FOOTNOTE:
[1] Butter is no longer thought indispensable to the dinner-table, and butter-plates are consequently a matter of taste.
CHAPTER IV.
BREAD-MAKING—BREAKFAST—BAKED POTATOES—CORN MUFFINS—BREADED CHOPS—HOW TO FRY.
When Molly made the humiliating discovery that she had forgotten the yeast, Harry, who was smoking and reading, looked up.
“What shall I do, that baker’s bread is so sour?”
“I’ll tell you, let’s sally forth and get it! It’s a lovely night!”
“Would you?” exclaimed Molly, brightly.
“Why not? You don’t suppose you are going to monopolize all the merits and reap all the glory of this housekeeping, do you? Why, I should not be able to have one of the little jokes other married men seem to enjoy at their wife’s expense.”
“I hate such jokes,” said Molly; “they are so cheap, and generally unjust.”
“Then I promise I won’t make them. I’ll never boast of the servant girls I escort out from New York, nor of the baskets I carry, nor the”—
“You’ll have no chance if you respect the truth,” said Molly, laughing. “Now if we are going, I’ll put on my things.”
The little town of Greenfield was just venturing on electric lights, and, with the band of its skating-rink making music, had quite a dissipated appearance, as the young couple strolled around in search of a grocer, and Molly, at the same time, found out a few other facts she was anxious to know, and had not yet had time to discover.
As they walked home, Harry said, hesitating, “My dear, I don’t want to interfere with your housekeeping, and I feel my own insignificance in approaching such a subject, but I would diffidently suggest that our family is at present very small, and neither you nor I like stale bread. Do you think Marta can be induced to consume all the ‘left over’ loaves?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then don’t you think we had better try another baker who doesn’t make sour bread, or”—this was said very slowly, as if it would be a sad necessity—“I might bring it out from New York.”
Molly laughed merrily.
“I think I see you! Surely then you could joke about your martyrdom. No, my dear boy, you’re going to have no such toothsome morsel as that for a joke, but I see you are afraid of stale bread.”
“The truth is, I have a lively recollection of living in the country and eating bread a week old, and older still sometimes, when the general appetite failed, and I don’t believe I’m up to that sort of thing now.”
“I don’t think you are, so you will not be tested. Now-a-days one doesn’t fear baking as one used to do. It is no more trouble to make bread three times a week than to boil potatoes.”
“I’m delighted to hear it. I’m learning every hour my own benighted ignorance.”
When they reached home Molly went into the kitchen and put one quarter of the yeast cake in a pint of warm water, which she made Marta, who was to make the next bread, feel was just about as warm as milk from the cow, then she put a heaped quart of flour in the mixing-bowl and set it in the oven with the door open, telling Marta to stir it in a few minutes that it might get evenly warm through.
“I am doing this, Marta, because I do not know this flour. It may be very new or damp; by drying it I shall be on the safe side. In cold weather you must warm it always, so that the water, yeast, and flour are all about the same temperature.”
When the yeast was quite dissolved by stirring, she put into the water one tea-spoonful of salt and two of sugar, made a hole in the flour and poured the liquid in, and the whole made a soft dough which slightly stuck to her hands.
“If it is necessary just shake in a little flour from the dredger; never throw it in by the handful, as the less flour you work with the better.” As Molly spoke she steadied the bowl with one hand and with the other worked the dough with her fist from the side to the middle, so that in five minutes what had been the under part was all brought over to the top, and the whole was smooth and very elastic to the touch.
Marta watched with interest and, as Molly could see, surprise.
“My mother always made her bread thin at night, and put in more flour in the morning.”
“Yes, but your mother and mine had no certainty that the yeast was good, and it was better to ‘prove it’ by using part of the flour for a sponge than to waste the whole, but now we use compressed yeast, which we are sure is good if fresh.”
Marta did not look convinced. She doubtless fancied it was some new-fangled notion of Molly’s.
The bread was left, covered with a clean cloth, on the table free from draught, for it was a mild night and she knew it would be risen well in the morning without going into a warm spot.
The next morning, as it was Marta’s first, Molly was up and down-stairs a few minutes after her, and found she had taken away the ashes and was struggling with the fire; with Molly’s help, however, it was soon burning in the stove.
“Now brush off the stove quickly before it gets hot, and do so every morning, and on Saturday it needs thorough cleaning.” Molly looked at the bread as she spoke.
“Fill the kettle now, after you pour out the water left in it, set it in the hole of the stove, and then look at the bread before I touch it that you may see how it should be. It is quite light, as you see, more than double the size it was last night; now while you go and dust the dining-room, brushing up any crumbs there may be first, I will work the bread over, then you can come here and sweep your kitchen and the piazzas. Molly worked the bread over faithfully for five minutes,—had the quantity been larger, of course the time would have been in proportion,—and then she set it in a warm spot back of the range, and went herself into the parlor to arrange it, knowing Marta would not be so quick this first morning as she hoped she might become later. At seven o’clock the work was done, and Molly told Marta she must do every morning exactly as this morning.
“Now we will begin to get breakfast, but I shall let you do it, because you will see that you have ample time without my help, and it must always be on the table at eight o’clock. Bring the chops I prepared yesterday, two eggs, and three potatoes.”
Molly looked at the fire, found it bright and the oven hot; she put a shovelful more of coals each side of the fire, and then showed Marta how to brush the potatoes with a little new brush she had brought for the purpose.
“See the difference, Marta? Wash them ever so carefully, you can’t make the skins so clean that the minute you put the brush to them they do not look several shades lighter.”
They were put into the oven.
“Now, Marta, bring that packet of cracker meal I pointed out yesterday, and pour at least half on a dish; now a saucer and the pepper and salt. Break one egg, and put the yolk into the saucer, the white into a cup; if there were more chops we would use both white and yolk,—as there are so few, for economy’s sake we will use only the yolk; put to it two teaspoonfuls of cold water and beat it with a fork. Now season those chops with salt and pepper, remembering never to do so before cooking if they are to be broiled or cooked without breading.”
Marta was rather clumsy, but still Molly repressed her own itching fingers, knowing the girl would do better in future if let alone now.
“Now lay a chop in the egg,—take care it moistens every part,—lift it out with the left hand, let it drain an instant and lay it on the cracker meal; now with your dry right hand send the meal all over it till every bit of the meat is covered with the white dust, then lay it aside. Now do the others in the same way.”
Molly looked at the clock; it was nearly half past seven.
“Hurry, Marta, get the can of lard, and, as that spider is not deep, I am going to fry in this agate saucepan; it is just about broad enough for a chop. Put in it at least a pound of lard, set it where it will get hot, yet not boil till you are ready. Now you can grease the muffin-pans, leaving a teaspoonful of lard in one, and then make the muffins. We need only a dozen, so you can take half a cup of corn meal, half a cup of flour, and a teaspoon of baking-powder and half one of salt. Mix them quickly. Now a scant table-spoonful of sugar, and milk to make a thick batter, break in an egg, and beat it all steadily three minutes by the clock,—no, beat just as if you were beating eggs, quickly, till it froths. Now pour the lard from the muffin-pan in it, stir well, and fill the pans nearly full; set them in the oven,—they will bake in fifteen minutes. Go now and set the table, and do it quickly.”
On second thought Molly went with her and helped, because she could not easily find things. She found she had remembered fairly well the directions about the cloth.
“Put the cups and saucers at my left, and that mat for the meat before Mr. Bishop; the potatoes, on a folded napkin, you will place on one side, the muffins exactly opposite them on the other, butter within easy reach of both. Put this tile for the coffee at my right hand, the sugar and the milk-pitcher in front, those geraniums in the centre, a knife and fork and small plate to each; and now come out into the kitchen, set the plates to warm, and a platter. I’ll put the lard now on the hottest part of the stove, and a cover over it, so that the smell of hot grease may be as little as possible, and while it gets hot you can grind the coffee. You remember how to make it? Put a pint of milk on to boil, and set the other pint away. Now try the fat, and remember that what I am now going to teach you with these chops applies to all kinds of frying. The way you crumbed those chops is the way you must crumb cutlets, fish, oysters, or croquettes. They are better crumbed a little while before they are fried, as they have time to dry.”
Molly had cut, as she spoke, some little cubes of bread.
“Come and watch, Marta. This fat is very hot, but I doubt if it is hot enough, although it begins to smoke.”
She dropped in one bit of bread, it sizzled, but after waiting a few seconds remained white.
“It is not hot enough or that bread would have colored. Get the colander, set it on the stove with this sheet of grocer’s paper in it. When you take any fried article out of the fat, lay it first on the paper, then on a hot dish. Now let us try the fat again.”
Another bit of bread was dropped into the fat, and this time it colored in a few seconds.
“Remember, if I had six chops instead of three I should let the fat get hotter yet, because they would cool it so much. Now drop each chop gently in,—that’s the way. If they were very thick, as soon as they were brown I would draw back the fat, and leave them longer; as it is, two minutes will brown them beautifully, and they will be cooked through.”
“Two minutes!” murmured Marta, in expostulating tones. She could hardly be expected to credit that.
“Yes; you forget this fat is far hotter than any oven would be, and they are completely immersed in it. You can take up the potatoes if they are done, wipe them and lay them on the plate, and I will take up the muffins. The two minutes are up; look at the chops: you see they are most beautifully brown all over alike!”
Marta exclaimed, “Schön!” and stolidly attentive as she had been to all else, the golden chops evidently appealed to some hidden well of enthusiasm. They were taken up, laid first on the paper, then on the dish, and put to keep hot while the breakfast was taken to the table.
When the chops were going in, Molly said, “When we are settled, I shall want you always to put a little parsley on the dish with fried things.”
The muffins were light and crisp, the potatoes looked far more tempting in their pale-yellow, well-brushed skins than they usually do, and altogether the breakfast was as dainty a meal as heart could sigh for.
CHAPTER V.
HOW TO MANAGE THE FAT THAT HAS BEEN USED FOR FRYING—CUP CAKE.
When breakfast was on the table, Molly directed Marta to go up-stairs with pail and cloth and to bring down the soiled water, fill the ewer with fresh, etc. As Harry rose to put on his coat, Molly ran up-stairs and put on her hat and gloves. “I am going to the depot with you, Harry,” she said, when she reappeared ready for walking, “and I shall do my marketing as I return.”
“That is a good idea, Molly; the walk will be good for you.”
Before leaving the house, Molly passed through the kitchen, and told Marta, after she had finished her breakfast, to wash the breakfast things, but to leave the fat (that she had herself removed from the stove and covered, so that the fumes might not fill the house, before she went in to breakfast) till she returned. “After you have washed up, if I am not here, fill the lamps and clean the chimneys.”
This Marta was doing when she got back, and while she finished, Molly took off her outdoor clothes and donned her apron. “Now, Marta, I will show you about this fat, and I want you to remember to do just as you see me do, every time you use it. This is a piece of cheese-cloth; the fat is still quite hot (Molly had left it on the iron shelf over the range), but not scalding; I put the cloth over this empty lard-pail, and without shaking the fat, pour it through the cloth. You see all this fine black sediment that remains on the cloth and in the saucepan? That, if it were not strained out, would discolor whatever you fried in it. When it is strained each time, you can use it a dozen times; so you see it is not extravagant to fry in deep fat. Now you have a very greasy cloth and saucepan, but pour a quart of boiling water and a piece of washing-soda as big as a walnut on them, stir them, and you see you have no more grease, only some nice soapy water and a clean saucepan!”
Marta’s interest had been all alive since she had seen the chops, and she explained how often she had seen cooks in Germany bread cutlets, and they came out of the pan only breaded here and there. Never had she seen them all over alike, except at a restaurant where she had been dish-washer, and where there was a man cook.
“The crumbs come off for one of two reasons,—either they were too large (when I use bread instead of cracker I sift them), or the fat had not been hot enough; two or three large crumbs would spoil the whole, for they would fall off, bring others with them, and leave bare pale spots.”
As she made the explanation she had worked over the bread, which had risen to twice its first bulk, and put it into a tin pan, and set it to rise again. “That will only make one nice loaf, but it is as much as we shall eat while fresh. Now, while my hands are in flour, I will make a plain cake, and while it is baking, Marta, you and I will go up-stairs to the bedrooms. But first look well at the bread in the pan; you see it is barely half full; I worked it thoroughly, so that it has again to rise; when it is twice the size it now is it will be ready for the oven.”
She got for her cake two eggs, half a cup of butter, one of sugar, and a cup and a half of flour, a lemon, a nutmeg, and a tea-spoonful of baking-powder. Remembering she would need them, she had brought half a dozen of lemons and an ounce of nutmegs in with her. She set Marta to cream the butter and sugar, while she separated the yolks of the eggs and beat the whites till they were quite firm.
“This is only a plain ‘one, two, three, four’ cake, Marta, but it will be made nicer by the flavoring. When you know how to make this cake, always remember to vary the flavor, and the cake will seem much better than ordinary cup cake; sometimes you can add, the last thing, a cup of candied lemon and orange peel, cut fine,—I will show you how to candy them when we have collected enough,—or a cup of currants; either of these must be made warm, flour shaken through them, and the cake stirred only just enough, after they are in, to mix them, or they will all go to the bottom. This cake we will flavor with lemon and nutmeg. Mix the two yolks now with the butter and sugar, grate half the nutmeg, beginning at the blossom end or there will be a hole all through it; when you see that, always turn the nutmeg, begin at the other end, and there will be no hole; then grate the peel of the lemon to them, add a quarter tea-spoonful of salt, and mix all together; now sift in part of the flour with the baking-powder, then part of this cup of milk, now more flour, and the rest of the milk; the batter is rather stiff as yet, but the whites of the eggs will thin it enough,—they are the last to go in.”
Molly buttered a cake-pan, and the mixture, a thickish batter, was poured in, and then powdered sugar was sifted over and the cake put in the oven.
“The oven is nice and hot. I like to cover a cake the first half hour, so I will put this pie-pan over the top; another time I will have a piece of card-board ready and keep it for the purpose. Remember, if you want to make this cake when we are short of butter, you can use half lard. Now look at the bread; it will be ready in about twenty minutes, and the oven will be just nice for it. Meanwhile we will go upstairs.”
CHAPTER VI.
WHAT “SIMMERING” MEANS.
Oysters on the Half Shell.
Porterhouse Steak. Ragout of Lamb.
Stuffed Potatoes. Lima Beans.
Cheese Canapées.
Lemon Pie.
WHAT “SIMMERING” MEANS.
Molly congratulated herself on her unusual good fortune in securing such a girl as Marta, when she saw, in initiating her into the bedroom work, how well she did it. But she was not to be without her trials, even with this treasure, any more than every other housekeeper. When she knew, by the time, that the bread was ready, being deep in the draping of some chintz she had had in their city room, she told Marta to run down and put it in the oven, and to take the cover off the cake, but on no account to move or shake it, as the bread would go in on the other side of it.
Marta ran down, if the term can be applied to the lumbering movement with which she hurled herself down-stairs. Molly heard her carrying out her order, and then she heard a sound that elicited an exclamation of annoyance. It was the sound of the oven door closing with a tremendous bang.
“My poor cake! how vexatious!” For a moment vexation impelled her to scold Marta, but if Molly was one thing more than another, she was reasonable. Her blame was for herself more than for the girl. “How could she know? I must give her a general caution; I suppose the cake is gone utterly.”
It was. She met Marta returning to her up-stairs work smiling serenely.
“Marta, I want you to come and look at the result of banging the oven door in that way when cake is in the oven,—and you must remember, too, never to set a pot heavily on the range; when a cake has once risen, until quite done, any sudden jar will cause it to settle down. Look at this; you see the cake is all sunken.”
Marta stood, the picture of concern, her teeth pressed tight over her under lip.
“Never mind, we’ll look on the cake as a lesson; to-morrow you must make another as you saw me do this. Go and finish up-stairs, and I think, as we have no cake to-day, I will make a pie for dinner. When you come down you will see me make the paste, as everything I do I hope you will do later.”
When Marta came down Molly weighed out six ounces of butter and eight ounces of flour—the butter was straight from the ice-box and very firm; these she put together in a chopping-bowl with a pinch of salt, opened the window to let in the cool air, and then chopped butter and flour together, but not very fine, the butter still remaining in well-defined bits, some as large as white beans, when she left off. Making a hole in the centre, she poured in a small half cup of ice-water, and made it, with as little pressure as possible, into a firm dough. A few bits of butter and flour fell from it, but she did not stay to work them in smoothly, explaining to Marta, as she turned all out on to the pastry-board, that they would roll in smooth, and the less handling the pastry had the better. She rolled it out half an inch thick, folded it in three, putting any little flakes of butter that might be on the board upon it, and rolled it out again. (This was done as quickly as possible, so that the warm air of the kitchen might not soften the butter.) She dredged very little flour on it, and folded it again in three, rolled it again, and then once more folded and rolled it, making three times in all.
“Now, if I were in a hurry, I should use the pastry at once, as it is ready, but it will be so much lighter and better by being put on the ice that I shall leave it till I come out to see to the dinner. I will have cold lamb and salad for my lunch,—you know how to prepare the lettuce.” And Molly left the kitchen, knowing she had now some hours in which she could attend to getting things into place, etc.
Hardly was her luncheon cleared away, however, when Marta brought in a card, saying a lady had given it to her, but she didn’t know what she wanted. It bore the name of Mrs. Merit, and realizing that the visitor was left standing at the front door, Molly hurried out to receive her. She apologized for Marta’s keeping her there.
“Don’t mention it. This is a very early call; but coming into a furnished house is so different from an empty one,—you get settled in a few hours; besides, I knew this was your first experience of housekeeping, and if one wants to be of real use it is of no use to leave it till your difficulties are over.”
The lady had followed Molly into the parlor as she spoke, and seated herself in the rocking-chair.
“You are very kind,” said Molly, thinking how very friendly it was.
“I mean to be kind, my dear. I know the difficulties of inexperienced young housekeepers, and I want you to know that your nearest neighbor is ready to run right in any time you want, and if there’s anything I can tell you, why, you know where to come.”
“Thank you very much indeed,” said Molly gratefully; “I shall not forget.”
The conversation now drifted off into talk about Greenfield, and Molly learned the names of most of her near neighbors, and, it must be confessed, more of their peculiarities than she cared to hear.
“I’m your nearest neighbor on this side the street, but there’s poor Mrs. Lennox right opposite, poor thing! I’m glad she’s got some one to take Mrs. Winfield’s place to her. She was a real good neighbor, and when one’s life’s as hard as hers, a friendly neighbor is a good deal.”
Molly did not ask why Mrs. Lennox was qualified by the adjective “poor” nor why her life was hard. She began to recognize in Mrs. Merit a type of good-hearted women given over-much to interesting themselves in other people’s affairs. Mrs. Merit rocked serenely on, however, and proceeded to question Molly on her knowledge of housekeeping and to give some strong hints on economy.
“You see, my dear, young people start off with an idea of style, and it takes them some time to find out the best and cheapest way of doing things, and there’s receipts I’ve got that I’ve altered and changed so’s they don’t cost half, and taste, to my thinking, just as well, and no danger of dyspepsia, and I’d be glad to send you over my written book.”
Again Molly thanked her, and promised to avail herself of the book.
“Yes, and you’ll find your money goes a deal further; my receipts don’t call for eggs and butter as if they grew out on the bushes.”
“Well, you see,” said Molly timidly, “we need so little of anything that even a recipe which calls for what seems many eggs or much butter can generally be divided by four for us, and the four eggs or half pound of butter become only one egg and two ounces of butter; so we can have the good things and still spend little.”
“But then you have so little of it, and it wastes time to make things in small quantities.”
“Yes, but my time is not valuable, and besides it would be no economy for me to make things too plain, for we might not eat them at all; and the same would happen if I made much at a time of anything,—it would not be eaten up. Mr. Bishop likes variety.”
“Well, I believe in husbands’ liking food that’s according to their means, and not in young women wearing their lives out cooking for them. Mr. Merit was always satisfied with a plain, wholesome dinner, and that I took care he had.”
Mrs. Merit’s words were verging on the unpleasant, but her manner was so unconscious that Molly felt sure only kindness was meant; she was simply instructing the young and inexperienced wife.
“Now there’s poor Mrs. Lennox, she’s got four children, and her husband is as poor as a church mouse, and as pernickety about his eating—nothing she can get is good enough for him; and the way she manages to make both ends meet, and to dress them children as nice as any, is a wonder to every one, though, poor thing, she is wearing herself out.”
Shortly after, finding Molly was not curious about Mr. and Mrs. Lennox, Mrs. Merit protested that she was paying an unwarrantably long visit, rose and left, saying, as she did so, “You won’t be lonely long, you are not like strangers; being such friends of Mrs. Winfield, every one will make a point of calling very soon.”
Molly noticed, as she returned to the parlor, that Mrs. Merit was standing at the door of the house she had pointed out as Mrs. Lennox’s; doubtless she had gone to report her visit.
Molly went from her visitor to the kitchen. She had ordered in the morning a porterhouse steak and a dozen oysters on the half shell. As the butcher was also fishmonger, he had no objection to send so few, and she had impressed on him that both were to be sent after five, and the oysters opened at the house. She now told Marta, when they should come, to put the oysters into the ice-box at once, and went to assure herself that the fire was made up and would be ready by five o’clock to cook. She found, as she had feared, that Marta had forgotten, and the fire was at that stage of intense brightness which gives place to a mass of dead white ash a little later, but would quickly burn up with fresh fuel.
“How fortunate I came out, Marta; red as this fire is, in half an hour it would have been near out. Put a little coal on; when it is lighted well, not before, you can rake out the ashes and put on more coal, but not too much.” As she spoke she opened all the drafts.
She meant to have a ragout of the rougher part of the lamb—the neck piece—as a second dish; if Harry did not care for it at dinner, it would make a very savory one for breakfast. She cut it up into neat pieces; there was about a pound and a half of meat, very lean, and, properly treated, the tenderest in the whole sheep.
“If I had to pay the same for this part of the lamb as for the loin, I should still prefer it for boiling and stewing,” she said to Marta, “but so few people will believe it. Get me one onion and a carrot, and prepare them. I wish I had some canned peas, they would be such an addition; but I have not half the little things in store yet that I need.”
Molly was making this ragout, not that it was needed for dinner so much, although it made variety and a better-seeming table, but her chief thought was for the breakfast. Having the vegetables prepared, and the range being by this time hot on the top, she put a spider, containing a table-spoonful of butter and one of flour, on the stove, and told Marta to stir slowly till the flour and butter were pale brown, while she tied six sprigs of parsley and half a bay leaf together. When the flour and butter formed a smooth brownish paste, or roux, as the cooking-books call it, the carrots and onions, cut small, and the meat were added, with a half salt-spoonful of pepper, three level salt-spoonfuls of salt, and a tea-spoonful of vinegar. These were all stirred round, and a close cover put on.
“Now these have to be stirred every minute or so, to prevent burning, till brown, and while the ragout is cooking I will make a lemon pie. I have written the recipe, Marta, as I shall do all for the future, and you will keep the book in the kitchen. I will read it over to you.”
The recipe was, of course, written in German. Molly had not been able to do it without help from the dictionary, but she remembered that she was improving her German, which, indeed, was one of her reasons for taking a German girl, the compulsory practice would be so good for herself.
“Half a cup of fine bread crumbs, just enough milk to swell them, two eggs, three table-spoonfuls of sugar, two of butter, the juice of one lemon, the grated rinds of two. Beat sugar and butter to a cream, then the eggs and lemon juice, and last the bread and milk. You can make the mixture while I roll the paste and get the pie ready, but first I’m going to knock a few holes in this tin pie-plate, so that the crust may be light at the bottom.”
She took a small nail and hammer, and with it perforated the pie-plate till it looked like a colander. The paste was firm and hard, and Molly rolled it out with perfect ease, the third of an inch thick, without its once sticking to the board, which was lightly floured. She laid the pie-plate on it, and cut a circle a little larger than the tin to allow for the depth. Every touch she made was quick and light, just as if the paste were tulle or white satin. She turned the plate over, laid the paste on it, and pressed it only on the bottom, never touching the edges. She cut a little piece and put it in the oven to try it. Then she cut two long strips of paste, about an inch wide, and laid them lightly around the pie, so as to make the edge twice the thickness of the bottom; she gently pressed the lower edge of this strip to make it adhere to the pie, and then poured in the lemon mixture.
“Mr. Bishop doesn’t like meringue, or I would have kept out the two whites of eggs, to make it,” said Molly, as she took out the little “trier” she had in the oven.
It had risen a full inch, and “the separate flakes could be counted!” Marta exclaimed, as she saw it. Her intelligence only seemed to rouse when she saw something out of the ordinary routine of cooking, because, as Molly afterwards found, her ideal of cooking was what the man cook at the restaurant in Germany could do; she never expected to see a lady do them, and he had made puff paste just like this, and it seemed magic to her.
“And if she had never lived at the restaurant she would not have had intelligence enough to know what to admire. It is the old story,—to those who know nothing of art, a gay chromo is better than a fine painting,” said Molly, when she told Harry, who broke into good-natured laughter.
“Oh, my dear Molly, you are too delicious in your enthusiasm! What would our artists say to such a comparison?”
Molly joined in the laugh. “It sounds absurd, but the principle is the same. The poor girls who have no experience of good cooking or refined living can’t be expected to appreciate it.”
But this was in the evening, and we are digressing from the dinner.
By the time the pie was in the oven, the lamb had been twenty minutes in the spider,—Marta occasionally stirring it about. Two thirds of a pint of hot water was now added (it left plenty of gravy around the meat, yet did not cover it), the parsley was put in, and the spider closely covered and set where it would just simmer, as the success of the dish depended on its simmering, and not boiling. Molly waited to see it come to the boiling-point.
“Now, Marta, remember that to simmer means this,” she said, pointing out the gentlest little sizzling round the edge of the pan. “Perhaps you hardly think it is cooking at all, but that scarcely perceptible motion is what I mean when I say, ‘let it simmer;’ faster than that would be boiling. You must understand these distinctions if ever you hope to make a good cook. We are going to have Lima beans, and stuffed potatoes, and cheese canapées—to use up the baker’s bread—and, as I do not mean to be in the kitchen to-night except just as you broil the steak, I will get everything ready now.”
So saying, she cut slices of bread half an inch thick, then, with a large round cutter, cut circles; these she cut in half—they were not the true crescent shape that canapées should be, but they would answer; then she put a table-spoonful of butter in a small saucepan (using a saucepan, because to fry, or rather sauter, so little, the butter required would be twice as much if it had to go over the large space of a frying-pan), and then she fried four of the canapées a very light brown. When done she took them up, and grated about an ounce of cheese, and setting the canapées on a small tin ready for the oven, she heaped the grated cheese on them, then sprinkled on them a little pepper and salt.
“Marta, those are ready, but need not go into the oven till I tell you. At five you wash four large potatoes and put them into the oven; at a quarter past you can put the Lima beans into a saucepan of boiling water, with two tea-spoonfuls of salt and one of sugar; let them come quickly to the boil again.”
Molly took the pie out of the oven. It was beautifully brown, and the edge, half an inch thick when it went into the oven, was now more than double, and more flaky than real puff paste, as generally made.
“Now, Marta, I’ll leave you to set the table quite alone to-night, and to do everything by yourself, except broil the steak, which I have not yet shown you how to do, and to dress the vegetables. Chop ready for me two table-spoonfuls of parsley and one slice of onion very fine.”
Molly had to congratulate herself on having gotten so far forward with the dinner, for just as she was leaving the kitchen Mrs. Lennox came.
“Mrs. Merit told me you were settled and ready to see your neighbors, so I would not delay coming over. I have not the same good excuse as she has for so early a visit, for, beyond good feeling, I cannot be of any use to any one, my hands are so completely tied with my family; but you are Mrs. Winfield’s friend, and you seem no stranger to me.”
“But no excuse is needed,” said Molly. “I think it exceedingly kind.”
Mrs. Lennox was a very nervous-looking woman, who had once been very pretty, and was still young enough to be so. When they had talked a little while, it proved that one of Molly’s dear friends had been a school-fellow of Mrs. Lennox. This made them quite intimate in a few minutes, and Molly found herself talking freely of her hopes and plans.
“Oh! but how could you have the courage to keep house, when you had no family to make boarding impossible?”
“But it needed more courage to go on boarding, I think,” laughed Molly.
“Oh! wait a bit, till your servant goes off at a moment’s notice, just as you have company to dinner; or till your husband begins to criticise the food, or—if you are too newly married for that—till you see him look at the table in despair, and sit down and eat as if it were all chaff,—those are the things that will make you long to give it all up.”
“But,” said Molly gravely, for that bitter phrase, “if you are too newly married for that,” shocked her, “I don’t think, if girls served me so half a dozen times a year, it would be more than a temporary annoyance, while to board is a daily and hourly discomfort; as for my husband, I shall try at least to give him as good food as we had while boarding.”
“Yes, as good food, but it is the variety; on small means it is impossible to have it. You smile! it is all smooth sailing for you yet, but I assure you the first time you find yourself without a girl you’ll realize what I mean; but it is beautiful to see your enthusiasm, and recalls my own early married life.”
She sighed; Molly pretended not to hear her, although she was full of sympathy for her weary looks; she laughed lightly and said, “Well, I don’t believe I should be in despair to find myself without a maid! It would worry Mr. Bishop for my sake, but not me.”
“That’s all very well in theory, but when it comes to having the breakfast to get, the fires to light, and you find the bread won’t rise, and nothing goes as it ought to go, you’ll be inclined to sit down and cry.”
“But I think things would go better than that. I am so fond of cooking that I shall practice a good deal, so that, if I find myself deserted, we shall not feel the loss beyond less leisure for me.”
“You are fond of cooking—that’s different! I hate it, but then that’s because I have it to do, I suppose, for, though I sympathized with you in advance in case you are left without, I never have a servant; and as I have four children, and make all their clothes and my own, you may suppose I have no time to spend over the fire. We are obliged to live very plainly, and if I can manage to get the food on the table in an eatable form, that’s all I try for. I tell you this now because, if, as I hope, we should become more than formal acquaintances, you will know what to expect at my house.”
There was a pained look in the weary face, as if the saying had not been pleasant, and Molly’s heart ached at the sad picture of toil her words conjured up. And yet, after she had left, Molly remembered the dress of cheap material, but trimmed to excess, and thought of the weary hours it had taken to make, and wondered why she did it.
Molly, when again alone, hesitated what to do. She knew of several bits of sewing she had to do for the house, but she was a little tired; and besides, after a week or two Marta would not need her so much in the kitchen—or, at least, she hoped not; meanwhile, the new “Century” was on the table, and she took it up to read till it became necessary for her to go and direct Marta.
Molly had had a hint or two from her two visitors that they considered she would be making rather a slave of herself, but she had no such intention; she did not think it harder work to be in the kitchen than at the sewing-machine. At half past five she went to see if the table was neatly laid, and made a few changes, calling Marta’s attention to them; then went into the kitchen, and found the parsley and onion not nearly fine enough; these she chopped over, and by that time the potatoes and Lima beans were done.
“Pour the water off the beans, Marta, then dress them just as you did the cabbage last night; stir them well around, and move them to a part of the range where they will just simmer. When you have done it, you can put the oysters on the table, six on each plate, the points to the centre, with a quarter of a lemon in the middle of each.”
While she was speaking, Molly had put a little milk on to boil, and cut the tops from the potatoes, and holding them in a cloth, scooped out the inside with a spoon, into a bowl which she had made hot, without breaking the skin; when the potato was all out, she added to it a table-spoonful of butter and the parsley and onion, moistening the whole with hot milk, and then with a fork she beat it rapidly back and forth till very white and light; then she seasoned with salt and pepper to taste, and filled the skins, which she had put to keep hot again, and set them in the oven. The milk being boiling and the process quick, they had not had time to cool much.
“Now, Marta, heat the gridiron and put your dishes to get hot; then put the steak on, open all the drafts that the smoke may go up.”
The fire was clear and not too high, and she watched while Marta broiled it, directing her to turn the steak frequently.
“Keep the gridiron tilted from you, so that the grease runs to the back of the stove, and don’t be frightened at its flaring; better it should flare than smoke; it is the smoke, not the flame, that blackens the steak.”
When it had broiled eight minutes it was to be laid on a hot dish, with a lump of butter on it, and liberally seasoned with pepper and salt. But as Molly heard Harry come in, she left the butter and seasoning ready and went to him, trusting Marta to bring the dinner to table, telling her, as she left the kitchen, to put the cheese canapées in the oven, on the upper shelf. They would be brown by the time they had finished the meat.
CHAPTER VII.
MOLLY AND MRS. LENNOX—ECONOMICAL BUYING MAKES GOOD LIVING.
A week passed, and Molly found her ten dollars left a narrow margin, as will be seen from the account she triumphantly showed to Harry, and the week’s bills of fare, which she wrote out neatly, appending every recipe, and which, for the benefit of those who may wish to do likewise, I will give in its place; but before that week was over, Molly was resolving other problems. She had seen Mrs. Lennox again, and Harry was delighted with Mr. Lennox, who traveled on the same train with him, and in answer to Molly’s remarks on the hard life his wife led, he maintained that his pity was for the husband.
“I can picture to myself that household, Molly, and the scrambling meals that man gets. Why, he was astounded when I told him we lived just as well as I want to live, and what we had to live on. Yes, dear, I fear I did boast to the poor fellow of the charming little dinners you got up, and asked if he knew any one who could beat that? He said:—
“‘Well, I wish Mrs. Bishop would teach my wife how to put some flavor into what we eat. Our means are narrow, but I do know that if Letty knew how to cook, we should all be better, and she herself. We can’t expect fancy dishes—our family is too large and our means too small for that—but even Irish stew may taste of something besides onions and hot water.’
“I should think it could; nothing I enjoy better than Irish stew. However, I didn’t crow any more over poor Lennox, but you needn’t give all your pity to Mrs. Lennox.”
Already Molly had decided in her own mind that Mrs. Lennox was making a great mistake in the way she had chosen for doing her duty to her family, and that the weary days spent at the sewing-machine might be partly spent in the kitchen with advantage to her own health and her children’s. She longed to help her, but dared not take the liberty. But the day came when Mrs. Lennox herself gave the opening. They met in the street on Saturday, and Molly mentioned that she was on her way to the butcher’s.
“I see you go every morning down town, but it is rare for me, for I can’t spare the time, so I have to trust to what the butcher sends. You see we live so plainly that we haven’t much choice—it’s just steak and chops and roast beef. Mr. Lennox can’t bear cold mutton, so we never get a joint of it.”
“But don’t you think the morning walk would do you good? I believe it will me; and then I have some satisfaction in seeing my meat before I buy it, although we buy very little.”
Molly was terribly afraid of seeming didactic, and spoke in a rather apologetic way.
“Yes, but you haven’t four children, my dear; however, as I am out, I will go with you. How I wish you would tell me what to get in place of chops for to-day and a roast for to-morrow! We all hate them, but we can’t afford poultry.”
“I hardly like to suggest, for I don’t know your tastes; but if I wanted to live cheaply,—forgive me, you have given me reason to suppose that you have to be economical”—
“Economy isn’t the word,—we can barely make ends meet, and I work myself to death to avoid spending an unnecessary dime.”
“I know you do, and for that reason I would like to tell you a few things I learnt in France, where they make a franc go as far as we would a dollar, and yet live well.”
“Tell it me; but for goodness’ sake don’t tell me that lentils are as good as meat—we abhor lentils—or that peas and beans are nitrogenous; I’ve read that sort of thing till I’m sick; if you haven’t the appetite of a ploughman you can’t eat things because they contain nitrogen any more than you can live on medicine.”
“I’m a little of your opinion, but I mean really good living that, if you didn’t know the cost, would seem almost luxurious. It is simply buying, and using what you buy, judiciously.”
Mrs. Lennox smiled a little incredulously, but said, courteously, “I am quite open to conviction.”
“What do you propose to pay for your roast of beef?”
“It will be at least $2, for it is of no use getting less than eight pounds; and chops for to-day will be about 35 cents.”
“And how long will the roast last?”
“It has to last till Tuesday, though out of an eight-pound roast there isn’t much but bone and fat the third day.”
“And you have then something extra to get for breakfast?”
She laughed a little. “To tell the truth, our breakfast is slim; I can’t afford meat, and Mr. Lennox usually has an egg or two; he never cares, fortunately, for a heavy breakfast, but prefers knick-knacks.”
“This is the sort of housekeeping Harry dreaded,” thought Molly, but she said aloud, “Then you would really spend $2.35 this morning for meat to last till Tuesday?”
“At the very least, but more likely $2.75, for they could hardly cut me exactly eight pounds.”
“Then I would suggest you get, instead of the roast, either a leg of mutton at 15 cents a pound, or a piece of beef at the same price for à la mode beef; and if you choose the mutton, then you will have a really nice pot-pie to-night in place of chops. You will find that you will buy ten pounds of meat for $1.50, and then you can get some of the knick-knacks Mr. Lennox likes for breakfast.”
“But he won’t look at cold mutton, or Irish stew made of it.”
“No; Irish stew needs fresh meat, and cold mutton is not appetizing; but I propose your having hot mutton each meal.”
“But that will make so much cooking, and I am alone to do it!”
“I know,” said Molly, gently, “but I am sure that sewing-machine is half killing you; can’t you give it up for an hour or two each day?”
“My dear, by the time I get through my housework it is near noon; then there’s the children’s dinner to get and clear, and I don’t get to sewing till after one. Then the afternoon and evening I have to give to it; if I could go and buy new material I need not have half the work, but it is the cutting down, making over, ripping, altering, and planning that wears one out.”
“Then I will help you,” said Molly. “I have time, and if you’ll promise to give one hour to the kitchen, I’ll sew an hour with you and cook an hour. I am so sure the change of work will brighten you up.”
“Heaven knows I need brightening! I feel a perfect hag, and I’m only twenty-eight.”
“Then you accept?”
“Yes,” hesitating; “yet I don’t know why I can allow you to”—
“Oh, don’t say one word! I love it.”
They had slackened pace in their earnest talk, but now they had reached the butcher’s.
“You are to order just what you like,” said Mrs. Lennox.
“I will.”
Molly chose a good-sized leg of mutton, weighing eight pounds, and told the butcher to cut it nearly in half, leaving the large part for the loin end; and a pound and half of round steak. She ordered also half a pound of beef suet; then, turning to Mrs. Lennox, she asked if Mr. Lennox was fond of kidneys for breakfast?
Then a beef kidney was added, and the amount spent was:—
| Leg of mutton, | $1.20 |
| Suet, | .06 |
| Kidney, | .10 |
| Steak, | .24 |
| Total, | $1.60 |
“Well, I count myself nearly a dollar in pocket so far,” said Mrs. Lennox, “but I have tried buying economical meats before, though in the end it was no economy, for we did not eat it.”
“I will forgive you if you don’t eat this,” said Molly, laughing; “but I must hurry home; I have a chicken pie to make for to-morrow’s dinner, but I will see you later in the day. I am responsible, you know, for the meat I have bought.”
Molly’s own dinner being soup, veal cutlets, potato croquettes, Lima beans, and apple pudding, and the soup ready, all but heating it, she meant to make the pudding and prepare the croquettes, and leave Marta to her own resources for the vegetables and breading cutlets,—she, herself, would be back in time to see the actual cooking of her own meat. But of her own cooking I will speak in the next chapter.
At three o’clock, then, Molly went over to Mrs. Lennox, whom she found busy feather-stitching several yards of navy blue cashmere ruffling with red crewel.
“This is for Milly’s fall frock; it was first my dress, then Lily’s, now it comes to Milly, and the red will make a change.”
“You have far more patience than I,” said Molly.
“Yes, I don’t know what I should do without it. Must the cooking begin now? I hate to lose daylight.”
“Yes, the pot-pie will take long, slow cooking to be good, but you can come back in half an hour.”
“Oh! suppose we have that steak fried—just for to-day; well pounded it will be tender enough. I hate to leave this.”
“I will go down, then, if you will let one of the little girls show me where you keep things.”
“Oh, no; I can’t let you!” said Mrs. Lennox. “But that is just it; don’t you see yourself I have no time to cook?”
Molly longed to say that it seemed as important to her that the food should be well prepared as that the flounce should be feather-stitched, but of course, she said nothing, and the next minute they were down in Mrs. Lennox’s neat kitchen.
“This pot-pie I propose making is an English dish my father was very fond of, and it is a little different from our dish of that name.”
“This is very kind of you, Mrs. Bishop. I only fear you will see what an up-hill business it is to make a family live well on very little money.”
“What do you call little?” asked Molly, busily cutting the steak into finger-lengths.
“$80 a month to keep six people, and out of it $20 for rent; that leaves sixty for everything else.”
Molly thought that was not too little to insure a plain, solid comfort, but she must gain Mrs. Lennox’s confidence in her ability and good-will before telling her so, and she went on quietly preparing for the pot-pie.
CHAPTER VIII.
BEEF POT-PIE—LEG OF MUTTON—TWO ROASTS—SEVERAL WHOLESOME ECONOMICAL DISHES.
When Molly had cut the steak into finger-lengths, she floured the pieces lightly, and put an iron saucepan that held about three quarts on the stove, and, when it was hot, dropped in the fat of the steak, then the meat, and left them to fry at the bottom of the saucepan.
“I should think that would burn,” said Mrs. Lennox.
“No, because the meat fat is there; but it has to brown very quickly, or the meat will be hard; that is why I let the saucepan get so hot. Now I want a carrot, an onion, and a turnip—all of medium size.”
“I have only small onions.”
“Two of those, then.”
Molly washed and then began to peel them—the turnip thick, the carrot very thin.
“What can I do?” asked Mrs. Lennox.
“You can chop that suet very fine, taking away all skin and veins.”
Molly cut the vegetables into slices a quarter of an inch thick, made piles of half a dozen slices of carrot, then cut across them at even distances; it was more quickly done than the usual hit or miss way, and they looked far better; the turnip she did the same, and then she stirred the meat round, which was sending a savory odor through the house. The peeled onion she dropped into water, and then, with hands still in the water, cut it across at equal distances all the way through, then across again.
“What are you doing that in water for?”
“It prevents the odor clinging so much to the hands, and also mitigates its power to make me weep.” As she spoke she took all the vegetables to the saucepan, dropped them in and stirred them quickly round, then poured two kitchen cups of boiling water on the whole, and seasoned it with a tea-spoonful of salt and a quarter one of pepper.
“I want to watch that come to the boil, and then put it where it will just simmer.”
She had covered the saucepan close, and then turned to Mrs. Lennox. The suet in her unaccustomed hands was still far from being chopped fine, and the warmth of the kitchen had made it clog together. Molly said, “If suet gets soft while being chopped, shake a little flour into it, also flour the chopping-knife. When chopping it in winter for mincemeat, I let it get well frozen.” She chopped vigorously as she spoke, and it was soon so fine as to look like tapioca. She then turned to the saucepan, which had reached the boiling-point, and drew it aside, carefully changing the position until it just simmered. She then pointed out to Mrs. Lennox the little sizzling round the edge of the saucepan, barely perceptible, and told her that it should cook no faster.
“But that doesn’t appear to be cooking at all.”
“Oh, yes! and meat stewed so will always be tender. If you like we can go to the sewing now, as it is too soon to make the crust.”
She went upstairs and sewed till five o’clock, chatting the while, Mrs. Lennox expatiating on the privations of the whole family; and Molly could well understand how it came about, with a poor, weary mother sewing strenuously to make the children look well, and understanding so little of domestic economy that she did not see that, by a different mode of living, she would save enough in the month either to buy new clothes or to lessen her own incessant labor by getting help. Nor could Molly at this time make any suggestion.
At five o’clock Molly took a cup of the suet, and a scant two cups of flour, with a level tea-spoonful of salt, tossed all together in a bowl, then made a hole in the centre, and poured in half a cup of cold water, quickly and lightly made it into a dough with a knife, adding a few drops of water to bind the crumbs; there was no pressure, no attempt at kneading, and the dough was soft, but not sticky; then she turned it on the floured pastry-board, and rolled it quickly; it formed a fairly good round shape, an inch thick, and somewhat larger than the top of the saucepan. She laid it on the top of the meat and vegetables, after tasting the gravy to see if it was seasoned enough.
“You see it forms a sort of lid to the stew, which must now be put forward, as the cold crust has cooled it, till it boils again, or the crust will be heavy.” She placed it in the hottest spot as she spoke.
“But do you mean to say that crust will be light without baking powder?”
“Yes, quite light; if it is made quickly, rolled only once—just as you would biscuit dough, only not so soft—brought quickly to the boiling-point when in the saucepan, and then kept gently simmering an hour, not allowed to soak in the gravy without cooking. But if you choose you can add baking-powder; it makes a much more crumbly crust. Made as I have made it, it is considered very wholesome and nourishing, as beef fat and wheaten flour are two of the best kinds of food; lard and flour and baking-powder are by no means so wholesome a combination. When dishing it, cut the top crust pie-fashion, and lay it round the meat.”
“Well, ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating,’ and if it is fairly good I shall be so glad to have some dish that is a change from our routine, and it is, after all, easy enough,” said Mrs. Lennox, washing potatoes for the oven.
“Oh, quite! It only needs strict attention to the little points, the slow simmering and the seasoning; the browning at first is not necessary, although it is better looking and better flavored by taking that little trouble.”
“Ah, my dear, it is the little trouble, that seems nothing to you, that makes so much difference to a busy woman like me.”
“If you like this dish, I have several others that I think you may find both very cheap and very nice, and I shall be very glad at any time to come over and give you a helping hand in the kitchen. And, by and bye, this suet crust is the foundation for several good puddings,—rolled out and spread with jam, and boiled one hour and a half as a roly-poly, it is excellent; with a cup of currants added, before wetting the flour and suet, it makes the ‘spotted Dick’ dear to English children; or, in place of currants, the juice of a lemon and the grated rind of two, with half a cup of sugar, makes a nice plain lemon pudding, but long, steady boiling is absolutely necessary to lightness. Excuse my telling you all this, but you know I am so fond of cooking, I can’t help it.”
“I am much obliged. I like to hear all about it, even if I can’t make the things.”
“Now about that leg of mutton: I propose you roast the loin end to-morrow, and there will be a little left cold, which you will not use on Monday, but cook the other half—have it boiled, with caper sauce, or roasted.”
“I will boil it, for that is a dish we all like; only what to do with cold boiled mutton I don’t know; that is why, though we like it, we never have it.”
“Tuesday, you will have the remains of the Sunday roast and the remains of Monday’s boiled mutton, and I will run in and show you how to make a nice dish of them; but be sure to boil the half leg in only just enough water, and very slowly, and keep the broth; if you boil a turnip and onion with it, it will be all the better for broth and meat.”
“Thank you; that sounds like a great improvement on hot meat Sunday and cold Monday and Tuesday. What about that kidney? I haven’t an idea how to cook it.”
“Soak it in salt and water an hour; cut it in pieces half an inch thick, leaving out the core; flour them; put them in a saucepan with half a table-spoonful of butter and a thin slice of onion, unless it is disliked; let them fry five minutes, then add half a tea-cup of boiling water, and stand the saucepan where it will just simmer ten minutes—if you leave it longer the kidney will be hard. I like to have it served on toast, but that is optional; only be sure it is served as soon as cooked, and with quite hot plates.”
“Thank you ever so much. Mr. Lennox will enjoy his breakfast, I’ve no doubt.”
“I hope you will, too,” said Molly.
“I dare say I shall, thanks to you.”
Molly hurried home, for she had her own dinner to attend to; and to-night she was going to look over her accounts and convince Harry that “Ten Dollars” is “Enough” to pay all the weekly expenses they would be likely to incur.
CHAPTER IX.
VEAL CUTLETS, BREADED.
When Molly reached home it was nearly six. Marta had followed directions fairly well, but Molly had taken the precaution to do everything she could before leaving home. She had herself cut half the veal cutlets into neat pieces, the size of a large oyster, leaving the rest for her pie, pounded each, squeezed on it a few drops of lemon juice, and piled one upon the other, and told Marta to leave them so an hour or two, then bread them exactly as she had done the lamb chops. She had also cut some thin slices of breakfast bacon, taken off the rind and dark inner skin very thinly; and now, having let the frying-pan get quite hot, she put the bacon in it. As soon as it looked clear she turned it; it curled up, and when it had been in the pan about three minutes she took it out and laid in the cutlets; the half a dozen pieces left room to turn them about comfortably.
“You see, Marta, I don’t drop these into deep fat, because veal is a meat that requires long cooking, and is one of the few things I think better fried, or rather ‘sauté,’ in this way, with only enough fat to cook them, but it is much more trouble to do than the frying in boiling fat.”
The cutlets took nearly ten minutes to fry a nice brown on one side, because, although the pan was kept at a good heat, she had to guard against burning. Then each piece was turned, and, when quite brown (it took nearly ten minutes more to get so), taken up and put on the dish, and the bacon round it. Molly took the pan to the table, poured off the fat, which was dark, and put in the pan a dessert-spoonful of butter and a scant one of flour, set them on the stove and let them melt and brown a little; then she drew the pan aside, and poured a small cup of the hot soup they were going to have for dinner into it, and stirred till smooth, mashing all the brown clinging gravy with the back of her spoon. She explained to Marta that, if the soup had not been at hand, water and pepper and salt would have been used; or, if there was oyster liquor in the house, she should have used that and water in equal parts.
“Now take in the soup, Marta,—and while that is on the table, let this gravy boil a few seconds, then pour it through the strainer into the dish with the cutlets; don’t let it boil longer, or it will get too thick.”
After dinner, Harry told Molly that one of the gentlemen on the cars, a friend of the Winfields’, had spoken to him about joining a dramatic reading-club, of which he was president, and said his wife was coming to invite Molly. “But I don’t think we can afford it, dear.”
“Would you like it?” asked Molly quickly.
“Oh, I don’t know! Yes, I think it might brighten the winter a bit.”
“Well, we will see after my accounts are audited. First, I want to ask you how you consider you have fared this week?”
“Admirably,—so well that I’m afraid of the accounts.”
“You need not be. Now I want you to listen while I read over the bills of fare for the week.”
Harry nodded in amused good humor, and smoked on comfortably.
“On Monday we had chicken salad, etc., for lunch. Dinner—Roast shoulder of lamb, potatoes, cabbage, macaroni, tomato salad, and peaches and cream.
“Tuesday. Breakfast—Breaded chops, baked potatoes, corn muffins.”
Harry nodded assent to each item as Molly turned her bright eyes on him to make sure he was giving attention.
“Tuesday. Dinner—Oysters, steak, ragout of lamb, stuffed potatoes, Lima beans, cheese canapées, and lemon pie.
“Wednesday. Breakfast—Hashed lamb, poached eggs, and soufflé bread. Dinner—Tomato cream soup, roast breast of lamb, chicken croquettes, stewed onions and potatoes, peach pudding.
“Thursday. Breakfast—Lamb chops broiled, eggs, tomato salad, stewed potatoes, muffins. Dinner—Fried smelts, beef à la mode, cones of carrots and turnips, mashed potatoes, lettuce salad, cheese fritters, amber pudding.
“Friday. Breakfast—Brown hash, poached eggs, corn bread, baked potatoes. Dinner—Bisque of clams, beef au gratin, chicken rissoles, cauliflower, potatoes, tomato salad, custard pie.
“Saturday. Breakfast—Scalloped clams, cauliflower, omelet, pop-overs, stewed potatoes. Dinner—Clear soup, veal cutlets, mashed potatoes, cabbage, macaroni, apple pudding.
“And to-morrow’s breakfast and dinner, though not eaten, is paid for, so I add that.
“Sunday. Breakfast—Broiled bacon, poached eggs, muffins. Dinner—Clear soup, chicken pie, mashed potatoes, creamed onions, tomato salad, peach compote, and custard.”
Molly concluded her list with rather a triumphant air, as one who knows she has achieved what she set out to do.
“Yes, Molly, we have had all those good breakfasts and dinners, and I’m afraid to think of the work you have had to cook all that. Let me look at your poor little hands.”
She held them towards him. They were white and soft as ever.
“Nevertheless,” he said, pressing them between his own, “I feel such a selfish brute to let you do it.”
“Nonsense! I like it. Why, didn’t I always go to Mrs. Welles’ house after each cooking-lesson, and repeat the whole lesson, when I hadn’t the satisfaction of seeing you share the good things I made, because we were boarding? And didn’t she and I repeat every failure until we got it right? Those were the days when I had backaches and headaches, because I was so anxious to succeed and failed so often; but now it is all at my fingers’ ends, and no more trouble than the simplest cooking—far less, indeed; it takes a little more time and makes more washing-up for Marta; and if we had a large family and I had other duties, I could not give so much time; nor would it be right to overwork one girl to cater to our tastes; but in a tiny house like this, with two or even four people, there’s no question of overwork for either mistress or maid.”
“But even your time, dear, oughtn’t to be sacrificed to give me good dinners.”
“No, nor will it be; but what is my time good for, except to make your income go as far as it will? I get all the time to read I want; I am not fond of plain sewing; and as clothes ready made can now be bought so good and cheap, I don’t mean to do more than keep the buttons sewed on,”—here she smiled as she thought of the favorite grievance,—“the stockings well darned, and everything mended; so; you’ll never have the satisfaction of seeing me stitch long white seams, nor wear a shirt made by me.”
“Thank heaven!” ejaculated Harry.
“No, nowadays that I consider real waste of time. And then I’ve no gift for fancy work, pretty as the modern version of it is, so I’d like to know what I should do with the whole day if I didn’t do something in the kitchen? I expect, when Marta is trained, never to spend more than an hour and a half each day there, and an hour besides for the other little household duties; that leaves a margin for visiting, reading, and the sewing I may have.”
“Very well, Molly dear; that programme sounds very easy, but whether it works in practice I don’t know.”
“Everything depends on Marta,—if she shows intelligence and cares to learn, things will go as I have planned after the first month; but supposing she actually never proves capable of doing the cooking alone, I shall simply make up my mind to spend the hour between five and six every day in the kitchen. I shan’t like to do it, because it ought not to be necessary, but one has to accept some shortcoming with any servant, and I would sooner this than some others; but to make it worth while to keep her under those circumstances, she must be very good in other things. There! I’m talking instead of attending to business,” said Molly; “here is an account of our expenditure.”
| Monday— | Meat and sundries | $2.90 |
| Cream | .10 | |
| Yeast | .02 | |
| Tuesday— | Oysters | .12 |
| Steak | .30 | |
| Lima Beans | .05 | |
| Wednesday— | Extra milk for soup | .04 |
| Thursday— | Smelts | .10 |
| 3 pounds beef | .35 | |
| Pork | .10 | |
| Lettuce | .05 | |
| Friday— | Cauliflower | .10 |
| Milk for soup | .04 | |
| Clams | .15 | |
| Soup bone | .15 | |
| Saturday— | Veal cutlets, 1½ pounds | .27 |
| Chicken | .50 | |
| Bacon | .14 | |
| Extra butter | .25 | |
| Milk for week | .56 | |
| Ice, 100 pounds | .40 | |
| Fuel | .50 | |
| $7.19 |
Molly had added to the supplies she had ordered for the month, which, it will be remembered, amounted to $9.86, the following articles:
| Macaroni | $0.20 |
| Nutmegs | .10 |
| Lemons | .20 |
| Carrots, turnips, onions | .36 |
| Apples | .40 |
| Parsley | .05 |
| Thyme | .05 |
| $1.36 |
which brought the amount to $11.22; one fourth of which, $2.80, added to $7.19, made the week’s expenditure $9.99.
“Now, although that amount has been spent this week, you must remember that of several of the articles bought, a little is left, and I have not to begin this week without a scrap in the house as I had the last,” explained Molly. “We need ice only a week or two longer, but when that need ceases we shall require more fuel; but I think a dollar a week all the year round will average ice and fuel, so I shall allow that. We shall use $2 a week for a few weeks, but barely 50 cents the rest of the year.”
Molly laid the accounts before her husband as she finished, and he gravely looked them over.
“And if, this month, I come out even five cents ahead, we may count ourselves safe, for buying in the very small quantities I am now doing is an extravagant way. But I wanted to make sure my ‘paper housekeeping’ would work in practice.”
There was rather an anxious look in Harry’s eyes as he read over the accounts. He was afraid Molly had sadly miscalculated, and he hated to prove her at fault, although he loved to poke fun at her.
“What’s the matter?” asked his wife, starting up and looking over his shoulder.
“Only, dear, if you remember, we had chicken in one form or other several times this week, but there is only one chicken counted, and that is to-day. Also lamb chops we have had several times.” He glanced up at her deprecatingly, for he felt such criticism ungracious, yet necessary; but Molly was quite serene.
“The box of chicken in Monday’s bill was all I’ve used; the chops also were from Monday. There’s one thing, though, I will call your attention to, and that is, that the most expensive meal we have had was the steak, yet people who use steak every day are supposed to live plainly and economically.”
“Then we come out wonderfully, I acknowledge.”
“This week, of course, Marta has simply seen how I want things done; next week I want her to actually do the cooking from recipes. Do you think you can stand last week’s dinners all over again?”
“Of course, my dear; why not?”
“That’s well, because if I teach her new things before she has learnt these thoroughly, she will get confused. I want to feel that there are a few things I can absolutely trust her to do. Then I can go on to fresh fields, so you may have things that are difficult to cook rather oftener than I like, till Marta is capable.”
“I shall not object to aid in Marta’s education so far,” said Harry.
CHAPTER X.
DETAILS OF MOLLY’S MANAGEMENT—RECIPES.
Molly had not entered so fully into matters with Harry as she would have done had he been a woman; but as this story is to tell, not only what Molly did, but how she did it, I must be a little more explicit.
She found herself on Wednesday with a breast of lamb, eight chops, half a box of boned chicken, and a small piece of steak. The chops were good for two breakfasts; the chicken, prepared as for croquettes, would make either eight of those, or three croquettes, three rissoles, and some fritters. Now, as eight croquettes for two people would be waste, since they were only an entrée, the main dinner being something else, she had no idea of that, but rissoles, fritters and croquettes being all prepared alike, and keeping better in that way, she made the mixture, and used enough for the three croquettes, leaving the rest in the ice-box for use another day. Part of the chops she would not want to use till the end of the week, and keeping them quite sweet she made all the fat that had come from the lamb (dripping and trimmings, etc.) boiling hot, then laid the chops in it—seethed them, as it were—for one minute, then put them away with the coat of fat on them, to be scraped off when they were to be cooked.
For the clam soup a pint and a half was all that was needed, and the liquor, with half the clams, was all that she used; the rest she scalloped for breakfast.
It was in making no more of each dish than they could eat (but allowing plenty for kitchen as well as dining-room) that Molly was able to have what seemed a surprising table,—that and one other thing, allowing nothing whatever to be wasted. The piece of steak left from Tuesday’s dinner was fag end; it was put away, and when the hash was made for Friday morning from the remains of à la mode beef, the steak was just the thing to add to it.
For lunch there had always been enough in the house from dinner the night before. As it was her plan to put Marta more on her own responsibility the following week, she had prepared for that purpose the recipes of the principal things; and as Marta’s mistakes and difficulties might occur to others, the working of them out in her hands will be more instructive than recounting Molly’s certain success.
The recipes were as follows:—
Hashed Lamb.—The remains of ragout of lamb, freed from bone, chopped with the vegetables, the gravy, and a tea-spoonful of butter and one of Worcestershire sauce added; the whole made boiling hot, and served on fried bread.
Soufflé Bread.—Two eggs, two table-spoonfuls of flour, in which half a tea-spoonful of baking-powder is sifted; beat yolks and a table-spoonful of butter, melted, together, then add flour and just milk enough to make a very thick batter; add a pinch of salt and a tea-spoonful of sugar; whip whites of eggs to a firm froth, and stir gently in. Have ready a small iron spider (or earthen pan is still better), made hot, with a dessert-spoonful of butter also hot, but not so hot as for frying; pour the mixture, which should be like sponge-cake batter, into the pan, cover with a lid or tin plate, and set it back of the stove if the fire is good—if slow, it may be quite forward. When well risen, almost like omelet soufflé, set it in the oven five minutes to brown the top; if the oven is cool, you may very carefully turn it, so as not to deaden it; serve when done, under side uppermost. It should be a fine golden brown.
Soufflé bread may be baked in a thick tin, with rather more butter than enough to grease it, but the oven must be very hot indeed, and it should be covered till thoroughly puffed up, then allowed to brown.
Tomato Cream Soup.—Put six ripe tomatoes on to stew; when done, boil one pint of milk in a double boiler, mix two tea-spoonfuls (large) of flour with very little milk till smooth, then stir it into the boiling milk; cook ten minutes. To the tomato put a salt-spoonful, scant, of soda, stir well, then rub through a strainer fine enough to keep back seeds; add a dessert-spoonful of butter to the milk, stirring well, then the tomato, and serve immediately.
Breast of Lamb Roasted.—Take out the bones with a small, sharp knife; put them on to boil with a piece of carrot and a slice of onion, a pint of water and a bay leaf; boil for two hours till reduced to less than half. Roll the breast (it may be seasoned with pepper, salt and chopped parsley before rolling) and skewer it, then brush it over with egg and roll in cracker crumbs; bake in a good oven an hour and a half, basting often. It should be very well browned, but not burnt. When done take it up, put a dessert-spoonful of butter in the pan, which set on the stove, then add a scant one of flour; let them brown together, stirring the while; strain to it the gravy from the bones, stirring quickly to prevent lumps, season to taste, add a tea-spoonful of lemon juice or vinegar, and pour round the meat.
Chicken Croquettes.—Half a box of boned chicken, or half a chicken; chop it fine, flavor with a few mushrooms, or a little oyster liquor, or oysters chopped, or a very little ham, or simply a piece of onion as large as a hazel-nut, scalded and chopped very fine, and a tea-spoonful of finely chopped parsley. In flavoring this (and other dishes) take advantage of what may be in the house suitable. Put a table-spoonful of butter in a small saucepan with a table-spoonful of flour, stir till they bubble, then put into a half-pint measure a gill of strong stock made from bones (Molly had bruised up the bones from the shoulder of lamb and boiled them down) and, if you have it, a gill of cream or milk (unless you have oyster or mushroom liquor, when half a gill of cream), and fill up with either of them (the liquid, of whatever kind, must be just half a pint to this quantity); pour this on the butter and flour, and stir till it forms a thick, smooth sauce; boil five minutes, season highly, and then mix the chicken with it; stir together, and pour it out on a plate, and put it to get quite cold and firm. If no stock is used, an egg must be stirred into the sauce, moving it a few seconds from the fire before adding it, or it will curdle. When it is cold and stiff, put plenty of cracker meal on a board, beat an egg with a table-spoonful of water, cut the chicken mixture into strips, roll it between the hands into shapes like wine corks, no larger, put each one into the egg, then into the cracker meal, taking care the egg has covered every part and the meal coats it thoroughly. As each is done, lay it on a plate of cracker meal. They may be prepared an hour or two before they are needed. To fry them, the fat must be so hot that bread dropped into it will color well in thirty seconds; arrange a few at a time in a frying basket, set it in the hot fat; two minutes will make them golden brown; if left longer, or made too large, they will burst.
Rissoles.—Take a little fine paste,—any trimmings will do,—roll it as thin as paper, cut it into squares three inches by four, lay on each a strip as thick as your finger of the chicken mixture, and roll up, wetting the edges of the paste and pressing together, so that there will be no oozing out; egg and crumb the same as croquettes, and fry four minutes.
Chicken Fritters.—Make some good batter thus: a cup of flour sifted; melt a table-spoonful of butter in a scant cup of warm water, which pour by degrees to the flour, making a batter thick enough to mask the back of a spoon dipped in it; salt to taste; add, the last thing, the white of an egg well beaten. Make the chicken mixture into balls the size of small walnuts, flatten a little, dip into the batter, and drop from the spoon into very hot fat, the same as croquettes.
Peach Pudding.—A cup of flour, one tea-spoonful of baking-powder sifted in it; make into a very thick batter with three parts of a cup of milk, beat two eggs very light with a quarter cup of sugar, add a pinch of salt, mix, and then stir in as many cut-up peaches as you can; butter a bowl thoroughly, nearly fill with the mixture, tie a cloth over it, and plunge into fast boiling water; boil one hour, taking care that ebullition never ceases while the pudding is in the saucepan, or it will be soggy. Serve with cream, or soft custard, or hard sauce.
Peach Fritters are made by the same recipe, but dropped by the spoonful in boiling lard.
Fried Smelts.—Cleanse and dry them, then dip them in milk, then in flour; shake off superfluous flour, and then egg and crumb them the same as chops, laying each fish when done on a bed of cracker meal. Make the lard as hot as for croquettes, and drop them in five or six at a time. If the lard is hot enough they will brown in two minutes.
Beef à la Mode.—Three pounds of the vein or any coarse part of beef that is solid meat, and half a pound of fat pork. Pierce the meat in several places with a knife, and into each hole thus made put a strip of pork; lay the beef in an earthen pan, with a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme, four sprigs of parsley, two onions, medium size, with a clove stuck in each, half a blade of mace, half a carrot and turnip, a wine-glass of cooking-sherry, and a gallon of water, with half a salt-spoonful of pepper. The pan should not be much larger than the meat. Cover closely, using a common flour and water paste round the edges to prevent the steam escaping, and set in a good oven three hours. The wine may be omitted, and a wine-glass more water added, with a table-spoonful of Worcestershire sauce and half one of vinegar. When done, take up the meat carefully, strain the gravy, skim and season, and pour it over the meat. Don’t add the salt till the gravy is done, as pork varies so much that you may get it too salt with very little added; you must go by taste.
Cones of Carrots and Turnips.—Boil them separately in quarters, using white turnips; chop each fine in a chopping-bowl, put a dessert-spoonful of butter with them, season with white pepper and salt, then press them into a cone shape—a wine-glass will answer—and stand them in alternate cones of the yellow carrot and white turnips round the beef à la mode or corned beef.
Cheese Fritters.—Grate two ounces of cheese with two dessert-spoonfuls of bread crumbs, a half tea-spoonful of dry mustard, a dessert-spoonful of butter, a speck of cayenne, and the yolk of an egg; pound with a potato-masher till smooth and well mixed, then proceed as for chicken fritters.
Amber Pudding.—Two eggs, their weight in sugar, butter, flour, and the juice and grated peel of one lemon. Beat the yolks, with the sugar, lemon juice, and butter softened, till very light; sift in the flour and grated peel, butter a small bowl or mould, pour the mixture in and boil two hours.
Bisque of Clams.—For one pint and a half of soup take a dozen large clams; stew them fifteen minutes in their own liquor, to which water is added to make three gills. Boil three gills of milk; stir one dessert-spoonful of butter and one of flour in a small saucepan till they bubble; then pour the boiling milk quickly on them, stirring all the while; stand it aside. Squeeze each clam with a lemon-squeezer, and you will find little but an empty skin remains; strain the clams and liquor to the thick white sauce already made, pressing as much juice out as possible; then stir well, bring all to a boil, and remove from the fire while you beat the yolk of an egg with two table-spoonfuls of the soup; stir it to the rest and season to taste. Take care the soup is boiling hot, yet does not boil after the egg is added, or it will curdle.
Scalloped Clams.—Take a small cup of the bisque of clams, before the egg is added, and save it for the scallop. Scald ten or a dozen clams, cut out the hard part, chop the rest fine. Butter tin scallop shells or little saucers thickly, strew them with bread crumbs, put a layer of clams with pepper, a layer of crumbs, and enough of the soup to moisten them; then more clams, more pepper, and crumbs over the top, and then a thin covering of the soup, and bake a rich brown. Serve a cut lemon with them. Be careful not to get too much soup on them,—they should be moist, not wet, and be served very hot. Add a little salt if the clams are not salt enough, but it is seldom necessary.
Cauliflower Omelet.—Two eggs, a half cup of cold cauliflower with the sauce; mash the cauliflower and sauce, beat the yolks of eggs with it, then beat the whites till they will not slip from the dish, and stir them gently in; add pepper and salt, and fry as any other omelet.
As Molly had given minute directions to Marta for frying omelet already, she did not repeat them in her recipes. When Molly had made the brown hash for breakfast, she had laid aside some of the nicest slices of the cold à la mode beef and the gravy for
Beef au Gratin.—Put a layer of bread crumbs in a small dish, then a layer of fat pork cut thin as a wafer, then a layer of beef, on which strew a very little chopped onion and parsley, pepper and salt; then another layer of the shaved pork, more beef, and cover the top with bread crumbs; over all pour gravy enough to moisten it well, and bake slowly one hour.
Custard Pie.—Line the dish with light paste (Molly used what was left after making the lemon pie,—puff paste will keep a week in the ice-box), beat one egg, mix with a small cup of milk and one table-spoonful of sugar, pour it into the pie, grate nutmeg over, and bake in an oven that is very hot on the bottom.
Clear Soup.—Three pounds of soup-meat, or a soup-bone weighing that; gash the meat well and put to it three quarts of cold water and three tea-spoonfuls of salt, half one of pepper, one small carrot, one turnip, one large onion—each must weigh three ounces after peeling; stick one clove in the onion, cut the vegetables, and when the meat has slowly boiled two hours, add the vegetables and cook three hours more. By slow boiling is meant just an occasional bubble in the centre of the pot. Skim just as the meat comes to the boil, then throw in half a cup of cold water; take off the scum that will now rise rapidly, adding a little cold water again when it begins to boil. Skim again after the vegetables are in, and when done, strain. When cold, take off the fat; don’t shake the soup, but pour through a clean cloth, all but the sediment, which keep to make gravy. It must never boil fast, or it will be cloudy and taste poor. There will be two quarts and a pint of fine, clear soup, if the boiling has been so slow as to waste very little.
Chicken Pie.—Put the neck, gizzard, and feet, scalded, of a chicken in nearly a pint of water with a small spoonful of salt and a slice of onion and a piece of carrot as big as your thumb. Let them stew slowly till there is not more than a gill of liquid, which strain and put aside; when cold it will be hard jelly. Lay in the bottom of a deep oval dish that holds rather more than three quarts, about half a pound of veal cutlet (or beefsteak if you prefer) finely chopped across, yet not made into sausage-meat; sprinkle on it a scant salt-spoonful of salt and a little pepper, shave nice sweet salt pork and put a thin layer of that; then put in the chicken, neatly divided into small joints, sprinkling each with a little salt and pepper, and always pile toward the centre; when full add forcemeat balls made thus: Chop very finely a heaped tea-spoonful of parsley, rub a scant salt-spoonful of thyme leaves to fine powder (this is easily done if they are put to stand in a hot place a few minutes before rubbing, taking care they do not burn), add to them a tea-cup of fine bread crumbs and just one grate of nutmeg, the nutmeg drawn sharply once up and down the grater; chop into this a good tea-spoonful of butter, and wet all with the yolk of an egg; now add a little salt and pepper, tasting to see when there is enough; make into little round balls and drop into the pie wherever there is a chink, and pour over all half a cup of water. Now roll out some rough puff paste (made as for lemon pie), cut strips half an inch thick and two broad, wet the edges of the dish and lay this round lightly. If the chicken is packed in the shape of a dome it will slope from the sides, and the paste can be pressed round the inside edge to make it adhere to the dish; wet it slightly, then roll the paste for a cover half an inch thick; lay it on, press, with your forefinger laid flat to form a groove between the chicken and the dish, so that the inner edge of the under paste adheres to the upper one; don’t press the outer edge at all; trim round with a sharp knife, make a good-sized hole in the centre and ornament with twisted paste, or as you choose; brush all over with white of egg (not the edges, or they will not rise) and bake an hour and a quarter in a good steady oven. Before it is cold, pour the gravy made from giblets through the hole in the top, using a funnel for the purpose. This pie is excellent cold, but if made the day before using, when made hot it will take quite half an hour to heat through. Lay a paper over to protect the crust.
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT TO DO WITH A SOUP-BONE.
“I don’t think there is any more painful fact connected with a small income than one’s inability to do anything for the distress one hears of,” said Harry as he chipped an egg at breakfast on Sunday morning.
“I feel that too, very keenly; but are you thinking of any special instance?”
“Yes, a poor fellow was killed a few weeks ago on the track here, and he left a delicate wife and three little children. They were taking up a collection in the cars for her yesterday. I contributed my mite, of course; but what are a few dollars in a case like that? They say he had been out of work for weeks before he got the employment that led to his death, and that if some more permanent help does not reach them, they will be near starvation this winter.”
“Oh, surely not, certainly not, if people only know of the distress; each one will do a little, and so very little will keep hunger from them,” said Molly confidently.
“Well, I hope so, but unfortunately times are very hard, and these people are strangers, while all Greenfield charity is needed for the well-known poor.”
“Well, I believe in each one doing the duty that lies before him without waiting to see if others do theirs. We are strangers here, too; so perhaps we have the best right to help those like ourselves.”
“But, my dear Molly,” expostulated Harry, “we can but just meet our own expenses.”
“I know, but if there is any real need we must do our part; not as I should like to do it, for to a needy family I would like to give beefsteak and comforts as well as necessities, but that we can’t do. What we can we will. Can we spare a dollar a month, do you think, from our twenty dollars margin?”
“Why, of course, if you say so.”
“I do, if necessary. I will see the woman and judge if the need is very pressing, and then, perhaps, some of our neighbors will do something.”
“You’re a brick, Molly, my dear, but what you may be thinking of I don’t know.”
“If the necessity is great I can do something; if it is not, the woman may despise what I can do.”
No more was said, but next morning, on her way back from the depot, after seeing Harry off, she went to a row of tiny tenements, built on the street through which the railroad passed, evidently the homes of the very poor, and in one of which she was told Mrs. Gibbs was to be found.
In the very poorest of the very poor little group, she found the widow and her fatherless children, the oldest only five, the youngest not six weeks old. The mother looked so frail and white that Molly’s heart ached to think that what she could do was hardly the sort of help this poor soul needed. Surely beef tea, and milk and eggs, and every nourishing thing was required to build up that fragile frame. And all she would be sure of giving was bread and occasionally, perhaps, a savory meal. How she wished she knew more people whom she might influence for the right kind of help!
She talked to Mrs. Gibbs, and learned that her poor husband had been in work only a fortnight, after being months idle from sickness, when the accident happened, and that the baby was only three days old when its father died.
“At first every one was good; they came and helped me and did a great deal; but there are so many needing help. I could not expect it all to be given to me, and I did think I might get a little sewing when I was out of bed, but I have no machine, and so I can only earn a few cents a week. What I should have done I don’t know, if a kind gentleman hadn’t made a collection in his car for me, and brought me on Saturday $12, which is owing for two months’ rent.”
“And you will have it all to pay away?” cried Molly.
“Yes, ma’am, I must, but oh, I’m so thankful to have it. The dread of losing the roof over us is worse than hunger or anything.”
“But surely you have not needed food?”
The tears came to the woman’s eyes.
“I’m never hungry, but the children are, and yet I think if I could get good food for a week or two, I should get strong and could do work.”
“That food she must have,” thought Molly. “At all events, for a few days she shall have half a pound of steak or a chop. I believe her. That delicate look is semi-starvation.”
Molly bought at the butcher’s that morning one pound of the tender side of the round steak. It cost sixteen cents, and she intended Mrs. Gibbs to have one third for three days.
“Then when she has one nourishing solid meal a day she can make up on other things, and the dollar we have squeezed out for her must be made to go as far as possible.”
When Molly had made her clear soup on Saturday she had looked regretfully at the couple of pounds of meat and vegetables that were strained from it, wishing she knew to whom to give it, as her own family was not large enough to need it, and hoping some one might ask for food at the door. She had kept it, also about a cup of the soup that was thick at the bottom (the richest part, although for appearance’ sake it must not be used with clear soup).
She had a use for it now: it would make a savory hash, not nourishing enough for an invalid like Mrs. Gibbs to depend on, but good for her children and herself, in addition to the steak.
Marta was busy washing; so, soon after eleven, Molly chopped the meat and vegetables quite fine, added about a third the quantity of cold mashed potato to it, a tea-spoonful of Worcestershire sauce, and a table-spoonful of flour. This she moistened with a half cup of the soup and seasoned it with pepper and salt. Then she greased a deep yellow pie-plate, put the hash in it and set it in the oven.
Having some kind of hot bread every morning, Molly used but very little bread. She had made a loaf on Saturday which was more than half left. She must give that, and make a few quick rolls for their own dinner.
While the hash was getting brown she put a pint of flour to dry and warm, and the third of a cake of compressed yeast to dissolve in a cup of warm milk, into which, when well mixed, she stirred a table-spoonful of butter till it got soft, and then the beaten yolk of an egg, two tea-spoonfuls of sugar and one half of salt.
She made a hole in the flour, poured in the milk, etc., and stirred them together, adding a little more warm milk till it was a thick paste, too stiff for batter, yet not stiff enough for dough,—just as stiff as it would be stirred with a spoon. She beat it for five minutes, and then set it, covered with a cloth, in a warm place.
The hash was now quite brown; and, as Molly had no one to send to-day, she put on her bonnet and took it and the bread and piece of steak to Mrs. Gibbs, begging her to cook and eat the latter for herself.
“I will for baby’s sake. Thank you! Oh, thank you!”
At two o’clock the rolls Molly had set had risen to the top of the bowl, which had been half full. She beat them down with a spoon thoroughly, covered them again and put them to rise, and in an hour they were again light. The dough was beaten down, a dozen gem-pans were greased, and a scant table-spoonful of the paste put into each; the paste was so thick and ropy that it was difficult to take up with a spoon, and a floured knife helped the performance. There was a small cupful left, and to this Molly put a tea-spoonful more sugar, and put it into a small round tin pan, that had once evidently been a dipper; this was for breakfast. They were all now put to rise, and in half an hour they looked like little balloons rising out of the pans. They were brushed lightly over with warm milk and put in the oven; the rolls took fifteen minutes, the breakfast-cake twenty-five, to bake.
The chicken pie Molly had made for Sunday had only been half eaten, as there had been three quarters of a pound of veal in it as well as the chicken,—the drumsticks of which, by the way, she had reserved for Monday morning’s breakfast, prepared in the following way:
The sinews were taken out, when the feet were cut off, in this way: the yellow skin only was cut, the sinews were drawn out, the bones removed and their places filled with a forcemeat made of veal chopped very fine, with an equal proportion of salt pork. Molly had bought enough veal on Saturday for dinner and the pie, and she took a very small piece of that cooked in the latter, for her forcemeat, of which there was needed only two scant table-spoonfuls altogether, and just enough of the jelly to moisten it. She seasoned the forcemeat rather highly, then filled the place of the removed bones with it, taking care not to pack it too tight, sewed up the opening (having left a good piece of the skin of the thigh on the legs when removing them), wrapped each in a very thin slice of pork, tied them round, floured them, and baked them in a sharp oven twenty-five minutes, and they were brown and crisp when taken up.
To make the pie presentable for dinner at small expense she had ordered a dozen large oysters; the oyster liquor was strained, a table-spoonful of butter and half one of flour put in a saucepan, stirred till they bubbled, then the cold pie, all but the pastry, added to it, with part of the oyster liquor and the oysters. The pastry was cut into neat pieces, and put into the oven to get hot, while Molly chopped a table-spoonful of parsley very fine.
When the fricassee came to the boiling-point, it was carefully stirred round and the parsley sprinkled in, and then the oysters were left five minutes to plump. While doing this she directed Marta to prepare a fondue, telling her to put a table-spoonful of butter and one of flour in a small saucepan, stir them till they bubbled, and then to add a gill of milk to them.
“That is really thick white sauce, you see, Marta; you will soon know of how many things a good white sauce is the foundation. Stir to prevent burning. Now add to it the two ounces of cheese I told you to grate, and a level salt-spoonful of salt, and as much pepper as will go on the end of the salt-spoon. Now you can take it off the fire, and turn it into a bowl; beat the yolks of two eggs light, and stir them to it. While you dish and dress the cabbage, and take up the potatoes and fricassee, I will beat the whites of three eggs solid.”
Molly wanted to see if Marta remembered how the cabbage was dressed the last time, and left her to it.
When the vegetables were ready the fricassee was taken up, the chicken and veal laid in the centre of the dish, the oysters round it, and the strips of pastry at the four corners.
Now the whites of eggs were stirred into the fondue gently; it was poured into a small buttered dish, which it only half filled, and was put to bake while the first part of the dinner was eaten.
“This will be done as soon as it is golden brown, and you must bring it to table at once, as it will fall if left standing.”
Molly meant to have dinners that were as little trouble as possible on Monday, feeling that as it was washing day Marta should have less to do; therefore the bill of fare was only
Chicken and Oyster Fricassee.
Cabbage. Potatoes.
Fondue. Peaches and Cream.
She had also bought again a forequarter of lamb, so that she might see how far Marta had profited by her instructions. She would vary the cooking somewhat, but the cutting and arrangement of the joint would be the same. She noted in her account-book that evening:
| Lamb, | $1.10 |
| Cream, | .10 |
| Oysters, | .15 |
| Butter, 3 lbs., | .75 |
| Eggs, 2 dozen, | .50 |
| Peaches, 4 quarts, | .20 |
| Total, | $2.80 |
She had learnt that the last week she had ordered too little butter and needed three pounds instead of two.
CHAPTER XII.
MOLLY AND MRS. LENNOX ON THE RUFFLE QUESTION—FRICASSEE OF MUTTON—CABBAGE AGAIN.
Marta, unpromising as her appearance was, had shown considerable aptitude for cooking, but about the house generally she was rather hopeless. She had succeeded already in breaking two of the pretty ornaments Molly had on her bureau, and therefore the latter had decided to trust her to touch nothing that required careful handling. She was hopelessly mixed, too, about laying the table. The breakfast was laid as for dinner, and vice versa, and the result was that Molly did not depend on her to do either, it being easier to do them herself. When she had kept house a few years longer she learnt that to do things herself was, in spite of the proverb, the way not to get them done well by any one else. But the trouble was so slight she did not think it worth while to struggle against it.
She meant to have exactly the same dinner as last Tuesday, only she had shoulder of lamb roasted instead of breast. She stood by while Marta cut the shoulder out, and then read over the recipe for tomato soup, and lemon pie, pastry for which was left from the chicken pie made on Saturday, and then left her to cook the dinner alone, while she went to Mrs. Lennox according to her promise.
She found that lady busy ironing. She looked white and exhausted, and yet there was a large pile of little clothes all trimmed by the mother’s industrious fingers, and, alas, trimmed so much.
Yet who could not understand a mother’s desire to see her children dressed prettily, when it cost only a few hours more time, a little more fatigue to make them so? and how few are able to blend beauty and strict simplicity, although when it is blended the result is more charming than any dictate of fashion?
“Let me help you iron for an hour. We need not begin cooking just yet, if you saved the mutton broth, as there is no gravy to make.”
“Yes, I saved it, but you mustn’t think of ironing,—please don’t.”
“I’d like it. I am not expert, but every little helps, and your instruction will do me good. Let me go on with that ruffle, while you get something I can’t do. My Marta is ironing to-day, but by the look of things I’m afraid I shall have to learn, myself, in order to teach her, if she proves teachable.”
“Ironing I have learned to do pretty well from necessity. I only wish I had been brought up to do everything, it would all have come so much easier to me.”
“But it seems to me you can do so many things well,” said Molly. “You sew so beautifully, and this ironing would shame most people who have been brought up to do it.”
“Yes, I can do anything I make up my mind to do; so can most people, I think.”
“Yes, and that is why if an educated woman is forced into unaccustomed fields of work she does it better than those who are professedly working-women,—better in every case where sinew is not the chief desideratum.”
“Only,” rejoined Mrs. Lennox, “she works with brains and hands too, and that is why the work tires her so much more than those who work mechanically.”
“I suppose so. I am a strong young woman and have never known a day’s sickness, yet I am tired to death after a couple of hours in the kitchen, while Marta, who has been doing the hard work and has been on her feet hours longer, is fresh, and has to go on working while I can rest. Yet that thought makes me very tolerant of a servant’s shortcomings, seeing my own limitations.”
Molly was busy ironing the ruffle of a child’s petticoat as she spoke, and Mrs. Lennox said, partly in explanation perhaps: “I dare say you think I’m foolish to trim my children’s clothes and make myself so much work; but if you use cheap materials they look really quite mean without it. Mr. Lennox constantly quotes the beauty of simplicity, and points to the pictures of English children, as if I couldn’t see the beauty as well as he. But simplicity is costly or dowdy. A shilling calico or crossbar made ‘Kate Greenaway’ fashion would look a poverty-stricken effort, while in linen or fine nainsook or India muslin they are charming. Flimsy materials won’t hang well unless they are trimmed; at the same time I do think I am wearing myself out for the sake of appearance, and often resolve that I will never make or iron another ruffle.”
Molly had no experience as a mother of a family to offer poor strenuous Mrs. Lennox, whom she found a much brighter and more sensible woman than she had at first supposed. Yet she felt that the ruffle question was a very serious one.
“I hardly dare say anything about the matter, because I have so little experience, but I do feel that you are not strong enough to do such ironing as this; and yet, as you say, poor material plainly made looks mean. How would it be to give up wash goods for every-day use and wear dark blue flannel for a while? Even wealthy people do that at the seaside, and one flannel frock will cost no more than the four calico ones that take its place.”
“I have thought of it, and I do believe I will make an effort another summer; but when you’ve so many children the frocks come down from one to another, and the only one I have ever to get new for is the eldest, but next year I’ll get her a flannel frock and see how it works; but though light flannel is really cool, she will fancy she’s hot if she sees her sisters in cotton.”
“Now, if you’ll tell me where your cold meat is, I will show you how the cold mutton may be made a very nice dish.”
The meat and broth were soon before her, and by her direction Mrs. Lennox peeled and sliced two large onions and put them on to boil.
“What vegetables did you intend having?”
“I’ve been so busy ironing that I did not think of anything but potatoes, though Mr. Lennox does like a second one.”
“I see you have cabbage in the garden, and corn.”
“Yes, but the corn is too old, and the cabbage there is no time for; besides, we have it so seldom, because I have to cook it in the morning so that the terrible smell may be out of the house before Mr. Lennox comes home, he is so fastidious; though, I must say, the smell of cabbage is something any one not fastidious might object to.”
“How long do you boil it?”
“Oh, two hours, sometimes more.”
“Do you mind my boiling it to-night?”
Mrs. Lennox stared. She had some confidence in Molly, yet cabbage for dinner—and it was now after five—was something absurd.
“But it won’t be done.”
“Oh yes, I see the kettle is full and boils. I am quite sure you won’t believe me unless I show you; but I do assure you there is no unpleasant odor about, cabbage boiled as the English boil it, and in Europe it is considered the most wholesome of vegetables.”
Mrs. Lennox listened politely.
“I will get a cabbage, of course.” She left the kitchen for the purpose, and Molly smiled. She knew Mrs. Lennox was thinking what others less polite had said to her, “but we like our cabbage very well done,” as if Molly must prefer it half raw.
Molly had cut from the bones of roast and boiled mutton quite a large dish of meat, and the onions being tender she poured off the water from them, put to them a table-spoonful of butter and one of flour, with salt and pepper. As she was stirring them about, Mrs. Lennox brought in the cabbage, and cutting away leaves and part of core as Molly directed, laid it in water, and half filled a good-sized pot with boiling water and set it on the range.
“For your six-o’clock dinner it must be well drained and go into that water at half past five.”
“I obey unquestioningly, but I confess to strong doubts as to whether we mean the same thing by boiled cabbage”—laughing.
“I know we don’t,” said Molly maliciously. “Will you look at this? I am going to pour in a half pint of the broth, which I find you did flavor with vegetables.”
“Yes, I’m not so ungrateful as to neglect your instructions, after the success of our Saturday night’s dinner.” (It should be mentioned that on Sunday Mrs. Lennox had come to tell Molly how good it was, and how much enjoyed.) “There was some left, very little, and a little kidney from yesterday’s breakfast; the children did not take any of that. This morning I warmed both together with a very little of that broth, and they made another good breakfast, and I felt that I had achieved something.”
“That was a splendid idea; so few people think what two or three odds and ends put together will do, though each may be so little as to be almost worthless alone. Real economical management lies in this dovetailing one thing with another. This is what English and Americans know so little, and the French so well.”
“I see that sauce is now like onion sauce, but less white.”
“It is onion sauce, made with broth instead of milk. Now we will lay the meat in and leave it to steep in this sauce at the back of the range, where it will keep at boiling-point but not boil. The last thing, add a tea-spoonful of vinegar or a few capers.”
Now the cabbage.
“Yes, I’m waiting for that miracle,” said Mrs. Lennox, coming with it in the colander, after shaking the water well out. “I shall lay the blame on your shoulders if Mr. Lennox’s olfactories are offended; he will forgive you anything, since through you we have lived better and spent a dollar less in three days. There is nothing truer than that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”
“Then we must take that path,” said Molly merrily. “The cabbage needs a table-spoonful of salt added to the water and a scant half tea-spoonful of soda.”
“I shall wait and see the success of the cabbage,” added Molly, laughing, when she had seen it boiling furiously, “although the meat is done, so I may iron another piece or two.”
Both took up their irons, and after a few minutes Mrs. Lennox exclaimed:—
“It is positively true!”
“What is?”
“That cabbage has no disagreeable smell.”
“No, but it would have if you left it on the stove to cook slowly for an hour or two. It is the long slow cooking in little water that ruins it and all green vegetables.”
Mrs. Lennox now prepared to lay the cloth, and when she returned to the kitchen Molly had taken up the cabbage and pressed it. It was bright pale green, streaked, where the heart was, with creamy white.
“Is that the cabbage? and is it done?”
“Try for yourself. You see it is far more tender than when slowly boiled, and is marrowy as spinach.”
“So it is; but how did you find it out?”
“I didn’t. I was told by an English lady. I had noticed that all English cooking-books gave twenty minutes to half an hour to boil cabbage, while ours always say two hours. And I noticed, too, it was never alluded to as a coarse, rank vegetable, and I asked an explanation from her, and she also told me she dared not eat cabbage here, for fear of indigestion; but I never yet found any one who believed me when I told them cabbage should only be boiled twenty-five minutes, nor can I induce them to try it. They all think that I prefer half-raw cabbage. Now I leave you to dress it as you like, for I must run home.”
“I shall just put pepper, salt, and butter on it, it looks so pretty,—and to think there is only a pleasant odor!”
When Molly reached home she found Marta looking very scared.
“What is wrong?” asked Molly, sure that some disaster had occurred.
Marta silently pointed to the soup, which looked like pink curds and whey; then, turning rather sulkily to the stewed tomatoes, she evidently expected to be scolded.
Molly said nothing for the moment, but opened the oven and found the shoulder of lamb beautifully brown, and other things doing well; she was heartily glad there was something to praise.
“You’ve made a mistake with the soup, Marta; but everything else looks very nice. That meat is done as well as I could do it. Now, in the first place, you were in too great a hurry. The milk and tomato were only to go together the last thing, but that hasn’t caused the milk to curdle. You cannot have read your recipe over as you made it, and have forgotten the soda?”
“No, I put the soda in.”
Molly felt she could not be speaking the truth, but when she tasted the soup, found she was.
“Well, I don’t understand this. Tell me exactly how you did it.”
Marta rehearsed her movements and then it turned out she had put the soda in last, after the tomato, and of course it had curdled before that. She explained this, told her to strain the soup, and then went to prepare the table quickly, for Harry would be home in a minute.
On the whole, although the soup was a failure, Molly was satisfied with Marta’s first unaided efforts. The lemon pie, in spite of her own admonition to handle the paste very little, she had pressed with her thumb round the edge, to make it smooth, no doubt. The consequence was, the paste was nice and short, but bore no resemblance to puff paste, either in appearance or in eating, but Molly had not expected anything better, and reserved comments until the next time, when she would again show her how to use pastry.
CHAPTER XIII.
PREPARING TO SAVE WORK—BROWN THICKENING—WHITE THICKENING—CARAMEL.
Molly had resolved to take the first opportunity to prepare two or three articles for her storeroom which would simplify work for Marta, and indeed she herself had felt the lack already of these very articles.
Brown thickening saves a great deal of standing over the fire and stirring of butter and flour together, when it is ready, and if thickening of soup or stew is intrusted to inexperienced hands, it often results in something very different from what it should be, while with ready-prepared thickening (roux, the French call it) a blunder is less possible. The ironing being out of the way then on Wednesday, she resolved to make that and several other things, or rather to superintend while Marta carried out her orders.
“Marta, put half a pound of butter in a small saucepan or bowl to melt, and while it is doing so, weigh and sift half a pound of flour. Skim the butter; now pour it off carefully from the milk that has settled at the bottom into another small thick saucepan, and stir it into the flour. Keep on stirring till it is bright brown. Watch carefully that it doesn’t burn; that is almost dark enough. In saying ‘bright brown’ I mean a rich, pale golden brown, not dark like coffee. Now put it into this little marmalade jar, and when it is cold lay a piece of paper on the top and put it away for use. It will keep for months, and when I tell you to thicken any brown gravy, use this for the purpose instead of fresh butter and flour. The flavor is richer than any hastily made thickening.
“Now we will make some white thickening. Wash out the saucepan, melt the butter, half a pound, just in the same way. Now stir in it half a pound of flour; keep on stirring as long as you can, before it begins to change color. It must not be at all brown, yet the flour must be well cooked. Therefore stir it in a cooler spot than the other. When the flour no longer smells raw, put it into a small bowl. Cover as you did the other and put it away. This is for white thickening, for fricassee or to dress vegetables, etc.
“Now wash the saucepan again, and we will make some caramel for coloring. Put in it a cup of sugar and a quarter cup of water. Let them boil till the syrup begins to change color, then watch it carefully. Tilt the saucepan from all sides so that it may get equally brown. The moment it is all nearly black, but before it chars in the least, put to it a cup of boiling water; take care of yourself, for it sputters a good deal. Now let it boil till it is all dissolved and like very dark syrup. A tea-spoonful of this, or less, will give a fine color to gravy or soup if not dark enough in itself. It will also color icing for cake or custard, and in fact is always very useful.”
CHAPTER XIV.
MARKETING—APPLE PUDDING—LIVER AND BACON—BRAISED BEEF—BOILING PUDDINGS.
When Molly reached her butcher’s next morning, Wednesday, she was surprised to find Mrs. Lennox there, and by the way she hastened to the door to greet her it was evident she was waiting for her.
“I knew you would come here, and I am going to enlist under your banner, so you must tell me what to buy and how to cook it.”
“Oh dear me!” cried Molly in consternation.
“Do you mind? I beg your pardon, I ought”—
“Oh, it is not that, but it’s such a responsibility. Suppose I advise something you don’t like?”
“If you did it wouldn’t be very dreadful, but I don’t believe you will. I only know we’ve enjoyed every meal since Saturday, and I’m nearly a dollar in pocket.”
“If that is really so I shall have something to suggest in colder weather. You see I know nothing of your tastes.”
“I believe we like a good many things we don’t have, but anything outside of steak and chops will be a welcome change.”
“What do you say to liver and bacon, and, as it is so inexpensive, have a nice apple pie or pudding with it. Do you like liver?”
“Yes, but Mr. Lennox protests I do not cook it right.”
“Suppose we take one—a lamb’s liver”—
“Lamb’s? I always get calf’s.”
“I think you will find this quite as nice and less expensive,—and I believe I will take one myself. Harry used to anathematize the liver at breakfast in the boarding-house so vigorously, for being cooked in thick slices like steak and whitey-brown in color, that I think he will enjoy it now.”
“I am afraid that is the way mine generally is. Now what shall I get for to-morrow?”
“If you had not had mutton so lately, I would suggest Irish stew; but what do you say to a pot-roast of beef,—or, to be finer, we will call it ‘braised beef’?”
“My dear, we have nothing but mutton and beef, so an Irish stew will be very good; and I certainly want to know how to make it well.”
“Still, I advise the small pot-roast to-morrow and an Irish stew later.”
“Very well, either will be good. Now what meat shall I get for it?”
“Three pounds of thick flank—of beef.”
The butcher handed out a thin piece nearly all fat.
“No, no, that is not the part; have you not the flank with a broad piece of lean running through it?” asked Molly.
The butcher now produced a piece of meat about four inches thick, three of which were lean.
“That is it.”
It was ten cents a pound. By Molly’s direction Mrs. Lennox got also half a pound of fat bacon, and her expenditure was:—
| Lamb’s liver | .10 |
| Bacon | .07 |
| Beef | .30 |
| .47 |
“Now we have meat for two days, for about what I have always paid for one.”
“And you’ll have something for breakfast, you’ll find.”
“The great thing will be the variation of our old routine, and the money-saving; but can’t you just tell me how they should be cooked, instead of coming yourself?”
“Yes, I will write out the recipes and send Marta with them.”
“And the apple pudding.”
“Ah, yes, you have suet in the house? Well, make a crust exactly as you did for the pot-pie; roll it out half an inch thick. Grease a bowl well and lay the paste in it, letting what is to spare hang over the sides; fill it with pared and cored apples cut small, and put over them two table-spoonfuls of sugar and a little water. Wet the border of the paste and gather up the overhanging sides, pinching them all together, so that there is no chance for juice to escape. Then dip the centre of a cloth in boiling water, flour it and put it over the pudding, tie it firmly with string just under the flare of the bowl, so that it will not slip up; bring the four corners of the cloth up over the top of the pudding and tie them.
“Before you begin to make the pudding, set a pot, that is large enough to boil it in, on the stove, half full of water; when it is fast boiling, put the pudding in and let it boil up quickly again, and boil for an hour and a half without stopping.”
“But I suppose the water must not cover over the top of it.”
“Oh, indeed, yes; so long as the water boils there is no danger of its getting into the pudding. As soon as it stops it begins to soak; that is why so many boiled puddings are heavy and soggy.”
“Well, I never knew that. I knew they were often heavy, but not why. I rather supposed it was because they were boiled in too much water, and so it got into them.”
They had talked along the quiet village streets, until Molly’s door was reached, and half an hour afterwards Marta ran across the road with the two following recipes:—
Pot-Roast or Braised Beef.—Remove the skin and some of the fat from the flank of beef (put both in the oven with half a pint of water to “try out”), sprinkle the beef with two level tea-spoonfuls of salt and half a salt-spoonful of pepper, a table-spoonful of finely-chopped parsley, if you have it, and a scant tea-spoonful of thyme, also, if you have it. Roll up the beef tightly with these flavorings inside, flour the meat and put in a thick saucepan or pot with a wine-glass of vinegar and two cloves. Cover very closely, and if the lid of the saucepan does not fit well put a clean cloth over it. Let it so remain till nearly browned, turning it about occasionally. Have ready a carrot and half an onion sliced, and when the meat has been slowly cooking nearly two hours, put them to it with half a pint of boiling water and a dessert-spoonful of Worcestershire or any nice table sauce, if you have it, and simmer very slowly two hours longer; then take up the meat, remove the strings, carefully skim all fat from the gravy which pour over it.
In summer put a pint of young peas into the gravy; fried potatoes are very good with this dish.
N. B. You will observe I have said with regard to some of the flavorings “if you have it.” I mean by that they are not necessary, but a great improvement; and, as they cost very little, if you want plain dishes made savory it is economical to have them always in the house.
Liver and Bacon.—Wash the liver, dry it, cut it with a sharp knife into slices the third of an inch thick. Dip each slice in flour. Cut some bacon in thin slices, remove the rind and fry it crisp but don’t burn it; then lay in the liver, only enough to cover the bottom of the pan; when nicely brown turn each slice; brown the other side and take it up on a hot dish with the bacon around it. Now if the fat is not burned (and to prevent that, it should be fried where the fire is good but not too fierce) stir into it a scant dessert-spoonful of flour, mashing all the brown bits and lumps with the back of a spoon; when it is all a fine brown, have a cup of boiling water ready, and pour it quickly into the pan. Stir till smooth. Let it boil down till thick as good cream, season with pepper and salt and a tea-spoonful of vinegar or Worcestershire sauce, and pour it over the liver.
If by chance the fat was burned pour it out of the pan, for it would make a bitter, black gravy, and spoil the whole. Put into the pan a dessert-spoonful of butter and one of flour, let them get quite brown stirring the while, when proceed with water as before.
If you have ready-browned flour in the house it saves standing over the fire waiting for it to brown in the fat or butter, and as you may like to prepare some I send directions. Of course whitey-brown gravy is very disagreeable.
Brown Flour, for thickening gravy quickly. Sift half a pound of flour into a dripping-pan and set it in a hot oven. Look at it occasionally and stir it well, taking care it does not burn; when it is the color of coffee that is half milk, or pale café au lait color, take it out and put it in a tin for use. You will require a third more of this to thicken than of raw flour.
CHAPTER XV.
ROLLS—BAKED LIVER—CROQUETTES—WHAT WAS THE MATTER WITH THEM—HOTCH-POTCH.
Marta had twice made bread very satisfactorily, and Molly thought she might now show her how to make plain rolls; therefore she had told her to save out a piece of her bread dough, about a pint bowl full, and when she returned from taking the recipes to Mrs. Lennox, Molly was ready to show her how to make them.
It was ten o’clock, and Molly reckoned they would be warm for dinner if made now.
“These are going to be quite plain rolls; when you succeed in these we will try finer ones. Get a good table-spoonful of butter,—lard would do, but I use it as little as possible for health’s sake—put it near the fire to warm a very little; add to the dough two tea-spoonfuls of sugar; now the butter is pliable, work it in; it will take five minutes’ constant kneading to make the butter and dough quite smooth. Now you see it is softer than bread dough; if a crisp crust is wanted, work in gradually a little more flour, almost a table-spoonful,—if the weather is cold have it warm; if a soft crust is preferred leave it as it is. Put the dough to rise in a warm place behind the stove, but not too hot, or it may sour; in from two to three hours it will have risen again very light; work it over thoroughly for three or four minutes till it is again as small as now, and set it to rise again, and when light come and tell me.
“This evening we shall have bisque of oysters, baked liver, and croquettes, and you can make a peach pudding by your recipe, but I want you to use cold lamb for croquettes; I will prepare it before I go out of the kitchen so that it will be ready whenever you are, and remember if you forget anything to come to me.”
Molly cut the meat from the cold shoulder of lamb, removed every bit of skin and gristle, and then chopped it very fine; she had not left that to Marta because she might not be careful enough. She also flavored the meat by using a bit of onion as large as a dime chopped till as fine as sand, and a tea-spoonful of parsley, also chopped fine, and a pinch of thyme; these were mixed with the lamb, and Marta was told to do the rest as if making croquettes of chicken.
Molly intended asking her friend, Mrs. Welles, to come and stay a week with her soon, and as that would entail a little extra expense, she meant to economize somewhat for a week or two; therefore she omitted some little items from her bill of fare, and substituted others that would be cheaper. This interfered very slightly with her plan of letting Marta do alone nearly all that she herself had done the last week.
The girl would be able to make croquettes with one meat as easily as another, and although for the sake of practice she meant to repeat the dishes, she did not care to have them in the same order. The bisque of oysters she would have in place of clams for the sake of variety and of showing Marta that the principle was the same in both, and that another time she might substitute lobster instead of either, and yet the process would not change. Another thing she had in mind was that as the breast of lamb she had for Thursday would be a rather slim dinner, the oyster patties, of which Harry was extravagantly fond, would make up.
Soon after one o’clock Marta came to say that the rolls had risen, been worked down, and were now light enough, she thought, to push down.
When she went into the kitchen she found the dough just about as light as bread should be.
“No, Marta, this is not light enough. Rolls should rise a great deal lighter than bread. They will need to rise another half hour—but as I see the oysters are here, I will use some of them for patties for to-morrow’s dinner.”
Molly took a third of the pint of oysters, and then half a gill of the liquid, and scalded both for a minute; then, taking out the oysters, added an equal quantity of milk to the liquor, and in another small saucepan put two tea-spoonfuls of butter, the same of flour; and, stirring them together till they bubbled, she poured milk and oyster liquid to them, stirring till they were quite smooth. She seasoned this sauce and then dropped the oysters, each one cut in four, into it. She did not mean to use them to-day, but the oysters kept raw would not be good; cooked in this way they would be as good as when fresh.
The rolls being now light Molly stuck her fingers two or three times downward into the light mass, and it sank under them.
“This is what you are to do, Marta, when I tell you to ‘push the rolls down;’ do this twice or three times after they have been twice thoroughly worked over—take notice, only lightly stick your fingers in, to let out air; don’t knead them at all, nor try to make them smooth; leave them just so; they come up again very rapidly after the first time, and this is the secret of having rolls of a close, exceedingly light texture, that will have no doughy inside.”
An hour later the rolls had risen and been pushed down three times, and Molly, after working them all over again, took a little piece of butter on her hand, broke off bits of the dough as big as an English walnut, and rolled them between her buttered palms, and then dropped each on to a greased tin two inches apart. They were set to rise till they would be like small balloons—each quite double the size it was when first made. They would perhaps take three quarters of an hour to rise, but Molly cautioned Marta that she could not go by time in bread-making, for that differed so constantly; in summer it would be less, and in winter more; the degree of heat in the kitchen would make the greatest difference; also, some kinds of flour rose more quickly than others.
It must not be supposed Molly had forgotten Mrs. Gibbs; she had her and her family in mind when she ordered the liver. The neck end of her lamb this week she was going to make into a nourishing Scotch broth, and out of the dollar, of which she had spent only fifteen cents as yet, she bought ten pounds of rye flour and five of white.
This would provide bread for a month, and as the poor woman was yet so weak, Molly meant to have it made at her own house for the present.
When the rolls were light enough to bake, they were brushed over with white of egg. The chicken pie on Saturday, it will be remembered, had only taken part of the white left from the forcemeat balls; the rest was beaten with a tea-spoonful of water and set in the ice-box for just such an occasion as this, and was now used to brush over the rolls.
While the rolls baked, Molly prepared the liver for the dinner, and told Marta to make the Scotch hotch-potch for the Gibbs family.
“Cut the meat up in pieces; put it in a saucepan with two onions, half a small cup of Scotch barley, a carrot and a turnip, a quart and pint of water, and a tea-spoonful and a half of salt; in an hour shred up a quarter of a cabbage and add it. Let it all simmer for two hours and a half, or until the barley is very soft.”
Molly, while Marta was doing this, washed and dried the liver, cut about a dozen strips of fat pork as thick as her little finger, and with a narrow knife made many incisions through the liver and then inserted the pork. When all was done she floured it, sprinkled a little salt over it and it was ready for the oven.
When the liver was cooked—it took just half an hour in a hot oven—it was taken up, put on a hot dish, and a half cup of boiling water poured into it; round the pan was a great deal of thick glaze; this was all rubbed off and dissolved in the gravy; a tea-spoonful of Worcestershire sauce was added and a pinch of salt, and then the gravy was poured over the liver.
The dish was a great success. Harry, without an idea that it had cost but ten cents, cut it in slices a quarter of an inch thick, which, where mottled with the pork and the rich brown gravy, gave quite an air to the homely viand. The bisque of oysters Marta had managed very nicely, and also the peach pudding, all but the foaming sauce, which Molly had shown her how to make; it was a good sauce, but did not foam; the only real fault was with the croquettes, which were like sausage meat and not at all creamy. Molly made no comments at the time, knowing that a much more experienced cook often made no better, but next morning she meant to find out where the mistake was.
“Did you notice, Marta, that the croquettes last night were not quite right?”
“Yes, they were harder, but I went exactly by the directions.”
“I want you to tell me just what you did, and then we will see where the mistake came in. You managed everything else so nicely.”
Marta repeated the recipe correctly and Molly was puzzled.
“Are you sure you did just as you say?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then show me how you measured half a pint.”
“Ah, there it is; you have really only a little more than a gill. Did you measure like that yesterday?”
Marta confessed that she had, and the puzzle was solved, and more understandable still when Molly saw what she called a table-spoonful of flour; it was really near two, for she had used the large kitchen basting-spoon, and used it heaped.
“Now, Marta, I want to tell you something. You are anxious to cook like the man cook you once knew; that is, you want everything you do to turn out always right, and they will only do that by your being very exact about measuring and weighing. A tea-spoonful more or less seems a trifle, and yet it will spoil many things. Remember, if you have a recipe that calls for a table-spoonful, it means just that, if the recipe is good for anything, and half a pint is exactly that measure full, not partly full.
“Gouffé, the celebrated French cook, who wrote a remarkable book for other cooks, was so particular that he explains exactly how much he means by weight when he says ‘a pinch of salt,’ and he directs one to weigh each carrot and turnip for soup till one’s eye is accustomed to the sizes.”
CHAPTER XVI.
RYE BREAD—OYSTER PATTIES—KNUCKLE OF VEAL, À LA MAÎTRE D’HÔTEL—A SAVORY DISH.
Molly knew the virtues of rye bread; and in perfection, as had she eaten it once in her life, she had enjoyed it much,—it had been so sweet, so light, and seemed to have the quality of never getting stale. She knew that to some people rye bread represented a loaf that cut like liver, that was sweet in flavor, but in wheaten bread would have been called heavy; and to others it was a sour, dark bread, much approved by Germans. But that rye bread need be neither of these she knew well, but she had no recipe. Then she remembered Mrs. Merit and her experience; perhaps she could help her with rye bread, as she was a famous economist.
She therefore paid a visit to her neighbor, and after a respectable amount of small talk broached her subject.
“Rye bread! laws yes—when my family was large we had it, because it don’t cost more than half as much as wheat flour does, and it’s as easy to make as mush. You just make a thick batter of one third white flour, two thirds rye; stir into each quart two tea-spoonfuls of baking-powder—and bake.”
This was a new recipe to Molly, and she meant to try it some day; but for the Gibbs family, she was satisfied that a properly yeast-leavened bread would be more wholesome, and she therefore resolved to see what she could do. She had quite a library of cook-books, but rye bread for general use did not seem to be in them. On thinking it over she couldn’t see why rye bread should not be made in the same way as white. Finally she went to work to make it exactly as white bread, making a sponge with a pint of white flour and half a cake of yeast, dissolved in a pint of warm water, a table-spoonful of sugar and two tea-spoonfuls of salt. When this was as full of holes as honeycomb, she put to it two pints of rye flour and used as much warm water as would make all into a soft dough. She kneaded it, but began to understand why it was usually stirred, for it stuck to her hands like bird-lime, and to use flour enough to free them would, she knew, spoil her bread. She worked on, regardless of stickiness, and when it was mixed divided the dough in three, put it in tins to rise, and when each was double the first size, they were baked in a very moderate oven one hour.
When they were done Molly saw she had attained the secret of her friend’s bread, for it was sweet, spongy, and with a tender crust. She kept one loaf for her own use and sent the rest to Mrs. Gibbs, with the remains of the liver made into savory collops, as follows: It was chopped fine, and an equal quantity of bread crumbs added, a quarter tea-spoonful of powdered marjoram, half one of thyme and pepper and salt; to these were put a few scraps of cold fried bacon and a little cold ham left from Wednesday morning’s breakfast, both chopped fine. The mince was just moistened with broth (from boiling down lamb bones with an onion), and a table-spoonful of flour stirred with it. Molly then made it into three good-sized balls, put them into a small, deep pan, poured in the rest of the broth, and put them to bake in the hot oven for half an hour.
It may be thought Molly was taking great trouble for Mrs. Gibbs. She knew that, and had she had it in her power to give money enough to be of substantial service to a destitute family, would not have done it. In this case, as with her husband’s income, she looked on her time as money, since by it she could make a little money go far. A dollar given to Mrs. Gibbs would have done little—bought bread for a week, perhaps, and a meal or two besides; the liver sent round to her cold would have been eaten so, and been miserable and insufficient for a dinner; the neck of lamb the same; but by the time, not an hour after all, she had double the value of what she could give, and the bread she would make from the flour would last three times as long as baker’s bread. In addition to this she went to the house where she bought her cream and asked what they did with their skimmed milk, and was told they made it into pot-cheese when they had much, but half the time they gave it away; she then obtained a promise that they would give Mrs. Gibbs two quarts a day if she sent for it. Being sure of milk, Molly felt that the best thing she could do now was to buy ten pounds of corn meal and send it to them for mush. This exhausted the dollar, and beyond making the bread and sending an occasional meal, to be concocted out of something that would not much enlarge her own expenses, she knew that she could do nothing, but did not despair of interesting others.
Molly did not want to let her little lecture on croquettes grow cold in Marta’s mind, and therefore meant to have them again very soon. To that end she made a tour of the butcher-shops in Greenfield, of which there were several, in order to find, if she could, a knuckle of veal. This would kill two or three birds with one stone. Veal is not plentiful in September, yet is sometimes in market, and for the knuckle she knew she would have to pay very little, for in this country it is looked upon as only good for stock, while in Europe it is very choice. She was fortunate enough to get one; it was quite large, that is, the meat was not cut too far down, and because of this extra size she paid twenty cents for it instead of the usual fifteen cents. She also bought a piece of salt pork (very sweet, which she could tell by the pinkish fat) for twenty cents, and four lamb’s kidneys for breakfast for five cents. So surprised was the Greenfield butcher at her wanting them that at first he had seemed to think they were hardly worth a price; evidently he did not know that they were quite a dainty in the fashionable markets of New York, and as Harry would not eat beef kidney, but was very fond of others, she made up her mind to have them often.
The knuckle of veal was to be boiled the next day very gently, in just water enough to cover it, for two hours, with a small turnip, a bay leaf, and a carrot, an onion, and a bouquet of sweet herbs. The pork was to be cooked in the same water, and served to eat with the veal, which would have a rich parsley sauce poured over it, fried potatoes and fried smelts.
Molly thought it a good plan to have fried fish, instead of soups, or boiled fish, every day when the rest of the dinner was boiled.
From the veal there would be the stock for soup, and, as there would be more meat than would be eaten, what was left would make croquettes. She did not mean to have them for dinner so soon again, but for breakfast. The practice for Marta was what she wanted.
Molly had some “rough puff paste” which she intended to use for the oyster patties. She rolled it out half an inch thick, then with a biscuit-cutter cut several rounds; these she put one on another three deep, and on each pressed a smaller biscuit-cutter half way through. She had cut twelve rounds of paste, which made four patties (three rounds or layers to the patty), and each had a circle (cut with a small cutter) on the top layer. These were put on a baking-tin and brushed over with a feather dipped in white of egg, and put in the oven, which was very hot, yet not likely to scorch. To try the heat Molly put in her hand and began to count seconds; when she had counted twenty she was forced to take out her hand, and knew the oven was right.
While she waited for them to bake, she proceeded to finish the oysters for filling, first telling Marta to beat up the remaining white of egg with a little water, and put it away for use.
The yolk was just what was needed for the oysters. She strained them from the sauce, which she put on to boil; then when quite boiling and smooth she dropped the oysters in (it will be remembered they had been not more than scalded yesterday), and in about two minutes they were firm, yet not shrunken. She took them from the fire and stirred in the yolk of an egg, already whipped, with a tea-spoonful of the cold sauce. They were thick before, but immediately became thicker as the heat cooked the egg, and the sauce was now about the consistency of the cream filling used for cream cakes or éclairs.
By this time the patties were baked. They were more than three inches high, and after they had been out of the oven a short time, Molly carefully removed the centre of the top layer marked out with the small cutter, and laid it aside, for it was the cover of the patty; then with a small coffee-spoon she scooped out the half-cooked paste from the centre, and then replaced the top. They were now ready to be filled, but as they would have to be made hot for dinner she did not fill them, as the paste would be burnt up before the inside would be warm; she therefore directed Marta to stand the oysters in boiling water a few minutes before serving them, and keep them stirred, and to put the patty-cases in the oven at the same time; let them get thoroughly heated, and when both were hot, put the oyster filling in them with a spoon. Molly gave these directions for the moral effect, but, having strong suspicions that Marta would be unequal to such neat-handed work and might cover the outside of the patties with the filling, saw to that part herself before going to the table.
CHAPTER XVII.
MR. AND MRS. BISHOP BECOME MEMBERS OF A DRAMATIC CLUB—CROQUETTES OVER AGAIN—WHERE THE MISTAKE LAY—WHITE SOUP.
Harry and Molly had talked over the matter of the dramatic club, and whether they could afford to join it. Molly was old enough, not being a school-girl bride—did I ever mention that she was twenty-four?—and had seen enough of the world to know that, although a woman’s ideal of married life may be to sew in the evening, while her husband reads to her, or, if he is weary, to read to him while he rests, a man very often prefers something more exhilarating. Although Harry had never seemed bored by a tête-a-tête evening, she remembered that he had never yet been subjected to the long uninterrupted quiet of country winter nights, and she wanted to run no risk of him finding their life humdrum. He was not a reader in the true sense of the word,—that is to say, he read for amusement’s sake. If the book he read was not to his mind, he threw it aside, or fell asleep over it, and he was not so fond of reading aloud as Molly could have wished. However, this was one of the little disappointments most women, and some men, have to put up with, and she was thankful there was nothing worse. It is true that, finding Harry cared less for reading than herself, she had devoted herself to chess, of which he was very fond, and their evenings seldom passed without having the men out; but Harry was too much in sympathy with his wife not to know that chess, to her, was a sort of loving pleasure, and had often pretended disinclination; therefore the prospect of a weekly social meeting and the many little entertainments that would grow out of it was, for Harry’s sake, a pleasant one.
“What are the actual expenses?” she had asked.
“I don’t know, but from what Framley said, I imagine these are merely nominal, outside the entertaining of the club, which falls to every one’s share once in the season.”
“Yet as we are so limited in money matters, we can run no risks; what would be nominal to people with double our income may be serious for us. I think I had better wait and see Mrs. Framley.”
That lady called before Molly had been quite two weeks in Greenfield; she was very handsomely dressed, but of rather formal manners, which Molly came to know were natural to her, and rather a distress to herself. After the usual chat of a morning call Mrs. Framley said:—
“I believe Mr. Framley spoke to Mr. Bishop about our reading-society. Mr. and Mrs. Winfield were members, and as we limit the club to fifteen couples we thought it would be very pleasant if you and Mr. Bishop would take their places.”
Molly colored a little, hesitated, then said:—
“Will you please tell me the exact conditions and expenses?”
“Well, there are no particular conditions, except that no member is admitted that is not acceptable to all. Your names were proposed by Mr. Winfield and warmly welcomed; the expenses are nominal.”
Molly smiled. She had braced herself to be quite frank.
“But what is nominal? I may as well tell you our income is little more than sufficient for our needs, and we cannot risk incurring expense that may be quite beyond us.”
“But there are several of our members who are in the same position, and for that reason we made a few rules at the start so that our club should not break up, as so many have done, on the rock of emulous hospitality. The actual expenses have never exceeded $2 each person for the winter, and have oftener been under a dollar and a half. This is outside the cost of entertaining. Every member having a house is supposed to have the meeting once in the season, and as all our members are householders, and some very hospitable, when anything occurs to make such reception inconvenient it is gladly taken by some one else; but as some are much wealthier than others, a rule was made that no ice-cream, oysters or bought cakes were to be allowed, only sandwiches, tea, coffee and home-made cake, and I am glad to say one lady, one of the most wealthy, has nothing but home-made wafers and coffee.”
“Then I think Mr. Bishop and myself can accept the membership with an easy conscience, although I hardly see what acquisition I can be, for I cannot act. I don’t know whether my husband has any talent that way.”
“I think you may have hidden your light,” said Mrs. Framley, politely, “but at least half of the members are honorary and only give us the pleasure of their presence; in fact, I myself am only an onlooker.”
“Then I will have courage. When is the next meeting?”
“Next Wednesday, at my house, and I am pleased to think your first evening will be there.”
Molly thanked her, and soon after Mrs. Framley rose to go.
“I hope we shall see much of each other, Mrs. Bishop. Mrs. Winfield told me we should have a great deal in common, being both devoted to cooking-school.”
Molly responded suitably and Mrs. Framley left.
Molly had made some mixture for croquettes early in the morning, going minutely over every detail with Marta, using cold veal with a slice of the boiled pork, chopped together very fine, in place of chicken. Some of the stock in which the veal was boiled, which was now a firm jelly, was used, and as there was no cream, Molly used half a gill of milk to the gill of stock, and an egg beaten; the milk and stock were stirred to the butter and flour (see recipe for [chicken croquettes]) and boiled till thick and smooth, the meat and seasoning then added, and when it was all hot, the beaten egg. After this was in, the mixture was only stirred one minute, and then taken off the fire, the object being to bring the whole to boiling-point, but not to curdle the egg. The mixture was put out on a dish and set to get cold and firm, and Marta told to make it into croquettes according to her recipe.
As Molly was very anxious that Marta should thoroughly master the art of making croquettes, she had intended to oversee the forming and frying of these, which were for her lunch; but Mrs. Framley’s visit had interfered, and when she went to the kitchen she found Marta had one croquette on paper in the colander and was fishing in the hot fat with her skimmer.
“What is the matter, Marta?” asked Molly, although she could guess what had happened.
Marta pointed to the top of the fat, which was covered with crumbs of meat, and lifted two empty shells of croquettes from it.
“I see what has happened, Marta, but don’t be discouraged. You have some mixture left, and you must do this over again for breakfast to-morrow. I can tell you the reason of this accident, and once we know the cause of a failure, it can easily be set right. Had it not been for that one perfect croquette I should have said that the fat might not have been hot enough; that is a frequent cause of croquettes bursting,—they have time to melt inside before the crust is formed, but in this case the fault has been in the size. You must have made them too large. Don’t you think that one, which is perfect, was smaller than the others?”
“Yes, it was. I was afraid that one was too small.”
“It was just right, you see, and after this I think you’ll know. Before you put that croquette mixture away, Marta, keep out a large tea-spoonful, and after luncheon I will come and make some balls for soup.”
The veal stock Molly had carefully skimmed and strained in the morning, and intended to have a white soup for dinner. There was about a quart of strong jelly. One pint she put aside. It was so valuable that she did not mean to use a tea-spoonful more than necessary; the pint, with half a pint of milk, would be all that was required for soup; but as she had neither asparagus tops nor mushrooms nor celery to put in it, and veal soup is apt to be a little insipid without, she decided on forcemeat balls, made in the following way: To a large tea-spoonful of croquette mixture she added one of finely chopped parsley, as much thyme as would go on the end of a penknife, and a dessert-spoonful of bread crumbs; she beat an egg, and used enough only to make the whole into a soft paste; this she seasoned rather highly with pepper and salt, and made into little balls not larger than marbles, and they were set away till wanted.
As the soup was one Marta could not be expected to make, Molly went into the kitchen herself, half an hour before dinner, to do it; indeed, although she had left the cooking to Marta pretty much, she could not risk Harry’s comfort by waiting for the dinner to straggle in as Marta would have had it. This seemed her chief failing, an inability to see the necessity of dishing up quickly. After she had cooked a thing well, she ran the risk of spoiling it by her slowness in getting it on the table. No mishap had yet occurred, because Molly was on hand to rescue; but white sauce was left in the saucepan with risk of burning, and vegetables, after they were dressed, the same; but Molly hoped that, in a few weeks, seeing the importance she herself attached to time might have its effect on Marta.
The pint of veal stock, flavored, it will be remembered, with the vegetables boiled in it the day before, was put on to boil, and in a small saucepan she put a table-spoonful of butter and a scant one of flour, and stirred them together till they bubbled. She allowed them to cook together for a minute, stirring all the time, and called Marta’s attention to the fact.
“The white sauce you made last, Marta, although very smooth, had a little raw taste; this was because you added the milk before the flour was cooked sufficiently in the butter,—you put it in as soon as it bubbled.”
“I was afraid it would burn.”
“Of course you must not let it do that, but you see, once it bubbles, I draw the saucepan to a cooler part and stir till the flour is on the point of changing color, then I quickly add the milk or broth. The sauce will be an ivory white instead of the rather dead white that even fairly good sauce often is.”
She poured the stock to the flour and butter and stirred till smooth, and then added half a pint of milk,—“and, as I have no cream, Marta, I kept the egg left from the forcemeat balls—I used very little of it—to add to this soup the last thing, just as you do for the bisque of clams.” While the soup was all coming again to the boiling-point at the back of the range, Molly dropped the tiny forcemeat balls into boiling water, let them simmer half a minute, then strained them out and added them to the soup; then, with a caution to Marta not to let the egg curdle, she went to add a few touches to her toilette before Harry came home.
CHAPTER XVIII.
BROILED LAMB’S KIDNEYS—MRS. LENNOX STARTLED—CORN-BEEF HASH.
When Molly had said Marta was to make croquettes for breakfast, she had forgotten that she had kidneys in the house; but, remembering it before she went to bed, she told Marta she would come down and broil them herself, which she accordingly did, knowing kidneys are very easily spoiled by bad cooking.
She split each kidney down the back, or thick side, but did not sever the core or membrane, so that when opened they lay flat, but still in one. Then she ran a long skewer through the centre bit of fat and brought it out again, in such a manner that the kidney lay open flat under the skewer, which was attached to it only by that stitch through the middle; then a second kidney was run on in the same way till they were all threaded, the skewer lying across them all; but nowhere did it pierce the flesh of the kidney. This arrangement prevents the kidneys’ curling up in unsightly fashion and secures their being equally cooked.
They were laid on a hot gridiron, and a dish and plates made very hot to receive and serve them on; and while Molly cooked them, Marta carried in breakfast, for kidneys are things that are spoiled by waiting.
She turned them often for about four minutes. During the process she had put in the little dish that was to receive them a piece of butter the size of a butternut, a level salt-spoonful of salt, a little pepper, and a tea-spoonful of Worcestershire sauce. When the kidneys were done they were removed from the skewer, and each well rolled in the hot butter and seasoning. They were just enough cooked in that four minutes for the gravy to start when the fork pricked them; if over-cooked they become tough.
“Kidneys!” cried Harry, as Molly removed the heated vegetable-dish-cover she had used to send them unchilled to table. “Dear Molly, where do you scare up these metropolitan dainties in the wilds of Jersey?”
“Nothing so easy; actually, the butcher throws them in with his tallow, and seemed surprised that I wanted them.”
“I’m afraid such ignorance can’t last,” said Harry “and when he finds lamb’s kidneys are really very desirable, he will value them accordingly.”
“No, not until he has customers who do; and I suspect, although the man I buy from sells good meat, that he is not the fashionable butcher of Greenfield.”
“They are cooked to a turn, Molly.”
“I am glad. I should have had them on toast in the orthodox way, but knew you preferred fresh bread.”
In the afternoon Mrs. Lennox came with her work-basket to sew, while she paid Molly a visit.
“I want to have a little talk with you, but can only spare the time if I bring some darning with me, so you will excuse me.”
“I am glad, for I also have my sewing,” she said, and she colored a little as she displayed a dainty little garment.
“I am so glad,” said Mrs. Lennox; and there was congratulation in the tone, although she said no more. “You have done me so much good since I have known you, Mrs. Bishop, that I feel I may trouble you a little further about my affairs without exhausting your patience.”
“You certainly may, if I can do anything.”
“I must seem a perfect ignoramus to you, and yet I’m an old married woman and you’re a young one; but the fact is, I was married directly after I left school. I knew nothing of housekeeping, for my mother had been such an invalid that we always boarded at that time. Mr. Lennox was full of hope that he would rise to great things,—all young writers are,—but, unluckily, the hard times of ’73 came, and the magazine of which he was sub-editor, and which he hoped to edit, succumbed, and ever since then he has been forced to plod on, at what insures us bread. He has never dared to try for better things, and I know he frets at seeing me so overworked, and has been telling me for years if I would sew less, and cook more, I should be better; but first one must ‘know how’ to cook, and I don’t. There is one thing, however, I do see now, that I never did before; and that is, that if I give my time to preparing the food, I can save enough to get the sewing I cannot do done for me. I never realized this before, but now I do. This is Friday, and we have lived nicely—I mean we have had food we enjoyed, and I have spent $2 less; and the sewing I should have done in the time I have cooked would not have amounted to one full day’s work, which I can get done for a dollar.”
“I am glad you see it so. I was sure of it, and I am sure that the effort to do so much sewing and the housework, too, is far more wearing than double the quantity of either alone would be.”
“Yes, because I dread to lose a minute, and the cooking always seemed such a loss.”
“I wonder you have not thought it cheaper to keep a servant.”
Mrs. Lennox dropped her work in her lap, and looked at Molly in astonishment.
“Cheaper! why, I should feel I was ruined at once.”
“Let us talk it over a bit, and see if my idea is right or yours. You pay a woman to wash?”
“Yes, I spend $8 a month in getting help, a dollar a week for washing, and the other dollar I divide between the heavy ironing and roughest cleaning; the rest I do myself.”
“And the ironing that is left is quite a day’s work?”
“Well, it takes all my spare time on Tuesday; and I have been running down so much lately, that I am afraid I cannot do it through next summer.”
Molly looked at her. She did, indeed, look as if she were worn out. She could understand that doing all the work for her family, washing, even, included, was nothing extraordinary for some women; but for this one, with her ambition to dress her children prettily, not to look poor as well as be poor, her fastidious husband, and her bringing-up,—it was an effort that was wearing her out.
“Now this is the way I reckon,” said Molly. “You can get a strong, newly landed girl, for six or eight dollars a month. She may have nothing but health and industry, although I have known girls as capable as those who ask more, but more self-distrustful. Will not such a girl do more to help you for $8 the month than you get now for that money?”
“Oh dear, yes. It seems to me if I had only some one to wash dishes every day I should be easy; but you forget the food.”
“No, I do not; but, really, if you have time to give your own attention to that, and you would have then, your food would cost less, even with one extra to feed than now. It would not be so if you had to get an extra large steak or chops each day for that one, but with the varied cooking you could then practice, you would find it make only such difference as you can easily make up in some other way; for instance, you use baker’s bread; make it at home, and the difference in cost will be more than your girl will eat of it; then, as all children like rye bread, use it once or twice a week. You will make your expensive flour go much farther. Then if rye is not liked, or they get tired, use one week Indian and wheat bread, another, rice bread. I don’t think your husband or children would consider these breads anything but a treat, or know they came cheaper, and I should say nothing on that point till you found out their real tastes. One thing I don’t want to advise; and that is, the providing of any unpalatable or unwelcome food, be it ever so wholesome or cheap. Food eaten without relish is not wholesome; and that is why, unless time is given to cooking, the coarser parts of meat are not economical, because they require careful cooking. A hurried, slap-dash way of preparing any part of meat spoils it. Only the finest steaks or chops are eatable, when so abused; but it requires all their excellence to make them so.”
“I am taking in all you say. You have startled me wonderfully about the girl; and the way you put it makes it seem as if it would be almost cheaper.”
“It would be as cheap, and your health would be better. You may not be lucky enough to meet with a good girl at first; but we all run that risk, and I am sure of one thing: if you should give double the wages you would be equally exposed to it, and I am in favor of taking girls who have nothing to unlearn. I went on that plan with my Marta; and, although she is not all I could wish, I don’t think I should have done better by taking one who professed to know.”
“I don’t think you could; but she seems to me an exceptional girl.”
“Fortunately for me, she has a fondness for cooking, and seems thoroughly respectable; but, if I had more work in my house, I should not be able to keep her; so I am hoping you may be able to find one equally good and a little quicker, if you resolve to make the trial.”
“I would like, but I am afraid. I have always heard that a servant increases the expenses out of all proportion to what she eats.”
“Of course, if servants are left to themselves in their inexperience, they waste far more than they consume; but you will oversee everything.”
“And then I shall get the reputation of being dreadfully stingy.”
“What matter? You might be wasteful, and still be called so by those who wish to do it; but economy is not stint. I am sure you will never look more keenly after odds and ends than I do.”
Mrs. Lennox looked incredulous.
“It is true. If there is one potato left I have it put away; one spoonful of rice, a fag end of beefsteak. Although I am new to keeping house in this country, I am an old housekeeper; for my mother left everything to me, and, our means being small, and she fastidious (by which I mean only that she could do without anything, better than have it second rate), I had to set my wits to work; and I’ve too often known the time when one potato was just the thing to finish, or make her a little dish, to despise it.”
“But how?”
Molly laughed. “Impossible to say, for one never knows what may happen; but I can tell you what it once did. My mother and I lived alone, and so rarely had joints of meat that we seldom had much more than enough in the house for our needs, in the way of fresh meats, but potted dainties we always had. However, one wet, chilly evening, a visitor arrived unexpectedly, an American traveling, and he had come considerably out of his way to see us for a half an hour. I was at my wits’ end, for our solitary maid had her holiday, and we were about to sit down to a cozy cup of tea and toast, with some anchovy paste and a little fruit. All we had in the house was a few slices of corned beef, not presentable, for they had been cut off for tea the night before. Now I knew our friend expected no dinner; and to give him as good a one as a French cook could send up would be no treat, for he was leading a hotel life. The only thing he would really enjoy would be some real American dish. There was little time, for he had to catch a train in an hour. I flew down-stairs in despair. I must have something hot to set before him. I looked at the safe; there were about a cup of cold mush, a solitary potato of good size, and a few half-dried scraps of corned beef. I took them all into the kitchen, blessing the French charcoal stoves, which are always ready, and, arranging the oven for baking, I chopped my beef, then the potato, not too fine. When done there were a cup of beef and rather less of potato. I put some beef-dripping into a pan, and set it to get hot; and into a saucepan put the beef and potato mixed, and a little salt and pepper, and stirred them round; and then I added a small half cup of thick cream. While this was heating, I cut the mush in slices, floured each, and when the dripping was smoking hot I laid them in; I tasted the hash, and found it just right. There was no time to brown it; but I left it long enough for the cream to dry sufficiently away, while I beat the yolks of four eggs and the whites to a stiff froth, then added to the yolks a little salt and three table-spoonfuls of milk, stirred the whites to them gently, and then took up the hash. The mush, which I had turned, was now pale brown; and I laid it round the dish on which was the hash, then poured the fat from the saucepan, put a bit of butter in it, and when it melted, which, as the pan was already very hot, it did in a moment, I poured in the eggs. Happily, the table was ready, and my mother always made tea on it; so I waited only to split a few pickled gherkins to garnish the hash, and then my omelet being half set I put it, pan and all, in the oven, while I carried my Yankee dish to table. I had been absent only twenty minutes; everything was ready, and, while the traveller’s tea was being poured out, I ran down and doubled my omelet over and turned it out. I am quite sure nothing short of canvas-back ducks, or New England turkey and cranberry sauce, could have been such a success as that hash.”
“‘Dear Mrs. Holmes,’ our friend said to my mother, ‘I assure you I have dreamed of corned-beef hash and fried mush, and longed for them many times when the table has been groaning with every French dainty, and believed I could not hope to eat them on this side of the Atlantic.’
“Since that time I never think anything too small to save; it comes in when least expected; and, had my cooked potato not been there, I could have made no hash.”
CHAPTER XIX.
SUMMARY—LAMB’S HEART—FLOUNDERS—CORNED BEEF—CANNELON OF BEEF.
It has been said that Molly was providing for visitors by economizing slightly in her table. She was always economical, but it made some difference whether the fish she bought was the inexpensive flounder, made by the art of good cooking into the aristocratic filet de sole, or what passes for such where veritable sole is not to be bought for money, or a more expensive sort; whether she used veal instead of chicken, or clams in place of oysters, and tomato or potato salad for lettuce. On Saturday, after Sunday’s marketing was done, her account stood thus:—
| Monday— | Sundries | $2.80 |
| Tuesday— | Sweet corn and milk | .10 |
| Wednesday— | Oysters | .15 |
| Liver | .10 | |
| Knuckle of veal | .20 | |
| Pork | .20 | |
| Thursday— | Kidneys | .05 |
| Yeast | .02 | |
| Sweet corn | .06 | |
| Friday— | Beets | .05 |
| Corned beef | .40 | |
| One flounder | .12 | |
| Soup meat | .15 | |
| Saturday— | Steak | .16 |
| Chicken | .50 | |
| Ice | .40 | |
| Fuel | .50 | |
| Milk | .56 | |
| $6.52 |
This made the week’s expenditure 23 cents less than the last week.
It will be remembered that Monday’s dinner was formed, with the addition of oysters, from what was left on Sunday; and therefore the lamb bought on Monday did not come into use till Tuesday, when three chops were used for breakfast, and the shoulder for the evening dinner.
Substituting, then, the lamb for the steak of the Tuesday before, and on Wednesday using lamb’s liver in place of the roast breast which was used on Thursday, the bills of fare were substantially the same as those of the preceding week, until Friday, when stuffed lamb’s heart for breakfast, and corned beef and flounders and beets for dinner, were new items, as was also the steak for Saturday, in place of the cutlets. Dessert and puddings of the first week were repeated.
Twice Molly had found in market green corn young enough for their taste, and had bought half a dozen ears. The beets, also, were moderate enough in price now to come within Molly’s purse. Needless to say, all articles which were expensive, only because too early or too late in season, had to be eschewed; but in autumn, in the country, where vegetables are rarely so plentiful as in New York, the market needs watching. One grocer may have a stray basket of string beans, quite young, or a few dozen of sweet corn, long after they have disappeared generally; and these are often quite cheap.
Molly had chosen a cheap part of corned beef—the plate—in preference to the round, at double the price: properly boiled, she liked it better. A small piece of four or five pounds of round of beef is very dry, even if the careful boiling prevents its being hard; therefore she got four pounds and a half at eight cents. She knew, from her cooking-school experience, the New York price was seven cents; but she had learned that most things were a little dearer in Greenfield. As she wrote down the recipes for cooking the heart, the corned beef, the flounders, and steak, I give them in that form.
Lamb’s Heart Baked.—The heart, which came with the lamb’s liver, instead of being cut up and fried in dry rings, as it is usually done, was cleansed of blood, the gristle (or “deaf ear”) cut away, and a veal stuffing made of a heaped table-spoonful of bread crumbs, a small tea-spoonful of parsley chopped very fine, and a pinch, between thumb and finger, of thyme, pepper and salt. Make this into a paste with butter by working a piece the size of a walnut into it, then fill the cavity in the heart with it; cut two thin slices of fat pork, wrap the heart in them, flour it and put it in a hot oven, in a small dish. Bake it twenty minutes, turning often so that it will be quite brown. Take it up, pour into the dish a very little boiling water or gravy (Molly had some of her veal stock), season nicely; if water is used, add a few drops of sauce or catsup; stir it well round the little dish to remove dried gravy, then serve with the heart, which thus makes a very appetizing dish.
The corned beef was washed, and, as the butcher had told Molly it was only moderately salt, she did not soak it.
Boiled Corned Beef.—Although it was quite a small piece, Molly intended it to come so very slowly to the boil that she had it put on the stove in cold water at two o’clock. The water was only at the boiling-point at three, and it was kept till six so slowly cooking that one had to look carefully in order to see that there was any movement in the water at all. At six it was taken up, and the bones drawn out, the rough edges trimmed off, carrot and turnip cones set round it, and boiled cabbage served with it. After dinner, it was put between two dishes, and two heavy flatirons set on it, and it was allowed to get cold under pressure, in order that it might cut in neat slices.
Young Beets Boiled.—The beets to be carefully washed, the roots not cut off at all, and the tops left an inch long; the idea is to prevent the skin being broken in any way. Put them in boiling water, and, if they are of average size, one hour will boil them tender. Try, without a fork, by pressing in a cloth; then pour the water off, and peel and slice them (or they can be left whole if preferred), and make the following sauce: A dessert-spoonful of butter, a scant one of flour; let them bubble one minute, put to them a scant half-pint of water; let it boil, season with pepper and salt, and then put in a large tea-spoonful more butter; stir till mixed, and add the juice of half a lemon; put the beets in this sauce, and let all come to a gentle boil together.
To Bone Flounders, and prepare as filet de sole. Take a flounder weighing as near two pounds as possible,—if too small they will make poor filets,—have the head removed, lay it on the board before you, and with a sharp knife make a cut right down the middle of the back, from neck to tail, letting the knife touch the bone all the way; then run the knife carefully between the flesh and the bones, working always towards the edge or fin, and keeping close to the bone; you have now detached one quarter of the flesh. Do the other side in the same way, and when the side uppermost is thus entirely loose from the bone, turn the fish over, and do the same with the other part. You will now find you can remove the bone whole from the fish. You have now two halves of the fish; cut away the fins, and you have four quarters of solid flesh, or filets. Lay each one, skin downward, in front of you; hold the end of the filet firmly, and with the knife cut the filet from the skin by pressing the edge of the knife downward on the skin, which you hold firmly with thumb and finger, and pushing, as it were, the flesh up from it. You will find the skin and flesh will separate without destroying the shape of the filet. Now bread them; have either a good supply of bread crumbs dried in the oven and sifted, or cracker meal; beat an egg with a table-spoonful of water, lay each filet in it, both sides, then lift it out and lay it in the crumbs; turn it over that both may be well covered, and press gently; then lay it aside, and do the other three. Have enough fat in a deep pan to cover them; let it get very hot, trying it with a bit of bread. If it brown at once, put the filets in, two at a time; have brown paper ready, and lay them on it when they are a fine golden brown, and serve on a hot dish.
Stewed Cannelon of Beef, or Rolled Steak.—Take a piece of the upper side of the round of beef, cut broad and thick. Make a veal stuffing in the following way: A cup of fine bread crumbs, a scant table-spoonful of finely chopped parsley, and a very scant tea-spoonful of thyme and marjoram mixed (if any one objects to either of these herbs, leave it out), a very little nutmeg, a half tea-spoonful of salt, and a half salt-spoonful of pepper; chop or mix all together with a good table-spoonful of butter; lay the steak on a board, and with a large knife hack it closely across and across, all over on one side only, then along the centre of the hacked side lay the stuffing; roll the meat over and fasten it with toothpicks to keep it, while you envelop it in thin slices of fat pork, round which you wind twine. When neat and compact, lay it in a saucepan with a pint of water, and a piece of carrot and onion cut fine, a salt-spoonful of salt, and a tea-spoonful of vinegar. Let this simmer very gently for three hours, closely covered, then take it up, lay it in a baking-pan, remove the strings and toothpicks very carefully, dredge it all over very thinly with flour, and set it in a very hot oven to brown quickly. If the saucepan was kept closely covered, and the simmering slow, there will be at least half a pint of thick, rich gravy in it; which strain, and skim free from fat (a table-spoonful of cold water thrown in will make it easier to skim). When the meat is brown, pour this gravy round it, and serve. If the gravy should have dried away too much, a little boiling water may be put into the saucepan, and well stirred, before straining,—but a little rich gravy is better than much and poor.
This dish Molly prepared herself, and it was a great success. Harry pronounced it better than filet de bœuf.
“Yes, it is either a very good dish, or a wofully bad one,—hard and dry and altogether unsatisfactory.”
But Molly knew it depended so entirely on great care, that the meat should be hacked thoroughly, yet not anywhere cut through, and then so very slowly simmered, so quickly browned, that she thought it one of those dishes she would always have to cook herself. She was not expecting too much from Marta. If she profited by her instructions sufficiently to know the rules of cooking, and abide by them so far that she might be trusted not to spoil a dish if left to watch it, and be able to cook a few things well, so that she could do when necessary unaided,—that was all Molly looked for.
CHAPTER XX.
PREPARING A CHICKEN—GIBLETS—SPOILT BREAD.
While the beefsteak, on Saturday, was being converted into such a savory dish, Molly, who wished to oversee the simmering, took that time to prepare the chicken. The one used for the pie, last Sunday, she had prepared, while Marta was busy elsewhere; this week she wanted to show her how it was to be neatly done.
She had ordered the chicken (or rather, yearling fowl; for it weighed over three pounds, and Molly was not paying the price of chicken in September) to be sent home with the feet on, for two reasons: first, because the butcher usually chops them off at the joint, or above it, when they should be taken off just below, else when roasted the flesh shrinks up, and they display an unsightly bare bone; and, secondly, because the feet, properly prepared, are too valuable, for gravy, to lose.
Molly began by picking over the bird to remove a few stray feathers; then she took off the stove-lid, put some paper in the fire, and quickly moved the bird over the flame, taking care not to blacken the skin.
“Now, Marta, if you are ready, I want you to pay great attention, because if you can clean a fowl you can also clean a duck, goose, or turkey; the process is the same, and either, improperly done, though you may remove everything that ought not to remain in it, will never taste the same. If the entrails are broken, it imparts the odor of the barnyard to the whole.
“You see I cut the neck off close to the body, leaving as little of it on as I can; but, before beginning to cut, push the skin well down toward the body, so that there will be plenty of skin to cover the place where the neck has been. Cut off the feet just below the joint; then cut the skin at the back of the neck, an inch or so down, and with your forefinger loosen the crop all round, and take it out without breaking or emptying it. Next cut a slit right under the rump, large enough to run two fingers in. If this were a goose or turkey, you would need it large enough to admit your whole hand into the body. Before attempting to draw out the entrails, loosen with your finger all the tiny strings that attach them to the body. Be certain your fingers can pass between the contents of the stomach and the body in every direction without obstruction; then bend your hand or fingers round the mass, and draw it forward; this will bring the whole out in a ball. Be careful not to drag it by any particular part, or you will break the entrails, and the whole process be an unclean one; or you may spoil the fowl by breaking the gall, the bitter of which cannot be washed away. Cut off the vent, which will free the main entrail. If properly managed, the bird will be quite clean inside, and need only wiping with a wet cloth; if not clean, pour lukewarm water through it.”
Molly worked while she talked, suiting the action to the word when possible; and when the entrails of the fowl lay on the table, quite unbroken, she showed Marta the clean inside.
“You see this needs washing neither inside nor out; and that is the great object,—to prevent the contents of the entrails getting on the bird; for if they do, to my mind, no amount of washing will cleanse it.”
“Now I lay the bird aside, and prepare the giblets, which make gravy. You see this small, dark-green bladder attached to the liver? That is the gall. I cut it off, but am careful to leave a bit of the liver with it to avoid breaking. Put the liver in cold water. This hard, silvery-blue lump is the gizzard; it must be freed from all skin and strings; and by cutting it carefully on the wide side, without penetrating the inner skin, it can be peeled off, leaving the inside whole, thus avoiding the usual mess. This outer flesh throw into the water with the liver. Now for the feet.”
Molly put them in a quart bowl, and poured water from the kettle—which she was careful to see was actually boiling—upon them, covering them all over.
“Now, Marta, if you do this yourself, never attempt to scald with water that is not boiling, however near the point it may be; and do not put them in hot water and set them on the stove to come to the boiling-point. Either of these methods will so set the skin that it will not come off without the flesh, while these, you see, will peel easily enough.” She had taken, as she spoke, a clean cloth in one hand, and with a fork lifted one of the feet out of the hot water, then quickly rubbed the thin, yellow skin, which came off as readily as the skin from a ripe, scalded tomato; then she bent back each nail and that, too, came off, leaving the foot delicate, white, and clean. The rest were done in the same way. “The only thing necessary is great quickness; the skin gets ‘set’ as the water cools.
“You can put the fowl away now till to-morrow, Marta, but the giblets I will put on to stew for gravy. Here are the feet, the heart, the neck, gizzard, and liver, all well cleaned. They need a pint of water, a slice of onion, a piece of carrot, as big as your thumb, cut in it, half a tea-spoonful of salt, and a sprig of parsley. Now if I had not these vegetables in the house, I should do without; but having them, the gravy will be much better. Let these giblets stew down very slowly, till only half remains; then strain, and you will find it is a solid jelly, when cold.
“Ah, Marta, what is the matter with the bread? and how comes it so late to-day?”
Marta was just taking from the oven the one loaf which formed the tri-weekly baking, and at a glance Molly knew it was a failure. It was a peculiar color,—a drab tone, instead of the bright, yellow brown it should have been,—and it looked flat.
“That I don’t understand,” said Marta; “it seemed to-day as if it would never rise.”
It must here be said that after Molly showed Marta bread-making, her bread had been very good. She had made it three times so well that Molly thought that part of her teaching was over. This was the fourth time, and it was evidently a failure.
She thought of all she had heard from experienced housekeepers,—how thankless a task it was to teach servants, for when they attain perfection, they lack the ambition to keep to the mark; they “run down,” as it were. For a moment Molly was appalled at the prospect of working so hard and faithfully with Marta, if it was to end thus; and then she remembered, if it should prove so in this case, it could not be possible that some girl would not be wise enough to see the advantage to herself of keeping up to a standard.
“Even if I have to change several times, at last I certainly shall find one who repays me; then I shall have a year or two of peace and comfort.”
But she did not make up her mind to the worst about Marta from this failure. It had been gradually becoming clear to her that Marta had some good qualities and many faults. Whether the qualities balanced the faults was something she had seriously to consider when she had had longer trial; and which would depend much on whether, once knowing a thing thoroughly, she could be trusted to do it.
“Marta, nothing of this sort can happen without a cause; try to think what it can be.” Molly studiously refrained from showing her vexation, for she really wanted to find out whether Marta had erred through carelessness or ignorance; and the only way to get at the facts was, not to frighten her into deception by seeming angry.
“I cannot think, unless the yeast was not good; I was very careful.”
“Get me the rest of the cake of yeast.”
When she brought it, Molly broke it. It broke off short, and smelt quite good; had it been stale it would have pulled like dough, or smelt bad.
“No, the yeast is good, and in proof of it I must make something else with it. But I think you must have put it in too hot water.” As she spoke she had cut the loaf. “This looks just like bread made with scalded yeast, or that had risen too slowly from having too little yeast.”
“No, ma’am, I am sure the water was not too hot.”
“And it could not have been chilled when you set it to rise, I know. Ah, there’s one thing, Marta! perhaps you forgot to stir the yeast after you dropped it in the water, or did not do it sufficiently, and it remained at the bottom and never went into the bread at all.”
This seemed the certain solution, if what Marta said about the water was true; but the girl shook her head.
“No, I am sure I stirred it, and it all went into the flour.”
Molly looked at her,—could she be telling the truth? If she had not known the bread had had long enough to rise, she would have thought it had been put into the oven directly the dough was in the pan, without being allowed to rise; but that she knew could not be, for she had seen it rising, and wondered why it should be so late. She wished now she had asked before it was baked; but Marta had been out of the way, and when she returned to the kitchen the matter had slipped from her mind.
“I have told you to warm the flour. I suppose you didn’t make it very hot.”
“No; I did everything just as you showed me.”
Molly said nothing. Marta must be untruthful; this was a more unpleasant thing to discover than the failure of the bread.
“Well, we must have bread; it is four o’clock, and Saturday. I will make a rye loaf, because it needs to rise only once after it is mixed, and by seven o’clock it will be ready to bake.”
Molly measured the flour and set it to warm (she meant to make this bread herself, because she was much quicker than Marta). As she poured the hot water into the cold, to make the right temperature for the yeast, a thought struck her;—she always dissolved the yeast in the tin pint measure, and Marta did the same.
“Marta, after you put the yeast in the water, did you set it on the stove?”
“Yes, ma’am, the water was a little cool, and I set it there to dissolve; but I did not let it get a bit hot, and it was quite back of the stove.”
“That is the mystery then!” Molly had remembered hearing a lady speak of having done the same thing herself; and though it was back of the stove, and the water could not get hotter, the yeast, being at the bottom in contact with the hot iron, had baked or scalded. Of one thing she was very glad; Marta had immediately owned the fact, and the failure had not come from her neglect of any of the rules Molly had laid down,—only from not understanding cause and effect.
CHAPTER XXI.
TO MAKE A FOWL TENDER AS SPRING-CHICKEN.
As I have said, the fowl was a yearling, and Molly meant to try with it an experiment she had seen practiced in France, by which fowls, not quite young, were made very tender, without being converted into fricassee or pot-pie. On Sunday morning, before going to church, she had taken a large sheet of soft paper, and, after twisting the wings over on the back, and forcing the legs up against the body snugly, securing them there with skewer and twine, and fastening the skin of the neck neatly on the back with a toothpick, she seasoned it and wrapped it entirely in the paper, which was large enough to cover it twice. She then tied it up with twine.
“Marta, put this chicken in the oven at half past eleven; that is, half an hour earlier than if it were a young chicken. Let the oven be hot, and, at a quarter past twelve, remove the paper. Take care to let all the grease that may be in it run into the pan; flour the fowl a little, and set it back in the oven and roast it. Take care to turn it often, and let it get well browned; when you take it up, remove skewer and string, pour the gravy from the giblets, with the liver and gizzard chopped very fine, into the dripping-pan; set it over the stove, season, and, if it should not look a nice rich brown, put about two drops of caramel in it. Send the gravy to table in a sauce-boat.”
Marta promised to follow directions carefully, and Molly left the kitchen; and then, remembering a mistake Marta might make, hastened back.
“I told you to flour it, but I mean only to shake a very little over it from the dredger; if it is at all thick there will be a white, pasty coating on the outside, instead of a crisp, brown one.”
After church Molly went to the kitchen to see if everything was going right, and saw on the table a cupful of pretty yellow balls. “What are these?” she asked, taking one up, but found it collapsed between her fingers. It was simply a wind ball, and the outside as thin as paper.
“They are German noodles for soup,” said Marta, her face beaming with pride.
“They are very pretty; and, though I know several sorts of noodles, I have never seen these.”
At dinner the clear soup, with the addition of Marta’s noodles, was excellent, and she found that steaming the fowl in paper, before baking, agreed just as well with the American bird as a French one; the limbs fell from under the knife, as Harry carved, and the oft despised yearling might have rivalled the youngest and juiciest spring chicken.
CHAPTER XXII.
DOLLARS AND CENTS.
Molly reached the end of her first month’s housekeeping, and now could see exactly where she stood, and could plan for the coming month to advantage. Referring to her note-book, she found she had spent 53 cents less the second week than the first, 75 cents less the third, and 60 cents less the fourth. She had, therefore, in hand nearly $2, and provisions in the house for a couple of days. She had also salad-oil, olives, Worcestershire sauce, cooking-wine, pepper, salt, mustard, corn meal, and vinegar, to last a month at least. There was also over a pound of coffee left; and she would need only three pounds of lard in place of five, as there was nearly half left, and two instead of four pounds of coffee. She had, therefore, that much to deduct from her second month’s grocery bill, and several additions to make to it, for she had so far done without many articles she liked to have in the house; she found, too, that the twelve pounds of sugar she had allowed must be increased to fifteen, twelve granulated, three cut loaf.
Her order for the grocer stood for the second month thus:—
Molly had carefully saved the peels of all lemons used in the past month, which had not been grated. As they were squeezed, the pulp was scraped out, and then they were dropped into a gem-jar of salt and water, a handful of salt to the quart. She meant to do the same with oranges, through the winter, and to candy them. A cup of candied lemon or orange peel is a great addition to a fruit cake or to many puddings; and, as the only cost was the sugar used in candying it, she would always keep a good supply in her store-closet. The alcohol was to make lemon flavoring; and, as soon as it came, she took a fresh lemon with a coarse rind, and with a sharp knife carefully pared off the yellow as thin as possible; this, cut into small pieces, she put into the alcohol, then corked it tightly. In two or three weeks this would be very fragrant extract of lemon, growing stronger the longer it was kept. The extract of rose, of vanilla, and of almond, she bought of the druggist; they were much stronger than those put up in bottles, and of course very much cheaper, and the ten cents’ worth would last months. The extract of rose was to take the place of rose-water in flavoring cakes or icing; a very few drops would suffice.
“Now,” thought Molly, as she surveyed her new stock of provisions, “I can have some variety in dessert and cakes, and these little bottles will work wonders in my commissariat. Charlotte and I will have a real good time when she comes.”
“Charlotte” was Mrs. Welles; and she was to come the second week in October, when the hills would be in the full glory of autumn color; and Molly was full of anticipation of pleasure in having her old friend in her own house.
“That alone pays for all the extra care and work of housekeeping,” she had said to Harry,—“the pleasure of asking your friends to your own house instead of some one else’s.”
“Oh, it’s a paying thing in every way,” said Harry. “I confess I’m completely converted.”
Harry had kept up his little jokes about their housekeeping; had laughed gently over her weekly savings, and still more when she told him it was to meet the extra expense of visitors.
“But, Harry,” she had said earnestly, “we must do that, you know, or else get just as much behind as I am now before-hand. Of course, if we were a large family keeping a bountiful house, one more or less would not need providing for; but when just two are living as well as they know how, on a certain sum, that amount will not stretch to take in extra. Every one who manages has to calculate so; only perhaps I need not have spoken of it. Many things are all right until they are spoken, and then they do, I confess, sound very small. Of course, if we cooked a large roast to-day, ate it cold two or three days, baked once a week several loaves, and had large pots of weak coffee, half to be thrown away, we should not need to provide very much for a visitor; but we aim to live differently; and it is only by making one thing fit in with another that we can live quite within our means, and be able to welcome a visitor without anxiety.”
Molly was flushed, and her eyes sparkled; for she was a little wounded.
“My dearest little woman, you mistook me; I wasn’t laughing at the planning at all; I was laughing in admiration at the way you steered your little bark so very near the wind, and trimmed so very neatly. And to think, too, how clever you were to cut down the table-expenses after the first week without my guessing it. I declare, I thought I was living quite like a prince. I am lost in admiration, Molly, and feel ashamed to be so much better off than most fellows.”
He spoke in a sort of jesting earnest, and pressed Molly to him. She understood him well; the slight cloud lifted, and, with his arm about her, they went over the month’s accounts together.
“Now do you regret the experiment of housekeeping?” she asked, when he had congratulated her.
“No, indeed, I don’t. No more boarding for me if I know it.”
“I am so thankful to hear you say that.”
“Now, my dear, you’ve had your little innings, listen to mine. I have $20 a month, remember, to give an account of. You know we set out, when we married, with the brave purpose of reserving $10 a month for emergencies. But with board and laundress coming to nearly $90, and the numberless trifling expenses, car fares, etc., in New York, in the whole twelve months we did not save $10.”
“I know, and it worried me very much; to live right up to one’s income seems terrible.”
“Not so terrible in our case, because I’m sure of a steadily increasing salary; and I propose we do not increase our expenses for some years to come.”
“Oh, no indeed! Whatever the increase, it must be saved so long as we have health.”
“Well, I find by living in the country that drain of small expenses is avoided; and I actually have $12 in hand.”
“Oh, I am so thankful, but”—anxiously—“you have not been going without lunch?”
“By no means; but I find fruit or a sandwich and glass of milk makes me as good a lunch as I want, and averages ten cents a day.”
Harry’s commutation ticket was $6 a month, $3 only of which had to come from the margin of $20. (It will be remembered that the amount they allowed for their rent, servants, and table was $77. The $3 saved from their old boarding-house expense of $80 partly paid the commutation ticket.) Harry had therefore limited his personal expenses to $5 for lunch and newspapers, tobacco, etc. Molly was very proud each time she remembered how freely he had spent money before their marriage, and how cheerfully he had resigned the cigars and expensive luxuries that were almost second nature, for her sake. How could she grudge any pains that should make his house a little like the one he had been accustomed to? They had both decided to be very economical in dress; and it is astonishing how very little will keep up a wardrobe once well supplied, provided one does not easily tire of the same garments. Altogether Molly thought the outlook was bright enough; and, after thus summing up, they spent a long, happy evening laying plans.
“Oh, what is your conclusion about our light-handed Phyllis; will you keep her?”
“Oh yes; she certainly is rather exasperating sometimes, and I have thought it over seriously whether I should take the trouble to go on with her or change; but she has some very good qualities; she is very clean, and very saving, and really about cooking very intelligent. Outside of the kitchen I can’t say much for her; but another might be stupid there, too, so I think I’ll bear the ills I know.”
Marta’s wages were but $10; but Molly had found it absolutely necessary to hire a woman for two days, that Marta might see how washing and ironing was to be accomplished in this country, which Molly herself knew little about. She knew what the result should be, but how to attain it she did not know. When the woman came, she was careful to profit, herself. She watched the process, and asked the woman a dozen questions.
“It seems to me that Marta rubs enough and works hard enough, but nothing looks just right,” she had said, as she watched the apparently easy movements of Mrs. Hall, who was considered an excellent laundress.
“Lor bless you, ma’am, it ain’t the rubbin’ with clothes like your’n, it’s the rinsin’, and the washin’ in plenty of water—many ov ’em stuff the tub just full of clothes as they can pack, and then puddle them all through in a little water one side the tub, when it’s just as easy to have a few bits in at a time. Then when they’re a bilin’, the biler’s chuck full, and no room for ’em to scald; and they’re put right out of the bilin’ suds into the blue rinse water, ’stead ov bein’ suddled first.”
“What is suddled?”
“Well, just being put into a tub ov clear or near clear water, an’ gettin’ the soap out of ’em; then they kin be tossed into the rinse.”
“You think, then, it’s not the labor, but the water?”
“Stan’s to reason, if the cloes come out of thick water,—I don’t mean dirty; your cloes wouldn’t make dirty water if you was to try,—they’ll look thick.”
This was a great thing for Molly to know. She saw the principle of it, and she knew Marta grudged no work; it was only that she did not expend it in the right direction. Less rubbing, but more water, then, was no doubt the secret.
With ironing she learned less, Mrs. Hall’s views on the matter being of the Bunsby kind. Molly had been reading all she could find in books about it, but she believed a few words from a practical laundress would enlighten her more than much reading. She had only one clear idea herself; and that was that the most beautiful laundry-work she had ever seen, she had been told, was due to long boiling of the starch.
“I boil it till it runs off the spoon like melted silver,” the woman who did it told her.
“What do you think about starch? Ought it to be long boiled?” she asked Mrs. Hall.
“Oh, I don’t know. Some says so, some says not, but I never makes no differ; if I’m not ready the starch biles, if I am, it don’t. It’s all in the ironin’, I say; if you kin iron, you kin.”
“But surely sometimes starch sticks.”
“Yes, if you don’t understand it.”
Molly gave up; but she found Marta so far improved by what she had seen, that the money was well expended.
But to return to the dollar and cent question. Her grocery bill for the coming month was $10.02 against $11.22 for the last (see [Chapter IX.]), and the weekly proportion of that would be $2.50½. Of several articles, such as flour and potatoes, she had renewed the supply; not because they were really exhausted, but would be in a few days; all of which small “lap-overs,” however, would make a little difference to one who watched her expenses so closely as Molly.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHIEFLY SOCIAL—MRS. FRAMLEY’S OPINIONS.
Molly during the month had become acquainted with all Mr. and Mrs. Winfield’s friends; they had gone to the “readings” each week, and, not being hypocritical young people, but very ready to be amused, had enjoyed themselves much. The “readings,” she found, were really modified theatricals; and as happily no great tragedies or legitimate dramas were attempted, but bright comedies or farces, they were usually well done; and where they were not the fun was greater.
Molly was glad they had found so many pleasant people in Greenfield; it made the ordeal of a winter in the country for Harry far less trying. She was expressing an idea of this sort to Mrs. Framley, who said:—
“But you don’t seem to think the ordeal is as great for you, who are in the country all day. I’m afraid you spoil Mr. Bishop.”
“Oh dear, no,” laughed Molly; “but I do think it right to make life just as pleasant to him as I can.”
“My dear, don’t you think women do too much of that? Isn’t it just as much a man’s business to see that his wife enjoys herself as hers to cater to his amusement? You told me the other day you don’t care for chess; yet you make a point of playing it. Why shouldn’t Mr. Bishop make a point of doing something you like?”
“I don’t know; but I don’t believe he would think of it; if he did, no doubt he would try to amuse me.”
“That’s just it! You are so self-effacing that it doesn’t occur to him. I am no woman’s rights woman; I don’t want to vote; but I do not believe in catering to a husband’s taste any more than he caters to mine.”
“I haven’t thought much about it,” said Molly slowly. “It just comes natural to me to do what I can to please Harry, but I don’t know that it is any credit to me, for I enjoy it just as much as he does; perhaps if I didn’t I might not do it.”
“Well, you are newly married, but later you will find you have made him thoroughly selfish; at least, he is a remarkable young man if he doesn’t get so. Look at Jane Carlyle!”
Molly laughed. “I love Mrs. Carlyle, and I am always surprised at the tone of commiseration adopted toward her. I think she thoroughly enjoyed ministering to her husband—why shouldn’t she? She loved and admired him, and it was her life work; and I think I understand such a woman well enough to feel sure she was happier drudging for him than she would have been with some smaller man drudging for her. All her letters, for the first twenty-five years of her married life, show that she rather gloried in overcoming her difficulties. I dare say she would have pitied some other woman doing the same things; but we all leave out, in thinking of others, the personal affection which makes the things we do and suffer for those we love a pleasure.”
“My dear Mrs. Bishop,” cried Mrs. Framley, laughing, “I had no idea you could be so eloquent. I think, at one of our meetings, instead of a reading, we will have a lecture from Mrs. Bishop, entitled The labor that we love physics pain. You haven’t convinced me, though, because my opinions are founded on principle, and the conviction that women ought, out of self-respect and for the sake of other women, to expect that a husband should sacrifice his tastes and pleasure, and consider it his duty to amuse and entertain his wife as much as she does him, and not consider his duty done if he provides for her and treats her as well as he would a favorite horse.”
“I can understand if people, man and wife, or brother and sister, begin to draw the line as to what is to be conceded and what expected, and what they do for those they love becomes a conscious self-abnegation,—that life under such circumstances may be looked upon as one of self-denial; but I fancy few really are denying themselves while pleasing a loved one.”
Mrs. Framley smiled. “You are the last person I should have thought romantic, but I see you are; talk to me ten years from now, my dear, and I’ll listen respectfully.”
Molly thought the matter over when she was alone. Was she really in danger of spoiling Harry? She certainly had known husbands who took all the comfort of their homes just as their right, and never seemed to think they need do anything toward the family pleasure beyond paying the bills. Molly was devoted to her husband; but she was not so blinded by her love as not to see that Harry was in no way a perfect man. He was pleasure-loving only in the sense of seizing life’s enjoyments,—even his generous impulses were part of them,—and he was too fastidious for a poor man; and Molly could quite realize that he might not be a loving husband to some women just as good as she was, and yet she knew his faults were faults of temperament. How could he help it, if he liked brightness and gaiety and rather shirked the dreary side of life? She sympathized so much with him that she had no dread of the future; she had no wish to make him over to her standard. (Herein lies the secret of half the “incompatibility” in marriage, if Molly had but known it; but she was not, consciously, a social philosopher.)
“Well, I can’t help it; I don’t believe Harry will be more spoiled by being made happy in his own way than if I try to make him make me happy in mine; and if he does I can’t help it. It all depends, I suppose, whether one loves a man well enough to enjoy his pleasure and find one’s own in it; and I can’t help thinking Mrs. Carlyle was just as happy as those who pity her, until she got ill and morbid; the sacrifices she seemed to make of her own comfort were not so, for her pleasure was in promoting that of her great husband.”
On the whole, Mrs. Framley’s warning had done no good or harm. While boarding, although Molly had been as reserved as politeness permitted, and limited her intercourse with the ladies to formal acquaintance, it had been impossible for her to escape many such warnings, uttered good-naturedly, often by the way of joking a young wife; but she knew then, as now, she could lay no deliberate plans to secure her husband’s love and attention; if she gave more than she received, she could not help it—she loved to give. “If it is really necessary to measure one’s devotion in order to secure happy married life, then those women who love least have most chance of happiness; but it cannot be.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
A VERY PLAIN PUDDING—HOW TO COOK ODDS AND ENDS—BILLS OF FARE FOR A WEEK.
Molly’s enlarged circle of acquaintances enabled her to ask aid for poor Mrs. Gibbs; and several had subscribed small sums, which, put together, bought the poor soul fuel for a couple of months; and others who regretted inability to give money—having so many calls already—gladly sent to Molly odds and ends of food, fag ends of steak, the tops of mutton chops, etc., which, long and softly stewed and left till cold,—when the fat came off in a cake which made nice dripping for Mrs. Gibbs to fry mush or potatoes in,—then stewed again with onions and potatoes at some times, vegetables and barley at others, made a very appetizing dish; thus with a very little of Molly’s time and what would have been thrown away by one or two families, savory, nourishing food was provided for the destitute woman and children. Had the meat and vegetables been sent to Mrs. Gibbs herself, they would have done comparatively little good; they would have been fried, and the fat probably thrown away, and the tough meat eaten without relish. A large bread pudding, too, was made once a week; and, as it cost so little and was so good, Mrs. Lennox asked Molly for the recipe:—
Plain Bread Pudding.—Soak stale bread, crust and crumbs, in skimmed milk till soft; press out the milk, and beat the bread fine; add a table-spoonful of molasses, a tea-spoonful of ginger, and the third of a nutmeg to each quart of beaten bread; sweeten to taste; pare the yellow rind of an orange or lemon, or both, chop them fine, and add them with one or two cups of currants, according to the size of the pudding; put the whole into a pan, smooth it over the top, and strew it thickly with nice beef dripping or butter. Bake a three-quart pudding slowly four hours. Better cold than hot.
This pudding, if care is taken with the flavoring, will by no means taste poor. It is especially nice cut in slices and fried, or—in hot weather—eaten cold with milk or cream and sugar.
Mrs. Gibbs was getting now strong enough to do sewing, and one lady lent her a sewing-machine she was not using; Molly felt there was now some hope of her getting work enough to partly support her family.
Mrs. Lennox and Molly had often talked again over the advisability of the former getting help in her house, or not; Molly was strongly of the opinion that, as her health was before everything, it certainly was advisable and truly economical, but she did not venture to urge it, because she knew everything would depend on the kind of girl they would get; yet it seemed that any one with but two good qualities, willingness and strength, must be a great gain to a woman situated as her friend was.
“I do dread green girls, they generally are so stupid.”
“I confess they often are; so are those not green, only they conceal their stupidity better, and often add conceit to it; but it seems to me what you are in urgent need of is a pair of strong arms; if you get those, you can do without the brains, or supply them; you never stop to ask if the woman you hire to wash and iron is stupid or not, she simply does the work set for her; and if one pays a girl low wages, and she does just the work you show her, like a machine, every day instead of two days a week, won’t you be better off?”
“Yes. When I think of the matter like that, I see I should, even if I have to follow her round for a month or so.”
“Yes, you will be saving your muscles.”
“And I might then get time to think of my children’s minds as well as their bodies; my life is so sordid, I never read a line; and when Mr. Lennox reads to me I am sorry to say I am too pre-occupied to listen. It is a frightful waste of life.”
She sighed, and on the last of these conversations said: “Mrs. Bishop, I’ve resolved to try the experiment. I am not so afraid of the increased butcher bills since I have so many of your recipes.”
“I don’t believe you need be; but you can easily get an idea of what you will spend. I think it a good plan to write out a sort of list every week; it saves thinking each day what to have for dinner, and, of course, can be modified according to market prices. I limit myself to certain prices: and, if I find some articles dear one day, I can easily change; for instance, cauliflowers have been wonderfully cheap this fall, and twice I have got a small one—large enough for us two—for 10 cents; to-day I meant to have fried cauliflower, and found a very small one was 20 cents; of course I did not get it. You might draw up some sort of a list of provisions for a certain time, allowing for the extra person, and get a close idea of your probable expenses.”
“I wish you would help me.”
“I will, gladly.”
Later in the day, Mrs. Lennox came in much excited. “My dear! Mrs. Framley’s chambermaid has a sister expected to arrive from Ireland this very week, and she is trying to get a place for her; and I am tempted to try her. She is sixteen, and the sister says for the first three months she will let her live with nice people for very little.”
“I would by all means engage her if Mrs. Framley thinks well of the sister.”
“Yes. She says she is respectable and clean.”
“That’s about all one can hope for, and I think it is a fortunate chance.”
“I shall decide. Oh, think of my having another pair of working hands in my house: such a weight will be off my shoulders, and this saves me going to Castle Garden.”
Molly had decided to write her own bills of fare for the week, as it would save her thinking each day, and she could manage better, knowing beforehand all she would need. Accordingly, on the first of the month, she wrote out the following as her programme for the week’s dining. The breakfasts so often came out of the dinner that she did not need to make special arrangement:—
Bills of Fare.
Noodle Soup.
Braised Beef. Cabbage à la Crême.
Fried Potatoes.
Beets. Cheese Omelette.
Polka Pudding and Sauce.
———
Filets de Sole with Béchamel Sauce.
Miroton of Beef.
Green Peas. Potato Balls.
Iced Cream Coffee.
Cake. Fruit.
———
Black Bean Soup.
Chicken Fricassee.
Potato Croquettes. Peas.
King William’s Pudding.
Fruit.
———
Cod, with Hollandaise Sauce.
Roast Mutton.
Stewed Onions. Scalloped Potatoes.
Frozen Bananas. Cake.
———
Clear Soup with Royal Custard.
Fried Fowl (French fashion). Sweet Bread.
Tomatoes, au gratin. Stuffed Potatoes.
Vanilla Soufflé Pudding, Hard Sauce.
———
German Soup.
Boiled Mutton. Stewed Onions.
Potatoes.
Macaroni. Cheese.
Spoonful Pudding, Almond Sauce.
Fruit.
———
Raw Oysters.
Mutton, Re served. Stewed Onions.
Dresden Patties.
Potatoes. Old English Fritters.
Fruit.
CHAPTER XXV.
MARTA’S NOODLES—BRAISED BEEF—HOW TO ADAPT ONE’S MATERIALS—POLKA PUDDING AND SAUCE.
I have said before that Molly had repeated, as often as she could, the dishes she had first taught Marta, so that she might not get confused, and might know thoroughly a few things. She hoped by this means to be able to depend upon her for certain dishes. At the beginning of this new month Marta seemed to have learned thoroughly how to make clear soup, white sauce, bread, and to fry; and to Molly this did not seem a bad result. In knowing how to make clear soup, she knew the principle of soup-making, and could make any other meat soup,—also in learning this she had learned what slow boiling really meant, and could therefore boil meat well. To make white sauce perfectly meant to do many other things of which that, or its modifications, are the foundation. Whether Marta’s intelligence was quick enough to show her the value of the key she held, that good white sauce meant good béchamel sauce, good celery sauce, lobster sauce, poulette and all the long list of sauces with high-sounding French names, that seem so hopelessly unattainable to ordinary cooks, as well as all kinds of white soups, and many sweet dishes,—that she would see and apply all this was a great deal too much to hope; but if she would only keep her execution of what she could do up to the mark, Molly would feel that her efforts were far from wasted.
“If she will only not be content with having accomplished these things a few times, and will not become careless as she gets familiar, I must be very thankful;” but this was just what Molly did fear. The bread, although light and good, was never twice alike, unless Molly superintended the making; which assured her that Marta had taken to “guessing” or, what was as bad, to measuring carelessly. Carefully she explained to her that a pint of flour did not mean all that could be taken up on a pint measure, or that a pint of water did not mean the larger half of a quart measure; but the bread still came to table, sometimes coarse-grained, sometimes very close, showing it was sometimes made very wet, at others stiff, but always light and sweet so far; but she feared this lack of exactness might run into other things. If so, it could not be helped. Molly knew that many very good cooks, who turned out excellent dishes, never measured, could never tell how they did it, or give an intelligible recipe. Such cases had been often quoted to her as a reason why the precision of scientific cooking, as taught in cooking-schools, was nonsense; but she knew that those who cooked thus, although they might produce excellent results four times out of five, the fifth time might make a failure; they are always subject to good and bad “luck” with their cooking; and she knew, too, there are a certain few who are gifted with such a correct eye for quantity that they could calculate the weight of a thing to a quarter of an ounce,—she herself had this gift to a certain extent, but she never trusted to it,—yet she understood that a cook with that exceptional gift might do as well without weighing as with it; the only misfortune was that the generality were not so gifted, but believed themselves to be so, and the result is the frequent uncertainty with which one so often awaits the appearance of Dinah’s or Delia’s efforts, that result depending on their “good” or “bad luck.”
However, Molly was convinced that she had done her part with Marta, and that if she failed in the things she knew, it would not be because she did not thoroughly understand; and she could now try to teach her several new dishes.
The bill of fare for the day was noodle soup, braised beef, cabbage with white sauce, fried potatoes, and polka pudding.
About a pint of clear soup was on hand, and Molly had many times intended to let Marta show her how to make the German noodles that had so pleased her when she first saw them; but on days when clear soup was made or used, something had always called her attention; and even to-day was ironing-day, but she helped Marta through with her work, so that there might be half an hour to spare without putting the ironing back, and then while Marta was finishing she prepared the dessert.
She had a recipe for polka pudding which she had often heard praised, and now, as she had the materials, would try. I say she had the materials; but Molly was very clever in “cutting her coat according to the cloth.” The recipe called for bitter almonds as well as sweet; she knew by flavoring a portion of the sweet almonds with the extract of bitter she would have the same effect. Rose-water also was called for; she poured a few drops of the extract of rose into a table-spoonful of water, and she had it, or at least the effect.
The recipe was as follows:—
Polka Pudding.—One pint of milk, boiling hot, two table-spoonfuls of corn starch mixed smooth in a little cold milk; then pour the boiling milk on it and stir all the time; thicken over the fire and mix, when cooked, with a table-spoonful of rose water, a table-spoonful and a half of thick cream; or stir in one and a half of butter, one ounce of bitter almonds and one of sweet ones blanched, and beaten with a little white of egg to prevent oiling; beat the yolk and the rest of the white with another whole egg very light. Mix all together, let it come to the boiling-point, put it into an oiled mould, and set in ice.
There were one or two peculiarities about this pudding; it was unsweetened, except by the sauce, which might make it a pleasant change from sweeter dessert, and it was to be served ice cold on hot plates with hot sauce.
The first thing was to blanch the almonds, which she did by putting them in a bowl and pouring water over them, which she was careful to have quite boiling; when they had stood two minutes, she took them out of the water with a fork, laid them on a coarse cloth, and pressed them between her thumb and finger, when they slipped easily out of their skins. She dropped them as they were done into cold water to keep them white. When all were finished, she dried and weighed them (two ounces of almonds blanched being very different from the same weight in their skins), and then, as she had no mortar, she took the chopping-bowl, assured herself it bore no odor or trace of herbs, and first chopped them fine; then with the potato-masher, which she never used for its legitimate purpose, pounded them.[2] One-half of these she flavored strongly with bitter almond and the rest of the recipe she followed exactly, using cream instead of butter, as she had it, having saved it from dessert the day before for this purpose.
She measured the table-spoonfuls of corn starch very carefully, for nothing is more disagreeable than too much, and she boiled it in a saucepan set in another of water, so that the starch might be long cooked without burning. She removed it from the range to the table, and allowed it to go slightly off the boil before stirring in the eggs; then returned it to the range and stirred till it came to the boiling-point again.
When all was mixed, she poured it into an oiled mould and set it in the ice; and then prepared to watch Marta, who was delighted with her accomplishment, and to see it so much appreciated. Her face fairly beamed as she found herself giving instead of taking instruction. She said very little, but Molly stood by and noted what she did.
She beat one egg till it frothed, put to it a pinch of salt, and then worked in as much flour as it would take, about three table-spoonfuls; she kneaded it till it was a smooth and firm, yet elastic, paste. This she rolled out on the pastry-board (very slightly flouring it) till it was as thin as writing-paper. So far, this was exactly the recipe for home-made vermicelli noodles, which was familiar to Molly. When the paste was as thin as she could get it on the board, Marta lifted the sheet of yellow paste, laid a cloth folded on the board, and then the paste on that; this enabled her to roll it still thinner; then she removed the cloth and folded one-half the paste, and asked Molly for her thimble. Molly washed it and gave it to her, and Marta stamped a couple of dozen little disks out of the double paste. They were so closely stuck together that they looked like little circles of yellow card. Marta now took a little pint iron saucepan, put into it two large table-spoonfuls of lard, and set it to get smoking hot. While this was reaching the point of heat required, she took the little sheet of paste she had not used, and which was still single and had got very slightly dry, while the disks were being made, which she explained it was necessary for it to do. She then rolled up the thin sheet closely, and cut it at intervals of the third of an inch; the paste now looked like so much yellow tape; and these, she informed Molly, were either to be dried near the fire on a sieve and kept for soups, or to be boiled in water and dressed with butter. As she spoke, she tossed the shreds up lightly with a fork for some little time. The fat was now hot; as hot, Molly remarked, as for croquettes, proved by the fact that the little disks when dropped into it (they became balls the minute they were in the fat) took a pale, golden hue; one-half minute colored them all alike; they were then lifted out with a skimmer, and Marta laid them on a clean cloth. Molly said nothing, because she did not want at this time to interfere with what was Marta’s specialty, but in doing them herself would use paper to drain them instead of greasing a cloth.
“I am ever so much obliged, Marta; these are a real novelty. Now we will have the others boiled for luncheon and some day you can make them for dinner. Mr. Bishop is so fond of anything of the sort. I want to see you cook them.”
It was time for them to be cooked now, Marta declared, and she put on water to boil with a tea-spoonful of salt in it; then she grated about a table-spoonful of cheese, and when the water was fast boiling dropped the “noodles” into it. She knew no other name than this for both the balls and the ribbons. They were to boil a quarter of an hour, she said, and every now and then she carefully stirred them up with a fork not so as to break them, but to keep them separate. She put a large table-spoonful of butter in a little saucepan and set it to get hot. When the noodles were strained off, the grated cheese was sprinkled over them with a little pepper and salt, then the butter was put to get boiling hot, and immediately poured over them. They were again stirred up with the fork, and, when the butter was well through them, Marta pronounced them ready; it was of course quite a small dish, but Molly told Marta if it proved half as good as it was pretty, she would be called on to make it very often.
It did not belie its appearance. “Marta, this is quite a discovery! I wonder if you can make any more German dainties?”
Marta smilingly said she knew only one or two really nice things.
“Then you shall make them; but don’t you see, you silly girl, that when you knew how to fry those little balls you knew how to fry many other things?”
“I see it now, but I did not before. I thought everything else had to be done in a different way in a flat pan.”
“Well, when you make these ribbon noodles again, you will have to take the whole of the paste made from the egg, and double the butter dressing; for I’m sure Mr. Bishop will be delighted with them.”
In the afternoon, as the irons were on the stove, Molly put the beef in the oven and made what Soyer calls a “roast-braise.” She took a small earthen crock or pan and put into it a large onion, a small carrot and turnip, two sprigs of parsley and a bay leaf; on these she laid some fat pork shaved, and on that the meat beef neatly skewered and tied. Over this meat she put a thin layer of fat pork, and over all a cup of water and a flour and water paste, so that the steam could not escape. This was to be left in the oven, which was not allowed to get very hot for the first two and a half hours,—just hot enough to keep the roast simmering.