Chapter M: H. PHILLIPS AND CO., of Troy, N. Y., manufacture a griddle with

three shallow cups sunken in an iron plate which moves on a hinge. When the cakes are done on the lower side the turn of a handle reverses the plate upon a heated surface. This makes the cakes of equal size and thickness and saves the trouble of watching, spatula in hand, to turn each one. It greatly simplifies the process of baking cakes, and, lessens the heating labor of attending to them.

Be sure that each cake is done before you turn it. A twice-turned “griddle” is spoiled.

Sour-milk Cakes.

One quart of “loppered,” or of buttermilk.

Three cups of sifted flour.

One cup of Indian meal.

One “rounded” teaspoonful of soda free from lumps.

One teaspoonful of salt.

Two tablespoonfuls of molasses.

Sift flour, salt and meal into a bowl. In another mix the milk, molasses and soda. Stir these last to a foam, and pour into the hollow in the middle of the flour. Work down the flour into the liquid with a wooden spoon until you have a batter, and beat _hard_ with upward strokes, two minutes. Bake at once. These are cheap, easy and good cakes.

Hominy Cakes.

Two cups of fine hominy boiled and cold. (Take the
tough skin from the top before mixing in the batter.)

One heaping cup of sifted flour.

One quart of milk.

Three eggs beaten very light.

One tablespoonful of molasses.

One teaspoonful of salt.

Rub the hominy with the back of a wooden spoon until all the lumps are broken up. Wet it little by little with the milk and molasses, working it smooth as you go on. Sift flour and salt together, and put in next. Beat for a whole minute before adding the whipped eggs, and another minute very hard, before baking. Stir up well from the bottom before putting each fresh batch of cakes on the griddle.

These cakes if properly made, are tender, wholesome and delightful.

Graham Cakes.

Two cups of Graham flour.

One of sifted white.

One heaping tablespoonful of Indian meal.

Three cups of buttermilk, or loppered milk.

One rounded teaspoonful of soda.

Two tablespoonfuls of molasses.

One teaspoonful of salt sifted with the flour.

Two eggs whipped very light.

One tablespoonful melted butter.

Put Graham and salted white flour into a bowl with the Indian meal. Stir up in another milk, molasses, soda and melted butter, and while foaming pour into the hollowed flour. Work to a good batter and beat in the eggs already whipped to a froth.

Beat one minute and bake at once.

This is a good standard breakfast hot bread.

5

EGGS.

MANY people do not know a well-boiled egg by sight or taste, yet a _fresh_ egg, boiled to a nicety, is one of the simplest, most nutritious of breakfast dishes.

Boiled Eggs.

Select the cleanest eggs, wash them well, and lay them in lukewarm water for five minutes. Have ready on the fire a saucepan of water on a fast boil, and in quantity sufficient to cover the eggs entirely. Into this put one egg at a time with a spoon, depositing each gently on the bottom, and quickly.

_Four minutes_ boils an egg thoroughly, if one likes the white set and the yolk heated to the centre. _Five minutes_ makes the white firm and sets the yolk. _Ten minutes_ boils both hard.

Take up the eggs with a split spoon or wire whisk. If you have no regular egg dish, lay a heated napkin in a deep dish or bowl (also warmed), put in the eggs as in a nest, cover up with the corners of the napkin, and send directly to the table. They harden in the shells if left long without being broken.

The best way to manage a boiled egg at the table is the English way of setting it upright in the small end of the egg-cup, making a hole in the top large enough to admit the egg-spoon, and eating it from the shell, seasoning as you go on. Heat and taste are undoubtedly better preserved by this method than by any other. Those who cannot afford gold-washed spoons, can procure pretty ivory ones at a trifling cost, or small teaspoons will serve the purpose.

Spoons smeared with eggs should be laid to soak in _cold_ water directly you have finished using them.

Custard Eggs.

Put the washed eggs in a saucepan of cold water and let them just come to a boil, then take them up.

Or, lay them in a hot tin pail, cover them with boiling water, put the top on the pail and leave them on the kitchen table for five minutes. Drain off the water, pour on more _boiling_ hot and replace the top. Wrap a hot towel about the pail, and leave it four minutes before dishing the eggs. They will be like a soft custard throughout, and more digestible than if cooked in any other way.

Poached, or Dropped Eggs.

Into a clean frying-pan, pour plenty of boiling water, and a teaspoonful of salt. Let it boil steadily, not violently. Wipe a cup dry, break an egg into it, and pour, very cautiously and quickly, on the surface of the water. Avoid spreading or breaking it. It will sink to the bottom for an instant, but if the water is boiling hot, will rise soon and be cooked in about three and a half minutes. Do not put more than three into the pan at one time, or they will run into one another.

Take them up with a perforated skimmer and lay on a hot, flat dish in which a teaspoonful of butter has been melted. If the whites have ragged edges, trim neatly with a sharp knife. When all are done, pepper and salt lightly, put a bit of butter on each egg and send up _very hot_.

Eggs on Toast.

Cut out with a sharp-edged tumbler or a cake cutter as many round slices of stale bread as there are eggs to be cooked. Toast these nicely, butter thinly; cover the bottom of a heated dish with them, and pour on each a tablespoonful of boiling water. Set in the plate-warmer or an open oven while you poach eggs as directed in the last receipt.

Lay each when done on a round of toast, pepper, salt and butter, and serve.

Eggs on Savory Toast.

Toast rounds of stale bread as directed in preceding receipt, but instead of moistening them with hot water, pour upon them, as they lie in the dish, two tablespoonfuls of boiling gravy to each slice. A half-cupful of gravy left over from yesterday’s roast or stew skimmed free of fat, heated, thinned with a very little boiling water, well-seasoned, then strained and boiled up quickly, makes this a tempting dish.

Poach as many eggs as you have rounds of toast, and lay on these, with pepper, salt and bits of butter.

Scrambled or Stirred Eggs.

Nine eggs.

One tablespoonful of butter.

Half a teaspoonful of salt.

A little pepper.

Half a teaspoonful of chopped parsley very fine.

Break the eggs altogether in a bowl. Put the butter in a clean frying-pan and set it on the range. As it melts, add pepper, salt and parsley. When it hisses, pour in the eggs, and begin at once to stir them, scraping the bottom of the pan from the sides toward the centre, until you have a soft, moist mass just firm enough not to run over the bottom of the heated dish on which you turn it out. Make it into a neat mound. Some people prefer it without the parsley.

In serving _everything_, be careful that the rims of the dishes are perfectly clean. The effect of the most delicious viand is spoiled by drops or smears of food on the vessel containing it.

If you heap your scrambled eggs on a platter and lay parsley-sprigs around, making a green fringe or border for the yellow hillock, you have an elegant dish. Study to make plain things pretty when you can.

Bacon and Eggs.

Fry as many slices of ham, or what is known as breakfast-bacon, as there are eggs to be cooked. Have the clean frying-pan warm, but not hot, when the meat goes in. Turn the slices as they brown. When done, take the pan over to the sink or table, remove the meat to a hot dish and set where it will keep warm.

Strain the grease left in the pan through a bit of tarlatan or coarse muslin into a cup. Wipe the frying-pan clean, pour in the strained fat and return to the fire. If there is not enough to cover the bottom a quarter of an inch deep, add a tablespoonful of butter. Break the eggs one at a time in a cup, and when the fat hisses put them in carefully.

Few people like “turned” fried eggs. Slip a cake-turner or spatula under each as it cooks to keep it from sticking. They should be done in about three minutes. Do not put in more at once than can swim in the fat without interfering with one another.

Take up as fast as they cook, trim off ragged and rusty edges and lay on a hot platter. Drain each to get rid of the fat, as you take it out of the pan.

When all are dished, lay the ham or bacon neatly about the eggs like a garnish. Pepper all lightly. Ham for this purpose should be cut in small narrow slices.

Drop sprays of parsley on the rim of the dish.

Baked Eggs.

Put a tablespoonful of butter in a pie-plate, and set in the oven until it melts and begins to smoke. Take it to the table and break six eggs one by one into a cup, pouring each in turn into the melted butter carefully. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, put a tiny bit of butter on each and set in the oven to bake until the eggs are “set”—that is, when the whites are firm and the yolks skimmed over, but not hard. Four minutes in a quick oven should do this. Send to table at once.

If you have a few spoonfuls of nice chicken gravy, you can strain and use it instead of butter.

Scalloped Eggs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Larded Liver.

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).

Whip two eggs light and pour them into a pie-plate. Turn the cutlets, one by one, over in this until every part is coated. In another dish spread evenly a cupful of rolled or pounded cracker, very fine and dry. Turn the “egged” cutlets over in this to encrust them well.

Meanwhile four large spoonfuls of sweet lard or nice beef-dripping must be melting in a clean frying-pan at one side of the range. When the cutlets are all breaded, move the pan directly over the fire. As the fat begins a lively hiss, put in as many cutlets as can lie in it without crowding. In five minutes turn them with care, not to loosen the crumb-coating. After another five minutes of rapid frying, pull the pan to a spot where the cooking will go on slowly, but regularly. In ten minutes turn the cutlets a second time. In another ten minutes they should be done.

Understand! The first fast cooking sears the surface of the meat and forms the breading into a firm crust that keeps in the juices. The slower work that follows cooks the veal thoroughly without hardening the fibres.

Lift the cutlets carefully from the pan, draining all the grease from each, and keep hot in a covered dish set over a pot of boiling water until all are done.

Always put tomato catsup or tomato sauce, in some form, on the table with veal cutlets.

Sausage Cakes.

Break off bits of sausage meat of equal size, roll them in the palms of clean hands into balls and pat them into flat cakes. Arrange them in a frying-pan and cook (not too fast) in their own fat, turning them twice until they are nicely and evenly browned. The time allowed for frying them depends on the size of the cakes. If they are not large, fifteen minutes should be enough.

Serve on a hot dish, without gravy.

Smothered Sausages.

Prick “link” sausages—that is, those done up in skins, in fifteen or twenty places, with a large needle; put them in a clean frying-pan in which is a half a teacup full of hot water. Roll the sausages over in this several times and cover _closely_. If you have not the lid of a pot or of a tin-pail that fits the frying-pan, use a pie-dish turned upside down. Set the pan where the water will bubble slowly, for ten minutes. Lift the cover then, and roll the sausages over again two or three times, to wet them thoroughly, leaving them with the sides up that were down. Cover again and cook ten minutes longer. Turn them twice more, at intervals of five minutes, cover, and let them steam four minutes before taking them up. They will be plump, whole, tender and well-done, and the bottom of the pan be almost dry. Lay in neat rows on a hot dish.

Fish Balls.

Soak a pound of cod-fish all night in cold water. Change it in the morning, and cover with lukewarm water for three hours more. Wash it, scraping off the salt and fat; put it into a sauce-pan, cover it well with water just blood-warm, and let it simmer—that is, not _quite_ boil, two hours. Take it up, pick out the bones and remove the skin, and set the fish aside to cool.

When perfectly cold chop it fine in a wooden tray. Have ready, for a cupful of minced fish, nearly two cupfuls of potato boiled and mashed very smooth.

A tablespoonful of butter.

Half a teaspoonful of salt.

Two tablespoonfuls of milk worked into the fish while
hot.

Add also, when the potato has been rubbed until free
from lumps, the beaten yolk of an egg. Work this in
well with a wooden or silver spoon.

Now stir in the chopped fish, a little at a time,
mixing all together until you have a soft mass which
you can handle easily.

Drop a tablespoonful of the mixture on a floured pastry board, or a floured dish. Flour your hands, roll the fish and potato into a ball, and pat it into a cake, or make it as round as a marble. Lay these as you form them on a dish dusted with flour, and when all are made out, set in a cool place until morning.

Half an hour before breakfast, have five or six great spoonfuls of sweet lard hissing hot in a frying-pan or doughnut-kettle. Put in the balls a few at a time; turn as they color; take them out when they are of a tanny brown, lay them in a hot colander set in a plate, and keep warm in the open oven until all are fried.

A Breakfast Stew (very nice).

Two pounds of lean beef. (The “second best cuts” may be
used here.)

A quarter of a medium-sized onion.

A tablespoonful of browned flour.

Half a teaspoonful each of minced parsley, summer
savory, and sweet marjoram.

As much allspice as will lie on a silver dime.

One teaspoonful of Halford sauce.

One saltspoonful of made mustard.

One saltspoonful of pepper.

Strained juice of half a lemon.

Cut the meat into pieces an inch square. Put it with the chopped onion into a saucepan with a pint of lukewarm water; cover closely and cook slowly, _at least_ two hours and a half. The meat should not be allowed to boil hard at any time, and when done, be so tender that it is ready to fall to pieces.

Pour the stew into a bowl, add the salt and pepper, cover it and set in a cool place until next morning.

Then put it back into the sauce-pan, set it over a quick fire, and when it begins to boil, stir in the spice and herbs. (The latter may be bought dried and powdered at the druggist’s if you cannot get them fresh.)

Boil up sharply five minutes.

The flour should be browned the day before, by spreading it on a tin plate and setting this on the stove, stirring constantly to keep it from burning black. Or a better way is, to set the tin plate in a hot oven, opening the door now and then to stir it. It is a good plan to brown a good deal—say a cupful of flour—at a time, and keep it in a glass jar for thickening gravies, etc.

Wet up a heaping tablespoonful of this with three tablespoonfuls of cold water, the lemon-juice, mustard and Worcestershire sauce. Rub smooth and stir well into the stew. Boil two minutes longer to thicken the gravy and turn out into a deep covered dish.

This is a good dinner, as well as breakfast dish. A teaspoonful of catsup is an improvement.

8

WHAT TO DO WITH “LEFT-OVERS.”

A VOLUME, instead of a single chapter, might be written upon the various methods of preparing what the French call “_rechauffés_,” and we speak of, usually contemptuously, as “warmed-over” meats. Cold meat is seldom tempting except to the very hungry. Cold tongue, ham and poultry are well enough on picnics and as a side-dish at tea. At breakfast they are barely admissible; for a simple luncheon tolerable; for dinner hardly excusable. At the first and last meal of the day, the stomach craves something hot and relishable.

A wife told me, once, with strong disgust in the remembrance, that when her husband took her on the wedding-trip to visit his mother, a frugal Massachusetts matron, they were set down within half an hour after their arrival, to lunch on a cold eel-pie left from the day before. The daughter-in-law, forty years later, spoke feelingly of the impression of niggardliness and inhospitality made on her mind by the incident.

“If she had even warmed it up, I should not have felt so forlornly homesick,” she said. “But cold eel-pie! Think of it!”

I confess to heartfelt sympathy with the complainant. There is a suggestion of friendliness and home-comfort in the “goodly smell” of a steaming-hot _entrée_ set before family or guest. It argues forethought for those who are to be fed. We have the consciousness that we are expected and that somebody has cared enough for us to make ready a visible welcome. Pale slices of cold mutton, and thin slabs of corned beef cannot, with the best intentions on the part of the caterer, convey this.

The summing up of this lecture, is: Neither despise unlikely fragments left over from roast, baked or boiled, nor consider them good enough as they are without “rehabilitation.”

We will begin with a dish the mention of which provokes a sneer more often than any other known to civilization.

Hash.

Rid cold corned or roast beef of fat, skin and gristle, and mince it in a wooden tray with a sharp chopper until the largest piece is not more than an eighth of an inch square.

With two cupfuls of this mix a cupful of mashed potato rubbed smooth with a potato beater or wooden spoon.

Season well with pepper and salt if the beef be fresh, if corned use the salt sparingly and pepper well.

Set a clean frying-pan on the stove with a cupful of beef gravy in it from which you have skimmed all the fat. Clear soup will do if you have no gravy. If you have neither, pour into the pan a half-pint of boiling water and stir into this three tablespoonfuls of butter. When the butter-water (or gravy) reaches the boil, add a half-teaspoonful of made mustard.

Then put in the meat and potato and stir—scraping the bottom of the pan to prevent sticking—for five minutes, or until you have a bubbling-hot mass, not stiff, nor yet semi-liquid. It must have been brought to boiling heat and kept at it about five minutes, cooking so fast that you have to stir and toss constantly lest it should scorch.

Heap on a hot dish, and eat from hot plates.

Hash Cakes.

Having prepared the hash as above set it aside until cold, when mould into flat cakes as you would sausage meat, and roll in flour. Heat nice beef-dripping to a boil in a frying-pan, lay in the cakes, and fry to a light brown on both sides.

Beef Croquettes.

You can make these of the cold hash by moulding it into rolls about three and a half inches long, and rather more than an inch in diameter. Roll these over and over on a floured dish or board to get them smooth and regular in shape; flatten the ends by setting each upright on the floury dish, and put enough dripping in the pan to cover them as they lie on their sides in it. It should be _very_ hot before they go in.

Roll over carefully in the fat as they brown, not to spoil the shape. Do not put too many in the pan at once; as fast as they are done take them up and lay in a hot colander until all are ready. Arrange neatly on a heated flat dish and serve.

A Mutton Stew.

Cut slices of cold mutton half an inch thick, trim away fat and skin and divide the lean meat into neat squares about an inch across.

Drop a piece of onion as large as a hickory-nut in a cupful of water and boil fifteen minutes. Strain the water through a bit of muslin, squeezing the onion hard to extract the flavor. Allow this cupful of water to two cupfuls of meat. If you have less mutton use less water; if more increase the quantity of liquid.

Pour the water into a clean saucepan and when it boils add two full tablespoonfuls of butter cut into bits and rolled over and over in browned flour until no more will adhere to the butter.

Stir this in with a little pepper and salt, a pinch of mace and a teaspoonful of lemon-juice. Boil up once and drop in the meat. Cover closely and let it simmer at one side of the stove, almost, but never _quite_ boiling, for ten minutes.

Turn into a deep dish and serve very hot.

Minced Mutton on Toast.

Trim off skin and fat from slices of cold mutton and mince in a chopping-tray. Season with pepper and salt.

Into a clean frying-pan, pour a cupful of mutton-gravy which has been skimmed well, mixed with a little hot water and strained through a bit of coarse muslin.

When this boils, wet a teaspoonful of browned flour with three tablespoonfuls of cold water, and a teaspoonful of tomato or walnut catsup, or half a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce. Rub out all the lumps and stir into the gravy in the frying-pan. Boil up once well before putting in the mutton.

As soon as the mixture bubbles and smokes all over, draw it to one side of the range where it will keep hot, but not quite boil; cover it closely, and let it stand five minutes. Warmed-over mutton becomes insipid when cooked too much.

Before the mince is put into the pan, toast the bread. Cut thick slices from a stale loaf, and trim off the crust. If you would have them look particularly nice, cut them round with a cake or biscuit-cutter. Toast to a light-brown, and keep hot until the mince is cooked.

Then lay the toast on a heated platter; butter the rounds well on both sides, and pour on each a tablespoonful of _boiling_ water. Heap a great spoonful of the minced mutton on each piece.

The mince should not be a stiff paste, nor yet so soft as to run all over the dish. A cupful of gravy will be enough for three cupfuls of meat.

Some people fancy a little green pickle or chow chow chopped very fine and mixed in with the mince while cooking. Others think the dish improved by the addition of a teaspoonful of lemon-juice put in just before taking it from the fire.

Devilled Mutton.

Cut even slices of cold mutton, not too fat.

Stir together and melt in a clean frying-pan two
tablespoonfuls of butter and one of currant or grape
jelly.

When it hisses lay in the mutton and heat
slowly—turning several times—for five minutes, or
until the slices are soft and very hot, but not until
they begin to crisp.

Take out the meat, lay on a warmed dish, cover and set
over boiling water.

To the butter and jelly left in the pan add three
tablespoonfuls of vinegar.

A small teaspoonful of made mustard.

A quarter spoonful of salt.

Half as much pepper as you have salt.

Stir together over the fire until they boil, and pour
on the meat. Cover three minutes over boiling water,
and serve.

Devilled, or Barbecued Ham.

Slice cold Ferris & Co.’s “Trade Mark” ham, lean and fat together, and lay in a clean frying-pan. Fry gently in the grease that runs from it as it heats, until the lean is soft, the fat clear and beginning to crisp at the edges.

Take out the slices with a fork, lay on a warmed dish; keep hot over boiling water.

Add to the fat left in the frying-pan:

Four tablespoonfuls of vinegar.

A small teaspoonful of made mustard.

As much pepper as will lie _easily_ on a silver
half-dime.

Stir until it boils, then pour on the ham. Let it stand
covered over the boiling water for five minutes
before sending to the table.

Chicken Croquettes.

One cup of cold chicken, minced fine.

One quarter cup of pounded cracker.

One teaspoonful of cornstarch, wet up in a _little_
cold water.

One egg.

One tablespoonful of butter.

Half a tablespoonful of salt.

A good pinch of pepper.

Half a cupful of boiling water.

Mix minced chicken and crumbs together in a bowl with
salt and pepper.

Put the boiling water in a clean saucepan, add the butter and set over the fire. When the butter is melted stir in the wet corn starch. Boil and stir until it thickens.

Have the egg beaten light in a bowl and pour the hot mixture upon it. Beat well, and mix with the minced chicken. Let it get perfectly cold and make into croquettes as directed for beef croquettes.

But roll these in a well-beaten egg, then in fine cracker-crumbs instead of flour, and fry, a few at a time, in a mixture half-butter, half-lard enough to cover them well. Drain off every drop of fat from each croquette as you take it up, and keep hot until all are done.

Serve hot and at once.

9

DINNER DISHES.