The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual Part 8

If the palate becomes dull by repeated tasting, one of the best ways of refres.h.i.+ng it, is to masticate an apple, or to wash your mouth well with milk.

The incessant exercise of tasting, which a cook is obliged to submit to during the education of her tongue, frequently impairs the very faculty she is trying to improve. "'Tis true 'tis pity and pity 'tis," (says a _grand gourmand_) "'tis true, her too anxious perseverance to penetrate the mysteries of palatics may diminish the _tact_, exhaust the power, and destroy the _index_, without which all her labour is in vain."

Therefore, a sagacious cook, instead of idly and wantonly wasting the excitability of her palate, on the sensibility of which her reputation and fortune depends, when she has ascertained the relative strength of the flavour of the various ingredients she employs, will call in the balance and the measure to do the ordinary business, and endeavour to preserve her organ of taste with the utmost care, that it may be a faithful oracle to refer to on grand occasions, and new compositions.[53-*] Of these an ingenious cook may form as endless a variety, as a musician with his seven notes, or a painter with his colours: read chapters 7 and 8 of the Rudiments of Cookery.

Receive as the highest testimonies of your employers' regard whatever observations they may make on your work: such admonitions are the most _unequivocal proofs_ of their desire to make you thoroughly understand their taste, and their wish to retain you in their service, or they would not take the trouble to teach you.

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 sh.e.l.ls, 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 has.h.i.+ng 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 a 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs 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 sc.u.m, 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.

In those houses where the cook enjoys the confidence of her employer so much as to be intrusted with the care of the store-room, which is not very common, she will keep an exact account of every thing as it comes in, and insist upon the weight and price being fixed to every article she purchases, and occasionally will (and it may not be amiss to jocosely drop a hint to those who supply them that she does) _reweigh_ them, for her own satisfaction, as well as that of her employer, and will not trust the key of this room to any one; she will also keep an account of every thing she takes from it, and manage with as much consideration and frugality as if it was her own property she was using, endeavouring to disprove the adage, that "PLENTY makes _waste_," and remembering that "wilful waste makes woful want."

The honesty of a cook must be above all suspicion: she must obtain, and (in spite of the numberless temptations, &c. that daily offer to bend her from it) preserve a character of spotless integrity and useful industry,[55-+] remembering that it is the fair price of INDEPENDENCE, which all wish for, but none without it can hope for; only a fool or a madman will be so silly or so crazy as to expect to reap where he has been too idle to sow.

Very few modern-built town-houses have a proper place to preserve provisions in. The best subst.i.tute is a HANGING SAFE, which you may contrive to suspend in an airy situation; and when you order meat, poultry, or fish, tell the tradesman when you intend to dress it: he will then have it in his power to serve you with provision that will do him credit, which the finest meat, &c. in the world will never do, unless it has been kept a proper time to be ripe and tender.

If you have a well-ventilated larder in a shady, dry situation, you may make still surer, by ordering in your meat and poultry such a time before you want it as will render it tender, which the finest meat cannot be, unless hung a proper time (see 2d chapter of the Rudiments of Cookery), according to the season, and nature of the meat, &c.; but always, as "_les bons hommes de bouche de France_" say, till _it is_ "_a.s.sez mortifiee_."

Permitting this process to proceed to a certain degree renders meat much more easy of solution in the stomach, and for those whose digestive faculties are delicate, it is of the utmost importance that it be attended to with the greatest nicety, for the most consummate skill in the culinary preparation of it will not compensate for the want of attention to this. (Read _obs._ to No. 68.) Meat that is _thoroughly roasted_, or _boiled_, eats much shorter and tenderer, and is in proportion more digestible, than that which is _under_-done.

You will be enabled to manage much better if your employers will make out a BILL OF FARE FOR THE WEEK on the Sat.u.r.day before: for example, for a family of half a dozen--

_Sunday_ Roast beef (No. 19), and my pudding (No. 554).

_Monday_ Fowl (Nos. 16. 58), what was left of my pudding fried, and warmed in the Dutch oven.

_Tuesday_ Calf's head (No. 10), apple-pie.

_Wednesday_ Leg of mutton (No. 1), or (No. 23).

_Thursday_ Do. broiled or hashed (No. 487), or (No. 484,) pancakes.

_Friday_ Fish (No. 145), pudding (No. 554).

_Sat.u.r.day_ Fish, or eggs and bacon (No. 545).

It is an excellent plan to have certain things on certain days. When your butcher or poulterer knows what you will want, he has a better chance of doing his best for you; and never think of ordering BEEF FOR ROASTING except for Sunday.

When the weather or season[56-*] is very unfavourable for keeping meat, &c. give him the choice of sending that which is in the best order for dressing; _i. e._ either ribs or sirloin of beef, or leg, loin, or neck of mutton, &c.

Meat in which you can detect the slightest trace of putrescency, has reached its highest degree of tenderness, and should be dressed without delay; but before this period, which in some kinds of meat is offensive, the due degree of inteneration may be ascertained, by its yielding readily to the pressure of the finger, and by its opposing little resistance to an attempt to bind the joint.

Although we strongly recommend that animal food should be hung up in the open air, till its fibres have lost some degree of their toughness; yet, let us be clearly understood also to warn you, that if kept till it loses its natural sweetness, it is as detrimental to health, as it is disagreeable to the smell and taste.

IN VERY COLD WEATHER, bring your meat, poultry, &c. into the kitchen, early in the morning, if you roast, boil, or stew it ever so gently and ever so long; if it be _frozen_, it will continue tough and unchewable.

Without very watchful attention to this, the most skilful cook in the world will get no credit, be she ever so careful in the management of her spit or her stewpan.

The time meat should hang to be tender, depends on the heat and humidity of the air. If it is not kept long enough, it is hard and tough; if too long, it loses its flavour. It should be hung where it will have a thorough air, and be dried with a cloth, night and morning, to keep it from damp and mustiness.

Before you dress it, wash it well; if it is roasting beef, _pare off the outside_.

If you fear meat,[57-*] &c. will not keep till the time it is wanted, _par_-roast or _par_-boil it; it will then keep a couple of days longer, when it may be dressed in the usual way, only it will be done in rather less time.

"In Germany, the method of keeping flesh in summer is to steep it in Rhenish wine with a little sea-salt; by which means it may be preserved a whole season."--BOERHAAVE'S Academical Lectures, translated by J.

Nathan, 8vo. 1763, p. 241.

The cook and the butcher as often lose their credit by meat being dressed too fresh, as the fishmonger does by fish that has been kept too long.

Dr. Franklin in his philosophical experiments tells us, that if game or poultry be killed by ELECTRICITY it will become tender in the twinkling of an eye, and if it be dressed immediately, will be delicately tender.

During the _sultry_ SUMMER MONTHS, it is almost impossible to procure meat that is not either tough, or tainted. The former is as improper as the latter for the unbraced stomachs of relaxed valetudinarians, for whom, at this season, poultry, stews, &c., and vegetable soups, are the most suitable food, when the digestive organs are debilitated by the extreme heat, and profuse perspiration requires an increase of liquid to restore equilibrium in the const.i.tution.

I have taken much more pains than any of my predecessors, to teach the young cook how to perform, in the best manner, the common business of her profession. Being well grounded in the RUDIMENTS of COOKERY, she will be able to execute the orders that are given her, with ease to herself, and satisfaction to her employers, and send up a delicious dinner, with half the usual expense and trouble.

I have endeavoured to lessen the labour of those who wish to be thoroughly acquainted with their profession; and an attentive perusal of the following pages will save them much of the irksome drudgery attending an apprentices.h.i.+p at the stove: an ordeal so severe, that few pa.s.s it without irreparable injury to their health;[58-*] and many lose their lives before they learn their business.

To encourage the best performance of the machinery of mastication, the cook must take care that her dinner is not only well cooked, but that each dish be sent to table with its proper accompaniments, in the neatest and most elegant manner.

Remember, to excite the good opinion of the _eye_ is the first step towards awakening the _appet.i.te_.

Decoration is much more rationally employed in rendering a wholesome, nutritious dish inviting, than in the elaborate embellishments which are crowded about trifles and custards.

Endeavour to avoid _over_-dressing roasts and boils, &c. and _over_-seasoning soups and sauces with salt, pepper, &c.; it is a fault which cannot be mended.

If your roasts, &c. are a little _under_-done, with the a.s.sistance of the stewpan, the gridiron, or the Dutch oven, you may soon rectify the mistake made with the spit or the pot.

If _over_-done, the best juices of the meat are evaporated; it will serve merely to distend the stomach, and if the sensation of hunger be removed, it is at the price of an indigestion.

The chief business of cookery is to render food easy of digestion, and to facilitate nutrition. This is most completely accomplished by plain cookery in perfection; i. e. neither _over_ nor _under_-done.