When Molly returned from her walk to the dépôt with Harry, she found on the back stoop a barrel and a packing-case that had come by express. The barrel she quickly saw contained apples; the packing-case was as yet a mystery, but it did not long remain so. Molly was not frightened at a hammer, and between her and Marta the top was soon wrenched off; and then she saw it was full of treasures. A dozen pots of raspberry jam, the same of currant jelly, English pickled walnuts and French canned peas and mushrooms, and boned chicken enough to last her the winter, a jar of Canton ginger and one of French plums, met Molly’s wondering eyes. What luxuries for a young housekeeper! Of course they could come only from Harry’s parents.
Had they sent her a present for herself she would have resented it, considering how they had looked down on her, but this gift she could take pleasure in, for it was as much for Harry as for her, and only such things as would be very pleasant and useful, but were not necessaries. Her housewifely mind was already reveling in the thought of a well stocked store-room.
She had found a letter from Mrs. Welles, at the post-office, which she had waited to read till she could do so at home and enjoy it, for her friend was a clever and voluminous correspondent.
“Next Monday, dear Molly, if convenient, I shall leave New York for Greenfield. Mr. Welles says you are doing a rash thing to invite me, that I am primed and double-loaded and warranted to go off at any moment, for he has heard me the last month saying of every new thing (‘thing’ always being ‘dish’ with me), ‘Molly and I will do that together when I get there.’ If you can, imagine how I ache to get away from this hotel and into a house of my own, with a kitchen and a range. Never, never again will I consent to be a homeless hotel waif. However, in two weeks our house will be our own again,” etc., etc.
Molly smiled over her friend’s letter, she knew her so well. How pleasant it would be to have her in her own house!
Charlotte Welles was an English woman five years older than Molly, who had known her long before her marriage to the rich banker, Mr. Welles.
When Molly and her mother were living in London in very economical lodgings at South Kensington, they had become acquainted with Mrs. Morris and her handsome daughter, whom at first they took to be an art-student at South Kensington. Charlotte had laughed merrily at the mistake.
“No, indeed, I’m a cooking-student.”
Then she had told Molly and her mother how it was that being certain she would have to earn her living, and, though generally clever, having no special talent for anything, she had chosen her career. “As for being a governess, I have neither patience nor meekness nor ability enough, and as cooking is just now coming to be a recognized profession for women who are not of the working-class, I decided on that. I don’t find many ladies among the thorough-going students like myself, but I do see that no profession offers greater rewards to a lady,—perhaps for that very reason; so I am qualifying myself to be a teacher.”
Molly’s mother, invalid as she was, had taught her daughter more than most girls know of housekeeping, and her own taste leaned that way, but no doubt her acquaintance with Charlotte Morris confirmed it; she went with her sometimes to the demonstrations and worked with her at home. When the latter left the school a medallist and went to Liverpool to lecture, Molly and her mother had gone to the south of France for the health of the latter, and there they heard of Charlotte’s success, how her grace and culture (and perhaps her beauty) made her much in request at ladies’ colleges and schools, and of the public lectures she gave. But her career was cut short, before it was well begun, by her engagement to an American banker of wealth,—an engagement speedily followed by marriage; and it was through Mrs. Welles that, after her mother’s death, on returning to her native country, Molly found the position as governess she had held up to her marriage with Harry Bishop. Several months before Molly came to Greenfield Mr. and Mrs. Welles had let their house and gone to England for a trip, but returned two months before the tenant’s term was up and had been living at one of the best hotels since.
True to her old instincts, Mrs. Welles attended all the best cooking-lectures in whatever city she might be, and after Molly’s marriage they had gone together to cooking-school and practiced at her house, which had been of incalculable service to Molly. Since her return to America they had not met. It is needless to say she looked forward to her visit with heartfelt pleasure, for she felt that to her acquaintance she owed very much.
And how these good things had come just in time!
To-day they were to have a regular boiled dinner, German soup made from the half leg of mutton boiled, and an egg beaten in it, the same that she had shown Mrs. Lennox how to make, and the mutton with caper sauce, mashed turnips and moulded potatoes, macaroni cheese, and pudding.
This dinner Marta could cook with written instructions, all but the pudding, and Molly, now she had jam, meant this to be an old-fashioned English jam roly-poly.
The written instructions were as follows:
At five o’clock put the half leg of mutton into boiling water, only enough to cover it; put with it one carrot cut, one turnip, one onion, and when it has boiled very slowly half an hour, put in a very scant tea-spoonful of salt. Put some macaroni to boil. Put the turnips, cut into strips, on the fire in boiling water at half-past five, also the potatoes. Let the turnips boil fast, the potatoes slowly.
Make three gills of white sauce instead of half a pint, never forgetting when you increase the milk also to increase butter and flour in same proportion; then when the macaroni is tender put a layer of it in a small dish, pour over it a table-spoonful of white sauce and the same of grated cheese with pepper and salt, then another layer of macaroni, more white sauce, cheese and seasoning, and over all strew bread crumbs and bits of butter, and bake till brown.
The turnips strain when tender and let them stew five minutes in some of the white sauce made for the macaroni, reserving the rest for caper sauce. To make it, add capers in proportion of one good tea-spoonful of capers to the half pint, and just as it goes to table stir in a tea-spoonful of caper vinegar; if it stands after this it will be apt to curdle.
Take up the mutton, put it to keep hot, skim and strain the broth and let it boil down fast till there is enough for dinner and no more; beat an egg, mix a very little of the broth with it, and put both into the tureen, with a tea-spoonful of parsley chopped fine. Let the broth remain off the fire one minute, then pour it to the egg, stirring quickly, then serve it.
Molly had a busy morning arranging her store-room, and making a list of what it contained. This list she nailed behind the door, with a pencil attached, so that when anything was used a mark was made against it. In this way, when any article was nearly out she would be reminded to replace it. It was not so necessary, perhaps, with a girl as careful as Marta, or in her small family as in a larger one, but it had been her mother’s way, and she followed it. She could then keep track of everything at a glance.
One hour and a half before dinner Molly put on a saucepan of water to boil, and then chopped six ounces of beef-kidney suet very fine, which she mixed with half a pound of flour and a pinch of salt. She made a hole in the centre of the mixture, and poured in enough cold water to make a stiff firm paste (not so stiff as to be hard to roll out); it was handled as little as possible, only worked enough to keep it together. It was rolled out once to a sheet half an inch thick, then spread with raspberry jam, which was not allowed to come within an inch of the edge all round; the edge was wetted, the paste rolled up and the ends pinched closely to prevent the jam coming out, as was also the flap along the centre. A pudding-cloth was scalded and floured, the roly-poly laid on one side of it and rolled up; each end was tied close to the paste, and the centre pinned. No string was passed round the centre, as Molly had sometimes seen done, for as the pudding swells the string cuts into it. When finished the cloth was not very loose on the pudding, nor tight, but what may be called an easy fit. When it would leave the water, after an hour and quarter constant boiling, it would be swelled and plump.
Molly saw that the water boiled fast when it was dropped in, and that there was plenty of it.
“Marta, take care that the pudding never ceases to boil, and once in a while look that it floats round, so that it may not stick to the bottom.”
The next day Molly had to make Dresden patties, and some fritters the recipe for which she had unearthed from the old last-century book; it was written in the quaint language and indefinite fashion common to cooking-books of that date. Molly had often thought, in reading them, that housekeepers’ wits must have been much more brilliant in those days, or the books could have done little good.
But she had thought out the matter, and her knowledge of old cook-books told her that a “handful” probably meant a man’s hand full, as the book was written by a man cook; that when you were told to “beat and search your sugar” it was because they had not latter-day improvements and probably no powdered sugar was sold. Reduced to present-day terms and small dimensions, the recipe was as follows:
The yolks of two eggs and a tea-spoonful of flour, and a scant half pint of milk or cream, a pinch of salt, a quarter of a small nutmeg and a table-spoonful of sugar. The flour and yolks of eggs to be well beaten with a little of the milk, the rest to be added warm, and all beaten very well together with the sugar and salt and nutmeg. This will make a custard, to be baked in a shallow round dish till firm, then put to get cold. Make a batter of a gill of milk (half cream, the recipe called for), one whole egg and enough flour to make it thick enough to quite mask the back of a spoon without running off,—two level table-spoonfuls are about enough; beat one of the whites of eggs left from the custard till it will not slip from the dish; put to the batter, which must be quite smooth, the grated rind of half a lemon, a pinch of salt, and then add the beaten white of egg, stirring very slowly after this is in. Cut the custard into six pieces, pie-fashion, and dip each piece into the batter, and drop it into boiling lard.
The recipe sounded very well to Molly, and her mind went over all sorts of improvements in flavoring, from simply adding vanilla to the introduction of chopped citron or crumbled macaroons into the custard; but she would make the recipe as given, or as nearly as she could interpret it, first.
Although the fritters would be much better hot, perhaps, the book gave no clew to that; she knew they must be good warmed over, or even cold, and as she did not want to leave the dinner-table to attend to the frying,—being an experiment,—she felt she must do it herself. She decided to cook them at once; the custard required very careful handling while it was being dipped in the batter, and she found the safest plan to prevent breaking was to pour the batter into a saucer, and take up the fritter, when dipped, on a broad knife. The batter completely hid the custard, and when dropped into the fat, which was very hot, it puffed up outside and doubled the size.
They took two minutes to get pale brown, and then they were laid on paper to drain; and after the sugar was sifted on them they certainly were pretty to look at, and at dinner were found to bear out their good appearance, and Molly added them to her special recipes.
The Dresden patties she wanted Marta to understand making, because they were so easy, so useful, and so pretty. With a view to making them, Molly had kept half a stale loaf that was as light as baker’s bread,—too light, she thought, for the table; from it she cut two slices two inches thick and from them she cut, with a medium sized biscuit-cutter, three rounds; the cutter was simply a circle of tin with a handle over it, so that the cutter went right through the bread; had it had a top to prevent it going through, she would have cut them with a half-pound baking-powder box. On the top of each round of bread she cut a smaller circle as for pastry patties; now she beat an egg, added half a pint of milk with a pinch of salt, and stood the three patties in it, telling Marta to let them stay so at least an hour, turning them about, but being careful not to break them, the idea being to let the egg and milk soak well into them, and to make them as moist as possible without breaking. It will be remembered that one sweetbread only was cooked two days ago; the other was now cut into dice, two tea-spoonfuls of flour and butter and a gill of stock made into béchamel sauce, and the sweetbreads put to it with a table-spoonful of oyster liquor (as she happened to have it). This thinned the sauce sufficiently to let the sweetbreads cook in it without burning. By the time they were done the sauce would be reduced again and very thick (or, if it should not be, the sweetbreads would be taken out, and the sauce boiled fast and stirred till very thick).
Marta had the lard ready, very hot indeed, when Molly came out to show her how to fry the patties. She put them to drain, using a cake-turner, for they would not bear handling.
“At some times these are rolled in flour, at others in egg and crumbs, and I think they are prettier for crumbing; but it is not necessary, and I will save an egg. Now I am going to drop them into the fat, which is as hot as it can be without burning. Stand aside, for it will splutter very much.” Each one was dropped from the end of the cake-turner, and, as Molly said, they “spluttered.”
“I leave them on the very hottest part of the fire, because they are filled with cold custard, which will keep the temperature about right for five minutes; then draw them a little aside if they are brown, and let them remain two minutes.” When taken up they were a bright brown, looking almost like a doughnut that had been shaped like a small Charlotte Russe. The centre was then scooped out, leaving about half an inch of crust all round, which was filled with the fricasseed sweetbreads piled in the centre.
“The beauty of these patties is that they can be made early and heated in the oven, and that they are suitable for dessert with preserves, or are excellent filled with any kind of rich minced meat or oysters.”
Molly had long wanted to make an experiment with oysters; she believed simply panned and served with brown butter they would be delicious. She had never heard of “oysters au beurre noir,” but, knowing they must be good, resolved to try the experiment. She waited, however, till Harry was in the house, for they would spoil by standing.
She made the sauce first, because the oysters must not wait. She put a good table-spoonful of butter into a little saucepan and watched it till it got golden brown, but did not burn; then she put it aside to cool a little, and heated a tea-spoonful of vinegar in a cup, Marta meantime draining the oysters. They were put in a stewpan with pepper and salt, covered tightly and set over the fire and tossed round once or twice, the heated (but not boiled) vinegar was put to the brown butter, they were made very hot together, and when the oysters were plumped in their own steam, they were drained off and turned into a hot dish, with the brown butter over them, and served at once. They were such a success that this became a favorite oyster dish with the Bishop family.