Try out chop bones and other meat taken from the plates for soap fat.
Tough Pieces. Chop the tough ends of steak very fine, season, and form them into balls or cakes, sauté or broil them, and serve for breakfast or luncheon (see “Hamburg steaks,” page [151]).
Small Pieces, Cold Meats. Cut pieces of white meat into dice or strips, mix it with a white sauce, turn it into a flat dish, make a border of pointed croûtons, sprinkle over the top a little chopped parsley, and garnish with hard-boiled egg; or mix the meat with aspic jelly in a mold and serve cold with salad.
Mix dark meats of any kind with a brown sauce, and garnish with lettuce leaves, hard-boiled eggs, and croûtons. Any kind of cold meat may be chopped and used in an omelet, or combined with rice and tomatoes for a scallop. For cold mutton see “Ragoût of Mutton” (page [165]).
Eggs. Save egg-shells to clear soup, jellies, or coffee. Boiled eggs that are left return to the fire and boil them hard to use for garnishing, to mix with salad, or to make golden toast (page [270]) for luncheon. Cold poached eggs can be boiled hard and used in the same way. Cold fried or scrambled eggs can be chopped and mixed with minced meat, and will much improve it.
When an egg is opened for the white alone, drop the yolk carefully into a cup, cover the cup with a wet cloth, and keep it in the ice-box until wanted. When whites are left over make a small angel cake (page [467]), angel ice cream (page [497]), kisses (page [475]), or cover any dessert with meringue, or serve a meringue sauce (page [448]) with the next dessert, or make a meat soufflé without yolks (page [190]).
General Odds and Ends. Everything too small to utilize in other ways put in the soup pot, and from this can be drawn sauces and seasoning for minces, scallops, etc., that will often be better than specially prepared stock.
Cereals. Oatmeal, hominy, cracked wheat, and other cereals which are left over can be added next day to the fresh stock, for they are improved by long boiling and do not injure the new supply, or such as is left can be molded in large or in small forms, and served cold with cream, or milk and sugar. In warm weather cereals are nicer cold than hot. Cold hominy and mush, cut into squares and fried, so that a crisp crust is formed on both sides,—also hominy or farina, rolled into balls and fried,—are good used in place of a vegetable or as a breakfast dish.
Any of the cereals make good pancakes, or a small amount added to the ordinary pancake batter improves it.
Cold rice can be added to soup, or made into croquettes, or used in a scallop dish, or mixed with minced meat and egg and fried like an omelet. Cold rice pudding can be cut into rounded pieces with a spoon and served again on a flat dish; this may be covered with whipped cream or flavored whipped white of egg.