when cold beat into them two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, a quarter of a teaspoonful of salt, a pint of milk, two eggs and a cupful of flour in which has been sifted a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Beat hard for five minutes. Have a soapstone griddle heated, and drop the mixture by the spoonful on this. If the cakes are too stiff, add a little more milk. Serve hot with butter. These are good with broiled steaks or chops.
Squash fritters
Peel and slice the squash, and boil in salted water for a little over five minutes. Carefully remove the slices and drop into iced water. When cold, drain in a colander and pat dry between the folds of a dish-towel. Dip each slice in beaten egg, then in cracker crumbs, and when all are thoroughly coated set in a cold place for an hour. Have ready a kettle of boiling dripping; drop the squash slices carefully into this and fry to a golden brown. Drain in a heated colander, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and serve.
TOMATOES
The nineteenth century was a third gone before the world on this side of the sea began to appreciate the beneficent qualities of what our foremothers used to call “love apples.” There is no other vegetable that is of more value as a liver regulator and blood-cooler than the tomato. The small quantity of calomel it contains acts as a corrective of biliousness, and stimulates all the secretions of the body to activity. Eaten raw, it is cooling and delicious, and it may be cooked in so many and varied forms that one does not soon weary of it.
In the average home it appears as a salad, in soup, stewed, and perhaps baked or scalloped. When it has been thus served many housekeepers consider that they have exhausted its capabilities. On the contrary, they have hardly touched upon its possibilities.
The increasing familiarity with sauces as the cook’s potent aids in converting old dishes into new, has made tomato sauce popular as an accompaniment of certain compounds of macaroni, but even those who use the sauce in this manner do not all know how admirable it is served with boiled or baked fish, or with roast mutton, or as a vehicle for shrimps, or as a zest for eggs. Apart from this, the tomato, not made into a sauce, but employed either fresh or canned, may come to the table in a variety of easily-prepared and savory combinations that will appeal to the family caterer as being the new and inexpensive dishes she is always seeking.
Raw tomatoes
Never scald them. Pare and strip off the skins. Set on ice until you are ready to serve. Cut up quickly, lay within a chilled bowl and season, as you serve, with French dressing.