Tag: soup

Appetizing Jellied Soups for Hot Days

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This is the final article in July of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on July 28, 1907, and is an article on jellied soups.

The thought of jellied soups gives me the willies, in fact, there is a line in this article that states, “it is prudent not to enter into details of the manufacture,” i.e. making gelatine is gross. hahaha.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the Boston Sunday Post.

Appetizing Jellied Soups for Hot Days

IMPRIMIS: Never resort to the cheap trick of using gelatin to cover lack of skill and the failure to combine the right elements to secure consistency. I have before me recipes for making mint jelly, for jellied bouillon, and, strangest of all, for the manufacture of fruit jellies to be kept over from season to season—all of which call for sparkling gelatine in varying quantities.

Gelatine is excellent in its place. That is, as a substitute for the calf’s feet from which our granddames were wont to evolve jellies that, in clarity and flavor, are not equaled by the finest products that have gelatine as the basic idea.

It is superfluous to tell the least sophisticated of our housewifely readers that this same gelatine is an animal product. It is prudent not to enter into details of the manufacture. Like many another popular article of human food, it is best received on faith by the consuming one asking no questions for the diaphragm’s sake.

Being an animal bi-product, it decomposes too readily to be compounded into jellies that are to be stored for use in the months to come.

We do not can or pot jellied soup in the private family. I have, it is true, poured it hot into air-tight jars and kept it good for some weeks. I doubt not it could be preserved for several months if properly made and kept sealed from the air and in a dark closet.

What we are considering today is the preparation of jellied soups to be eaten in lieu of hot in the “good old summer-time,” when the cooler a thing is the more it tempts the palate.

Soup-jelly should be strong. It must have gathered unto itself the best elements of the meat and vegetables that go into it. They must cook long and slowly until the residuum in the strainer is tasteless and no more nutritious than the same bulk of bleached cotton would be.

There is no short cut to excellence in the work of preparation. Unless the busy house-mother has learned the art of dove-tailing the tasks of the day, so as to carry on several processes at once, bestowing the requisite amount of time and attention upon each in its turn, she would better not essay the composition until she has a leisure forenoon.

Jellied Bouillon.

Two pounds of lean beef. The coarser parts of the meat will do as well as choice cuts, but there must be not a particle of fat upon it. One pound of lean veal. Mince it fine. Two pounds each of beef and of veal bones, cracked faithfully by the butcher.
A bunch of soup herbs, including parsley.
Two teaspoonfuls of onion juice. Chop the onion and squeeze through cheesecloth. If the pulp be added it will cloud the soup.
Three teaspoonfuls of kitchen bouquet.
White pepper and salt to taste.
One gallon of cold water.

Put meat, bones and vegetables with the water into a deep pot; cover closely and set at the side of the range, where it will not reach the boiling point under an hour’s time. Simmer thus for four hours, never allowing it to boil hard, yet keeping it at boiling heat all the time. At the end of the second hour pour in a cupful of cold water to throw up the scum; cover and set the pot back in place when you have skimmed it. Should the water sink to less than half the original quantity while the soup is in cooking, replenish from the boiling kettle.

When the soup has cooked four hours and you have reduced the liquid to two quarts, remove from the fire, season as directed above, cover again tightly and set in a cool place until the morrow. It should be a firm jelly, clinging to meat and bones. Scrape off the fat carefully. A greasy bouillon is nearly disgusting. Set over the fire and warm quickly to a boil.

As this is merely to rid bones and meat of jelly, do not keep it up more than five minutes. Drop in a lump of ice as big as an egg to check the bubble, transfer the pot to the table and let it alone for ten minutes.

Meanwhile, line a colander with white flannel which has been scalded and then rinsed in two waters. Pour the soup in to the colander, taking care not to disturb the dregs of meat and bones. Put again over the fire, drop in the white of an egg and the crushed shell, bring to a fast boil and strain again through the flannel, which should be perfectly clean. Do not squeeze the cloth at any time.

Finally, having satisfied yourself by tasting that the seasoning is right, set away the bouillon in a cool place.

When quite cold put on ice.

I have been thus explicit in giving the details of the process, because they are substantially the same in making jellied soups of whatsoever kind. The manufacture is by no means as tedious and difficult as might appear to the casual reader. While the soup is boiling, other work may go on without interruption, the bouillon taking care of itself, and demanding no thought beyond an occasional glance to make sure it is not cooking too fast.

Jellied bouillon is in great request at women’s luncheons and in the sick-room. An invalid will relish and digest a few spoonsful of iced jellied soup who would turn away in revulsion from hot liquids.

Jellied Chicken Soup.

Clean and dress a large fowl. It should weigh from four to five pounds when cleaned. Sever each joint from the rest and cut the breast into four pieces. Crack a knuckle of veal from which most of the meat has been stripped. (Veal is especially useful in making jellied soups because it contains much gelatinous matter.) Put the pieces of fowl and the veal bone into a pot; add two teaspoonfuls of onion juice and three stalks of celery cut into inch lengths, and cover with a gallon of cold water.

Cover closely and set where it will not boil under an hour, yet will heat steadily. Cook slowly for four hours, or until the flesh of the fowl slips from the bones. The toughest meat may be made tender by slow and prolonged cooking. The liquid should be reduced to two quarts.

Set the pot away, covered tightly, until the contents are a cold jelly. Heat to a boil to loosen the jelly from the bones, and strain as directed in the foregoing recipe. Clear with a cracked egg shell and the white of an egg as with beef bouillon.

Jellied Chicken and Sago Soup.

Make as for jellied chicken soup, but when the meat has boiled from the bones, stir into the hot soup four tablespoonfuls of sago that have soaked for three hours in a cupful of cold water. Add now a quart of boiling water and simmer for another hour. Leave the soup until cold. Skim then, and re-heat to the boiling point. Strain through double cheesecloth without squeezing, season to taste with white pepper and celery salt and set away to cool and to jelly.

A palatable and nourishing dish for invalids.

Jellied Veal and Celery Soup.

Crack a knuckle of veal into bits to get at the marrow. Put it over the fire, with six stalks of white celery cut into inch lengths; cover with a gallon of cold water and cook slowly for four—perhaps five—hours, replenishing the liquid with boiling water should it boll away too fast. When the meat is done to white rags, season with white pepper and salt, a little minced parsley, two teaspoonfuls of onion juice and a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet. Set away for ten hours, skim and heat to liquefy the jelly, and strain without squeezing.

Serve ice cold in bouillon cups.

The recipes given herewith are susceptible of numberless variations at the hands of the ingenious cook. The general principles of slow and regular cooking; an abundance of raw, sound meat and a judicious proportion of such materials as contain gelatine, together with wise seasoning, hold good with all.

Marion Harland

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Different Ways of Preparing Fish

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This is the third article in March of the School for Housewives 1907 series published on March 17, 1907, and is a discussion on preparing fish for Lent.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of The Boston Sunday Post.

Different Ways of Preparing Fish

EVEN if one is not a rigid churchman who eschews meat for Lent, it is well to have fish play an important part in the spring diet. Though we may not pin our faith to the old theory that fish food is brain food, we can be assured that the phosphates it contains and its digestible qualities prove very beneficial to the physical system that is relaxed by enervating spring days.

Not every one. Unfortunately, likes fish, but, if possible, the taste for it should be cultivated. Probably if we were compelled to live on it, as were the old Homeric heroes, we might be inclined to complain as bitterly as did Menelaus; but as an occasional article of diet it should have a place in every family’s weekly menu.

Nothing affords greater relief to the housekeeper sore beset by that ever-re current thought, “What shall I give them to eat today?” than to have a family with a strong liking for fish. So fortified, she can provide soup or salad, a boiled or broiled or baked second course for dinner, croquettes or scallops for an entree, and even the “piece de resistance” of the family lunch. She can be happy, moreover, in the fact that she is feeding her flock with a healthful, digestible food.

Guides to Selection

“But,” some one cries, “I cannot digest fish. Nothing disagrees with me more quickly!” Which stats should be attributed to some personal idiosyncrasy; to improper selection of the fish itself; to carelessness in preparation, or to bad methods of cooking, rather than to wholesale condemnation of a fish dietary.

For whatever the exceptional person say, fish is both digestible and nourishing to the majority of people. Where could one find greater health and vigor, for instance, than in the small fishing settlements where little or no animal food is obtainable?

Of course, not every kind of fish has equal value in this respect; the amount of nourishment varies with the species. Thus, red-fleshed fish, such as salmon, are more nutritious than the white-fleshed, the latter, however, being more digestible. Cod proves the exception to this rule. The homely and cheap herring, strange to say, possesses more nourishment than almost say other fish.

Flabby Fish Are Stale.

Not every ore is a good buyer of fish. Too many housekeepers trust so implicitly to dealer for selection that they cannot tell if a fish is fresh or stale. Yet really it not very difficult to acquire this knowledge. A fresh fish should feel stiff and rigid—flabbiness is a sure sign of staleness. The grills should be red and the eyes bright and unsunken. These are much better tests than to judge by the smell in these days of cold storage. If, on beings purchased, a fish is not found to be quite up to the mark, it can be somewhat improved by washing in vinegar and water.

Nothing is more disgusting to a careful housewife than a badly cleaned fish. Nowadays one usually buys them ready cleaned; but even so, it is important to go over them carefully before putting away. Holding the fish by the head, scrape with a sharp knife to remove all scales, then either wash in cold water or wipe all over with a clean, damp cloth. It is a mistake to immerse a fish very long in water, even for the purpose of cleaning, and it is apt to destroy the flavor.

The after-treatment of the fish depends chiefly upon the way it is to be cooked. Probably more people fail in boiling it than any other method. Always, if possible, use a fish kettle with a strainer, to avoid danger of breaking. The time-honored method of tying the fish in muslin and placing it on a plate at the bottom of a large kettle is, however, not to be despised. Boil it in as little water as possible, and except in case of salmon, which requires boiling water, put the fish into lukewarm water, as the high temperature tends to break the skin, and with cold water much of the flavor is lost.

The length of time for cooking varies with the weight of the fish. One can usually tell when it is done by the flesh separating from the bone. It can scarcely cook too slowly, however, and, after being brought to the boiling point, should simmer gently for the rest of the time. On removing, strain carefully, and keep covered until ready for use. If lemon juice or vinegar is added to the water in which white fish is cooked, the color is improved.

Half the success of the boiled fish depends upon its dressing and serving. Either a white cream sauce, with hard-boiled eggs, or a Hollandaise sauce are the most popular. A parsley sauce, or one made of a good handful of spinach or watercress, pounded and rubbed through a fine sieve, heated over the fire with three tablespoonfuls of cream, one dessertspoonful of tarragon vinegar, yolks of two eggs, salt and pepper until it is light and frothy, makes a pleasant change.

Always serve, a boiled fish in a folded napkin and garnish it with parsley, hard-boiled-eggs or if a little color is liked, with lobster coral.

Broiled fish next to planked is probably the most palatable way it can be served. There is a decided art, however, in broiling. The broiler must be absolutely clean and rubbed with suet to prevent sticking; the fire should be clear and bright, and the fish itself must be wiped perfectly dry and brushed over with oil or melted butter and well seasoned. To cook with the necessary slowness it is well to raise the broiler on two bricks. If the fire is inclined to smoke, throw on a handful of salt.

Planked fish are now in such favor that every aspiring housekeeper should own a plank. This should be of hard wood about two inches thick, and either grooved or slightly hollowed in the center to retain the juices, and furnished with clips or wires to fasten the fish to it. The plank must be heated before using. While the ideal way to plank is before an open fire, the upper grate of a very hot oven is a good substitute. Planking is usually associated with shad, but any good white-fleshed fish, as bluefish, whitefish or halibut, is equally good.

Frying is acknowledged the least digestible way to cook fish. It can, however, be dose deliciously if the fish is either rolled in flour or dipped in well seasoned egg and bread crumbs and done in very hot fat. The temperature should be slightly lower than when cooking such things as croquettes, whose interior has been previously prepared. Oil or cottolene is the best medium for frying, as lard is very apt to taste.

Besides these staple ways of preparing fish, delicious rechaufees, croquettes and salads be made from left-overs. Escalloped fish in little individual forms or shells are good either for a family lunch, or as a course at more formal affairs. It should always be served with sauce tartare, or, at least, with a rather acid mayonnaise.

Every one should own some of the interesting ides molds which now are very inexpensive. These five most attractive forms in which to prepare left-overs, or, indeed, new creamed fishes. The sauce in which the fish is prepared should always be a little stiffer than when it is not to be molded. A very attractive way to serve salmon, either fresh or canned is in timbale molds. It is also very artistic as a course for a dinner when chopped, creamed and molded in the shape of a huge curled fish and served on a flat platter, covered with caper sauce and garnished with parsley and lemon.

Various bisques and fist soups are excellent Lenten fare, and should be more generally used than they are, as should also fish salads, chowders and creams. We are not very well acquainted in this country with the fish pies of which the English are so fond, but they provide a quite delicious way to utilize cold fish and cold mashed potatoes.

Indeed, the variety in fish fare is very marked, and gives small reason for complaint, should this sea or fresh water food be a matter of daily or frequent occurrence on the family board.

Fish Recipes for Lenten Fare

A Left-Over Fish Bisque.

RID COLD baked, or boiled, or broiled fish of bones and skin, pick into fine bits with a silver fork. Get from your fish merchant for a few cents a pint of oyster liquor. Put over the fire, with a generous lump of butter, pepper and salt. Bring to a boil, add the fish, cook one minute and stir in a scant cupful of crumbs soaked in milk. Simmer for three minutes and serve. Pass sliced lemon with it.

Red Snapper Soup.

Heat a quart of white stock to a boil, stir in two cupfuls of the cold cooked fish, freed of skin and bones, and minced finely Add pepper, salt, a tablespoonful of chopped parsley and a great spoonful of butter. Heat a cupful of milk to boiling, thicken it with a white roux and a half cupful of fine cracker crumbs. When the fish has cooked in the soup for five minutes, stir the liquid into the thickened milk and serve.

Planked Shad.

Have your fish cleaned and split down the back. Wash and wipe dry. Have ready a clean oak or hickory plank about two and a half inches thick, and of such length that it will go readily into your oven. Set it in the oven till it is heated through. Rub your shad on both sides with an abundance of butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Lay it, open side up, on the hot plank, and fasten it firmly in place by putting a tin tack in each of the four corners. Lay the plank on the upper grating of the oven, and rub the fish with butter every few minutes until done. You can tell when this point is reached by testing with a fork. Carefully withdraw the tacks and serve the fish on a hot platter. Serve with melted butter and garnish with lemon and sprigs of parsley.

Shad Roe Croquettes.

Parboil and blanch. When perfectly cold break up and pass through a colander or vegetable press. Season with lemon juice, kitchen bouquet, paprika, and salt. Have ready a cup of rich, rather thick drawn butter. Stir the roe into it, and add a well-beaten egg together with a tablespoonful of fine bread crumbs to give the croquettes consistency. Let the mixture get perfectly cold, mold into croquettes, dip in egg and bread crumbs and leave on the ice over night. In the morning renew the crumbs and fry in deep, hissing fat, which has been brought gradually to a boil.

Salmon Loaf.

Flake cold boiled salmon and moisten it with a gill of a cream, a half gill of milk and two beaten eggs. Stir in a handful of fine crumbs, the juice of half a lemon, a tablespoonful of butter, salt and pepper to taste, and a tablespoonful of minced parsley. Mix thoroughly, turn into a greased pudding dish, and bake in a steady oven for three-quarters of an hour; then turn out upon a hot platter. Serve with a white sauce. This may also be boiled in a large covered fish mold.

A Curry of Salmon.

Open a can of salmon two hours before using and remove all bits of skin and bone. Pour two tablespoonfuls of olive oil to a frying-pan and fry in it a minced onion. When the onion is brown, stir into the oil a tablespoonful of flour mixed with a teaspoonful of curry powder, and when these are blended add a large coffeecupful of boiling water. Season and stir for a moment, and turn the salmon into the mixture. Cook for two minutes and serve. Pass sliced lemon with this dish.

Halibut Steak Baked With Tomatoes.
(A Creole recipe.)

Make a rich sauce of tomatoes, fresh or canned, seasoning with butter rolled in flour, sugar, pepper, onion juice, and salt, adding, if you have it, a sweet green pepper, seeded, and minced. Cook fifteen minutes, strain, rubbing through a colander, and cool. Lay the halibut in oil and lemon juice for an hour, place upon the grating of your covered roaster; pour the sauce over it; cover and take twelve minutes to the second if the oven be good. Sift Parmesan cheese over the fish and cook five minutes longer. Serve upon a hot dish, pouring the sauce over it.

Imitation Caper Sauce.

Cut cucumber pickles into tiny cubes with a sharp knife. Do not chop them, as the must be of uniform size. Drain perfectly dry and stir into hot drawn butter. Boll for one minute. Eat with fish or chops.

Bearnaise Sauce.

Beat the yolks of two eggs very light; put into a raised-bottom saucepan and set in one of boiling water; stir into it a few drops at a time, three tablespoonfuls of salad oil, beating as you stir; then, as gradually, the same quantity of boiling water; next, one tablespoonful of lemon juice, a dash of cayenne and salt.

This is served with all sorts of fish; also with chops, cutlets, and steaks.

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Savory and Nourishing Lenten Fare

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

I absolutely love spinach and use it every chance I get in my cooking.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of The Washington Times.

Savory and Nourishing Lenten Fare

Spinach the Broom of the Stomach

I WAS not the first to call it that! I wish I had been! In my opinion it outranks all other spring vegetables in virtue as a gentle and agreeable alterative of unhealthy conditions incident upon winter weather and the abrupt change from winter to spring. Dandelion greens have their merits, as we shall see by and by. But they are coarse in quality, and less palatable than spinach. Their chief recommendation, beyond their medicinal properties, is that they are cheaper than the more aristocratic spinach, which, let me remark in passing, is held at exorbitant prices by some marketmen, unmindful of the gracious possibilities wrapped up in the lush, dark-green leaves.

Spinach, when sold by the least conscientious of greengrocers, is cheaper by far than medicine, if only because, in its action, it adds no sorrow therewith. “I would not owe my health to a disease!” says a scornful satirist. Spring medicines of man’s devising poison before they cure. Juicy fruits, succulent salads, dandelions, asparagus and spinach taste good and act pleasantly upon liver and blood, the beneficiary, meantime, blissfully unconscious that he is “under treatment.” Meat heats and clogs the sewerage of the human system. Green vegetables are assuasive and cleansing.

Spinach shrinks so much in the cooking that our caterer must make allowance for this failing in purchasing. A quart will make a family soup, but two quarts are not too much for a dish of spinach a la creme, or spinach boiled plain.

CHEAPER THAN MEDICINE

It ought not to cost over 15 cents a quart. Should the grasping huckster demand 20, or even 25, reflect that you are treating your household with “kitchen physic,” and be complacent in the superiority of your regimen over the sulphur-and-molasses administered by our granddames in the times of ignorance in which our children can hardly believe.

They loved us as well as we love our bairns—those resolute dames of yore. It was principle, and sincere regard for our best interests, that made them line us up on balmy spring mornings, and, beginning with the baby in arms, pour a great spoonful of treacle and brimstone, beaten to a baleful mess, down our protestant throats. It was done before breakfast (also upon principle) and three days “handrunning,” after which came “three days off,” and then three more of the “spring sweetening” purgatory. It was supposed to act directly on the blood. Of the effect upon stomach and temper nothing was said—or thought.

USES FOR SPINACH

As soon as spinach comes home from market, lay it in very cold water if it is to be used that day. It will revive and plump up, growing crisp and comely, just as your cut flowers respond to the scent of water.

When ready to prepare it for cooking pick the leaves from the stalks. The stalks, if tender, may be utilized in the soup, but strip them of the leaves. Wash all carefully in two waters to rid the leaves from grit and insects.

Spinach Cream Soup.

Put your spinach, prepared as above, into a saucepan, with a cupful of cold water, and bring to a fast boil. Keep this up until the spinach is tender and broken to pieces. Turn into a chopping tray, straining off the water in which it was cooked, but not draining the vegetable. It must be quite moist. Chop very fine and run through the vegetable press. It should be a soft paste. Have ready a scant quart of boiling milk in a farina kettle. Never forget to drop a pinch of soda into milk when you boil it. In a frying pan melt two tablespoonfuls of butter, and stir into it a tablespoonful of flour. Cook and stir smooth, add to the spinach paste. Let the whole simmer for a minute. Pour in the hot milk, stirring all the time; take from the fire, season to taste with salt, pepper, a little sugar and a dash of nutmeg, and pour out. Strew sippets of fried bread on the surface of each plateful.

Spinach a la Creme.

Freshen and crisp the spinach as directed in the preceding recipe. Cook the leaves, dripping with water, in the inner vessel of a double boiler. Do not add water. Enough juice will exude in cooking for all purposes. Cover the kettle, and keep the water the outer at a hard boil until the leaves are broken and tender. Stir and beat up from the bottom several times. Press out the moisture in a colander, turn the drained spinach into a wooden bowl and chop as fine as possible.

Make a “roux” in a saucepan of two tablespoonfuls of butter and one of flour; cook for a minute and add the spinach, beating it well as you do this. In a separate vessel have half a cupful of cream heated with a bit of soda as large as a kidney bean. Turn this into the smoking-hot spinach, beating diligently to get the mixture smooth. Season with salt pepper, a little sugar, to correct the crude acid of the spinach; add a dash of nutmeg. Beat and cook for three minutes and serve. Garnish with triangles of fried bread laid about the edges of the dish.

There is no more delicious preparation of spinach than this. It is too little known in America. Some French cooks add lemon juice.

Boiled Spinach (American Style).

Prepare the spinach as already directed. Put over the fire in the inner vessel of a rice boiler, with no water except that on the wet leaves. Cover closely; fill the outer boiler with hot water and cook the leaves tender. Drain off the water and chop fine in a wooden bowl. Put back over the fire, and stir into it two tablespoonfuls of butter with a little sugar, and pepper and salt to your taste.

Mound on a hot platter and garnish with hard-boiled eggs cut in slices. A prettier garnish is the yolks of hard-boiled eggs rubbed to a line powder through a sieve, and strewed thickly over the mound. Shred the whites fine and lay about the base.

A Spinach Souffle.

This is a nice way of using left-over spinach. If it was creamed at its first appearance on your board, it will need no more chopping or beating. Add to it the beaten yolks of two eggs if there is a cupful of spinach, increasing the number of yolks proportionately if you have more of the “leftover”; a tablespoonful of melted butter and salt and pepper to your liking. Stir a pinch of soda into a cupful of sweet cream, mix with the other ingredients, and, this done, dip in the whites of the eggs beaten to a standing froth. Turn into a buttered dish and set at once into a brisk oven. Bake to a light brown and serve immediately.

Spinach Daisies.

Prepare and boil the spinach as for spinach a la creme or “in American style.” Press out all the water that will come away through a colander. Chop very fine while hot and mix into it a “roux” made by cooking together two tablespoonfuls of butter and the same quantity of flour. Season with pepper, salt, a little sugar and a suspicion of powdered mace. Cook all together for three minutes, keeping the spoon busy all the time. Have ready some scalloped pate pans. The more sharply scalloped they are the better will be the shape of the “daisies.” Butter them lavishly and press the cooked spinach firmly into them. Set in a shallow pan containing enough boiling water to keep the spinach very hot while you make a white sauce by “drawing” a tablespoonful of butter rolled in cornstarch in a cupful of milk. It should be really white and thick enough to mask the green when poured upon it.

Now turn out the forms of spinach upon a hot platter and pour a large spoonful of sauce over each. Lay rounds of cold hard-boiled eggs on the shapes and you have a pretty dish.

ASPARAGUS

The favorite vegetable of all classes, rich or poor, and one of the earliest in the spring market, is slightly medicinal. The mildly aperient qualities that make fresh asparagus desirable diet are not found in the canned stalks and tips. Moreover, the stronger chemical agents used as “preservatives” destroy much of the nutritive values of the succulent plant. The slightly bitter flavor characterizing the green vegetable is lacking from the pale, straw-colored spikes standing erect and close in the jars that crowd the grocer’s window as the days grow long and the new crop threatens to push out the old stock on hand.

The faint bitter is the wholesomest trait of our patrician asparagus. Robbed of it, and cooked and canned, it is as nutritious as so much wet cotton and well-nigh as insipid.

Asparagus a la Vinaigrette.

The salad whose popular name stands at the head of this recipe makes a delicious entree in the course of a Lenten dinner where fish has played the leading part.

Cut off the thickest and toughest portions of the stalks. (N. B.—Put them away carefully, with an eye to a vegetable soup to be served at the family dinner next day.)

Lay the edible tips attached to the upper parts of the stalks in cold water for an hour. Tie them then into loose branches with soft strings. Put these into a broad saucepan where they will not be crowded; cover with cold water, slightly salted, and cook gently for twenty-five minutes—for a shorter time if they are very young and slender. Make a dressing of two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, two tablespoonfuls of French mustard, half a teaspoonful of sugar, a saltspoonful of salt and half as much white pepper. Rub all these condiments together in a bowl until you have a smooth emulsion. Then begin to beat in oil and keep at it until you have incorporated six tablespoonfuls with the “emulsion.”

Set the vessel containing the dressing in a pan of boiling water, stirring frequently. When it is smoking hot, leave in the water while you drain the asparagus, remove the strings and lay in a deep dish. Pour the hot dressing over it, cover closely to keep in the strength of the vinegar and set away to get cold. When it is cool, set in ice until you are ready to serve it. Pass crackers and cream cheese with it.

Baked Asparagus.

Scrape the upper halves of the stalks down “to the quick,” as it. That is, get off all the hard, horny skins.

Let me say that asparagus, cooked in any way, is much more tender and digestible if the stalks be thus freed from the outer casing.

Boll in hot salted water until tender. Drain off the water and chop the asparagus —not so fine as to make it mushy. Make in a saucepan a “roux” of two tablespoonfuls of butter and the same of flour, and add to it, when it has cooked for a minute, two cupfuls of milk, heated, with a bit of soda dropped into it. Stir over the fire to a cream; add the minced asparagus when you have seasoned it with salt and pepper, and set it aside to get cold. Then beat into it three eggs whipped light and two tablespoonfuls of cream. Pour into a well-buttered dish and bake in a quick oven. Cover with paper for twenty minutes. Remove the paper and brown. Serve at once.

Asparagus a la Tom Thumb.

The tips alone are used for this dish. Scrape the stalks and lay them in cold water. They will work well into a cream-of-asparagus soup.

Cook the tips—none of them more than two inches long—in boiling water slightly salted. Meantime, make a rich white sauce by stirring into two tablespoonfuls of butter one of flour and, when it is smooth, a generous cupful of milk. Season with white pepper and salt; add the hot asparagus tips; cook for one minute and serve upon rounds of toast, laying six tips, side by side, upon each round.

ARTICHOKES

Italian artichokes look more like a flower than a vegetable. The taste for them, like a fondness for olives, is believed to be a matter of education. I cannot recall the time when I did not like the odd-looking things. They are as peculiar in taste as in appearance, and the slightly acrid, aromatic “bite” they give the tongue is disagreeable to some eaters. In Italy they are cheap. In the United States they are absurdly dear at certain seasons. I never eat them without the association, mingling with the aforesaid “bite,” of a whisper launched at me by the mother of a rich and fashionable hostess at whose table I was lunching with eleven other women:

“I do hope you are fond of artichokes!” said the handsome dowager, leaning well toward me. “My daughter would have an artichoke course. She says it is so ‘chic’—don’t you know? I think it awfully extravagant. For, would you believe it, she paid 50 cents apiece for them! I shouldn’t have the heart to eat them, even If I loved the bristly things. And I don’t!”

I was “fond” of the “bristly things,” and I swallowed the half dollar’s worth apportioned to me the more zestfully for the sauce of the naive comment.

Boiled Italian Artichokes.

Don’t pay 50 cents apiece for them. Watch the markets and you can get them for less than a quarter of the sum. Especially if you know where to find an Italian huckster, who never fails to have them when Lent is on. If they are large, one will do for two portions.

Cut the stems close to the body of each “flower” and lay all in cold water. Leave them there for half an hour, watching to see if any drowned insects rise to the surface, and removing them.

Cook in boiling salted water for another half hour, drain and, with a sharp knife, cut each neatly in half, from crown to stem. Put into a hot root-dish and pour over them this sauce:

Into six tablespoonfuls of melted butter beat a tablespoonful of lemon juice, half as much onion juice, a half teaspoonful of French mustard, a pinch of salt and of paprika, last, a teaspoonful of salad oil. Stir to scalding over the fire, remove the saucepan to the table and add, carefully, a beaten egg. Beat for a minute and pour over the artichokes; or,

You may serve with them a simpler bearnaise sauce, letting each guest help himself to it.

Bearnaise Sauce.

Put the beaten yolks of two eggs into a saucepan and set into another pan of boiling water. Add, drop by drop, three tablespoonfuls of salad oil; next, as slowly, three tablespoonfuls of boiling water; then the juice of half a lemon, a dash of cayenne and a little salt.

Serve hot.

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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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