Cooking schools and classes, chafing-dish lectures and the cuisine corner of the woman’s page have been active for more than a third of a century to bring our average American housewife to what old-time revivalists called “a realizing sense” of the deficiencies of the national kitchen, and by the rugged road of conviction to conversion from the old way to the new, which is the better. There is no dearth of missionaries, no lack of machinery.
Much of the work done by these is surface culture—scratching and smoothing over the soil, cleansing, to a polish, cup and platter. Curled parsley, beets, carrots and turnips, carved into leaves, stars and flowers, and fantastic confections of tissue paper and meringue—do not cheat veterans in gastronomics into relish of the ill-prepared dishes they adorn. Experiences of this sort have something to do with the contempt felt by many competent cooks for culinary esthetics. They class everything that looks in this direction under the head of “French cookery,” a synonym with them for flash and frippery.
I grant that to the hale appetite of the lover of “plain roast and boiled” of joints, haunches and rounds—the man who can digest mountains of fried “griddles,” and, in the bottom of his stomachic conscience, prefers corned beef and cabbage to broiled sweetbreads and mushrooms—his steak, or rare roast, or sugar-cured ham, or choice cut of cod, tastes no better for the garnish of cress, nasturtium or lemon. I once saw a millionaire “high-liver” toss aside the green sprays with the declaration that he “liked to have victuals and weeds sent in upon separate dishes.” After clearing the trou—trencher!—he proceeded to feed.
In the feeder’s very teeth I maintain that food daintily served tastes better than the same when set before us with no regard to seemliness. If slender appetites are to be coaxed into action, the study of pleasing effects becomes an obligation.
DINNER SWEETS OF ALL SORTS
PIES
Pastry
Have all ingredients very cold. Into a pound of flour chop three-quarters of a cup of firm, cold butter. When the flour is like a coarse powder stir into it a small cupful of iced water. With a spoon mix together, then turn upon a floured pastry-board, roll out quickly and lightly, fold and roll out again. Set the pastry on the ice until chilled through, roll out and line a pie-dish with it. Before filling the pastry shell with fruit, or other material of which the pie is to be made, wash over the lower crust with the unbeaten white of an egg, and, when the filling is put in, set the pie immediately in an oven that is as hot at the bottom as at the top. The oven must be hot and steady.
A good puff paste
Into a half-pound of flour chop six ounces of firm, cold butter, and, when like a coarse powder, wet with a small cupful of iced water. Stir to a paste and turn upon a chilled board. Roll out quickly and lightly, handling as little as possible. Fold and roll out three times, then set on the ice for several hours before making into pies. Always bake pastry in a very hot oven.