Tag: potatoes

Delicious and Savory Soufflés

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This is the second article in March of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on March 10, 1907, and is a discussion on the soufflés.

I have never made a soufflés myself, however, based on television, movies, etc. I am aware that it can be difficult ensuring the soufflé does not fall after it has been taken out of the oven.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of The Boston Sunday Post.

Delicious and Savory Soufflés

PRONOUNCED as if written “soofflay.” Some will recognize them by the hearing of the ear who might mispronounce the printed word into unintelligibility.

“Kitchen French” thus translates it: “A pudding beaten to a froth and baked very quickly.”

Our good standby, the dictionary and cyclopedia, goes into details: “A delicate dish, sometimes savory, but usually sweet. It is made light by incorporating whites of eggs beaten to a froth, and placing it in an oven, from which it is removed the moment it puffs up, and served at once.”

Not a bad description from one who, presumably, is not a professional cook. The souffle is as often savory as sweet in my kitchen. It is one of the most popular methods known to us of utilizing left-overs. As I shall show presently, there are few vegetables that may not be saved from the stigma of “warmed-ups” by working them into the compound with the French name. For a quarter century the potato puff has been a frequent and welcome visitor to our table. It may not taste better when christened “souffle,” but it more nearly approximates the dignity of a “company dish,” especially if it be crowned with a meringue.

She is a stupid or bigoted mistress who does not learn something from every change of cooks. I, for one, am not ashamed to confess myself the debtor to even the least accomplished woman who has ever presided over my range and sink. If you will deign to study her methods, you will find that each incumbent has some specialty. One, a redheaded daughter of Erin, boasted modestly when I engaged her, that she “had quite a name for her corn bread.” She was a mediocre cook in general. She made the best corn bread I have ever eaten that was made of Northern Indian meal. I introduced the recipe into my first cook book under the title of “Nonpareil Corn Bread,” and told her I had done it. From a second cook I got a capital recipe for Yorkshire pudding, registering it under its rightful name in the face of her insistent declaration that it was “Auction Pudding.” To a later date belongs my instructor in souffles. She was a fair cook in other lines. She had a genius for souffles. It did not lower my respect for her that she was conscious of this. So long as harmless vanity in her one accomplishment did not interfere with the average excellence of her work, I encouraged her. In fact, I had secret enjoyment in the sight of Janetta’s mien and movements when allowed to transform a cupful or a saucerful of this or that left-over that might have been consigned to the garbage pail but for her proclivity to reduce any given culinary quantity to a souffle.

Her methods were worth watching. To begin with—and this stage is commended as an example to the novice in kitchen work—she collected all needed materials and tools before beginning the real business of the hour. Eggs, cream or milk, the vegetable or fruit, or marmalade, or rice or tapioca, which was to act as the foundation of the airy structure—bowls, egg beater, bake dish, sugar and other condiments—were set in intelligent order upon the table and duly scanned ere she seated herself solemnly in front of the array and fell to work. In the three years of her incumbency she never once failed to send in a soufflé at the right moment—puffy, tender, hot, and in all things satisfactory. What matter if an artist magnify her office when the result is invariably success? It is something to be proud of—the ability to do one thing as well, if not better, than anybody else can do it—be it ruling an empire or tossing up a souffle.

RECIPES FOR SOUFFLES OF VARIOUS KINDS

A Cheese Souffle
(A nice luncheon dish.)

PUT two tablespoonfuls of butter into a deep frying-pan, and when it hisses stir into it two tablespoonfuls of flour. Rub and stir to a smooth “roux” and add gradually a cupful of milk. Bring to a boil, having dropped a quarter of a teaspoonful of soda into the milk, and stir in an even cupful of grated cheese, a saltspoonful of salt and a dash of cayenne. In two chilled bowls have ready the yolks and the whites of four eggs, beaten separately and very light. Turn the contents of the frying-pan into a third bowl, and pour in with this gradually the beaten yolks, beating all the time. Fold into the mixture, and lightly, the stiffened whites. Pour all into a bakedish ready heated and buttered, and bake in a quick, steady oven to a delicate brown. Send to the table promptly, before it falls.

Bread-and-Cheese Souffle.

Scald two cupfuls of milk, adding a half-teaspoonful of soda. Add a cupful of fine, dry crumbs, and take from the fire. Leave the crumbs in soak for ten minutes, beat to a smooth paste, add a cupful of finely grated and very dry cheese, a tablespoonful of melted butter, a pinch of cayenne and a saltspoonful of salt. Beat hard for a minute and add the yolks of three eggs whipped light; lastly, the stiffened whites of the eggs. Pour into a heated and buttered bakedish, sift fine crackerdust on the top and bake, covered, for fifteen minutes in a brisk oven. Uncover and brown lightly.

A delicious dish, and more wholesome than one based entirely upon cheese.

Baked Souffle of Eggs.

Scald a cup of milk, putting in a tiny pinch of soda. Beat the yolks of six eggs until light and creamy, and the whites till stiff enough to stand alone. Add one-half teaspoonful of salt, a dash of pepper and one rounded tablespoonful of butter to the milk, and stir it into the yolks; then beat in the whites very quickly. Pour into a deep, buttered pudding dish and bake in a moderate oven ten minutes, or to a delicate brown. Serve immediately in the bakedish.

Orange Souffle.

Cut stale sponge cake into small cubes and saturate with orange juice. Pour into a dish and pour over it rich custard. Cover with whipped cream and put Maraschino cherries on top.

Spinach Souffle.

Chop a cupful of cold cooked spinach very fine, or run it through the vegetable press. Beat in a tablespoonful of melted butter, salt and pepper to taste, half a teaspoonful of sugar and a pinch of mace nutmeg. Stir and beat to a smooth paste; add half a cupful of milk, the beaten yolks of three eggs, and when these are well mixed with the other ingredients, ??? in the stiffened whites. Beat for thirty seconds and turn into a buttered dish. Bake twenty, minutes in a quick oven. It is very good.

Green Pea Souffle.

Mash a cupful of cooked peas to a smooth pulp, working in, as you go on, a tablespoonful of melted butter. Mix with this a cupful of milk, into which you have dropped a pinch of soda. Season with salt and pepper; beat in the whipped yolks of three eggs, and, a minute later, the stiffened whites. Turn into a buttered bakedish; bake, covered, in a brisk oven for twenty minutes, then brown lightly.

Potato Souffle.

Into a cupful of mashed potatoes work a cupful and a half of milk which has been scalded, and a pinch of soda added. Beat hard and light. Season with salt and pepper and a teaspoonful of onion juice. Add a teaspoonful of melted butter and beat to a cream before whipping in the yolks, then the whites, of two beaten eggs. Turn into a buttered pudding dish and bake, covered, for ten minutes in a quick oven. Then, uncover and brown.

Rice Souffle.

Make a roux of a tablespoonful of butter and one of flour heated and stirred together in a saucepan. When smooth pour in a cupful of milk heated with a bit of soda. Remove from the fire, and, when it is lukewarm, beat into the sauce a cupful of cold boiled rice, then the yolks, and finally the whites of three eggs, beaten separately. Bake in a pudding dish set in a quick oven. Keep the dish covered for ten minutes.

Onion Souffle.

Make as you would the rice souffle, substituting for the cold boiled rice a cupful of boiled onion—yesterday’s “leftover”—run through the colander or vegetable press, and free from all bits of skin and fibre.

It is very savory.

The Queen of Souffles.

Soak half a pound of prunes over night. On the morrow drain them well, remove the stones and mince the prunes finely. Whip the whites of seven eggs to a standing foam, beat in quickly six spoonfuls of powdered sugar; whip the minced prunes into this meringue; turn into a buttered pudding dish and bake in a hot oven. Twenty minutes should send it to table hot and high—a very dream of lightness and deliciousness.

Serve whipped cream as a sauce.

Date Souffle.

Is made in the save way, and is esteemed by some epicures as hardly second to the “Queen.”

Chocolate Souffle.

Make a roux of a tablespoonful of butter and one of flour in a saucepan. When smooth, add, by degrees three-quarters of a cupful of milk. Have ready in a bowl the beaten yolks of three eggs, into which have been stirred three tablespoonfuls of sugar. Turn the white sauce upon this; add four tablespoonfuls of grated sweet chocolate, and whip to a lukewarm cream. Set on ice to cool, stirring now and then to hinder a crust from forming. When quite cold, fold in the frothed whites of the eggs, and turn into a buttered pudding dish. Bake quickly and serve at once with whipped cream.

Marion Harland

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Savory and Nourishing Lenten Fare

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This is the first article in February of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on February 3, 1907, and is the first in a series of talks on Lenten food which a specific look at fish.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of Boston Sunday Post.

Savory and Nourishing Lenten Fare

AN EMINENT metropolitan divine has put upon record as his opinion that, were it not for the intervention of Lent between the fashionable winter season and the almost as gay summer campaign, the women who compose the major proportion of his cure of souls would never remember that there is any other life than this.

“In Lent it is the fashion to go to church,” he said, “and women must, perforce, get some idea of the reason for holding church services.”

A learned Judge who belonged to a communion which does not enjoin church services during the forty days observed as a penitential period by other sects took another view of the expediency of abstaining from flesh-foods in the late winter and early spring. Chancing to go into his coachman’s house, and finding the family at dinner, he noted that there was no meat on the table.

“Ah, it is Lent!” he remarked. “And a very sensible thing it is to abstain from meat on three or four days a week in the spring! We should all be better off for following your example. We eat too much flesh-food.”

“You mean better for the body, sir,” rejoined the man, respectfully. “We think fasting good for the soul’s sake!”

THE PHYSICAL SIDE

This is not the place for a dissertation upon the spiritual benefit to be gained from denial of the grosser dispositions of the body, nor for a computation of the influence of a purified body upon religious experience. For the present I range myself with the jurist who claimed that we should all be in better condition physically if meat were stricken from the family bill-of-fare for three days in each week as a relief from the congestion wrought by winter diet and habits and in preparation for summer heats.

The national appetite for flesh- foods may be called a passion with certain classes. Conspicuous among these are adopted citizens of our lavish land. It would be a curious and a melancholy study—the comparison of statistics as to the quantity of flesh per capita, eaten by the transplanted immigrant and that eaten by the brother or sister left in the old country. As curious and more melancholy would be the difference between the doctor’s bills and the death rates of the two.

It is not to be denied that we need carbon in winter and that meat supplies more carbon than vegetables. It is as undeniable that continuous consumption of meat and a scanty use of esculents begets bile and uric acid. A third and consecutive truth is that to these two evil agents may be traced at least one-half of the maladies from which residents of the United States suffer and die.

REFORM MENUS

Let us begin a much-needed reform by inquiring how the national menu may be modified without making it less attractive; in other phrase, add to our culinary repertoire Lenten dishes that will commend themselves to the popular palate. The average eater does not take kindly to fare the chief recommendation of which is wholesomeness. He wants what “tastes good.” Savoriness is a prime essential. And savoriness is a natural characteristic of meat. Having once eaten thereof, and frequently, the sophisticated palate accounts all else insipid. As my oft-quoted Hibernian maid—“three years in the coontry”—complained when eggs were put before her at breakfast—“I moight ate six, and rise hoongry! The mate corner must be filled!”

She is a wise caterer who contrives to fill the meat corner with food that is at once nourishing, acceptable to the taste and, at this time of the year, gently alterative.

The object of this and the next paper will be to direct the housemother’s efforts into channels that may lead to these desirable ends.

If in dealing with Lenten fare I seem to make less than might be expected of these, the usual main stays of cook and caterer who exclude animal food from their daily menus while Lent holds on, it is because so much has already been written of the multifarious ways of cooking eggs—and with respect to a fish diet in winter I have grave misgivings. Fresh fish is wholesome—to some digestions. Others cannot assimilate it. Stale fish is poison. And fish that has been laid up in cold storage for weeks and months is as stale as if it were not advertised as “fresh.”

DANGERS OF FISH DIET

Have you ever paused to consider how many more cases of ptomaine poisoning occur in the winter than in summer? I have been led to look into the subject by several severe and two fatal cases that have come under my immediate observation. In each instance the fish—cod, salmon, halibut and shad—was purchased from a reputable dealer at a high price. It lay buried in ice on the stall, and the buyer assured that it had been drawn from cold storage within a few hours. A majority of women marketers do not ask themselves questions as to the age of fish thus glibly recommended. They know that salmon are not caught in ice-locked rivers and that the shad season in the Northern States is not January and February. They accept the fishmongers’ word for the wholesomeness of their wares, and take no further thought in the matter.

Cold storage is a blessing when the antiseptic process is complete. Because it is faulty sometimes, and the vender’s conscience is elastic, I drop a word of caution to my fellow-housewife touching fish caught in the autumn and kept over for Lent. Southern shad are brought into Northern markets before the Hudson and Connecticut rivers are free of ice. Unless you are wise in determining the age of finny creatures, coax the fisherman of your family into doing this part of your purchasing for you (I do!).

EXPERIENCE ALONE IS SAFE

He may tell you, as my especial John has told me, times without number, what are the hall-marks of really fresh, therefore safe, fish. All the same, join him in his walk downtown—or get on the same car with him, and beguile him into looking into the market with you. The subtle flattery of your confiding appeal to his superior wisdom will do the work—if he be a real fisherman.

As to eggs, I have fifty ways, all told, of preparing them for the table, and I prefer giving the space these would occupy to recipes that have to do with the kindly fruits of the earth.

If eggs are used, however, as they will be by thousands of devotees, be sure to use only those that are fresh. A simple test, and one which is well known, should be given by the housewife if she is not sure of her grocer. Hold the egg before a lighted candle with both hands and scrutinize it between the thumbs. The reflection of the candle light will tell the story. If the shell is clear and opaque, the egg is good; if it appears dark and mottled, throw it aside.

It is my intention more particularly in this paper to talk of a branch of the culinary art which is sorely neglected by our native cooks. I mean the making of meatless soups, known in the inventory of the French chef as “soupes maigres.”

Spinach Soup.

Wash and pick over a half peck of spinach and, while still dripping wet, put it into the inner vessel of a double boiler, and fill the outer with boiling water. Fit a close top on the inner vessel and cook steadily until the spinach is soft and broken. Turn it into a bowl with the water that has oozed from it, and mince very line. When run it through a vegetable press. Return to the double boiler with boiling water in the outer kettle. Season with Hungarian sweet pepper (paprika), salt, a teaspoonful of white sugar and a teaspoonful of onion juice. While it simmers, heat in another boiler a quart of milk, putting in a good pinch of soda to prevent curdling. The richer the milk the better the soup. Put two heaping tablespoonfuls of butter into a frying pan, and when it hisses, stir in a tablespoonful of flour. Cook, stirring all the time until you have a smooth “roux.” When the milk is scalding hot, add the roux, cook two minutes, and pour, keeping the spoon going all the time, into the spinach broth. Boil up once, stirring faithfully, and serve. Scatter croutons of fried bread on the top.

An excellent “soupe maigre,” if properly made.

Tomato Soup.

Stew a quart can of tomatoes soft and rub them through a colander or a vegetable press. Return to the fire, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste, two teaspoonfuls of white sugar, the same of onion juice and a tablespoonful of butter. Meanwhile, scald a pint of milk in a double boiler, adding an even teaspoonful of baking soda. Make a “roux” – as directed in the last recipe—of two tablespoonfuls of butter and one of flour, stir into the milk, boil one minute and add the boiling tomato soup. It will foam up furiously. Pour out and serve.

This may be made into a perfect company soup by laying a tablespoonful of whipped cream upon the surface of each plateful when served.

Tomato Bisque.

Cook a can of tomatoes soft, run through the vegetable press and return to the fire. In another farina kettle scald two quarts of milk with an even teaspoonful of baking soda. When it is hot add three tablespoonfuls of butter, and, simmer gently. Season the tomatoes with pepper and salt and a heaping teaspoonful of white sugar, also one of onion juice and, if you can get it, one of Hungarian catsup. Cook for three minutes after the seasoning goes in and add an even cupful of finely rolled cracker crumbs. Simmer for two minutes, add the milk and stir smooth. Then pour into the tureen or plates at once.

Browned Potato Soup,

Pare and cut into thick slices ten large potatoes, and leave them in cold water for an hour. Dry them between two towels and brown in butter, cottolene or in oil. They should be nicely browned, but not crisped. Fry with them a sliced onion. The frying should be done in a deep saucepan and not in a frying pan. Pour upon the browned potatoes the onion and the fat in which they were cooked two quarts of boiling water, cover the pot and cook until the potatoes are boiled soft. Add a tablespoonful of browned flour rolled in butter. Rub through a colander, return all to the kettle, season with pepper and salt and a tablespoonful of minced parsley.

Have ready in another vessel a cupful of scalding milk, add a pinch of soda and, a minute later, two well-beaten eggs. Pour the potato broth into a tureen or bowl, stir in the milk and eggs and serve.

A most palatable puree. Some cooks omit the browned flour, but it gives a richer color to the soup and prevents wateriness.

White Potato Soup.

Pare, boil and mash ten fine potatoes. Heat a quart of milk in a double boiler with a pinch of soda, and when it is scalding add an onion that has been parboiled, then chopped. Simmer for three minutes, and rub through a colander to get rid of the onion. Make a roux of two tablespoonfuls of butter and one of flour, stir into the milk and set in boiling water while you beat into the hot mashed potato, pepper and salt to taste and a tablespoonful of minced parsley. Stir the boiling milk into this, set over the fire and add two beaten eggs swiftly and with deft whirls of the eggbeater. The instant they are fairly mixed with the soup pour out the latter and serve.

Marion Harland

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Under My Foreign Vine and Fig Tree – Switzerland

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This is the second article in January of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on January 13, 1907, and is a continuation of last year’s talk on keeping house in foreign countries and what can be learned from Switzerland.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of Boston Sunday Post.

Under My Foreign Vine and Fig Tree

Switzerland

NO CONDITION, or combination of untoward conditions, is intolerable when once one has seen the ridiculous side of it. A laugh salves the smart of defeat and blunts the edge of an insult.

The funny side of our initial experiences in Swiss cookery was quick in coming to the front. It lay in the discovery that not one of our family party could speak the language of the region in which we had pitched our moving tent for six months. And this although a year in Italy had given half of the number a colloquial acquaintance with the musical, facile tongue. Granted a tolerable familiarity with spoken and written French and a substratum of Latin, and Italian was the easiest of lingual tasks. We had furbished up our French in anticipation of the year in the Swiss Republic, for was it not the vernacular of the free-born Switzer?

A Trying Lingual Experience

“Boy,” now 5 years of age, and a glib chatterbox in three languages, was one of the first to proclaim our formidable disability. Returning, red of face and swelling with rage, from a visit to the excellent fruit market on the shore of the lake along which ran the crooked streets of the historic town, he thus relieved his humble soul: “I asked an old woman how she sold her grapes, and she said a long nonsense I had never heard before. And when I told her ‘Non capisco Tedesco,’ she laughed at me. It was good Italian, and meant I don’t understand your horrid old Dutch!”

We laughed, too, at the small man’s discomfiture, and brought our proverbial family philosophy to bear upon countless similar experiences no less surprising and inconvenient, the unlooked-for obstacles to settling down comfortably in our chosen nest. The speech of the common people of Lucerne and the surrounding region is a wretched patois of blended German and French, with a smack of Italian, introduced, as our disgusted Parisian professor used to say—“pour la rendre plus difficile.” As if it were not difficult enough already to make the earlier weeks of our sojourn in Helvetian lodgings a series of distractions!

From first to last, the fruit market in which “Boy” had his hard lesson was a surprise and a delight. Grapes, figs, oranges, pears, nespolis (a novelty to us) and berries were a delicious jumble that set season at defiance. We ate Alpine strawberries in November and grapes and pears at the same meal.

In September of the next year we reached Geneva just in time for the autumnal “grape-cure,” of which I have written somewhat at length in our Exchange. We “took” the cure conscientiously, but neither then, nor ever, did we learn to like the much-lauded grapes of Switzerland and Germany. They were fair to view, and, we thought, at first sight, preposterously cheap. The latter opinion we changed after sampling every variety we could lay hands upon. They were sour when fully ripe, even those that blushed rosily on the side of the cluster kissed by the sun. The purple-and-gold of the finest varieties was a delusion and a snare to eye and taste, until we came to know them well.

The berries, including currants and gooseberries, were delicious, and, as I have said, phenomenal in the length of seasonableness, in consequence of the wide range of altitudes in the mountain lands.

Here, as in Italy, our rooms were lofty as to ceiling; the windows were casements, opening down to the floor, and the floors were of brick in the chambers, stone in the salon and dining-room. When we got to Geneva we entered upon the realm of parquetries and rugs. The stairs were of stone, everywhere, and uncarpeted.

The Swiss are, as a nation, notably clean, and their thrift sets an object lesson to all Christendom. In none of our bedrooms was there any provision for a fire, and the steady wood-blaze that never went out in our big salon was a continual marvel—and I suspect a scandal—to our landlady and native visitors. This when the snow that lay on the mountain tops the year round cloaked the lower heights, and fierce winds filled the air with whirling white and drove long lines of fine flakes between the ill-fitting leaves of the long casements. We had fallen into the practice in Italy of tucking hot-water jugs between our sheets nightly to temper the chill of the beds. An assortment of tall round water jugs, used for this purpose and none other, is as regularly apart of household plenishing as cups and saucers and knives and forks. There was running water, hot and cold, in the kitchen, and cold in the bathroom, the primitive appointments of which would have moved us to active discontent had there been any hope of altering them. Since there was none, we pushed the family philosophy hard in that direction, and got many a laugh out of this and dozens of other discomforts.

Europe is Late Breakfasting

America leads the world in the matter of early breakfasts. In Switzerland, as in Italy, France, Germany and England, we arose at the hour at which we would have sat down to the first meal of the day at home. Not a shop in the business portion of Lucerne, Lausanne or Geneva was opened before 9 o’clock. To desert one’s pillow before 8 would be to invite remark, and the inconveniences of an uncleaned, unwarmed apartment. Not a drop of hot water could be had at 7, or at 7.30. We were lucky if we could secure a pint apiece for our matutinal ablutions at 8, and early in the season began to utilize the embers of the extravagant salon fire for heating a kettleful shaving water and to take the chill from boy’s bath. Firewood was the most expensive it m in our weekly bills. We computed that the short billets cut from small trees we would call saplings at home and the bunches of dried twigs bound into fagots for kindling cost at least $20 a cord. And this in a house that had no furnace to make, as it were, a background of heat for the ceaseless flare of our ruinous wood fire!

An Uncomplaining Maid

Breakfast was served in the salon upon a table drawn directly in front of the hearth. It was brought up from the lodging-house kitchen, three flights below, upon a huge tray, borne by a pretty maid about five feet two inches in height. When Marie comes to America she will not “engage” in a house where there is not a dumb-waiter from the kitchen to the dining room, one floor above. For four months she lugged the loaded tray up three flights of stone stairs with never a murmur, except on one dreadful morning when an incautious step on the topmost stair brought the corner of the tray in to contact with the railing, and tray and contents —coffee, cocoa, rolls, eggs, marmalade, cups, saucers and plates—went hurtling down the abysmal well of the lofty stairways and crashed upon the stone floor of the basement. What wonder that the poor little maiden, all forlorn, sat herself down on the upper stair and wailed aloud!

“For it is I who will have to pay for all that is broken!” was the burden of her plaint.

Of course, as “soft” foreigners, we made ourselves responsible for the breakages—deliverance for which we suffered in the esteem of our landlady—“padrona,” as we had learned to call her in Italy. Nor will Marie set it down to the account of some other American mistress when she emigrates.

The Swiss breakfast differed from the usual continental pattern in nothing save that marmalade of some kind was an invariable accompaniment of rolls and coffee, and that a slab of tough Swiss cheese balanced the butter. Nobody ever ate it, and, for all we know, the same slab may have mounted guard the season through. The Swiss are as strong on cheese as are the Netherlanders. I do not recollect that it ever failed to appear in some form at every meal to which we sat down during the eight months we passed in the tight little republic. Nor that breakfast or luncheon was ever set before us that did not display a glass dish of “confitures,” alias jam, alias marmalade. The abundance and all-the-year-around supply of fruits may account for the craze in this line. Every housewife puts up her own fruit. “Canned goods” have no harbor in her larder. The Swiss honey also goes with the simple breakfast. Sometimes it is strained; oftener it is served in the comb, clear as amber, and fragrant with the distilled breath of mountain thyme and other wild blossoms that help to make the Swiss flora the richest in the world.

We became, in time, so fond of the native bread as to find the fine white rolls sent in from a French bakery insipid by comparison. The Swiss housewife rarely makes fresh yeast, or sponge. She carries it from one baking to another for weeks together. It may be that this custom accounts for the slight “tang,” sometimes sharpening into sourness, that is seldom absent from the loaf. It is a mammoth loaf, and round and high. Thick slices were hewn from it as it was called for at table. It had a stand all to itself, at luncheon; it was a creamy brunette in complexion, being made from whole wheat, and was, altogether, so wholesome and whole-souled, that we gave it a distinguished place in our regard.

Luncheon was spread in the dining-room at 12.30. Besides the big loaf we had a dish of hot meat—as often as not, kid or chamois, roast or braised. In spite of classic allusions to Ambracian kid carved to slow music, and winter rights in the mountain hut where the “kid turns on the spit” —we did not take kindly to him, or to his country cousin, the chamois.

Condiments Disguised the Meat

The meat came on the table, dark, almost black—colored, doubtless, by the spices cooked with it—and whatever native flavor it might have had disguised beyond recognition by the condiments. Ragouts were also frequent; we had potatoes-boiled in their jackets—always a salad, and cheese, of course. Light wine was the common beverage. For sweets there was pastry, or a layer cake of rounds of pastry separated, yet cemented by rounds of “confitures.”

Dinner was served at 6.30. Having taken up the English fashion of afternoon tea early in our pilgrimage, we were comparatively indifferent to the defects of our luncheons, solacing ourselves at 4 o’clock with the most informal, social and refreshing function of the day. Other exiles from the homeland and resident English soon fell into the habit of dropping in at teatime, until our modest salon became the rendezvous for a coterie of the most charming people I have ever had the good fortune to know. We brewed the tea in our own quarters, made cozy on the stormiest day by the American innovation of the open fire. The silver teakettle bubbled gayly over the alcohol lamp; we had light cakes and biscuits, thin bread and butter, lemon for those who preferred tea a la Russe to tea with sugar and cream—and this was all! Some of my happiest reminiscences of foreign life are of the winter spent in dear old Geneva, and the reunions of English-speaking folk in the salon overlooking the Lake Leman, of Byron, Shelley and Bonnivard, the snow-capped Juras forming the horizon line.

The Dinner Menu

Our chat was usually prolonged until we had just time to dress hurriedly for dinner. The first course was soup— sometimes a thin bouillon floating noodles or rice or manestra. A broth of lentils suggested “Tedesco” kinship about twice a week. Sometimes we had a “potage a la bonne femme,” which had squares of toasted bread a drift upon a sea of consomme besprinkled will parsley.

Fish followed the soup. The lake furnished a fair variety, and it was invariably breaded and fried. Potatoes went around with it. Next appeared a solitary vegetable—cabbage, with a cheese sauce; fried celery; or stewed celery root, or artichokes eaten with a sauce tartare or dipped in melted butter, an entree of sweetbreads, or, maybe, of boiled “bolognas,” attended by greens of unknown name and family. The roast was, three or four times a week, chickens. Turkeys and ducks appeared so rarely as hardly to deserve a notice. We got up an American Thanksgiving dinner in Geneva, even achieving a mince pie.

Fowls were cooked with their heads on. The somewhat gruesome fashion had crept across the frontier from the country that had lent gutturals to the French the natives assume to speak. Salad of some kind—chickory and endives being favorites of our housemother—was served with the roast. It is an uncomely custom, to my notion. The salad cools the fowls, and the hot meat wilts the crispness of the salad, but it has been adopted in America since we made our daily protest against it in Switzerland.

Biscuits and the inevitable cheese succeeded a course of fruit, pastry, custard or cream, wrought into fantastic shapes.

We affected especially “crema montata,” or goat’s milk, whipped to a standing froth and sweetened. Served with strawberries, fresh or preserved, it found signal favor in our eyes and mouths.

Black coffee wound up the list of courses.

The only time I ever saw snails on the table, and eaten, was in Switzerland. We had seen them by the barrelful in Parisian shops, and, after one shuddering gaze, turned away our eyes from beholding what was so abhorrent to transatlantic gastronomic prejudices. They are put up for the market, boiled in the shell, and shrinking in the process to a greenish paste. Gamins buy them by the handful, and dig out the paste with finger-mails and pins, devouring it greedily at the street corners.

During our temporary residence at a Genevan pension, I chanced, one day, to meet the proprietress in the corridor with a basket of snails in her hands. At my inquiring look she stopped to explain:

“M.B” (a Russian boarder) “has weak lungs, and is advised by the physicians to eat des coquilles for the malady.”

“M.B.” sat opposite to me at luncheon, and in front of him was a bowl of what might have been long clams, boiled down to a gray, thick broth. I tried hard not to witness his consumption of the mess, and harder still, to swallow my own food.

Tuberculosis in France and Switzerland took on, for me, new horrors from the incident.

Yet why not snails as well as frog’s legs, raw oysters, clams and oyster crabs?

SOME SWISS RECIPES

Potato Salad Dressing

Make a good mayonnaise in the usual way, and to a cupful add two large potatoes prepared thus: Boil in their jackets, peel while hot and rub through a fine colander or vegetable press. Whip, when cold, into the mayonnaise gradually, stirring until the creamy mixture is smooth. Season with salt, pepper and a dash of onion juice, and just before serving, stir into the mayonnaise the white of an egg whipped stiff.

This is an excellent dressing for a macedoine salad, one of tomatoes, or of fish. It is best suited for a side dish at luncheon or supper. Eat with brown and cheese.

Baked Eggs

Into a bakedish which has been warmed and generously buttered pour a cupful of milk which has been made a little more than lukewarm. Add a teaspoonful of strained onion juice, set in the oven and, a minute later, drop carefully into the milk five or six eggs, or as many as will lie in the dish without crowding. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and bake until the eggs are “set,” but not hard.

Berry Mousse

To a pint of the squeezed and strained juice of currants, raspberries or strawberries add a pound of white sugar. Stir until dissolved and bring to a boil. Keep this up for five minutes, taking off the rising scum. Meanwhile, beat six eggs light in a bowl and pour the boiling syrup slowly upon them, stirring all the time. Put back over the fire and cook until it thickens, not intermitting the stirring for one second. Turn out to cool, stirring still for two minutes, and when cold set on ice until you are ready to use it.

Marion Harland

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