CHAPTER XVII.
a chapter of odds and ends—valedictory.
I have alluded, in an earlier chapter, to the fact that many inexperienced cooks are afraid of altering recipes; a few words on this subject may not be out of place. As a rule, a recipe should be faithfully followed in all important points; for instance, in making soup you cannot because you are short of the given quantity of meat, put the same amount of water as directed for the full quantity, without damaging your soup; but you may easily reduce water and every other ingredient in the same proportion; and, in mere matters of flavoring, you may vary to suit circumstances. If you are told to use cloves, and have none, a bit of mace may be substituted.
If you read a recipe, and it calls for something you have not, consider whether that something has anything to do with the substance of the dish, or whether it is merely an accessory for which something else can be substituted. For instance, if you are ordered to use cream in a sauce, milk with a larger amount of well-washed butter may take its place; but if you are told to use cream for charlotte russe or trifles, there is no way in which you could make milk serve, since it is not an accessory but the chief part of those dishes. For a cake in which cream is used, butter whipped to a cream may take its place. Wine is usually optional in savory dishes; it gives richness only.
Again, in cakes be very careful the exact proportions of flour, eggs, and milk are observed; of butter you can generally use more or less, having a more or less rich cake in proportion. In any but plain cup cakes (which greatly depend on soda and acid for their lightness) never lessen the allowance of eggs; never add milk if a cake is too stiff (but an extra egg may always be used), unless milk is ordered in the recipe, when more or less may be used as needed. Flavoring may be always varied.
In reducing a recipe always reduce every ingredient, and it can make no difference in the results. Sometimes, in cookery books, you are told to use articles not frequently found in ordinary kitchens; for instance, a larding-needle (although that can be bought for twenty-five cents at any house-furnishing store, and should always be in a kitchen); but, in case you have not one for meat, you may manage by making small cuts and inserting slips of bacon.
Another article that is very useful, but seldom, if ever, to be found in small kitchens, is a salamander; but when you wish to brown the top of a dish, and putting it in the oven would not do, or the oven is not quick enough to serve, an iron shovel, made nearly red, and a few red cinders in it, is a very good salamander. It must be held over the article that requires browning near enough to color it, yet not to burn.
In the recipes I have given nothing is required that cannot be obtained, with more or less ease, in New York. For syrups, fruit juices, etc., apply to your druggist; if he has not them he will tell you where to obtain them. We often make up our minds that because a thing is not commonly used in this country, it is impossible to get it. Really there are very few things not to be got in New York City to the intelligent seeker. You need an article of French or Italian or may be English grocery, that your grocer, a first-class one, perhaps, has not, and you make up your mind you cannot get it. But go into the quarters where French people live, and you can get everything belonging to the French cuisine. So prejudiced are the French in favor of the productions of la belle France, that they do not believe in our parsley or our chives or garlic or shallots; for I know at least one French grocer who imports them for his customers. On being asked why he brought them from France to a country where those very things were plentiful, he answered: