Their meat dishes were often garnished with little potato-balls, cooked à la Parisienne, or simply boiled. This seemed extravagant; but as a French vegetable-cutter only costs twenty-five cents, and the balls can be cut very rapidly—all the parings boiled and mashed serving another time as potato-cakes—there was nothing wasted, and little time lost.
In short, this household (and it is a sample of nearly all French families of limited means) lived well on little more than many an American family would throw away.
Let me give five bills of fare of their dinners, the second of which is partly prepared from the remains of the first day:
Beef soup (soup bone), 10 cents.
Veal blanquette and boiled potatoes (knuckle of veal), 15 cents.
Salad of sliced tomatoes, 2 or 3 cents.
Boiled rice, with a border of stewed small pears (green, or of common variety), 10 cents.
Onion or bean soup, 5 cents.
Fish (en matelote), 15 cents.
Croquettes (made of the remains of the cold beef-soup meat, and rice), with a tomato sauce.
Salad of cold boiled potatoes.
Fried bread-pudding.
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Potato soup.
Round steak, rolled (page 140), with baked, parboiled onions, 25 cents.
Salad of lettuce.
Apple-fritters, with sirup.
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Tomato soup.
Beef à la mode, with spinach, 40 cents (enough for two dinners).
Salad of potatoes and parsley.
Rice-pudding.
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Noodle soup.
Mutton ragout, with potatoes, 25 cents.
Noodles and stuffed tomatoes.
Cheese omelet.
DIRECTIONS AND EXPLANATIONS.
Boiling.
Fowls or joints should be tied or well skewered into shape before boiling.
Every thing should be gently simmered, rather than fast boiled, in order to be tender. The water should never be allowed to stop simmering before the article is quite done. A pudding is thus entirely ruined.
The kettle should be kept covered, merely raising the cover at times to remove the scum. Boiled fowl, with a white sauce, is a favorite English dish, and very nice it is if properly prepared.