You can find green string beans at the provisioner’s yet, or you can get them tinned, as you choose. I shall not presume to advise you as to that, but for the cooking of them I will say a word or two. Boil them till perfectly tender, then drain well and place them in a pan with a tablespoonful or more of fine herbs (minced chives or minced shallot and parsley), with pepper, salt and lemon juice and two ounces of butter; toss them over the fire till the butter is melted and serve.
Perhaps this isn’t the place to go into a discussion of the circumstances that have landed us as a nation at a point where we think we must have turkey on Thanksgiving Day, or be accused of showing a disrespect for the Declaration of Independence. But some time the matter will be attacked by somebody who will spend a decade or so in the Astor Library or the Boston Athenæum to discover who said “turkey” first and where they said it. Evidently it was said in one of those voices that are heard around the world and its echoes have not begun to diminish, so far as my ear can detect, even yet. So turkey it is, I suppose.
Grape Fruit with Rum
But this little talk shall be of the addenda of the dinner. Know what addenda means, don’t you? Well, call them “fixin’s,” then. Nowadays grape fruit is a hard and fast “fixin’” of a Thanksgiving Day dinner. Before the soup it comes on cut in halves with the seeds removed and also all of the white pith in the centre of each half with a pair of sharp scissors. Then by the taste of them it is evident that about an hour before they were put on the table they had a lump of sugar and a teaspoonful of rum put into each half, after which little refection they reposed on the ice till wanted. Don’t go on the principle that if a little rum is good more must be better and try to float the fruit in—that would have been hailed as a rank outrage even by Captain Shaddock himself—but just be content to see how potent a little bit of rum can be in good company.
Grape Fruit Sorbet
Fruit Salad
If you want a grape fruit sorbet, thinking it best to begin your dinner with oysters, you may pick out the pulp with a fork in sizable bits, free from seeds and pith, cover these bits with sherry and with a sprinkling of sugar and freeze. You know the rest—how to serve it and the like. But you may be firm in the conviction that when grape fruit comes to your table it doesn’t make its appearance till dessert. If so, you will allow me to put in just a word, won’t you? The word is to advise you to get the pulp out as recommended for the sorbet, mix with it an equal quantity of Malaga grapes cut in halves with seeds removed, covered with sugar and sherry and iced for three or four hours before serving.
I don’t know whether it is true or not but it seems to me more than likely that the mushroom hunters for science’ sake are doing “us folks” who like good things to eat a kind turn by getting out so many books on the subject of good, bad, and indifferent sorts. At any rate, they are getting to be more plentiful every year and consequently should be lower in price. Thanksgiving Day seems to be a pretty appropriate time for having them. You must spread yourself on that day, even if you live on bread and cheese for the rest of the month. Have them then and by themselves after the table is cleared of the “bird and its fixin’s,” and have them in croquettes.
Of course, you knew just what to have for dinner on Thanksgiving Day, and if perchance you didn’t there were plenty at hand to tell you how the menu should be composed. So just let me advise you how to prepare two or three dishes, to be called Thanksgiving en réchauffée, if it will make things seem any more prosperous to you.
Broiled Turkey Legs