Made-Over Dishes — Story, Setting & Ideas

Produced by Arjan Moraal, David Starner and the Online Distributed

Author of Mrs. Rorer's New Cook Book, Philadelphia Cook Book, Bread and Bread-Making, and other Valuable Works on Cookery.

Revised and Enlarged Edition

Preface Stock Cooked Fish Meat Beef--Uncooked Beef--Cooked Mutton--Uncooked Mutton--Cooked Chicken--Uncooked Chicken--Cooked Game Bread Eggs Potatoes Cold Boiled Cheese Sauces Salads Cereals Vegetables Fruits Sour Milk and Cream

Wise forethought, which means economy, stands as the first of domestic duties. Poverty in no way affects skill in the preparation of food. The object of cooking is to draw out the proper flavor of each individual ingredient used in the preparation of a dish, and render it more easy of digestion. Admirable flavorings are given by the little leftovers of vegetables that too often find their way into the garbage bucket.

Economical marketing does not mean the purchase of inferior articles at a cheap price, but of a small quantity of the best materials found in the market; these materials to be wisely and economically used. Small quantity and no waste, just enough and not a piece too much, is a good rule to remember. In roasts and steaks, however, there will be, in spite of careful buying, bits left over, that, if economically used, may be converted into palatable, sightly and wholesome dishes for the next day's lunch or supper.

Never purchase the so-called tender meat for stews, Hamburg steaks or soups; nor should you purchase a round or shoulder steak for broiling, nor an old chicken for roasting. Select a fowl for a fricassee, a chicken for roasting, and a so-called spring chicken for broiling. Each has its own individual price and place.

Save for stock, every bone, whether beef, mutton, poultry or game, as well as all the juices that are left in the meat carving dishes on the table, and the water in which meats are boiled and in which certain vegetables are boiled. Into this storehouse--for such a stock pot is--will go also the tough ends from the rib roasts, which would become tasteless and dry if roasted; the bits that are taken from the French chops; the bone that is left on the plate from the sirloin steak; and every piece of the carcass left on the general carving plate of all sorts of game and poultry. After the meat has been taken from the roast, these bones will also be used.

In all good cooking there is a constant demand for a half pint or a pint of stock. Brown sauce and tomato sauce, in fact, all meat sauces, are decidedly better made from stock than water, and as it comes to every household without the additional cost of a penny, there is no excuse whatever for being without it. Save the bones collected on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Chicken and veal bones may be kept together; beef, mutton and ham in another lot; one makes a white stock, the other brown. If the quantity is small, put them all together. Crack the bones, put them in the bottom of a large soup kettle, cover with cold water, bring slowly to boiling point and skim. Push the kettle to the back part of the stove, where the stock may simmer for at least three hours, then add an onion into which you have stuck twelve cloves, a bay leaf, a few celery tops, or a little celery seed, and a carrot cut into slices; simmer gently for another hour and strain. Tuesdays and Saturdays are the best days for making stock, as they are the days on which you have long, continuous fires; Tuesdays for ironing purposes; Saturdays for bread baking; in this way you will economize in coal, heat and time.

In making tomato soup, to each pint of tomatoes add a pint of this stock instead of water; or the stock may be simply heated, nicely seasoned and used as clear soup. By adding a little cooked rice or macaroni, you will have a rice or a macaroni soup.

In cream soups, where stock takes the place of water, less milk gives equal, perhaps better, results. For instance, in cream of celery soup, cover the celery with cold stock instead of water, using a quart instead of a pint of water, and then use only a pint of milk, having in the end the same quantity of a much more tasty soup at a less cost. One soon learns that all made-over dishes are more savory where stock is used in place of water. If peas, beans or cabbage are being cooked, this water may be added to that in which beef or mutton has been boiled, the whole reduced carefully by rapid boiling, strained and put aside for use.