The remains from the first cooked mutton, in form of curry, mince, salmi, or sauté, will be a second dish with your fowl.
Veal is one of the most convenient things to have for a small family, as it warms over in a variety of ways, and in some is actually better than when put on the table as a joint. By having a little fish one day, instead of soup, and a little game another, and remembering when you have an especially dainty thing, to have one with it a little more substantial and less costly, you may have variety at little expense.
For instance, if you find it convenient to have for dinner fritadella (see "Warming Over") or miroton of beef, or cold mutton curried, you might have broiled birds, or roast pigeon, or game. In this consists good management, to live so that the expenses of one day balance those of the other—unless you are so happily situated that expense is a small matter, in which case these remarks will not apply to you at all. Then, never mind warming over, or making one joint into two; let your poor neighbors and Bridget's friends enjoy your superfluity. To the woman with a moderate income it usually is a matter of importance, or ought to be, that her weekly expenditure should not exceed a certain amount, and for this she must arrange that any extra expense is balanced by a subsequent economy.
Salads add much to the health and elegance of a dinner; it is in early spring an expensive item if lettuce is used; but no salad can be more delicious or more healthful than dressed celery; and by buying when cheap, arranging with a man to lay in your cellar, covered with soil, enough for the winter's use, it need cost but moderately. Celeriac, or turnip-rooted celery is another salad that is very popular with our German friends; it is a bulbous celery, the root being the part eaten; these are cooked like potatoes, cut in slices, and dressed with oil and vinegar, or mayonnaise, it is exceedingly good. Potato salad is always procurable, and in summer at lunch, instead of the hot vegetable, or in winter when green salad is dear, is very valuable. It may be varied by the addition, one day, of a few chopped pickles, another, a little onion, or celery, or parsley, or tarragon, a little ravigotte butter beaten to cream with the vinegar, or with meat, as follows: Boil the potatoes in their skins, peel them, cut them into pieces twice the thickness of a fifty-cent piece, and put them into a salad bowl with cold meat (bouilli from soup is excellent); put to them a teaspoonful of salt, half that quantity of pepper, two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, three or even four of oil, and a teaspoonful of chopped parsley. You can vary this by putting at different times some chopped celery or pickles, olives, or anchovies.
CHAPTER VII.
on frying and broiling.
Frying is one of the operations in cookery in which there are more failures than any other, or, at least, there appear to be more, because the failure is always so very apparent. Nothing can make a dish of breaded cutlets on which are bald white spots look inviting, or livid-looking fish, just flaked here and there with the bread that has been persuaded to stay on. And, provided you have enough fat in the pan—there should always be enough to immerse the article; therefore use a deep iron or enameled pan—there can be but two reasons why you fail. Your fat has not been hot enough, or your crumbs have not been fine and even.
Many suppose when the fat bubbles and boils in the pan that it is quite hot; it is far from being so. Others again are so much nearer the truth that they know it must become silent, that is, boil and cease to boil, before it is ready, but even that is not enough; it must be silent some time, smoke, and appear to be on the point of burning, then drop a bit of bread in; if it crisps and takes color directly, quickly put in your articles.