The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual Part 19

Why have clove and allspice, or mace and nutmeg, in the same sauce; or marjoram, thyme, and savoury; or onions, leeks, eschalots, and garlic?

one will very well supply the place of the other, and the frugal cook may save something considerable by attending to this, to the advantage of her employers, and her own time and trouble. You might as well, to make soup, order one quart of water from the _Thames_, another from the _New River_, a third from _Hampstead_, and a fourth from _Chelsea_, with a certain portion of _spring_ and _rain_ water.

In many of our receipts we have fallen in with the fas.h.i.+on of ordering a mixture of spices, &c., which the above hint will enable the culinary student to correct.

"PHARMACY is now much more simple; COOKERY may be made so too. A prescription which is now compounded with five ingredients, had formerly fifty in it: people begin to understand that the materia medica is little more than a collection of evacuants and stimuli."--_Boswell's Life of Johnson._

The _ragouts of the last century_ had infinitely more ingredients than we use now; the praise given to _Will. Rabisha_ for his Cookery, 12mo.

1673, is

"To fry and frica.s.see, his way's most neat, For he compounds a thousand sorts of meat."

To become a perfect mistress of the art of cleverly extracting and combining flavours,[105-*] besides the gift of a good taste, requires all the experience and skill of the most accomplished professor, and, especially, an intimate acquaintance with the palate she is working for.

Send your sauces to table as hot as possible.

Nothing can be more unsightly than the surface of a sauce in a frozen state, or garnished with grease on the top. The best way to get rid of this, is to pa.s.s it through a tamis or napkin previously soaked in cold water; the coldness of the napkin will coagulate the fat, and only suffer the pure gravy to pa.s.s through: if any particles of fat remain, take them off by applying filtering paper, as blotting paper is applied to writing.

Let your sauces boil up after you put in wine, anchovy, or thickening, that their flavours may be well blended with the other ingredients;[105-+]

and keep in mind that the "_chef-d'uvre_" of COOKERY is, to entertain the mouth without offending the stomach.

N.B. Although I have endeavoured to give the particular quant.i.ty of each ingredient used in the following sauces, as they are generally made; still the cook's judgment must direct her to lessen or increase either of the ingredients, according to the taste of those she works for, and will always be on the alert to ascertain what are the favourite _accompaniments_ desired with each dish. See _Advice to Cooks_, page 50.

When you open a bottle of _catchup_ (No. 439), _essence of anchovy_ (No.

433), &c., throw away the old cork, and stop it closely with a new cork that will fit it very tight. Use only the best superfine velvet taper-corks.

Economy in corks is extremely unwise: in order to save a mere trifle in the price of the cork, you run the risk of losing the valuable article it is intended to preserve.

It is a _vulgar error_ that a bottle must be well stopped, when the cork is forced down even with the mouth of it; it is rather a sign that the cork is too small, and it should be redrawn and a larger one put in.

_To make bottle-cement._

Half a pound of black resin, same quant.i.ty of red sealing-wax, quarter oz. bees' wax, melted in an earthen or iron pot; when it froths up, before all is melted and likely to boil over, stir it with a tallow candle, which will settle the froth till all is melted and fit for use.

Red wax, 10_d._ per lb. may be bought at Mr. Dew's Blackmore-street, Clare-market.

N.B. This cement is of very great use in preserving things that you wish to keep a long time, which without its help would soon spoil, from the clumsy and ineffectual manner in which the bottles are corked.

FOOTNOTES:

[101-*] See, in pages 91, 92, A CATALOGUE OF THE INGREDIENTS now used in soups, sauces, &c.

[102-*] "It is the duty of a good sauce," says the editor of the _Almanach des Gourmands_ (vol. v. page 6), "to insinuate itself all round and about the maxillary gland, and imperceptibly awaken into activity each ramification of the organs of taste: if not sufficiently savoury, it cannot produce this effect, and if too _piquante_, it will paralyze, instead of exciting, those delicious t.i.tillations of tongue and vibrations of palate, that only the most accomplished philosophers of the mouth can produce on the highly-educated palates of thrice happy _grands gourmands_."

[102-+] To save time and trouble is the most valuable frugality: and if the mistress of a family will condescend to devote a little time to the profitable and pleasant employment of preparing some of the STORE SAUCES, especially Nos. 322. 402. 404. 413. 429. 433. 439. 454; these, both epicures and economists will avail themselves of the advantage now given them, of preparing at home.

By the help of these, many dishes may be dressed in half the usual time, and with half the trouble and expense, and flavoured and finished with much more certainty than by the common methods.

A small portion of the time which young ladies sacrifice to torturing the strings of their _piano-forte_, employed in obtaining domestic accomplishments, might not make them worse wives, or less agreeable companions to their husbands. This was the opinion 200 years ago.

"To speak, then, of the knowledge which belongs unto our British housewife, I hold the most princ.i.p.al to be a perfect skill in COOKERY: she that is utterly ignorant therein, may not, by the lawes of strict justice, challenge the freedom of marriage, because indeede she can perform but half her vow: she may love and obey, but she cannot cherish and keepe her husband."--G. MARKHAM'S _English Housewife_, 4to. 1637, p.

62.

We hope our fair readers will forgive us, for telling them that economy in a wife, is the most certain charm to ensure the affection and industry of a husband.

[103-*] Though some of these people seem at last to have found out, that an Englishman's head may be as full of gravy as a Frenchman's, and willing to give the preference to native talent, retain an Englishman or woman as prime minister of their kitchen; still they seem ashamed to confess it, and commonly insist as a "_sine qua non_," that their English domestics should understand the "_parlez vous_;" and notwithstanding they are perfectly initiated in all the minutiae of the philosophy of the mouth, consider them uneligible, if they cannot scribble _a bill of fare in pretty good bad French_.

[104-*] The princ.i.p.al agents now employed to flavour soups and sauces are, MUSHROOMS (No. 439), ONIONS (No. 420), ANCHOVY (No. 433), LEMON-JUICE and PEEL, or VINEGAR, WINE, (especially good CLARET), SWEET HERBS, and SAVOURY SPICES.--Nos. 420-422, and 457. 459, 460.

[105-*] If your palate becomes dull by repeatedly tasting, the best way to refresh it is to wash your mouth well with milk.

[105-+] Before you put eggs or cream into a sauce, have all your other ingredients well boiled, and the sauce or soup of proper thickness; because neither eggs nor cream will contribute to thicken it.--After you have put them in, do not set the stew-pan on the stove again, but hold it over the fire, and shake it round one way till the sauce is ready.

CHAPTER IX.

MADE DISHES.

Under this general head we range our receipts for HASHES, STEWS, and RAGOUTS,[106-*] &c. Of these there are a great mult.i.tude, affording the ingenious cook an inexhaustible store of variety: in the French kitchen they count upwards of 600, and are daily inventing new ones.

We have very few general observations to make, after what we have already said in the two preceding chapters on _sauces_, _soups_, &c., which apply to the present chapter, as they form the princ.i.p.al part of the accompaniment of most of these dishes. In fact, MADE DISHES are nothing more than meat, poultry (No. 530), or fish (Nos. 146, 158, or 164), stewed very gently till they are tender, with a thickened sauce poured over them.

Be careful to trim off all the skin, gristle, &c. that will not be eaten; and shape handsomely, and of even thickness, the various articles which compose your made dishes: this is sadly neglected by common cooks.

Only stew them till they are just tender, and do not stew them to rags; therefore, what you prepare the day before it is to be eaten, do not dress quite enough the first day.

We have given receipts for the most easy and simple way to make HASHES, &c. Those who are well skilled in culinary arts can dress up things in this way, so as to be as agreeable as they were the first time they were cooked. But has.h.i.+ng is a very bad mode of cookery: if meat has been done enough the first time it is dressed, a second dressing will divest it of all its nutritive juices; and if it can be smuggled into the stomach by bribing the palate with _piquante_ sauce, it is at the hazard of an indigestion, &c.

I promise those who do me the honour to put my receipts into practice, that they will find that the most nutritious and truly elegant dishes are neither the most difficult to dress, the most expensive, nor the most indigestible. In these compositions experience will go far to diminish expense: meat that is too old or too tough for roasting, &c., may by gentle stewing be rendered savoury and tender. If some of our receipts do differ a little from those in former cookery books, let it be remembered we have advanced nothing in this work that has not been tried, and experience has proved correct.

N.B. See No. 483, an ingenious and economical system of FRENCH COOKERY, written at the request of the editor by an accomplished ENGLISH LADY, which will teach you how to supply your table with elegant little made dishes, &c. at as little expense as plain cookery.

FOOTNOTES:

[106-*] Sauce for ragouts, &c., should be thickened till it is of the consistence of good rich cream, that it may adhere to whatever it is poured over. When you have a large dinner to dress, keep ready-mixed some fine-sifted flour and water well rubbed together till quite smooth, and about as thick as b.u.t.ter. See No. 257.

THE

COOK'S ORACLE.

BOILING.