Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Lay the fish in very cold salt-and-water for two hours; wipe dry; make deep gashes in both sides at right angles with the back-bone and rub into these, as well as coat it all over with a force-meat made of the crumbs, pork, herbs, onion and seasoning, bound with raw egg. Lay in the baking-pan and pour over it the drawn butter (which should be quite thin), seasoned with the anchovy sauce, lemon-juice, pepper and a pinch of parsley. Bake in a moderate oven nearly an hour,—quite as long if the piece be large, basting frequently lest it should brown too fast. Add a little butter-and-water when the sauce thickens too much. When the fish is done, remove to a hot dish, and strain the gravy over it.

A few capers or chopped green pickles are a pleasant addition to the gravy.

BAKED SALMON WITH CREAM SAUCE. +

A middle cut of salmon.

4 table-spoonfuls of butter melted in hot water.

Butter a sheet of foolscap paper on both sides, and wrap the fish up in it, pinning the ends securely together. Lay in the baking-pan, and pour six or seven spoonfuls of butter-and-water over it. Turn another pan over all, and steam in a moderate oven from three-quarters of an hour to an hour, lifting the cover, from time to time, to baste and assure yourself that the paper is not burning. Meanwhile, have ready in a saucepan a cup of cream, in which you would do well to dissolve a bit of soda a little larger than a pea. This is a wise precaution whenever cream is to be boiled. Heat this in a vessel placed within another of hot water; thicken with a heaping teaspoonful of corn starch, add a tablespoonful of butter, pepper and salt to taste, a liberal pinch of minced parsley, and when the fish is unwrapped and dished, pour half slowly over it, sending the rest to table in a boat. If you have no cream, use milk, and add a beaten egg to the thickening.

SALMON STEAKS OR CUTLETS (FRIED).

Cut slices from the middle of the fish, an inch thick.

1 table-spoonful butter to each slice, for frying.

Beaten egg and fine _cracker_ crumbs, powdered to dust, and peppered with cayenne.

Wipe the fish dry, and salt slightly. Dip in egg, then in cracker crumbs, fry very quickly in hot butter. Drain off every drop of grease, and serve upon a dish lined with hot, clean paper, fringed at the ends.

Sprinkle green parsley in bunches over it.

The French use the best salad-oil in this receipt, instead of butter.

SALMON STEAKS OR CUTLETS (BROILED).

Three or four slices of salmon.

1 table-spoonful melted butter.

½ cup drawn butter, thickened with browned flour, and seasoned with tomato catsup.

Pepper and salt to taste.

Rub the steaks with the butter, pepper and salt slightly. Broil upon a gridiron over a very clear fire, turning often, and rubbing each side with butter as it comes uppermost. When nicely browned, lay on a hot dish, and pour the sauce over them.

SALMON CUTLETS EN PAPILLOTE.

Dry and lay in melted butter ten minutes. Dust lightly with cayenne pepper, and wrap securely in well buttered or oiled white paper, stitching down the ends of each cover. Fry in nice dripping or sweet lard. They will be done in ten minutes, unless very thick. Have ready clean, _hot_ papers, fringed at both ends. Clip the threads of the soiled ones when you have drained them free from fat, slip dexterously and quickly, lest they cool in the process, into the fresh covers, give the fringed ends a twist, and send up on a heated dish.

Salmon _en papillote_ is also broiled by experts. If you attempt this, be careful that the paper is so well greased and the cutlets turned so often that it does not scorch. The least taste of burnt paper ruins the flavor of the fish, which it is the object of the cover to preserve.

SALMON IN A MOULD. (_Very good._) +

1 can preserved salmon or an equal amount of cold, left from a company dish of roast or boiled.

4 eggs beaten light.

4 table-spoonfuls butter—melted, but not hot.

½ cup fine bread-crumbs.

Season with pepper, salt and minced parsley.

Chop the fish fine, then rub it in a Wedgewood mortar, or in a bowl with the back of a silver spoon, adding the butter until it is a smooth paste. Beat the bread-crumbs into the eggs and season before working all together. Put into a buttered pudding-mould, and boil or steam for an hour.

_Sauce for the Above._

1 cupful milk heated to a boil, and thickened with a table-spoonful corn-starch.

The liquor from the canned salmon, or if you have none, double the quantity of butter.

1 great spoonful of butter.

1 raw egg.

1 teaspoonful anchovy, or mushroom, or tomato catsup.

1 pinch of mace and one of cayenne.

Put the egg in last and very carefully, boil one minute to cook it, and when the pudding is turned from the mould, pour over it. Cut in slices at table.

A nice supper-dish.

STEWED SALMON. +

1 can preserved fresh salmon, or remains of roast or boiled.

1 cup drawn butter.

2 eggs well beaten.

1 teaspoonful anchovy or Harvey’s sauce.

Cayenne and salt to taste.

2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped fine.

Some capers or minced green pickles.

Stew the salmon in the can liquor, or a very little water, slightly salted, ten minutes. Have ready, in a larger saucepan, the drawn butter thickened with rice-flour or corn-starch. Season and stir in cautiously the beaten raw eggs, then the salmon. Let it come to a gentle boil, add the chopped eggs and pickles and turn into a covered deep dish.

_Or—_

Add the hard-boiled eggs and capers to the salmon, with a table-spoonful of butter, toss up lightly with a fork, pepper slightly, and heap in the centre of a hot flat dish, then pour the boiling sauce over all.

It is very appetizing served in either way.

MAYONNAISE OF SALMON.

If you use canned salmon, drain it very dry and pick into coarse flakes with a silver fork. If the remnants of roast or boiled fish, remove all bits of bone, skin and fat, and pick to pieces in the same way.

1 bunch of celery, or 2 heads of lettuce.

_For Dressing._

1 cup boiling water.

1 table-spoonful corn-starch.

2 table-spoonfuls best salad-oil.

1 teaspoonful made mustard.

½ cup vinegar.

1 small teaspoonful black pepper, or half as much cayenne.

1 teaspoonful salt.

1 table-spoonful melted butter.

2 raw eggs—yolks only,—beaten light.

2 hard-boiled eggs, yolks only.

2 teaspoonfuls powdered sugar.

Wet the corn-starch with cold water and stir into the boiling water until it thickens well; add half of pepper, salt, sugar, and all the butter. Remove from the fire, and beat in the raw yolks while still scalding hot. Set aside to cool, while you cut the celery or lettuce into small pieces, tearing and bruising as little as may be. Mix this lightly with the fish in a deep bowl. Rub the boiled yolks to a powder, add the salt, sugar and pepper, then the oil, little by little, beating it in with a silver spoon; next, the mustard. When the thick egg sauce is quite cold, whip the other into it with an egg-beater, and when thoroughly incorporated, put in the vinegar. Mix half the dressing through the fish and celery, turn this into a salad-dish, mounding it in the centre, and pour the rest of the dressing over it.

Garnish with rings of boiled white-of-egg or whipped raw whites, heaped regularly on the surface, with a caper on top of each.

Do not be discouraged at the length of this receipt. It is easy and safe. Your taste may suggest some modification of the ingredients, but you will like it, in the main, well enough to try it more than once.

DEVILLED SALMON. +

½ pound smoked salmon, cut into strips half an inch wide and an inch long.

4 table-spoonfuls good beef gravy, seasoned with onion.

1 table-spoonful tomato or walnut catsup.

1 table-spoonful vinegar.

2 table-spoonfuls melted butter or best salad-oil.

1 teaspoonful made mustard.

Cayenne to taste.

Boil the salmon ten minutes in clear water. Have ready in a saucepan the gravy and seasoning, hot and closely covered, but do not let it boil. Lay the salmon for ten minutes more in the melted butter, turning it several times. Then put into the hot gravy, cover and simmer five minutes. Pile the fish upon a hot platter; pour the sauce over it, and serve with split Boston crackers, toasted and buttered.

SMOKED SALMON (_Broiled_). +

½ pound smoked salmon, cut into narrow strips.

2 table-spoonfuls butter.

Juice of half a lemon.

Cayenne pepper.

Parboil the salmon ten minutes; lay in cold water for the same length of time; wipe dry, and broil over a clear fire. Butter while hot, season with cayenne and lemon-juice, pile in a “log-cabin” square upon a hot plate, and send up with dry toast.

SALT COD _an maître d’hôtel_. +

About a pound of cod which has been soaked over night, then boiled, picked into fine flakes.

1 cup milk.

2 table-spoonfuls butter.

Bunch of sweet herbs.

Juice of half a lemon.

1 table-spoonful corn-starch.

Pepper to taste.

Heat the milk to boiling, stir in the butter, then the corn-starch; stir until it thickens, when add the fish; pepper and cook slowly fifteen minutes. Turn out upon a dish, strew thickly with chopped green herbs—chiefly parsley; squeeze the lemon-juice over all and serve.

Mashed potato is an improvement to this dish.

SALT COD WITH EGG SAUCE. +

1 pound salt cod, previously soaked, then boiled and allowed to cool, picked or chopped fine.

1 small cup milk or cream.

1 teaspoonful corn-starch or flour.

2 eggs beaten light.

2 table-spoonfuls of butter.

A little chopped parsley.

Half as much mashed potato as you have fish.

Pepper to taste.

Heat the milk, thicken with the corn starch; then the potato, rubbed very fine; next the butter, the eggs and parsley, lastly the fish. Stir and toss until smoking hot all through, when pour into a deep dish.

_Or,_

Make a sauce of all the ingredients except the fish and potato. Mix these well together, with a little melted butter. Heat in a saucepan, stirring all the while; heap in the centre of a dish, and pour the sauce over all.

SALT COD WITH CHEESE.

1 pound boiled codfish, chopped fine.

1 cup drawn butter.

Pepper and parsley.

2 table-spoonfuls grated cheese.

Bread-crumbs.

Heat the butter to boiling, season and stir in the fish, then the cheese; put into a baking-dish; strew fine bread-crumbs on the top, and brown in the oven.

SALT COD SCALLOPED.

Boiled cold cod, minced fine.

1 cup oyster liquor.

1 table-spoonful rice-flour or corn-starch.

3 table-spoonfuls butter.

Chopped parsley and pepper.

3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped fine.

1 cup fine, dry bread-crumbs.

Boil the oyster liquor, thicken and stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter with seasoning. Let it cool. Put a handful of bread-crumbs on the bottom of a buttered baking-dish, cover these with the oyster sauce, next comes a layer of fish; one of chopped egg; then more sauce, and so on, leaving out the bread-crumbs until the dish is full, when put a thick layer, with bits of butter set closely in it. Bake covered until hot through, then brown.

FRICASSEED LOBSTER. +

Meat of a good-sized lobster, boiled.

1 cup rich veal, or chicken broth—quite thick.

½ cup cream.

Juice of half a lemon.

1 table-spoonful of butter.

Pepper and salt to taste.

Cut the lobster-meat in pieces half an inch square; put with the gravy, pepper and salt, into a saucepan. Cover and stew gently for five minutes. Add the cream, and just as it is on the point of boiling, stir in the butter. When this is melted, take the saucepan from the fire, and stir in, very quickly, the lemon-juice.

Serve in a covered dish.

Boston crackers, split, delicately toasted, and buttered while hot, are a nice accompaniment to this fricassee.

Canned lobster may be used if you cannot procure fresh.

LOBSTER RISSOLES. +

1 large lobster—boiled.

2 table-spoonfuls of butter.

Yolks of 3 eggs.

Handful of bread-crumbs.

1 table-spoonful of anchovy sauce.

Cayenne, salt, and chopped parsley to liking.

Pick the meat from the boiled lobster, and pound it in a Wedgewood mortar with half the coral, seasoning with salt and cayenne pepper. When you have rubbed it to a smooth paste with the butter, add a table-spoonful of anchovy sauce and the yolk of an egg, well beaten. Flour your hands well and make the mixture into egg-shaped balls. Roll these in beaten egg, then in bread-crumbs, and fry to a light brown in sweet lard, dripping, or butter.

_For the Sauce._

The coral of the lobster rubbed smooth.

1 teaspoonful anchovy sauce.

4 table-spoonfuls melted butter.

1 table-spoonful of cream.

Have ready in a saucepan 4 table-spoonfuls of melted butter; the remainder of the coral of the lobster pounded fine, and stirred in carefully, and a teaspoonful of anchovy sauce. Let this heat almost to boiling; add the cream, and pour hot over the rissoles when you have arranged these upon a heated dish.

Garnish with parsley or cresses.

LOBSTER CUTLETS +

Are made precisely as is the paste for rissoles, except that enough flour is added to it to enable you to roll it out into a sheet about as thick as your finger. Cut this into strips about three inches in length and one in width. Fry these quickly and drain dry before arranging them in the dish.

Pour the sauce over them. If properly made and fried, they are light and palatable.

LOBSTER CROQUETTES. +

1 fine lobster, well boiled, or a can of lobster.

2 eggs, well beaten.

2 table-spoonfuls of butter, melted, but not hot.

½ cup bread-crumbs.

Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

Pound the lobster-meat, coral and all, in a Wedgewood mortar. Mix with this the bread-crumbs, then the seasoning and butter. Bind with the yolk of one egg. Flour your hands and make into oblong croquettes. Dip in beaten egg, then in bread-crumbs, and fry quickly to a light-brown in sweet lard or butter. Drain off fat, by laying upon a hot, clean paper, before dishing them.

Make a border of parsley close about them when you have piled them tastefully in the dish.

LOBSTER PUDDING.

1 large lobster well boiled, or a can of preserved lobster.

½ cup fine bread-crumbs.

½ cup cream or rich milk.

Cayenne pepper and salt.

1 teaspoonful of Worcestershire or Harvey’s sauce.

¼ pound fat, salt pork, or corned ham, cut into _very_ thin slices.

3 eggs.

Pound the meat and coral to a paste. Mix into this two eggs well beaten, the seasoning, the bread-crumbs, and one table-spoonful of cream. Stir all together until light. Line the pudding-mould with the sliced ham. Pour the mixture into this and fit on the top. Set into a pot or pan of boiling water, and boil steadily for one hour.

_Sauce for Pudding._

½ cup drawn butter.

The remainder of the cream.

A little chopped parsley.

1 teaspoonful anchovy sauce.

Heat almost to boiling; stir in a beaten egg, and so soon as this begins to thicken, take from the fire.

Turn the pudding out carefully upon a hot dish, and pour the sauce over it. Cut with a sharp thin knife.

Send around lemon cut into eighths, to be squeezed over each slice, should the guests wish to do so.

CURRIED LOBSTER.

1 large lobster, boiled.

1 large cup of strong veal or chicken broth.

1 shallot.

1 great spoonful of butter.

1 great spoonful chopped thyme and parsley.

Juice of 1 lemon.

1 table-spoonful corn-starch.

1 teaspoonful anchovy sauce.

1 table-spoonful curry-powder.

Pick the meat very fine and set aside in a cool place. Mince the onion, and put it with the chopped herbs, the butter and a table-spoonful of hot water, into a small covered saucepan. Set this over the fire until it begins to simmer, then add the broth. Boil all together for five minutes, strain as for soup, stir in the curry powder and corn-starch, and stew gently ten minutes longer, stirring often. Season as directed, and add the picked lobster. Let the saucepan stand in a pan of boiling water ten minutes, but do not let the contents of the inner vessel boil. Pour into a deep dish.

Send around wafery slices of toast buttered while hot, and pieces of lemon to be added if necessary.

DEVILLED LOBSTER. +

1 lobster, well boiled.

3 table-spoonfuls butter.

1 teaspoonful made mustard.

1 teaspoonful anchovy sauce.

1 wine glass of vinegar.

Cayenne pepper and salt.

2 hard-boiled eggs.

Pick the meat carefully from the shell, breaking it as little as may be. Rub the coral to a smooth paste with the back of a silver spoon. Chop the meat fine. Stir into this the butter, melted, but not hot, the yolks of the eggs, rubbed smooth with the coral, the pepper, mustard and salt, and put all together in a saucepan over the fire. Stir until it is smoking hot, then turn into the shell, which should be washed and heated.

STEWED LOBSTER.

1 large lobster, well boiled.

1 cup good gravy—veal is best.

1 blade of mace.

2 table-spoonfuls of melted butter.

Juice of half a lemon.

Cayenne and salt to liking.

1 glass sherry.

1 teaspoonful chopped parsley.

Cut the meat of the lobster into pieces an inch long and half as wide, keeping the coral until the last. Put the meat, with the broth and seasoning, into a saucepan and heat gently, stirring frequently until it is near boiling. Then add the coral and butter (which should previously be well rubbed together) and the chopped parsley. When the mixture again nears the boiling point, add the wine and lemon-juice and turn into a deep dish.

SCALLOPED LOBSTER (No. 1).

1 boiled lobster.

4 table-spoonfuls of cream.

2 eggs well beaten.

½ cup bread-crumbs.

2 tablespoonfuls butter.

1 tea-spoonful anchovy sauce.

Season to taste with cayenne, salt and nutmeg.

Juice of half a lemon.

Rub the meat of the lobster, including the coral, a little at a time, in a Wedgewood mortar with the butter, until it is a soft paste. Put this into a saucepan with the seasoning, and heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Remove from the fire, and add the cream and lemon-juice, stirring in well. Fill the lobster shell with this mixture. Strew bread-crumbs over the top, and set on the upper grate of a quick oven until the crumbs begin to brown.

Send to table in the shell, laid upon a hot dish.

You can scallop crab in the same manner.

SCALLOPED LOBSTER (No. 2).

1 lobster, well boiled.

3 table-spoonfuls of butter.

1 teaspoonful of anchovy sauce.

½ cup of bread-crumbs.

½ cup of cream.

2 eggs well beaten.

Season with cayenne pepper and salt.

Cut the lobster carefully into halves with a sharp knife. Pick out the meat carefully, and set aside while you prepare the sauce. This is done by rubbing the coral and the soft green substance, known as the “pith,” together in a mortar or bowl, adding, a little at a time, a table-spoonful of butter. Put this on the fire in a covered saucepan, and stir until it is smoking hot. Then, beat in the anchovy sauce, pepper and salt before adding the cream. Heat quickly to a boil, lest the cream should curdle, put in the picked meat, and again stir up well from the sides and bottom until very hot. The eggs, whipped to a froth, should now go in. Remove the saucepan from the fire so soon as this is done.

Have the upper and lower halves of the shell ready buttered, strew bread-crumbs thickly in the bottom of each, moisten these with cream, and pour in the lobster mixture while still very hot. Put another layer of bread-crumbs, well moistened with the remainder of the cream, on the top. Stick bits of butter all over it, and brown on the upper grating of a hot oven.

In either of these preparations of scalloped lobster, should the canned lobster be used, or should you chance to break the shell in getting out the meat, you may bake the mixture prepared, as directed, in a pudding-dish or small _paté_ pans.

CRABS

Are so near of kin to the lobster family that the same receipts may easily be used for both. Only, bear in mind that the lesser and tougher shell-fish needs more boiling than does the aristocratic lobster. If underdone, crabs are very unwholesome. Also, in consideration of the crab’s deficiency in the matter of the coral which lends lusciousness and color to lobster salads and stews, use more butter and cream in “getting him up” for the table.

Cayenne pepper is regarded by many as necessary in dishes of lobster or crab, because of its supposed efficacy in preventing the evil effects which might otherwise follow indulgence in these delicacies.

SOFT CRABS.

For a receipt for preparing these, please see “Common Sense in the Household, No. 1,” page 71.

TURTLE FRICASSEE. +

3 pounds turtle steak.

1 large cup strong veal gravy.

4 hard-boiled eggs—the yolks only.

1 teaspoonful anchovy sauce.

1 teaspoonful Harvey’s sauce.

Juice of half a lemon.

2 dozen mushrooms.

1 small onion, minced fine.

1 bunch sweet herbs, minced.

1 glass wine, and butter for frying.

Browned flour for thickening, with cayenne and salt.

Cut the steak in strips as wide and as long as three of your fingers; fry brown (when you have floured them) in butter. Take up; drain off the grease; put with the gravy, which should be ready heated, into a tin vessel with a close cover and set in a pot of hot water. It must not boil until you have put in the rest of the ingredients. Slice the onion and mushrooms, and fry in the same butter; add with the herbs and other seasoning to the meat in the pail, or inner saucepan. Cover and set to stew gently. To the butter left in the frying-pan, add three spoonfuls of browned flour (large ones) and stir to a smooth unctuous paste, without setting it on the range. Add the lemon-juice to this, and set aside until the turtle has simmered half an hour in the broth. Take up the meat, and arrange upon a covered hot-water dish; transfer the gravy to a saucepan, and boil hard five minutes uncovered. Put in the brown flour paste; stir up until it thickens well; add the wine and yolks of eggs, each cut in three pieces, and pour over the turtle.

PANNED OYSTERS. +

1 quart of oysters.

Rounds of thin toast, delicately browned.

Butter, salt and pepper.

Have ready several small pans of block tin, with upright sides. The ordinary “patty-pan” will do, if you can get nothing better, but it is well, if you are fond of oysters cooked in this way, to have the neat little tins made, at a moderate price, at a tinsmith’s. Cut stale bread in thin slices, then round—removing all the crust—of a size that will just fit in the bottoms of your pans. Toast these quickly to a light-brown, butter and lay within your tins. Wet with a great spoonful of oyster liquid, then, with a silver fork, arrange upon the toast as many oysters as the pans will hold without heaping them up. Dust with pepper and salt, put a bit of butter on top and set the pans, when all are full, upon the floor of a quick oven. Cover with an inverted baking-pan to keep in steam and flavor, and cook until the oysters “ruffle.” Eight minutes in a brisk oven, should be enough. Send very hot to the table in the tins in which they were roasted.

Next to roasting in the shell, this mode of cooking oysters best preserves the native flavor of the bivalves.

FRICASSEED OYSTERS. +

1 pint good broth—veal or chicken—well strained.

1 slice of ham—corned is better than smoked.

3 pints oysters.

1 small onion.

2 table-spoonfuls of butter.

½ cup of milk.

1 table-spoonful of corn-starch.

1 egg beaten light.

A little chopped parsley and sweet marjoram.

Pepper to taste and juice of a lemon.

If the ham be raw, soak in boiling water for half an hour before cutting it into very small slices, and putting it into the saucepan with the broth, the oyster liquor, the onion minced _very_ fine, the herbs and pepper. Let these simmer for fifteen minutes, and boil fast for five, then skim and put in the oysters. Boil up once briskly, keeping the contents of the saucepan well stirred. Have ready the corn-starch, rubbed smoothly into the milk. Stir this in and heat carefully, using the spoon constantly until it boils and begins to thicken, when the butter should go in. So soon as this is melted take out the oysters with a skimmer; put into a hot covered dish, heat the broth again to a boil, remove the saucepan from the fire, and stir in cautiously the beaten egg. A better way is to cook the latter gradually by beating in with it a few tablespoonfuls of the scalding liquor, before putting the egg into the saucepan.

Turn the gravy over the oysters, and serve at once. Squeeze in the lemon-juice after the tureen is on the table, as it is apt to curdle the mixture if left to stand.

Send around cream crackers, and green pickles or olives with this savory dish.

OYSTERS BOILED IN THE SHELL.

Large shell-oysters, washed very clean and scraped, but not opened.

Pot of boiling water over a hot fire.

Sauce of melted butter with chopped or powdered parsley.

A lemon, cut in half.

Put the oysters, one by one, quickly and carefully into the water, which must be kept at a hard boil all the time. In five minutes, turn off every drop of the water by inverting the pot over a cullender, dry the shells rapidly with a soft cloth and send to table upon a hot dish. Squeeze a few drops of lemon-juice upon each oyster, and put a little hot melted butter with pepper over it before eating it from the shell.

The epicurean oyster-lover may consider boiled oysters insipid, but they are liked by many.

SCALLOPED OYSTERS (No. 1). +

Large, fine shell-oysters.

Butter.

Fine bread-crumbs, or rolled cracker.

Minced parsley, pepper and salt.

Lemon-juice.

Open the shells, setting aside for use the deepest ones. Have ready some melted butter, _not_ hot, seasoned with minced parsley and pepper. Roll each oyster in this, letting it drip as little as may be, and lay in the shells, which should be arranged in a baking-pan. Add to each a little lemon-juice, sift bread-crumbs over it, and bake in a quick oven until done.

Serve in the shells.

SCALLOPED OYSTERS (No. 2). +

1 quart of oysters.

1 teacupful very dry bread-crumbs, or pounded cracker.

2 great spoonfuls butter.

½ cup of milk, or cream, if you can get it.

Pepper to taste.

A little salt.

Cover the bottom of a baking-dish (well buttered) with a layer of crumbs, and wet these with the cream, put on spoonful by spoonful. Pepper and salt, and strew with minute bits of butter. Next, put in the oysters, with a little of their liquor. Pepper them, stick bits of butter in among them, and cover with dry crumbs until the oysters are entirely hidden. More pieces of butter, very small, and arranged thickly on top. Set in the oven, invert a plate over it to keep in the flavor, and bake until the juice bubbles up to the top. Remove the cover, and brown on the upper grating for two or three minutes—certainly not longer.

Send to table in the bake-dish.

This is a good intermediate course between fish and meat, and is always popular.

BROILED OYSTERS. +

1 quart of the finest, firmest oysters you can procure.

½ cup very dry bread-crumbs, or pounded crackers, sifted almost as fine as flour.

Pepper to taste.

½ cup melted butter.

Dry the oysters by laying them on a clean cloth and covering them with another. Dip each in the melted butter, which should be peppered, roll over and over in the cracker-crumbs, and broil upon one of the wire gridirons, made for this purpose, over a clear fire. These wire “broilers” hold the oysters firmly, and can be safely turned when one side is done. Five or six minutes should cook them. Butter and pepper a hot dish, lay in the oysters, and serve immediately.

DEVILLED OYSTERS. +

1 quart fine oysters.

Cayenne pepper.

Lemon-juice.

Some melted butter.

1 egg, beaten light.

½ cup rolled cracker.

Wipe the oysters dry, and lay in a flat dish. Cover with a mixture of melted butter, cayenne pepper (or pepper-sauce), and lemon-juice. Let them lie in this for ten minutes, turning them frequently; roll in the crumbs, then in the beaten egg, again in the crumbs, and fry in mixed lard and butter, made very hot before the oysters are dropped in.

OYSTERS IN BATTER.

1 quart of oysters.

2 eggs, whipped light.

1 cup of milk.

Flour to make a good batter.

Pepper and salt.

Dry the oysters with a soft cloth, dip in the batter twice, turning each one dexterously, that it may be thickly coated, and fry in a mixture of butter and lard.

STEWED OYSTERS.

1 quart of oysters.

1 cup of milk.

Salt very slightly, and pepper to taste.

1 great spoonful butter.

Drain the liquor from the oysters into a saucepan and heat to a boil. At the same time, put on the milk to heat in another vessel set within a pot or pan of boiling water. When the liquor in the saucepan boils up, put in the oysters and stew until they begin to ruffle or crimp at the edges. Stir in the butter, and when this is quite dissolved, turn the stew into a tureen. Add the milk immediately (which should be boiling hot), cover closely, and send to table. Send around pickles, or olives, and crackers with them. There is no danger, when oysters are stewed in this way, of the milk curdling.

OYSTER PATÉS.

1 quart of oysters, minced fine with a sharp knife, with a thin blade,—not a “chopper.”

1 great spoonful butter “drawn” in a cupful of milk, or cream, if you can get it, and thicken with a teaspoonful of corn-starch or rice-flour, previously wet up with cold milk.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Drain the liquor from the oysters, and chop them as directed. When the milk has been boiled and thickened, and the butter well incorporated with it, stir in the minced oysters, and stew about five minutes, stirring all the while. Have ready some shapes of nice pastry, baked, and fill with the mixture. Set in the oven about two minutes to heat them well, and send to table.

_Or,_

You can heat the chopped oysters in a very little of their own liquor before adding to the thickened milk. Unless you are sure that the latter is quite fresh, this is a prudent precaution.

CREAM OYSTER PIE.

Line a pie-plate with good puff paste; fill it with slices of _stale_ bread, laid evenly within it; butter that part of the crust lining the rim of the dish, and cover with a top crust. Bake quickly in a brisk oven, and while still hot, dexterously and carefully lift the upper crust. The buttered rim will cause it to separate easily from the lower. Have ready a mixture of minced oysters and thickened cream, prepared according to the foregoing receipt, and having taken out the stale bread (put there to keep the top crust in shape), fill the pie with the oyster cream. Replace the cover, set in the oven for two minutes, or until hot, and serve. This is a nice luncheon dish, and not amiss for supper.

BREAKFAST.

He was a shrewd Cœlebs who restrained his loverly impatience to throw himself, in unconditional surrender, at the feet of his beloved, by the resolution to see her first at the breakfast-table. It is to be regretted that his admiring biographer has not recorded the result of the experiment. Let us hope, for the sake of preserving the “unities of the drama,” that Cecilia was “in good form” on the momentous occasion; not a thread ironed awry in bib or tucker; not a rebellious hair in her sleek locks. Cœlebs—Hannah More’s Cœlebs—and every other that I ever read or heard of, was a pragmatical prig; the complacent proprietor of a patent refrigerator, very commodious and in excellent repair, but which ought never, even by his conceited self, to have been mistaken for a heart.

Knowing you, my reader, as I do, I would not insult your good sense by intimating that the husband of your choice resembles him in any leading trait. Being a sensible (and avowedly a fallible) man, therefore, John does not expect you to appear at the breakfast-table in the flowing robes and elaborate laces that belong to the leisure hours of the day. If he does, he should don dress-coat and white cravat to keep you in countenance. He will not find fault with a neat _peignoir_ (if it _be_ neat), or a plainly-trimmed dress, or a white apron before the same. He ought to look for, and to see a clean collar put on straight and fastened snugly at the throat, or a white ruffle and cuffs, or wrist-ruffles, to correspond, and hair in irreproachable order. I have seen women who called themselves ladies, who could never find time to give their hair what they called “a good combing,” until afternoon. And time and patience would fail me, and I fear the equanimity of your diaphragm as well, were I to attempt even a partial recapitulation of the many and disgustful varieties of morning toilettes, of which I have been the unwilling spectator. You should hear my John,—whose profession takes him into what the renowned Ann Gale styles the “buzzom of families,” at all sorts of unconventional hours,—dilate upon this theme. Not invalid attire. When the work of wearing the robe of flesh becomes a matter of pain and difficulty, he must be indeed hypercritical who notes the ill-fitting wrapper, or roughened hair.

“But the queens of the breakfast-table!” he says, with lifted eyebrows. “The grimy chrysalids of the afternoon butterflies! It is not a casual glimpse of Cinderella on sweeping-day, or during house-cleaning week, that I complain of; but my heart swells with sincerest pity for the husbands before whose eyes the play is enacted three hundred and sixty-five times every year; to whom the elf-locks and collarless neck, the greasy, lank, torn dressing-gown of dark calico appear as surely and regularly as the light of each new day.”

I do not say that you should bring to the breakfast-table a face like a May morning. I hate stereotyped phrases and stereotyped smiles. But try to look as gracious as though a visitor sat between you and the gentleman at the foot of the board. It is not always easy to appear even moderately cheerful at breakfast-time. An eminent physician told me once, as the result of many years’ study and observation, that no woman should be up in the morning more than an hour before breaking her fast. My own experience has so far corroborated the wisdom of the advice that I always strive to impress upon my domestics, especially the not strong ones, the expediency of eating a slice of bread and drinking a cup of tea during the interval that must elapse between their rising-hour and the kitchen breakfast. I practise the like precaution against faintness and headache, in my own case, when I have to give my personal superintendence to the morning meal, or when it is later than usual. But with all precautionary measures, I believe “before breakfast” to be the most doleful hour of the twenty-four to a majority of our sex. In winter, the house is at a low temperature; dressing, a hurried and disagreeable business; the children are drowsy, lazy, and cross; John “doesn’t want to seem impatient, but would like to have breakfast on time, to-day, my dear, as I have an important engagement.” While the mother, who has slept with one ear quite open all night, and one eye half shut, because she fancied, at bed-time, that baby’s breathing was not quite natural, fights twenty battles with bodily discomfort and spiritual irritability before she takes her seat behind the coffee-urn, and draws her first long breath at the beginning of the “blessing,” that reminds her of the mercies, new every morning, which are still hers. For all this, try womanfully to launch John upon the day’s voyage with a smile and word of cheer. Think twice before you tell him of the cook’s indolence and stupidity, and the housemaid’s petulance. In the hope that the nauseating pain in your head may yield to a “good cup of tea”—(bless it, with me, O my sisters, one and all!) it is as well to withhold the fact of its existence from him. If he _will_ read the morning paper over his coffee, his cakes growing cold meanwhile, and thereby obliges the cook to bake twice as many as would be necessary for the meal were all to partake of it at the same time, restrain the censure that trembles on your tongue, and chat merrily with the children. A silent, hasty breakfast is one of the worst things imaginable for their digestion and tempers.

You would often rather have “a comfortable cry” in a corner than act thus, but persuade yourself bravely that nine-tenths of your miserable sensations are hysterical, and, therefore, ephemeral. If we women do not know what the “morning cloud” is, nobody does. Still, remember it “passeth away.”

If possible, let your eating-room be light and pleasant,—warm in winter, breezy in summer. Not only should the table be neat, orderly, and, so far as you can make it so, pretty, but guard against what I have mentally characterized, in some very grand _salles-à-manger_, as the “workshop look”—the look that says to all who enter—“This is the place where you must eat.” There are tall beaufets with loads of plate and glass, side-tables with reserves of implements for the labors of the hour and place; pictures of game, fish and fruit;—more eating;—and if the walls are frescoed, more game, sheep and oxen, or, at the best, hunting, seem to reassure the consumers of to-day that there will be more creatures killed in season for to-morrow’s dinner. Therefore, eat, drink and be solemn while doing it, as befits the season and surroundings. There is nothing like having a single eye to business.

Do not fret yourself if your dining-room boasts neither paintings nor frescoes. Throw open all the shutters in the morning, and coax in every available ray of sunlight. Press the weather into service to adorn the repast. If fine, remark upon the blueness of the sky and the enjoyment of the outer world in the glory of the day. If stormy, make the best of home-cheer, and promise something attractive as an evening entertainment, should the weather continue wet, or snowy. A canary-bird in the sunniest window is a good thing to have in a breakfast-room if you like his shrill warbling. A pot of English ivy, brave and green, twisting over the face of the old clock, and festooning the windows, is a choice bit of brightness in the winter time. In summer, when flowers are cheap and plentiful, never set the table without them if you can get nothing more than a button-hole bouquet to lay on John’s napkin. Insist that the children shall make themselves tidy before coming to the table, whatever may be the meal, even if they will meet nobody except yourself there. Teach them early that it is a disgrace to themselves and to you to eat with unclean hands and faces. Inculcate, further, the propriety of introducing, while at table, topics that will interest and please all. Let wrangling, fault-finding and recrimination be never so much as named among them. These are little things, but whatever detracts from the idea that the family repast is a tri-daily festival, and should be honored and enjoyed as such, is a wrong to those whose happiness it is your mission to guard and maintain. A wrong to health as to heart. Food swallowed in bitterness of spirit engenders dyspepsia and bile as surely as do acrid fruit and heavy bread. A sharp reprimand will take away sensitive Mamie’s appetite, and a frown between the eyes that, when serene, seem to John to mirror heaven itself, will beget in his bosom that indescribable sinking of heart we know as “goneness,” which is yet not physical faintness.

I have jotted down these hints under the heading of “Breakfast,” although most of them are applicable to all meals, because, as a rule, people bring less keenness of hunger to this than to any other. It is as if the longest fast that separates our stated time of eating from another were the hardest to break; as if we had got out of the habit of desiring and receiving food. It behooves us, then, as wise housewives, to make provision against mortifying rejection of our viands by various and artful devices to tempt the dull or coy appetite. Especially should we study to avoid sameness in our breakfast bills of fare; an easy thing to compass by a moderate exercise of foresight and ingenuity on the part of the housewife.

The American breakfast should be a pleasing medium between the heavy cold beef and game pie of the English and the—for our climate and “fast” habits of life—too light morning refreshment of the French. That in order to accomplish these ends it is not necessary greatly to increase the market bills of the household, or the cares of the mistress, I have tried to prove in these pages, while I have not deemed it well to specify, in all cases, which are exclusively breakfast dishes. Very many of those I have described might appear with equal propriety at breakfast, at luncheon, at what is spoken of in provincial circles as “a hearty supper,” or as an _entrée_ or side-dish at dinner.

PATÉS.

No form of meat, _entrée_, or made dish is more popular, and, if rightly prepared, more elegant than the _paté_. It is susceptible of variations, many and pleasant, chiefly in the form of the crust and the nature of its contents. The celebrated _patés de foie gras_, imported from Strasbourg, are usually without the paste enclosure, and come to us in hermetically sealed jars.

PATÉ OF SWEETBREADS. +

Make a good puff paste, basting two or three times with butter, and set in a cold place for at least half an hour. The best _paté_ covers I have ever made were from paste kept over night in a cool dry safe, before it was rolled into a sheet for cutting. When the paste is crisp and firm, roll quickly, and cut into rounds about a quarter of an inch thick. Reserving one of these whole for the bottom crust of each _paté_, lay it in a floured baking-pan, cut the centre from two or three others, as you desire your _paté_ to be shallow or deep, and lay these carefully, one after another, upon the whole one, leaving a neat round well, a little over an inch in diameter, in the middle. Bake in a quick oven, and when lightly browned, glaze by brushing each over with white of egg and returning to the oven for a minute. Make ready as many sweetbreads as you need (two of fair size will make a good dish), previously prepared by boiling fifteen minutes in hot water, then made firm by plunging into very cold. Cut them into slices, season with pepper and salt, put into a covered saucepan with a great spoonful of butter and a _very_ little water, and simmer gently until tender all through. Cut these in turn into very small squares, and mix with less than a cupful of white sauce. Return to the saucepan and heat almost to boiling, stirring carefully all the time. Fill the _patés_, arrange upon a hot dish, and send up at once.

_White Sauce for the above._

1 small cupful of milk, heated to boiling in a custard-kettle, or tin pail set in hot water.

1 heaping teaspoonful corn-starch, wet with cold milk.

Salt and pepper to taste.

1 table-spoonful butter.

A little chopped parsley.

Stir the corn-starch into the boiling milk until it thickens well, then the butter and seasoning.

This mixture is useful in all similar preparations, but should be a little thicker for oysters than for meats.

CHICKEN PATÉS. +

Line small _paté_-pans with good puff paste, let this get crisp in a cool place, and bake in a brisk oven. Stir minced chicken, well seasoned, into a good white sauce, heat through, fill the shells, set in the oven to brown _very_ slightly, and serve.

_Or,_

Thicken the gravy left from the roast chicken with browned flour, add to the minced meat the yolk of one or two hard-boiled eggs, mashed fine; stir all together in a saucepan until hot, and fill the paste-shells. This is a brown mixture, and if not over-cooked, is very savory.

The remains of cold fowls, of any kind of game, and of veal, can be served up acceptably in this way. The _patés_ should be small, that each person at table may take a whole one. If preferred, the paste can be cut round, as before directed, and baked without the tins.

PATÉS OF FISH.

The cold remains of baked or boiled salmon, fresh cod or halibut.

Some good white sauce, richer than if intended for meat.

About one-fourth as much mashed potato as you have fish.

Yolks of two or three hard-boiled eggs rubbed to a paste with a spoonful, or so, of butter. This paste should be smooth and light.

Pepper and salt to taste, and a little chopped parsley.

Shells of good puff paste, baked quickly to a delicate brown and glazed with beaten egg.

Rub the sauce gradually into the mashed potato until both are free from lumps. When mixed, beat together to a cream. Season and stir in the fish (which should be “picked” very fine) with a silver fork, heaping it as you stir, instead of beating the mixture down. Do this quickly and lightly, fill the shells, set in the oven to heat through, and when smoking-hot draw to the oven door, and cover with the paste of egg and butter. A little cream may be added to this paste if it be not soft enough to spread easily. Shut the oven-door for two minutes, to heat the paste.

Serve the dish very hot, and send around sliced lemon with it, as some persons like to squeeze a few drops over the _paté_ before eating.

Canned lobster and salmon are very good, thus prepared. Smoked salmon can be made palatable for this purpose by soaking over night, and boiling in two waters.

SWISS PATÉS.

Some slices of stale bread.

A little good dripping or very sweet lard mixed with the same quantity of butter.

Two or three eggs beaten light.

_Very_ fine cracker-crumbs.

Minced fowl or veal mixed with white sauce, and well seasoned. Cut _thick_ slices of stale bread—baker’s bread is best—into rounds with a cake-cutter. With a smaller cutter extract a piece from the middle of each round, taking care not to let the sharp tin go quite through the bread, but leaving enough in the cavity to serve as a bottom to the _paté_. Dip the hollowed piece of bread in the beaten egg, sift the pulverized cracker over it, and fry in the dripping, or lard and butter, to a delicate brown. Drain every drop of fat from it. Arrange upon a hot dish when all are done, heap up with the “mince,” and eat without delay.

Devilled crab or lobster is nice served in this style.

Bread _patés_ are a convenience when the housekeeper has not time to spare for pastry-making. You can, if you like, fry them without the egg or cracker; but most persons would esteem them too rich.

STELLA PATÉ.

3 cups minced veal or lamb—either roast or boiled. If underdone, it is an advantage, and if lamb be used, every particle of fat must be left out.

1 can French mushrooms, or a pint of fresh ones.

4 hard-boiled eggs cut into slices, and a sliced onion.

4 table-spoonfuls melted butter, or a cupful strong veal, lamb or fowl gravy.

3 cups fine bread-crumbs soaked in a cup of milk.

2 raw eggs beaten light and mixed with the milk.

Fry the mushrooms brown in dripping, or butter, with the onion, then chop rather coarsely. Work the crumbs, milk and raw eggs into a thick, smooth batter, with which line the bottom and sides of a well-greased mould or baking dish. Within this put a layer of the minced meat, seasoned to taste, wet with gravy or a little melted butter, and lay sliced egg over it. Next should come a layer of mushrooms, then another of meat, and so on, repeating the order given above until all your materials are used up, or the mould is full. The upper layer should be of the soaked crumbs. Cover closely and bake in a moderate oven half an hour, or until the outer crust is well “set.” Then set the mould, still covered, in a baking-pan half full of _boiling_ water. Keep in the oven, which should be hotter than at first, fifteen minutes longer. Pass a thin sharp knife around the inside of the mould to loosen the _paté_ from the sides, and turn out with care upon a hot flat dish. You should have a little brown gravy ready to pour over it.

If veal be the only meat used in preparing this dish, a layer of minced ham will improve the flavor.

If these directions be strictly followed, the _entrée_ will be pleasing to both eye and palate.

PATÉ OF BEEF AND POTATO.

This is made according to the foregoing receipt, but substituting for the bread-crumb crust one of mashed potato beaten soft and smooth with a few spoonfuls of cream and raw egg. In place of mushrooms, put a layer of chopped potatoes (previously boiled), mixed with a boiled onion also chopped. Season with beef gravy, from which the fat has been skimmed.

IMITATION PATÉ DE FOIE GRAS. +

Livers of four or five fowls and as many gizzards.

3 table-spoonfuls melted butter.

A chopped onion.

1 table-spoonful Worcestershire, or other pungent sauce.

Salt and white pepper to taste.

A few truffles, if you can get them.

Boil the livers until quite done, drain and wipe dry, and when cold, rub them to a paste in a Wedgewood mortar. Let the butter and chopped onion simmer together very slowly at the side of the range for ten minutes. Strain them through thin muslin, pressing the bag hard to extract the full flavor of the onion, and work this well into the pounded liver. Turn into a larger vessel, and mix with it the rest of the seasoning, working all together for a long while. Butter a small china or earthen-ware jar or cup, and press the mixture hard down within it, interspersing it with square bits of the boiled gizzards to represent truffles. Of course, the latter are preferable, but being scarce and expensive, they are not always to be had. If you have them, boil them and let them get cold before putting them into the _paté_. Cover all with melted butter and set in a cool, dry place. If well seasoned it will keep for a fortnight in winter, but should be kept closely covered.

This _paté_ is a delicious relish, and is more easily attainable than would at first appear. The livers of a turkey and a pair of chickens or ducks will make a small one, and these can be saved from one poultry-day to another by boiling them in salt water, and keeping in a cool place. Or, one can often secure any number of giblets by previous application at the kitchen of a restaurant or hotel.

_Or,—_

A fair imitation of the foregoing dish can be made from the liver of a young calf, with bits of the tongue for mock truffles.

CROQUETTES.

THESE popular little _roulettes_, although comparatively new to the tables of most private families in America, hold their place well where they have been once introduced. Like the _paté_, their name is Legion as regards shape, nature and quality.

In a housewifely conversation with a lady a few months since, the word “croquette” chanced to escape me, and I was caught up eagerly.

“Now,” with an ingenuous blush, “do you know, I was offered some at a dinner-party the other day, and was completely nonplussed! I thought croquet was a game.”

“Croq_uette_!” I interposed, making the most of the final _t_, and _e_.