Enter into all their plans of economy,[53-†] and endeavour to make the most of every thing, as well for your own honour as your master’s profit, and you will find that whatever care you take for his profit will be for your own: take care that the meat which is to make its appearance again in the parlour is handsomely cut with a sharp knife, and put on a clean dish: take care of the gravy (see [No. 326]) which is left, it will save many pounds of meat in making sauce for hashes, poultry, and many little dishes.
Many things may be redressed in a different form from that in which they were first served, and improve the appearance of the table without increasing the expense of it.
Cold fish, soles, cod, whitings, smelts, &c. may be cut into bits, and put into escallop shells, with cold oyster, lobster, or shrimp sauce, and bread crumbled, and put into a Dutch oven, and browned like scalloped oysters. ([No. 182].)
The best way TO WARM COLD MEAT is to sprinkle the joint over with a little salt, and put it in a Dutch oven, at some distance before a gentle fire, that it may warm gradually; watch it carefully, and keep turning it till it is quite hot and brown: it will take from twenty minutes to three quarters of an hour, according to its thickness; serve it up with gravy: this is much better than hashing it, and by doing it nicely a cook will get great credit. Poultry ([No. 530*]), FRIED FISH (see [No. 145]), &c. may be redressed in this way.
Take care of the liquor you have boiled poultry or meat in; in five minutes you may make it into EXCELLENT SOUP. See [obs.] to Nos. [555] and [229], [No. 5], and the [7th chapter] of the Rudiments of Cookery.
No good housewife has any pretensions to rational economy who boils animal food without converting the broth into some sort of soup.
However highly the uninitiated in the mystery of soup-making may elevate the external appendage of his olfactory organ at the mention of “POT LIQUOR,” if he tastes [No. 5], or [218], [555], &c. he will be as delighted with it as a Frenchman is with “potage à la Camarani,” of which it is said “a single spoonful will lap the palate in Elysium; and while one drop of it remains on the tongue, each other sense is eclipsed by the voluptuous thrilling of the lingual nerves!!”
Broth of fragments.—When you dress a large dinner, you may make good broth, or portable soup ([No. 252]), at very small cost, by taking care of all the trimmings and parings of the meat, game, and poultry, you are going to use: wash them well, and put them into a stewpan, with as much cold water as will cover them; set your stewpan on a hot fire; when it boils, take off all the scum, and set it on again to simmer gently; put in two carrots, two turnips, a large onion, three blades of pounded mace, and a head of celery; some mushroom parings will be a great addition. Let it continue to simmer gently four or five hours; strain it through a sieve into a clean basin. This will save a great deal of expense in buying gravy-meat.
Have the DUST, &c. removed regularly once in a fortnight, and have your KITCHEN CHIMNEY swept once a month; many good dinners have been spoiled, and many houses burned down, by the soot falling: the best security against this, is for the cook to have a long birch-broom, and every morning brush down all the soot within reach of it. Give notice to your employers when the contents of your COAL-CELLAR are diminished to a chaldron.
It will be to little purpose to procure good provisions, unless you have proper utensils[55-*] to prepare them in: the most expert artist cannot perform his work in a perfect manner without proper instruments; you cannot have neat work without nice tools, nor can you dress victuals well without an apparatus appropriate to the work required. See 1st page of [chapter 7] of the Rudiments of Cookery.