Always save the gravy of roast meat. Having skimmed off the fat, and poured the gravy through a strainer into a jar, cover it closely, and set it away in a refrigerator, or some very cold place, till next day. When cold meat is hashed or otherwise recooked, it is best to do it in its own gravy, and without the addition of water.
Take some cold roast veal, and cut it into small mouthfuls. Put it into a skillet or stew-pan, without a drop of water. Add to it the veal gravy that was left the preceding day, and a small lump of fresh butter. Cover the skillet, and let the hash stew over the fire for half an hour. Then put to it a large table-spoonful of tomata catchup; or more, according to the quantity of meat. One large table-spoonful of catchup will suffice for as much hash as will fill a soup-plate. After the catchup is in, cover the hash, and let it stew half an hour longer. This is the very best way of dressing cold veal for breakfast. Observe that there must be no water about it. Cold roast beef, mutton, or pork, may be hashed in this manner; but hashed veal is best. You may also hash cold poultry, or rabbits, by cutting them in small bits, and stewing them in gravy, adding mushroom catchup instead of tomata.
FRENCH CHICKEN SALAD.—
Take a large, fine, cold fowl, and having removed the skin and fat, cut the flesh from the bones in very small shreds, not more than an inch long. The dressing should not be made till immediately before it goes to table. Have ready half a dozen or more hard-boiled eggs. Cut up the yolks upon a plate, and with the back of a wooden spoon mash them to a paste, adding a small salt-spoonful of salt, rather more of cayenne pepper, and a large tea-spoonful of made mustard. Mix them well together; then add two large table-spoonfuls of salad oil, and one of the best cider vinegar. All these ingredients for the dressing, must be mixed to a fine, smooth, stiff, yellow paste. Lay the shred chicken in a nice even heap, upon the middle of a flat dish, smoothing it, and making it circular or oval with the back of a spoon, and flattening the top. Then cover it thickly and smoothly with the dressing, or paste of seasoned yolk of egg, &c. Have ready a large head of lettuce that has been picked, and washed in cold water; and, cutting up the best parts of it very small, mix the lettuce with a portion of the hard-boiled white of egg minced fine. Lay the chopped lettuce all round the heap of shred chicken, &c. Then ornament the surface with very small bits of boiled red beets, and green pickled cucumbers, cut into slips and dots, and arranged in a pretty pattern upon the yellow ground of the coating that covers the chicken. After taking on your plate a portion of each part of the salad, mix all together before eating it.
Do not use for this, or any other purpose, the violently and disagreeable sharp vinegar that is improperly sold in many of the grocery stores, and is made entirely of chemical acids. Some of these employed for making vinegar, are so corrosive as to be absolutely poisonous. This vinegar can always be known by its very clear transparency, and its excessive pungency, overpowering entirely the taste of every thing with which it is mixed; and also by its entire destitution of the least flavour resembling wine or cider, though it is often sold as "the best white vinegar." You can always have good wholesome vinegar by setting in the sun with the cork loosened, a vessel of cider till it becomes vinegar. In buying a keg of vinegar, it is best to get it of a farmer that makes cider.
NORMANDY SOUP.—
Take four pounds of knuckle of veal. Put it into a soup pot with twenty common-sized onions, and about four quarts of water. Let it simmer slowly for two hours or more. Then put in about one third of a six-penny loaf grated; adding a small tea-spoonful of salt, and not quite that quantity of cayenne pepper. Let it boil two hours longer. Then take out the meat, and press and strain the soup through a large sieve into a broad pan. Measure it, and to every quart of the soup add a pint of cream, and about two ounces of fresh butter divided into four bits, and rolled in flour. Taste the soup, and if you think it requires additional seasoning, add a very little more salt and cayenne. Always be careful not to season soup highly; as it is very easy for those who like them to add more salt and pepper, after tasting it at table.
Put the soup again over the fire, and let it just come to a boil. Then serve it up. These proportions of the ingredients ought to make a tureen-full. This soup is a very fine one for dinner company. The taste of the onions becomes so mild as to be just agreeably perceptible; particularly in autumn when the onions are young and fresh. In cool weather it may be made the day before; but in this case, when done, it must be set on ice, and the cream and butter not put in till shortly before it goes to table.
Never keep soup (or any other article that has been cooked) in a glazed earthen crock or pitcher. The glazing being of lead would render it unwholesome. Its effects have sometimes been so deleterious as really to destroy life.