Chapter 7
Section 7 of A Handbook of Cookery for a Small House. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Betty B. A Handbook of Cookery for a Small House by Jesse Conrad. Entrees and Savories, Part 2. 27. Ragout of Veal. Cut into small pieces 2 pounds of neck of veal. Put into a saucepan and cover with
cold water and a teaspoonful of salt, a little pepper, 1 piece of loaf sugar, 6 spring onions, bottoms and green tops, 6 small carrots split in 2, and 1 small turnip. Stew gently for 1 and 1-2 hours, adding a little water if required. Half an hour before serving, add a half pint of fresh green peas, a pinch of mixed herbs, half a glass of white wine. Thicken with a little smoothly mixed
flour and water, stirred into the veal. Best served in the earthenware saucepan with a napkin tied round it. If green peas are not available, a little patina rice may be used after it's been washed through several waters or a few cut scarlet runners. Cold veal may be treated as above, but in that case a little good meat juice must be used instead of the extra half pint of water. 28. Rump steak
and kidney pie with mushrooms or truffles. For a pie for four persons, take a pound and a half of rump steak and half an ox kidney. Cut into nice pieces with a little fat but no gristle. Put it all in a deep pie dish with pepper and salt and the contents of a small bottle of truffles cut in small pieces or 8 mushrooms. Flour rather thickly over the top and add a little water to the side of
the dish so that it runs underneath the meat and half a teaspoonful of mushroom ketchup if with mushrooms. Cover with another smaller pie dish which should allow a small opening at the sides so as to let the steam escape. Cook for three-quarters of an hour in a brisk oven and meantime rub a quarter of a pound of fresh butter or lard into two and a half breakfast cupfuls of
self-raising flour with a little salt and mix with a little milk to an elastic paste. When ready, take the dish out of the oven and stir the meat and the flour together. The pie will then be ready for the crust. Butter the rim of the dish while still hot. Lay a strip of paste all around and moisten with a little milk to make the top crust adhere. Bake in a quick oven for half an hour.
It is important that the meat should be cooked first as otherwise it will either be underdone or the crust will be overcooked. Do not forget to make a hole in the middle of the top crust before baking. 29. Kidney saute. Remove the fatty center of an ox kidney. Cut the kidney into thin slices and dice it on a pastry board on which has been poured a good handful of flour. Rub the diced
kidney well into the flour so that it looks all white. Put it into a stone saucepan, add pepper and salt, a little scraped carrot, one good-sized onion stuck with three cloves, and cover with cold water. Stir the kidney so as to remove all the flour into the water, which should look like milk. Cook in a quick oven for two hours. This might be cooked in the morning and made warm in
the evening. Remove onion before serving. 30. Kidney saute another way. Take one or two sheep's kidneys, skin and split them. Lay each half flat side down in a frying pan with an ounce of butter or dripping, heat it. Place on a quick fire, add one or two slices of onion, cut thin, pepper and salt. Remove from the fire and cut the kidneys up. Place again on the stove, add a teaspoonful of bovril, a little
Worcestershire sauce, one teaspoonful. Mix smoothly a dessert spoonful of flour with water. Add half a breakfast cup of hot water to the kidneys. Stir and keep boiling 20 minutes and serve hot, either alone or within a wall of freshly mashed potatoes. 31. Kidneys in onions. To those who are fond of an onion, there is hardly a more appetizing dish than onions prepared in the following manner. Take
four or five decent sized sound onions. Small Spanish are the best. Cut rather a deep slice off the top after removing the outer skin. You can then take the center out. Say you remove half the onion, leaving about four of the thicknesses. Have ready two or three sheep's kidneys prepared in the following manner. Skin each kidney and split it. Sprinkle lightly pepper and salt on the split
side. Put into a frying pan, a little dripping or butter. Lay the kidney flat side first in the boiling fat. Place the pan on a quick fire and fry lightly, turning twice. As onion requires a lot of cooking, it is best to put the prepared onion cases into boiling dripping and cook in a quick oven 25 minutes. Then place the kidney, half in each onion, and replace in the oven in the baking tin
another 10 minutes. Care should be taken not to overcook the kidney so that the gravy runs into the onion as it finishes cooking. Serve very hot in a stone dish. 32. Jugged hair. Cut the hair up, rub the pieces in flour, put one and a half ounces of butter into a large enameled frying pan, and lightly fry the hair for 10 minutes. Then place your hair in a stone jar with one Spanish onion stuck
with three cloves, some salt, a piece of low sugar, and a little finely scraped carrot. Add two glasses of port wine and a little Worcestershire sauce. Cover the jar with a plate and stand in a quick oven for three hours. Dish into a flat dish, garnish all round with half slices of lemon, and serve with currant jelly. 33. Yorkshire pudding for baked beef or mutton. Separate the white of one egg
from the yolk. Put the latter in an earthenware bowl and stir it lightly. Beat the white separately with a freshly clean knife in a plate. It is most important that a perfectly clean knife be used or the white of the egg will not rise. Beat it to a stiff froth and stir it into the yolk of the egg, and only afterwards add half a tea cupful of milk and a little pepper and salt. Stir in a
breakfast cupful of self-raising flour vigorously and work it perfectly smooth. If it is not then quite the consistency of very thick cream, add a little milk to make it so. Turn into a baking tin and bake under the meat, which would be already three parts cooked then. Do not forget to turn most of the fat out of the baking tin before the pudding is poured in. Three-quarters of an hour is the time
required for cooking a Yorkshire pudding. 34. Welsh rarebit. Take half a pound of good cheddar cheese, not too strong, and cut it into a flat meat dish with pepper and salt. Pour over a sufficient quantity of bottled ale to fill the dish. Stand in a quick oven and bake until all the cheese is melted. Have ready some butter toast about a quarter of an inch thick. Remove the cheese from the dish, leaving
the beer, and spread the cheese lightly on the toast. Replace in the oven and serve very hot. The object of the beer is to flavor the cheese only, and if the cheese were to be cooked in a frying pan over the fire, it would absorb all the beer and be rendered very bitter. 35. Spaghetti. Put half a pound of spaghetti into boiling water with a good pinch of salt. If you carefully put the spaghetti
upright in the saucepan and give them a twist, they won't break. Boil gently, being careful to add boiling water as needed to keep the same amount. It is important never to add cold water, as that chills the spaghetti and causes it to become tough. Cook for one hour and meantime prepare the following sauce. Put six good-sized tomatoes cut in quarters into a saucepan, or a pudding basin may be
used in the oven, with one large round of Spanish onion chopped fine, three pieces of low sugar, a pinch of salt, and pepper, half a bottle of tomato ketchup, and an ounce of fresh butter. Stew gently on the side of the stove for three-quarters of an hour. Strain all the water off the spaghetti with the lid into a salad bowl or good-sized dish. Stir in the tomato sauce, which has been
strained thoroughly, and serve very hot with some grated cheese in another dish. 36. Risotto. Remove all the fat from a pint of good clare beef or mutton stock and put it on the stove to boil. Wash a teacup full of Patna rice through four waters and put it into the boiling stock and cook for half an hour gently. Chop two thin rashers of bacon into small pieces, add
half an onion chopped very finely, and put this into the stock while it is boiling. Care should be taken. If the stock is already salted, that very little salt is added. Drain the rice dry and have ready a teacup full of Parmesan and Gruyere cheese, grated, and some good tomato sauce made with skinned tomatoes. Stir the cheese and tomato sauce into the rice in the saucepan and have ready
some stone or metal molds rinsed in cold water but not wiped. Put some of the mixture into each mold and place in a cold place for about two hours. Then put the molds into the oven with a dish over the top and serve when hot. 37. Cauliflower au gratin. Remove all the stump of a young cauliflower and boil for 15 minutes in a large saucepan with a pinch of salt and a small pinch of soda.
When cooked, turn it into a colander and break it into small pieces, not too small, on a flat pie dish. Take one and a half tablespoons of butter, have ready half a pint of milk boiling. Turn the boiling milk into the paste and stir well till quite smooth. Put it back in the saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir four good tablespoons of grated Gruyere cheese into the sauce and turn it over the
cauliflower in the dish. Dust a little more cheese over it and stand the dish in a quick oven for 10 minutes to brown. The browning can also be done with the salamander. 38. Macaroni au gratin. Have ready three pints of freshly boiling water with a good pinch of salt in a saucepan for about half a pound of straight macaroni, which must be broken up to a convenient size. Macaroni should
always be put straight into boiling water. Boil gently for 40 minutes to an hour, but be careful not to let it boil over, adding boiling water from time to time as the macaroni swells. Strain the water off with the lid and stir into the saucepan a breakfast cupful of grated Gruyere cheese. A little grated Parmesan cheese is a great improvement. Add it to the Gruyere. Turn into a stone dish. Dust
a little more cheese over the top. Put a piece of butter about the size of two good-sized walnuts and place in a quick oven to brown slightly. 39. Marrow toast. Take some good marrow bones and tie the ends in freshly scalded muslin after previously salting slightly the end where the marrow is. Put them into a large saucepan of boiling water with a cut onion. Boil for one hour and then
take the bones out. Remove the muslin and take the marrow out onto a plate and season with a little pepper and salt and spread on hot buttered toast. Replace in the oven for a few minutes and serve very hot. This makes a good savory dish. End of section 7.
