The Art of Entertaining Part 12

Why not a pound-and-a-quarter trout? The recipe begins later on: after some pork has been fried in the pan, throw in your carefully cleaned fish, no matter what their weight may be, turn them three times most carefully. Send to table without adding or detracting from their flavour.

This is for the sportsman who cooks his trout himself by a wood fire in the woods; and no other man ever arrives at just that perfect way of cooking a trout. When the trout has come down from cooling springs to the hot city, it requires a seasoning of salt, pepper, and lemon-juice.

Frogs--frogs as cooked in France, _grenouilles a la poulette_--are a most luxurious delicacy. They are very expensive and are to be bought at the _marche St. Honore_. As only the hind legs are eaten, and the price is fifteen francs a dozen, they are not often seen. We might have them in this country for the catching. Of their tenderness, succulence, and delicacy of flavour there can be no question. They are clean feeders, and undoubtedly wholesome.

Sala, writing in "Breakfasts in Bed" does not praise _bouillabaisse_.

He declares that the cooks plunge a rolling-pin in tallow and then with it stir that _pot pourri_ of red mullet, tomatoes, red pepper, red Burgundy, oil, and garlic to which Thackeray has written so delightful a lyric. "Against fish soups, turtle, terrapin, oyster, and bisque," he says, "I can offer no objection." The Italians again have their good _zuppa marinara_, which is not all like the _bouillabaisse_, and the Russians make a very appetizing fish pottage which is called _batwina_, the stock of which is composed of _kraus_, or half-brewed barley beer, and oil. Into this is put the fish known as the sterlet of the Volga, or the sa.s.sina of the Gulf of Finland, together with bay leaves, pepper, and lumps of ice. _Batwina_ is better than _bouillabaisse_.

THE SALAD.

"Epicurean cooks shall sharpen with cloyless sauce the appet.i.te."

Of all the vegetables of which a salad can be made, lettuce is the greatest favourite. That lettuce which is _panachee_, says the _Almanach des Gourmands_, that is, when it has streaked or variegated leaves, is truly _une salade de distinction_. We prefer in this country the fine, crisp, solid little heads, of which the leaves are bright green. The milky juices of the lettuce are soporific, like opium seeds, and predispose the eater to sleep, or to repose of temper and to philosophic thought.

After, or before, lettuce comes the fragrant celery, always an appetizer. Then the tomato, a n.o.ble fruit as sweet in smell as Araby the blest, which makes an ill.u.s.trious salad. Its medicinal virtue is as great as its gastronomical goodness. It is the friend of the well, for it keeps them well, and the friend of the sick, for it brings them back to the lost sheep-folds of hygeia.

There are water-cress and dandelion, common mustard, boiled asparagus, and beet root, potato salad, beloved of the Germans, the cuc.u.mber, most fragrant and delicate of salads, a salad of eggs, of lobsters, of chickens, sausages, herrings, and sardines. Anything that is edible can be made into a salad, and a vegetable mixture of cold French beans, boiled peas, carrots and potato, onion, green peppers, and cuc.u.mber, covered with fresh mayonnaise dressing, is served ice cold in France, to admiration.

To learn to make a salad is the most important of qualifications for one who would master the art of entertaining.

Here is a good recipe for the dressing:--

Two yolks of eggs, a teaspoonful of salt, and three of mustard,--it should have been mixed with hot water before using,--a little cayenne pepper, a spoonful of vinegar; pound the eggs and mix well. Common vinegar is preferred by many, but some like tarragon vinegar better. Stir this gently for a minute, then add two full spoonfuls of best oil of Lucca.

"A sage for the mustard, a miser for the vinegar, a spendthrift for the oil, and a madman to stir" is the old saw.

Add a teaspoonful of brown sugar, half a dozen little spring onions cut fine, three or four slices of beet root, the white of the egg, not cut too small, and then the lettuce itself, which should be torn from the head stock by the fingers.

Some French salad dressers say _fatiguez la salade_, which means, shake it, mix it, and bruise it; but the modern arrangement is to delicately cover the leaves with the dressing, and not to bruise them.

This is an old-fashioned salad.

An excellent salad of cold boiled potatoes cut into slices about an inch thick, may be made with thin slices of fresh beet root, and onions cut very thin, and very little of them, with the same dressing, minus the sugar.

Francatelli speaks of a Russian salad with lobster, a German salad with herrings, and an Italian salad with potatoes; but these come more under the head of the mayonnaises than of the simpler salads.

The cuc.u.mber comes next to lettuce, as a purely vegetable salad, and is most desirable with fish. Dr. Johnson declared that the best thing you could do with a cuc.u.mber, after you had prepared it with much care and thought, was to throw it out of the window; but Dr. Johnson, although he could write Ra.s.selas and a dictionary, knew nothing about the art of entertaining. He was an eater, a glutton, a _gourmand_, not a _gourmet_. How should he dare to speak against a cuc.u.mber salad?

Endive and chiccory should be added to the list of vegetable salads.

Neither of them is good, however.

An old-fashioned French salad is made thus: "Chop three anchovies, an onion, and some parsley small; put them in a bowl with two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, one of oil, a little mustard and salt. When well mixed, add some slices of cold roast beef not exceeding two or three inches long. Make three hours before eating. Garnish with parsley." This is by no means a bad way of serving up yesterday's roast beef.

The etymology of salad is said to be "sal," or something salted.

Shakspeare mentions the salad five or six times. In Henry VI., Jack Cade, in his extremity of peril when hiding from his pursuers in Ida's garden, says he has climbed over the wall to see if he could eat gra.s.s, or pick a salad, which he says "will not come amiss to cool a man's stomach in the hot weather." In Antony and Cleopatra, the pa.s.sionate queen speaks of her "salad days" when she was "green in judgment, cool in blood." This means, however, something raw or unripe. Hamlet uses the word with the more ancient orthography of "sallet," and says in his speech to the players, "I remember when there were no sallets in these times to make them savoury." By this he meant there was nothing piquant in them, no Attic salt. One author, not so ill.u.s.trious, claims that the n.o.blest prerogative of man is that he is a cooking animal, and a salad eater.

"The lion is generous as a hero, the rat artful as a lawyer, the dove gentle as a lover, the beaver is a good engineer, the monkey is a clever actor, but none of them can make a salad. The wisest sheep never thought of culling and testing his gra.s.ses, seasoning them with thyme or tarragon, softening them with oil, exasperating them with mustard, sharpening them with vinegar, spiritualizing them with a suspicion of onions, in that no sheep has made a salad. Their only sauce is hunger.

"Salads," says this pleasant writer, "were invented by Adam and Eve,--probably made of pomegranates as to-day in Spain."

Of all salads, lobster is the most picturesque and beautiful. Its very scarlet is a trumpet tone to appet.i.te. It lies embedded in green leaves like a magnificent tropical cactus. A good dressing for lobster is essence of anchovy, mushroom ketchup, hard-boiled eggs, and a little cream.

Mashed potatoes, rubbed down with cream, or simply mixed with vinegar, are no bad subst.i.tute for eggs, and impart to the salad a new and not unpleasing flavour. French beans, the most delicate of vegetables, give the salad eater a new sensation. A dressing can be mixed in the following proportions: "Four mustard ladles of mustard, four salt ladles of salt. Three spoonfuls of best Italian oil, twelve of vinegar, three unboiled eggs. All are to be carefully rubbed together." This is for those who like sours and not sweets. An old French _emigre_, who had to make his living in England during the time of the Regency, a man of taste and refinement, an epicurean Marquis, carried to n.o.blemen's houses his mahogany box full of essences, spices, and condiments, and made his salad in this way: he chopped up three anchovies with a little shallot and some parsley; these he threw into a bowl with a little mustard and salt, two tablespoonfuls of oil, and one br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with vinegar. When thoroughly merged he added his lettuce, or celery, or potato, extremely thin, short slices of best Westphalia ham, or the finest roast beef, which he had steeped in the vinegar. He garnished with parsley and a few layers of bacon. This man was called _Le Roi de la salade_.

A cod mayonnaise is a good dish:--

Boil a large cod in the morning. Let it cool; then remove the skin and bones. For sauce put some thick cream in a porcelain sauce-pan and thicken it with corn-flour which has been mixed with cold water. When it begins to boil stir in the beaten yolks of two eggs. As it cools beat it well to prevent it from being lumpy, and when nearly cold stir in the juice of two lemons, a little tarragon vinegar, a pinch of salt, and a _soupcon_ of cayenne pepper. Peel and slice some very ripe tomatoes or cold potatoes, steep them in vinegar with cayenne, pounded ginger, and plenty of salt. Lay these around the fish and cover with cream sauce. The tomatoes and potatoes should be carefully drained before they are placed around the fish.

A salmon covered with a green sauce is a famous dish for a ball supper; indeed, there are thirty or forty salads with a cold fish foundation.

This art of dressing cold vegetables with pepper, salt, oil, and vinegar, should be studied. In France they give you these salads to perfection at the _dejeuner a la fourchette_. Fillippini, of Delmonico's, in his admirable work, "The Table," adds Swedish salad, String Bean Salad, Russian Salad, Salad Macedoine, _Escarolle_, _Doucette_, _Dandelion a la coutoise_, _Baib de Capucine_, Cauliflower salad, and _Salad a l'Italian_. I advise any young housekeeper to buy this book of his, as suggestive. It is too elaborate and learned, however, for practical application to any household except one in which a French cook is kept.

A mayonnaise dressing is a triumph of art when well made:--

A tablespoonful of mustard, one teaspoonful of salt, the yolk of three uncooked eggs, the juice of half a lemon, a quarter of a cupful of b.u.t.ter, a pint of oil, and a cupful of whipped cream. Beat the yolks and dry ingredients until they are very light, with a wooden spoon or with a wire beater. The bowl in which the dressing is being made should be set in a pan of ice water. Add oil, a few drops at a time, until the dressing becomes thick and rather hard. After it has reached this stage the oil can be added more rapidly. When it gets so thick as to be difficult to beat add a little vinegar, then add the juice of the lemon and the whipped cream, and place on ice until desired to be used.

Another dressing can be made more quickly:--

The yolk of a raw egg, a tablespoonful of mixed mustard, one fourth of a teaspoonful of salt, six tablespoonfuls of oil.

Stir the yolk, mustard, and salt together with a fork until they begin to thicken; add the oil gradually, stirring all the time.

An excellent salad dressing is also made by using the yolk of hard-boiled eggs, some cold mashed potatoes well pressed together with a fork, oil, vinegar, mustard, and salt rubbed in, in the proportions of two of oil to one of vinegar.

A salad must be fresh and freshly made, to be good. Never serve a salad the second day; and it is not well to cover a delicate salad with too much mayonnaise. The very heart of the celery or the delicate inner leaves of the lettuce are the best for dinners. The heavy chicken and lobster, cabbage and potato salads, are dishes for lunches and suppers.

The chief employment of a kitchen maid, in France, where a man cook is kept, is to wash the vegetables; and you see her swinging the salad in a wire safe after washing it delicately in fresh water. The care bestowed on these minor morals of cookery, so often wholly neglected, adds the finishing touch to the excellence of a French dinner.

For a green mayonnaise dressing, so much admired on salmon, use a little chopped spinach and finely chopped parsley. The juice from boiled beets can be used to make a fine red dressing. Two of these dishes will make a plain, country lunch-table very nice, and will have an appetizing effect, as has anything that betokens care, forethought, neatness, and taste.

Some people cannot eat oil. Often the best oil cannot be bought in a retired and rural neighbourhood. But an excellent subst.i.tute is fresh b.u.t.ter or clarified chicken-fat, very carefully prepared, and icy cold. The yolks of four raw eggs, one tablespoonful of salt, one of mustard, the juice of a lemon, and a speck of cayenne pepper should be used.

Two drops of onion juice, or a bit of onion sliced, will add great piquancy to salad dressing, if every one likes onion.

I have never tried the following recipe,--I have tried all the others,--but I have heard that it was very good:

Four tablespoonfuls of b.u.t.ter, one of flour, one tablespoonful of salt, one of sugar, one heaping teaspoonful of mustard, a speck of cayenne, one cupful of milk, half a cupful of vinegar, three eggs. Let the b.u.t.ter get hot in a saucepan. Add the flour and stir until smooth, being careful not to brown.

Add the milk and boil up. Place the saucepan in another of hot water. Beat the eggs, salt, pepper, sugar, and mustard together, and add the vinegar. Stir this into the boiling mixture and stir until it thickens like soft custard, which will be about five minutes. Set away to cool, and when cold, bottle and place in the ice-chest. This will keep two weeks.

If one wishes to use prepared mayonnaise it is better to buy that which is sold at the grocers. It has not the charm of a fresh dressing, however, but is rather like those elaborated impromptus which some studied talkers get off.

A very pretty salad can be made of nasturtium-blossoms, b.u.t.tercups, a head of lettuce, and a pint of water-cresses. It is to be covered with the French dressing and eaten immediately.

Asparagus is so good in itself that it seems a shame to dress it as a salad; yet it is very good eaten with oil, vinegar, and salt.

Cauliflower, cold, is delicious as a salad, and can be made very ornamental with a garniture of beet root, which is a good ingredient for a salad of salt codfish, boiled.

Sardine salads are very appetizing for lunch. Arrange a cold salmon or codfish on a bed of lettuce. Split six sardines, remove the bones, and mix them into the dressing. Garnish the whole dish with sardines, and cover with the dressing.