Six eggs.
Half a cupful of nice gravy skimmed and strained. Chicken, turkey, game and veal gravy are especially good for this purpose. Clear soup may also be used.
Half a cupful of pounded cracker or fine dry bread-crumbs.
Pepper and salt.
Pour the gravy into a pie-plate and let it get warm before putting in the eggs as in last receipt. Pepper, salt and strew cracker crumbs evenly over them. Bake five minutes. Serve in the pie-plate.
Dropped Eggs with White Sauce.
Table of Contents Drop or poach the eggs; put them on a hot, flat dish and pour over them this sauce boiling hot.
In a saucepan put half a cupful of boiling water.
Two or three large spoonfuls of nice strained gravy.
A little pepper.
A quarter teaspoonful of salt.
When this boils stir in a heaping teaspoonful of flour wet up smoothly with a little cold water to keep it from lumping. Stir and boil one minute and add a tablespoonful of butter. Stir steadily two minutes longer, add, if you like, a little minced parsley, and pour the sauce which should be like thick cream, over the dished eggs.
Omelette.
Table of Contents Six eggs.
Four teaspoonfuls of cream.
Half a teaspoonful salt.
A little pepper.
Two tablespoonfuls of butter.
Whip whites and yolks together for four minutes in a bowl with the "Dover" egg beater. They should be thick and smooth before you beat in cream, salt and pepper. Melt the butter in a clean frying-pan, set on one side of the stove where it will keep warm but not scorch. Pour the beaten mixture into it and remove to a place where the fire is hotter. As it "sets," slip a broad knife carefully around the edges and under it, that the butter may find its way freely to all parts of the pan.
When the middle is just set, pass a cake-turner carefully under one half of the omelette and fold it over the other. Lay a hot platter upside down above the doubled mass and holding frying-pan and dish firmly, turn the latter quickly over, reversing the positions of the two, and depositing the omelette in the dish.
Do not be mortified should you break your trial omelette. Join the bits neatly; lay sprays of parsley over the cracks and try another soon. Be sure it is loosened from the pan before you try to turn it out; hold pan and dish fast in place; do not be nervous or flurried, and you will soon catch the knack of dishing the omelette dexterously and handsomely.
I have given you ten receipts for cooking eggs. It would be easy to furnish as many more without exhausting the list of ways of preparing this invaluable article of food for our tables. I have selected the methods that are at once easy and excellent, and adapted to the ability of a class of beginners.
6
BROILED MEATS.
Table of Contents IT has been said that the frying-pan has ruined more American digestions than all the other hurtful agencies combined. It is certainly true that while the process of frying properly performed upon certain substances does not of necessity, make them unwholesome-the useful utensil does play altogether too important a part in our National cookery. Broiled meats are more wholesome, more palatable, and far more elegant. Certain things should never be fried. That beefsteak should never make the acquaintance of the frying-pan is a rule without an exception.
The best gridirons for private families are the light, double "broilers," made of tinned wire and linked together at the back with loops of the same material. They are easily handled, turned and cleansed, and when not in use may be hung on the wall out of the way. It is well to have two sizes, one for large steaks, the smaller for birds, oysters, and when there is occasion to broil a single chop or chicken-leg for an invalid.
Beefsteak.
Table of Contents Never wash a steak unless it has fallen in the dirt or met with other accident. In this case cleanse quickly in cold water and wipe perfectly dry before cooking.
Have a clear hot fire and do not uncover that part of the stove above it until you have adjusted the steak on the broiler. If you use the ordinary iron gridiron, lay the meat on it the instant it goes over the fire, but have it already warm and rub the bars with a bit of fresh suet.
When the meat has lain over the coals two minutes and begins to "sizzle," turn it and let the other side cook as long. Watch it continually and turn whenever it begins to drip. Do this quickly to keep in the juices. If these should fall in the fire in spite of your care, lift it for an instant and hold over a plate or dish until the smoke is gone. Broiled meats flavored with creosote are not uncommon, but always detestable. The knack of broiling a steak well is to turn it so often and dexterously that it will neither be smoked nor scorched.
Ten minutes should cook it rare, if the fire is right and the steak not very thick. Cut with a keen blade into the thickest part when the time is up. If the heart is of a rich red-brown-not the livid purple of uncooked flesh, carry broiler and meat to a table where stands a hot dish. Lay the steak on this. In a saucer have a liberal tablespoonful of butter cut into bits, and with these rub both sides of the smoking steak, leaving unmelted pieces on the top. Sprinkle it also on both sides with pepper and salt-about half a teaspoonful of salt and a third as much pepper for a large steak. All this must be done quickly. Before you begin to cook the steak, prepare the butter and measure the salt and pepper. Cover the dish closely. If you have not a block-tin dish-cover, lay over the steak another dish, made very hot in the oven, and set both with the meat between them in the plate-warmer, or in an open oven, or somewhere where it will keep hot for three minutes.
Serve-i. e. put on the table-as hot as possible and on warm plates. Unless you have a hot water dish, do not send the steak into the dining-room until all have taken their places.
Sometimes steak is tough. You shake your head over it as it comes from the butcher's basket. I know of an enterprising meat merchant who objected to a wealthy customer because he would have choice cuts. He was willing to pay double for them, but as the worthy seller observed: "We must sell second-best cuts, and he'd ought to take his turn."
Like sin, tough steak ought not to be, but it is! If your turn to take it has come, lay it on a clean board, some hours before cooking it, and hack it on both sides, criss-cross, with a tolerably sharp knife, taking care not to cut too deeply. Rub both sides very well with the strained juice of a lemon, and set the meat in a cold place until you are ready to cook it. Do this over night, if you want it for breakfast. Very tough, fibrous meat is sometimes made eatable by this process.
Mutton or Lamb Chops.
Table of Contents Cut off most of the fat and all the skin. A clean bone an inch in length will project from the smaller end when you have pared away the tallow and skin which would have cooked into rankness and leather.
Put as many chops on the broiler as it will conveniently hold, and broil as you would beefsteak. Cut into the largest to see if it is done. If it is, lay the chops on a heated dish set over a pot of boiling water; butter, pepper and salt them, and cover them up while you cook the rest.
Serve as soon as the last is cooked, as they lose flavor with standing.
Lay sprigs of parsley around the edges of the dish and scatter a few over the chops which must be arranged in neat rows, a small end next to a large.
Broiled Ham.
Table of Contents Cut even slices from a cold boiled Ferris & Co.'s "Trade Mark" ham. Divide these into oblong pieces about an inch and a half in width, and broil quickly over clear coals until a delicate brown touches the slices here and there. Lay in order on a hot dish. Broiled ham is appetizing, and should be accompanied by dry toast, lightly buttered.
7
FRIED MEATS.
Table of Contents Larded Liver.
Table of Contents THE butcher will slice the liver, or show you how to do it. When it is cut up, lay it in cold water in which has been stirred a teaspoonful of salt. This will draw out the blood.
Cut fat, raw salt pork into strips a finger long and a quarter of an inch thick and wide.
In half an hour's time take the liver from the water, spread it out on a clean dry cloth, lay another cloth over the slices and pat gently to dry them thoroughly. Make holes an inch apart in the liver with a pen-knife or sharp skewer, and stick in the pork strips. They should protrude an equal distance on both sides.
As fast as they are ready, lay them in a clean, warm (not hot) frying-pan. When all are in, set it over the fire, and let it fry rather slowly in the fat that will run out from the pork "lardoons." In five minutes turn the slices, and again ten minutes later. Let the liver heat quite slowly for the first ten minutes. If cooked fast it is hard and indigestible. Allow about twenty-five minutes for frying it.
Take it up with a fork, draining off every drop of grease against the side of the pan as you remove each piece, and dish on a hot platter.
Put a half a teaspoonful of tomato sauce on each slice. Serve without gravy and very hot.
Veal Cutlets (Breaded).
Table of Contents Whip two eggs light and pour them into a pie-plate. Turn...
