6.
Black Bean Soup.
Halibut Steak.
Browned Potato. Scalloped Cauliflower.
Coffee Jelly.
Black Bean Soup.—Two cups black beans, six cups cold water, one onion, two sprays parsley, four or five cloves, one teaspoonful mixed thyme and sweet-marjoram, one quart corned-beef liquor. Pick the beans over carefully, wash them, and put them in soak in the cold water; let them stand all night, and in the morning transfer them to the soup kettle. Put with them the onion, herbs, and cloves, and simmer all together gently until the beans are soft; rub them through a colander, return to the fire, add the corned-beef liquor, and boil for an hour; pour the soup on two hard-boiled eggs, quartered, and a few thin slices of lemon, laid in the tureen.
Scalloped Cauliflower.—Boil the cauliflower tender; tie it in a piece of net before putting it in the boiling water; cut the clusters apart, and arrange them, stems downward, in a pudding dish; pour a cup of drawn butter over them, season with pepper and salt, sprinkle with fine bread or cracker crumbs, and bake until of a good brown.
Coffee Jelly.—Two cups clear strong coffee, one cup sugar, one cup boiling water, half-cup cold water, half-box gelatine. Let the gelatine soak in the cold water an hour; stir the sugar into it, and pour over both the boiling water and the hot coffee; strain into a mould. When cold, turn out in a glass dish, and serve with whipped cream.
WHAT SHALL WE EAT?
THE cook-book of the olden time gave its recipes with a generous disregard of cost. Such items as a ham boiled in wine were not unusual, and the quantities of costly materials demanded were on a Gargantuan scale. Even in the average French culinary manuals economy can hardly be said to be conspicuous, except by its absence, although Gallic cooks have a world-wide reputation for the wonderful results they can produce by a small expenditure. Even in this day, when economy is honored and studied, in the recipes that appear in print as written by women living in some parts of the South, there is a call for what to Northern ideas seems a reckless profusion of eggs, butter, and cream. The lavishness of these demands is often quite out of keeping with the common opinion of the straitened circumstances supposed to have prevailed of late years in that section of the country. The general impression these recipes give was voiced by a New England woman, who, after reading a collection of recipes from the pen of a well-known Southern writer, exclaimed, "Well, I can't afford to cook like that; but I presume she has always had plenty to do with."
In spite, however, of some instances of this kind which indicate extravagance, the general trend in culinary guide-books of the day is towards economy. Tracts, pamphlets, octavos, and quartos are published, giving directions for preparing a dinner for five persons at a cost of twenty-five cents, of fifty cents, of seventy-five cents, of a dollar. The Sunday and weekly newspapers have columns devoted to the same theme, and the countless household magazines with which the reading public is almost snowed under all spare a corner for the discussion of the same momentous topic. It may be noted, en passant, that this sudden interest in dietetics is responsible for many of the literary aspirations now current. Women who had never thought of meddling with pen and ink except in their private correspondence rush into print for the purpose of describing a dinner which will cost only twenty-seven and two-thirds cents, and, encouraged by success in one or two efforts of this kind, fondly imagine themselves possessed of talents which ought to bring them in a competency.