To take the bone from the shoulder, first cut from the inside and take out the shoulder blade, cutting from the inside, avoiding as far as possible cutting through the skin on the outside. The butcher will always do this for you probably, if you tell him about what you want done. First, the shoulder blade is taken out, then the bone which follows down along the leg. After the shoulder blade is taken out put it into a kettle of water, over the fire, and boil it for awhile until you can scrape all the meat off of it. You will have to use it in finishing the dish. After taking out the shoulder blade the cutting must all be done from the inside. There will be two or three places where you may possibly cut through the skin, where it is drawn very close over the bone, but cut as little as possible. When the meat is freshly killed before the skin is dried, you may not always cut through there, but where the skin is dried fast to the bone you will have to. This may seem a slight waste of time, but this dish is desirable for several reasons. In the first place, the bone being entirely taken out you can carve it without any waste whatever and with a great deal of ease. In the next place it gives you a very ornamental dish. In fact, I am going to show you how to make a duck out of it. And as I say, if you get the butcher to do it, it will not make any difference to you if it does take time.
Always in sewing meat or poultry, ladies, take very large stitches, not with fine thread. Use cord, so that you can see where the threads are when the meat is done. Any kind of a large needle will answer for sewing, large enough to carry your cord. Always leave long ends too.
To stuff the meat, season it nicely with pepper and salt and any herb that you are going to use in making stuffing. Sage, of course, would be very good with fat meat; put onion in the stuffing to make it imitate duck. For a force meat of bread, a teaspoonful of chopped onion; fry it in a tablespoonful of butter until it is light brown. While the onion is frying soak a cupful of stale bread in cold water until it is soft, then squeeze out the water. Put the soaked bread with the fried onion, add a teaspoonful of salt, a teaspoonful of any herb that you decide for seasoning, any dried sweet herb, half a saltspoonful of pepper, and stir all these ingredients over the fire until they are scalding hot. Use that force meat for stuffing any kind of meat or poultry. Of course there are a great many ways of making force meats; this is only one, and a very simple one. Another good stuffing for duck or for this dish, if you wish it more closely to imitate duck, would be to increase the quantity of onion—use much more onion, half a cupful of onion, or even more when you want to make onion stuffing. Another way is to use dry bread without cooking, a chopped onion, herbs, butter; some ladies like to put an egg in stuffing. There are a great many different methods of making it. Cold, chopped meat is very nice added to stuffing or dressing.
After the shoulder is stuffed thus, run a needle entirely round the edge in a large, over-hand stitch, so that you can draw it up like a purse; stitches at least an inch and a half long. That draws the edge up. Then take two or three stitches in such a way as to hold the stuffing in. Remember always to leave long ends in tying the cord used in sewing. Then curl the leg up like the neck of a duck and fasten with a cord. After it is prepared like that it is to be put into a pan in the oven, or before a hot fire, and browned quickly on the outside. It may be seasoned after it is browned. There will be a little drippings in the pan; baste it with the drippings; bake it or roast it, allowing, if you want it well done, about twenty minutes to the pound. A shoulder like that will weigh about two pounds and a half or three pounds. It will do in an hour’s time in a pretty quick oven; in an hour and a half in a moderate one. Use no water in the baking pan, because water never can get as hot as the fat outside of the meat. The temperature of the hot fat is higher than the temperature of hot water, and the result of putting water around meat in a baking pan is to draw out the juice. The object is to keep all the juice in the meat. You will always find that there will be drippings enough from any ordinary cut of meat for the purpose of basting. If you have an absolutely lean piece of meat pour about a couple of tablespoonfuls of drippings, or butter, in the baking pan, but no water, and use the drippings for basting. A nice gravy is very easily made from the drippings in the pan. I will tell you about that later. If the meat appears to be baking too quickly, if there is any danger of its burning, put a sheet of buttered paper over it. Baste the meat every fifteen or twenty minutes. You can drench it with flour, just before basting, if you want to. That gives it a rough surface. The flour browns with the fat. If you are basting with water of course the flour would not brown so quickly. I think I have given you good reasons for not basting it with water.
CREAM OF SALMON.
A cupful of boiled salmon separated from the skin and bone and rubbed through a sieve with a potato masher, mixed with a quart of cream soup, gives you cream of salmon. Any of the ladies who have seen cream sauce made will understand the making of the cream soup. Put a slice of salmon that will make a cupful, over the fire in enough boiling water to cover it, with a heaping tablespoonful of salt, and boil it until the flakes separate. That will be perhaps ten minutes. Watch it a little. When the flakes separate drain it, take away the skin and bones and put it into a fine colander or stout wire sieve, and rub it through with a potato masher.
Question. Do you use canned salmon?
Miss Corson. Yes, you can use canned salmon. That is already cooked, and you simply would rub it through the sieve. The fresh salmon is to be boiled in salted water. If you use canned salmon you do not need to boil it. After the salmon is rubbed through the sieve it is called puree or pulp of salmon.
Now to make a quart of cream soup: For each quart of soup put in the sauce pan a heaping tablespoonful of butter, a heaping tablespoonful of flour; put them over the fire and stir them until they are quite smooth. Then begin to add hot milk, half a cupful at a time, stirring each half cupful smoothly with the butter and flour before you add any more, till you have added a quart, or if milk is scarce a pint of milk and a pint of water. If you haven’t any milk at all, a quart of water. That gives you a white soup, if you add simply water; if you add milk it is called cream soup. If you are very fortunate and have lots of cream, in place of some of the milk, use cream, and then you will have genuine cream soup. After the milk or water is all added, then season the soup palatably with salt and pepper—white pepper. I have told you about white pepper. It is to be had at all the grocery stores; it costs no more than black pepper and is very much nicer for any white soup or white sauce. Salt and pepper to taste, and a very little grated nutmeg; a quarter of a saltspoonful, a little pinch of grated nutmeg. After the soup is seasoned stir in the salmon. I have told you already how to prepare the salmon. Stir the soup constantly until it boils for a couple of minutes. By that time you will find that the salmon is stirred smoothly all through it. Then it will be ready to serve, and it is very good. You can use any other kind of fish in the same way, and your soup will take its name from the fish that you use. Halibut or codfish, trout or any fish. Only remember if you want the soup to be white you must use the white part of the fish. For instance, if you had a large dark fish you would want to take off the brown parts and use only the white parts. Otherwise the brown parts of the fish will color the soup. You can use cream soup as the basis for vegetable soups that are very nice. Prepare the vegetables in the same way; boil them, and rub them through a sieve with a potato masher. Then stir them into the cream soup. Use asparagus, celery, cucumbers, green peas, string beans, Jerusalem artichokes,—those little root artichokes,—any vegetable, in fact, varying the quantity of vegetable in this way. You will find that some vegetables will give a much more decided flavor than others. For instance, celery has a very strong flavor, and cucumbers have rather a decided flavor. You want to use enough vegetables to flavor the soup, if it is a white vegetable. If it is a vegetable that has a decided color like carrots, for instance, or beets,—by the way, beets make a delicious soup, and a very pretty one is made with spinach,—you want to use enough to color the soup. The beets, boiled so that all the color is preserved, and then rubbed through a sieve, make a very pretty soup. One of our New York pupils calls it a “pink velvet soup.” Spinach makes a very nice green soup if it is properly boiled. We shall try to get some spinach for one of the lessons. We have puree of spinach on our list, and if we can get any spinach I will show you how to boil it so as to keep its color.