Marta had twice made bread very satisfactorily, and Molly thought she might now show her how to make plain rolls; therefore she had told her to save out a piece of her bread dough, about a pint bowl full, and when she returned from taking the recipes to Mrs. Lennox, Molly was ready to show her how to make them.
It was ten o’clock, and Molly reckoned they would be warm for dinner if made now.
“These are going to be quite plain rolls; when you succeed in these we will try finer ones. Get a good table-spoonful of butter,—lard would do, but I use it as little as possible for health’s sake—put it near the fire to warm a very little; add to the dough two tea-spoonfuls of sugar; now the butter is pliable, work it in; it will take five minutes’ constant kneading to make the butter and dough quite smooth. Now you see it is softer than bread dough; if a crisp crust is wanted, work in gradually a little more flour, almost a table-spoonful,—if the weather is cold have it warm; if a soft crust is preferred leave it as it is. Put the dough to rise in a warm place behind the stove, but not too hot, or it may sour; in from two to three hours it will have risen again very light; work it over thoroughly for three or four minutes till it is again as small as now, and set it to rise again, and when light come and tell me.
“This evening we shall have bisque of oysters, baked liver, and croquettes, and you can make a peach pudding by your recipe, but I want you to use cold lamb for croquettes; I will prepare it before I go out of the kitchen so that it will be ready whenever you are, and remember if you forget anything to come to me.”
Molly cut the meat from the cold shoulder of lamb, removed every bit of skin and gristle, and then chopped it very fine; she had not left that to Marta because she might not be careful enough. She also flavored the meat by using a bit of onion as large as a dime chopped till as fine as sand, and a tea-spoonful of parsley, also chopped fine, and a pinch of thyme; these were mixed with the lamb, and Marta was told to do the rest as if making croquettes of chicken.
Molly intended asking her friend, Mrs. Welles, to come and stay a week with her soon, and as that would entail a little extra expense, she meant to economize somewhat for a week or two; therefore she omitted some little items from her bill of fare, and substituted others that would be cheaper. This interfered very slightly with her plan of letting Marta do alone nearly all that she herself had done the last week.
The girl would be able to make croquettes with one meat as easily as another, and although for the sake of practice she meant to repeat the dishes, she did not care to have them in the same order. The bisque of oysters she would have in place of clams for the sake of variety and of showing Marta that the principle was the same in both, and that another time she might substitute lobster instead of either, and yet the process would not change. Another thing she had in mind was that as the breast of lamb she had for Thursday would be a rather slim dinner, the oyster patties, of which Harry was extravagantly fond, would make up.
Soon after one o’clock Marta came to say that the rolls had risen, been worked down, and were now light enough, she thought, to push down.
When she went into the kitchen she found the dough just about as light as bread should be.
“No, Marta, this is not light enough. Rolls should rise a great deal lighter than bread. They will need to rise another half hour—but as I see the oysters are here, I will use some of them for patties for to-morrow’s dinner.”
Molly took a third of the pint of oysters, and then half a gill of the liquid, and scalded both for a minute; then, taking out the oysters, added an equal quantity of milk to the liquor, and in another small saucepan put two tea-spoonfuls of butter, the same of flour; and, stirring them together till they bubbled, she poured milk and oyster liquid to them, stirring till they were quite smooth. She seasoned this sauce and then dropped the oysters, each one cut in four, into it. She did not mean to use them to-day, but the oysters kept raw would not be good; cooked in this way they would be as good as when fresh.
The rolls being now light Molly stuck her fingers two or three times downward into the light mass, and it sank under them.
“This is what you are to do, Marta, when I tell you to ‘push the rolls down;’ do this twice or three times after they have been twice thoroughly worked over—take notice, only lightly stick your fingers in, to let out air; don’t knead them at all, nor try to make them smooth; leave them just so; they come up again very rapidly after the first time, and this is the secret of having rolls of a close, exceedingly light texture, that will have no doughy inside.”
An hour later the rolls had risen and been pushed down three times, and Molly, after working them all over again, took a little piece of butter on her hand, broke off bits of the dough as big as an English walnut, and rolled them between her buttered palms, and then dropped each on to a greased tin two inches apart. They were set to rise till they would be like small balloons—each quite double the size it was when first made. They would perhaps take three quarters of an hour to rise, but Molly cautioned Marta that she could not go by time in bread-making, for that differed so constantly; in summer it would be less, and in winter more; the degree of heat in the kitchen would make the greatest difference; also, some kinds of flour rose more quickly than others.
It must not be supposed Molly had forgotten Mrs. Gibbs; she had her and her family in mind when she ordered the liver. The neck end of her lamb this week she was going to make into a nourishing Scotch broth, and out of the dollar, of which she had spent only fifteen cents as yet, she bought ten pounds of rye flour and five of white.
This would provide bread for a month, and as the poor woman was yet so weak, Molly meant to have it made at her own house for the present.
When the rolls were light enough to bake, they were brushed over with white of egg. The chicken pie on Saturday, it will be remembered, had only taken part of the white left from the forcemeat balls; the rest was beaten with a tea-spoonful of water and set in the ice-box for just such an occasion as this, and was now used to brush over the rolls.
While the rolls baked, Molly prepared the liver for the dinner, and told Marta to make the Scotch hotch-potch for the Gibbs family.
“Cut the meat up in pieces; put it in a saucepan with two onions, half a small cup of Scotch barley, a carrot and a turnip, a quart and pint of water, and a tea-spoonful and a half of salt; in an hour shred up a quarter of a cabbage and add it. Let it all simmer for two hours and a half, or until the barley is very soft.”
Molly, while Marta was doing this, washed and dried the liver, cut about a dozen strips of fat pork as thick as her little finger, and with a narrow knife made many incisions through the liver and then inserted the pork. When all was done she floured it, sprinkled a little salt over it and it was ready for the oven.
When the liver was cooked—it took just half an hour in a hot oven—it was taken up, put on a hot dish, and a half cup of boiling water poured into it; round the pan was a great deal of thick glaze; this was all rubbed off and dissolved in the gravy; a tea-spoonful of Worcestershire sauce was added and a pinch of salt, and then the gravy was poured over the liver.
The dish was a great success. Harry, without an idea that it had cost but ten cents, cut it in slices a quarter of an inch thick, which, where mottled with the pork and the rich brown gravy, gave quite an air to the homely viand. The bisque of oysters Marta had managed very nicely, and also the peach pudding, all but the foaming sauce, which Molly had shown her how to make; it was a good sauce, but did not foam; the only real fault was with the croquettes, which were like sausage meat and not at all creamy. Molly made no comments at the time, knowing that a much more experienced cook often made no better, but next morning she meant to find out where the mistake was.
“Did you notice, Marta, that the croquettes last night were not quite right?”
“Yes, they were harder, but I went exactly by the directions.”
“I want you to tell me just what you did, and then we will see where the mistake came in. You managed everything else so nicely.”
Marta repeated the recipe correctly and Molly was puzzled.
“Are you sure you did just as you say?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then show me how you measured half a pint.”
“Ah, there it is; you have really only a little more than a gill. Did you measure like that yesterday?”
Marta confessed that she had, and the puzzle was solved, and more understandable still when Molly saw what she called a table-spoonful of flour; it was really near two, for she had used the large kitchen basting-spoon, and used it heaped.
“Now, Marta, I want to tell you something. You are anxious to cook like the man cook you once knew; that is, you want everything you do to turn out always right, and they will only do that by your being very exact about measuring and weighing. A tea-spoonful more or less seems a trifle, and yet it will spoil many things. Remember, if you have a recipe that calls for a table-spoonful, it means just that, if the recipe is good for anything, and half a pint is exactly that measure full, not partly full.
“Gouffé, the celebrated French cook, who wrote a remarkable book for other cooks, was so particular that he explains exactly how much he means by weight when he says ‘a pinch of salt,’ and he directs one to weigh each carrot and turnip for soup till one’s eye is accustomed to the sizes.”