The cottage kitchen. A collection of practical and inexpensive receipts
.<m,. .mat. ,<ss!». .i«». «iik jsk*. «mi.»tmkiMtK, jsfc m^ ,««* ssws aMfe <d»kM COOEINa SIEECTIONS. BOILED. Soak over night, and boil in a double Itettle with slightly salt water.' Eat from a bowl with milk, or from a plate with butter and sugar. BAKED. One cupful boiled hominy, one and a half tea- spoonfuls of butter, teaspoonful of sugar, a little salt and ihree eggs. Eggs must be beaten very light, yolks and whites separately. Soften with about two cupfuls of milk. Bake in a deep but- tered dish. FRIED. Cut cold boiled hominy in slices and fry in lard or drippings. CROQUETTES. One cupful boiled hominy, one teaspoonful of butter. Stir hard. Moisten with milk and beat to a light paste. Add sugar and a well beaten egg. Shape into balls, dipl into fine cracker crumbs and fry in lard. GRIDDLE CAKES. Two cupfuls boiled hominy, one cup flour, one quart of milk, three eggs, one tfeaspoonful salt, lieat the hominy free from lumps. Add milk, salt, flour, and last eggs. Stir well before bak- ing. MUFFINS. Two cupfiils boiled hominy, three eggsy three cupfuls sour milk, half cupful' butter, two tea- spoonfuls salt, two teaspoonfuls sugar, one Clip flour, one teaspoonful soda. Beat perfectly smooth before baking. ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY Cornell University Gift of Thomas Bass ,r^- . - From Home Bakings, by Edna Evans San Francisco, 1912. Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http ://www. arch i ve . o rg/detai Is/cu31 924085803876 col Mi oi OOi 00= CDs 05 = " The very best, the most sensible, the most practical, the most honest book on this matter of getting up good dinners, and living in a decent, Christian way, that has yet found its way in our household."— Watchman UAo Rkflectoh. COM MON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD. A MANUAL OF PRACTICAL HOUSEWIFERY. By MARION HARI.AND. Ket7 Edition. One volume, 12mo, cloth, . . Price, $1.75 Kitchen Edition, in Oil-Cloth Covers, at same price. TAis edition is printed from new electrotype plates and hound in a new pattern cloth binding, and also in the favorite ^'' Kite fun Edition'''' style. The popularity of this book has increased steadily for the last ten years, and the sale has reached the extraordinary number of Over 100,000 Copies. Many housekeepers will gladly welcome their old friend in a new dress, and renew their copies worn by constant use ; or, as the author herself expresses it, " I hope my fellow-workers will find their old kitchen com- panion in fresh dress, yet more serviceable than before, and that their daughters may, at the close of a second decade, demand new stereotype plates for still another and like this a progressive edition." With the new edition of " Common Hense" the Publishers will issue, in uniform style: THE DINNER YEAR BOOK. One volume, lamo, 720 pp., cloth, or " Kitchen Edition,*' without colored plates $i-75< BREAKFAST, LUNCHEON, AND TEA, One volume, iimo. Cloth, or " Kitchen Edition," $i.7S. Note. — The Dinner Year Book, ivith six colored plates^ illustraiing^ iwenty~ eight subjects, handsomely bound in cloth, will be continued in print at the regular ^ice, $2.25. *4f* For sale ty all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt oj trice, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 743 AND 745 Broadway, New Youk. A. N3B"W EDITION- Uniform with the re-issue of "Common Sense in the Household' THE DINNER YEAR-BOOK. By MARION HARLAND, Author of "Common Sense in the Household," "Breakfast, Luncheon, and Tea," etc., etc. One vol., 12mo, 720 pages, Price, $1.76 Kitchen Edition in Oil-Cloth Covers at same Price, The Dinner Year-Book is, in fts name, happily descriptive of its purposes and char- acter. It occupies a place which, amid all the publications upon cookery — and their name is Legion — has never yet been occupied. The author truly says that there have heen dinner-giving books published, that is books of »?^««f for company dinings, "Little Dinners," for especial occasions, etc., etc. ; but that she has never yet met with a practical directory of this important meal for every day in the year. In this volume she has furnished the programme in all its details, and has superintended the preparation of each dish, proceeding even to the proper manner of serving it at the table. The book has been prepared for the family, for the home of ordinary means, and it has hit the happy line ivhere elegance and economy meet. The most numerous testimonials to the value of Marion Harland's " Common Sense " books, which the publishers have received, both in newspaper notices and in private communications, are to the efifect — always expressed with some astonishment — that the directions of these receipts, actually folloived, produce the prom- ised result. We-cau prophesy the same for the new volume. The purchaser wU find that he has bought what the name purports — The Dinner Year-Book — a practical guide for the purchase of the material and preparation, serving, etc., of the ordinary home dinner for every day of the year. To these are added t'welve company dinners, one for each month, from which a selection can be made — according to the time of the year— equal to any occasion which will be presented -to the housekeeper. This book, however, is not valuable merely as. a directory for dinners appropriate to various seasons. It contains the largest nunxber of receipts for soups, fish, meat, vegetables, entrees of all descriptions, and desserts, ever offered to the American public. The material for this work has been collected with great care, both at home' and abroad, representing the diligent labor of many months. Note. — The original Edition of The Dinner Year Book^ ivith six colored plates, illustrating tiventy-eight subjects^ handsomely bound in cloth, loill he continued in print at the regular price, $2.25. *#* For sale by all booksellers, or ivill he seni^ post or express charges paid^ v^on receipt 0/ the price, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York, THE COTTAGE KITCHEN COMMON 8EN8E IN THE HOUSEHOLD SERIES. The Cottage Kitchen A COLLECTION Practical and Inexpensive Receipts BY MARION HARLAND NEW TOEK CHAKLES SORTBNEE'S SONS 1883 Copyright, 1883, by CHAELES SORIBNEB'S SONS Trow's Printing and Bookbinding Company 201-Z13 Bast Twelfth St, NEW YORK INDEX OF GENERAL SUBJECTS. PAOB Beverages 238 Blanc mange 326 Bread 148 Cake 203 Corn-bread 157 Custards : 216 Clieese-dislies 145 Eggs 78 Griddle-cakes 157 Fisli 89 Fruits, stewed and baked ... 193 Jams and marmalade 194 Jellies and blanc mange 226 PAOE Jellies, fruit 196 Meats 36 Muffins 157 Pic-nic dishes 245 Pickles 197 Porridges 137 Poultry 78 Puddings 166 Salads 84 Sauces for puddings 183 Soups 9 Vegetables 103 FAMILIAE TALKS. Country-boarding 67 Disb-washing 251 Flies 221 Maid-of -all-work 141 Meats 36 Soup and Stock-pot 9 " Kitchenly-Kind " 186 ; Table manners 97 FAMILIAE TAJLK " It is only the really poor and the rich who can afford to marry and go to housekeeping now-a-days," is a saying that is no longer flippant, but so pertinent that wise hu- manitarians look grave with the hearing thereof. To the factory-girl or the seamstress who has been used to " go out to work," a flat in a tenement house furnished with her own chattels, is home. She esteems it a privilege to be allowed to reign over the kingdom of three or four rooms, to take care of the cheap new furniture, and pre- pare three meals a day for herself and the husband who, perhaps, takes his dinner ia a paU. when, he goes forth to his daily labor. The routine of homely tasks arranged by herself is a light cross compared with the stem necessity of rising before sunrise on winter mornings, breasting evening storms, and toiling for ten hours of broLhng sum- mer days under the eye of an overlooker in a temperature where sickly girls faint every hour, and the most robust sigh, " Would God it were night ! " She is her own em- ployer, forewoman, and operative, and rejoices in her in- dependence. The rich — and less free — ^house-mistress puUs upon her husband's purse or her private fortune to maintain a hand- some establishment, and yields plaintive assent when the nominal master of the abode raUs at " the concern " as a " servants' boarding-house." 1 2 COTTAGE KITCHEN. Young men belonging to the great middle class — to wit, clerks in banks, stores, and offices, small tradesmen, law- yers, doctors, and clergymen, who are beginning the prac- tice of their professions — with salaries varying from $600 to $1,200 per annum, cannot think of such luxuries as homes, wives, and famiUes of their very own for years to come. I was a hstener, some days ago, to a serious discussion of what we assume as a seK-evident truth, the speakers being two lawyers of distinction, men who treated the question with frankness, without sneering at the " extrava- gant notions of modem women." " The girls of this generation must marry middle-aged widowers, or remain single imtil the flower of youth has gone,'' was the summing up. " You and I married on $1,000 a year, and thought ourselves well off. Our daugh- ters must have double that sum. Every clergyman and pubUc register wiU tell you that the number of marriages is alarmingly on the decrease. Housekeepers cry out that the rise of salaries has not kept pace with the increased prices of provisions. The student of social economy puts the two facts together as cause and effect, and asks him- self ' what the end will be V " When to this statement we subjoin the truth that within the last quarter of a century Cookery as an Art has become a fashionable study, that as such it has kindergartens, nor- mal schools, professors, and itinerant lecturers, the problem is complicated. Must our girls practise the new branch merely as an accompUshment ? Is the knowledge for which we have paid fancy (and fabulous) prices but an- other aspect of the " sesthetic craze," to be ranked in an- other decade with the passing rage for illurtiinated flat- irons and decorated rolUng-pins ? In the hope of shedding one ray of practical Conmion FAMILIAR TALK. 3 Sense through the fog that enwraps this subject, I have set myself to work to prepare a compendium of receipts that are economical, yet wholesome and palatable. I have kept steadily before me the end of adapting these to the use of young housekeepers, and the mighty mass of people of moderate means who crave something more tempting to eye and taste than the dry or coarse rations flung upon hundreds of tables with Kttle more regard to the de- cencies of domestic life than is observed in supplying stall and sty. As in nine cases out of ten, the first indication of the fail- ure of physical powers is ia the weakened digestive organs, so it may be affirmed that scarcity of means shows itself soon- est and most decidedly in the kitchen. Coarser materials take the place of deUcacies ; sameness succeeds to tempt- ing variety ; and she is a woman of exceptional spirit, as well as cleverness, who does not grow more indifferent each day in the execution of duties that have become homely and hard. The same rule obtains in households where Hmited re- sources and strict economy have always prevailed. Un- friendly criticism strikes most quickly and surely at the poor man who " sets a good table.'' Fapny Kemble writes of her mother's talent for cookery : " It amounted to genius, and might have made her a pre- eminent cordon bleu, if she had not been the vsife of a poor professional gentleman, whose moderate means were so skilfully turned to account ia her provision for his modest table, that he was accused by ill-natured people of indulg- ing ia the expensive luxury of a French cook. I would joyfully many a time in America have exchanged aU my boarding-school smatterings for her knowledge how to produce a wholesome and palatable dinner." I shall feel far xQore than repaid for the trouble it has 4 COTTAGE KITCHEN. cost me to prepare " The Cottage Kitchen" if it shall intro- duce into the rude plenty of one farm-house, or the monot- onous fare served in the mechanic's "flat," savoriness which is wholesome in a succession of dishes that shall cheat poverty of some of its severity. " If I had the materials I could cook as well as any- body," is the lament of her who cannot afford choice cuts, early vegetables, and forced fruit. To nourish her fanuly she fries tough meat into leather and strings, boils potatoes into wateriness, and soaks cab- bage with grease. To tickle their palates she expends muscle and labor in the composition of " famUy pie-crust," and fills the same with half-sweetened dried apples. I have been a summer boarder in farm-houses where they "calculated to raise nearly everything for the table;" have been permitted to sit in the neat kitchen of the me- chanic's wife, and chat with her while she made ready "his" dinner ; have gone on errands of business and mercy into far humbler abodes, yet where provisions were suffi- cient as to quantity, if common as to quality. Noting silently the processes of preparing food in all of these, I have made up" my mind that the unsatisfactory results are attributable mainly to two faults on the part of the house- wife. First: an ignorant indifferentism on the subject of dainty cookery as a rule. Her familyi,fare as well as their neighbors. They are no better educated in this re- spect than herself, or suppose that poor people must be content with poor Kving. She has to get up three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. The business is tiresome, because trite and imiateresting. She groans over baking, boiling, and frying, almost as dolo- rously as over the cleansing of pots,' pans, and kettles. It is a flow that goes on forever without the sudden sally, the FAMILIAR TALK. S BparHe and the daily of the brook. She never asks her- self whether her husband may not weary of driving nails or laying brick, of ploughing, sowing, and reaping. That is his life-labor. She would despise him if he were as apathetic in the performance, loathed it as drearily as she does kitchen-work. If she is ambitious, she is apt to wish aloud that she had a trade or profession. Her web of life is a hit-or-miss carpet, and the knots have a way of com- ing out on the right, which is the wrong side. She is al- ways discouraged, chronically fatigued, and given to decla- rations that a tread-null is a bower of pleasure compared with the existence of the woman who does her own work She would hardly discern exaggeration, and certainly see no burlesque in the humorously pathetic last words of the old woman, who was "Going Where washing ain't done, nor churning, nor sewing, And everything else will be just to my wishes ; For where they don't eat there's no washing of dishes. Don't mourn for me now, nor mourn for me never. For I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever." Far be it from me to deny that there are many and sharp crooks in the lot of our tired wife. Said a patient voice to the pastor who spoke of the praises of heaven, the ad- vance from glory to glory — " Some time perhaps I'U un- derstand it all Just now Td like to pray God to let me lie still in my grave for a couple of hundred years or so. Just to get rested out, you know ! " The fardel of human existence and toil is bound more tightly upon some shoulders than upon others. Yet the question to be pressed home to our housewife's con- sciousness and conscience is, whether she appreciates the truth that Home is her sphere since the Master has put 6 COTTAGE KITCHEN. her there and hedged her in by loves and duties, and house-keeping her trade, her profession, her mission. Fault the second, I write down as mismanagement of time and forces. The preparation of each meal is postponed until there is just time to get it ready between the commencement of the business and the hour of serving. Instead of forecast- ing breakfast in aU its details, and so far as possible laying materials ready to her hand, time and nervous power are wasted when both are scant, in thinking, "What can we have ? " and in collecting ingredients. The toilet is hurried that the work may be seized by the first handle that offers itself. Kindlings were not prepared, nor oatmeal put in soak at bedtime. The beef and potatoes that could have been wrought into croquettes, which would have been firm and fit for frying by morning, remain as they were left at dinner-time — the one a shapeless chunk, the other a pUe of slaty-blue bullets. Clearly the only resort is that bane of the national kitchen, the frying-pan. The worried wo- man would cook coffee and biscuit in it, if she dared. "There is wit goes to the boiling of eggs," says the ancient adage. Cahn judgment and foresight ; a wise weighing of resources and capabilities are as much needed in kind, if not in degree, in the management of a kitchen as of an empire. She who feeds judiciously the bodies of that por- tion of the present generation given into her charge sets her mark upon her age and the next as truly as does he who writes an epic that is worthy to live, or she who delights the world with a "Middlemarch." Thus stands the case, then ! Every woman should face the fact — and consider it intelligently — that she chose her mission in accepting the hand of a man who, she knew, could afford to keep neither cook nor chamber-maid. And •:r-having selected it of her own free wiU — she is bound by FAMILIAR TALK. 7 honor and conscience to make the best of it and of herself. Instead of wearying mind and spirit by stooping to her work, let her bring her work up to her leveL They have a way in the Western settlements of using bored logs for drain-pipes and conduits. When one of these gets choked with mud a big eel is put in at one end, which is at once plugged up. The eel, if he is tolerably enterprising, finding there is not room for turning his body, nor possibOity of backing out, wriggles steadily on- ward until he emerges into the hght It may be a hun- dred or a thousand yards away from the starting-point It cannot be gainsaid that some women are created without taste for housewifery, nor that many of then- sex are bom deaf, others bhnd, and a few dumb. The suc- cess of these imfortunates in clearing away or working through the obstacles that clog their progress depends upon a sort of eel-like pertinacity of purpose theu' more gifted fellows should honor as it deserves to be honored. I make no apology for describing minutely the proper method of preparing the plain dishes which every raw cook fancies everybody must understand how to get up. What our cottage housekeeper needs most is the just conception in cookery as in graver concerns — of the importance of common things. She is apt to slur over such weighty matters of the law of dietetics and health as bread-making and potato-boUing, and rush with mistaken ambition after " fancy-dishes." Hers is a zeal without knowledge as truly as that of the art-student who dives at once into color without the preliminary drill of charcoal and cubes. When this principle is reduced to practice, the term " good plain cook " will be a title of honor, instead of disparagement. As to the lack of time for the day's work, the overlapping and "telescoping" duties that wring from the scared woman cries of horror and anguish, as she surveys the 8 COTTAGE KITCHEN. .wrecked train of hours, — ^may I append to this introductory chapter a bit of sound, every-day wisdom I have quoted elsewhere and more than once, with tongue and pen ? The sweet-natured, clear-headed woman who talks to us behind " Mary Blake's " mask says : "We have aU the time there is. Our mental and moral status is determined by what we. do with it." Suffer one more quotation, four Hnes by Longfellow, which I tacked up ia my buttery years ago, where my eye must fall upon them while mixing, beating, roUing, chop- ping, and what Mrs. Prentiss calls a " host of other ings " are going on. " All common things, each day's events, That with the hour begin and end. Our pleasures and our discontents Are rounds by which we may ascend." SOUPS AND THE STOCK-POT. Afteb setting down the Jheading of this chapter, an amused misgiving stole over me as to the probability that one in ten of the housewives for whom I write this series would know the meaning of that last and compound word. That the stock-pot, or jar, or crock, by whatever name known in various sections of our country, is not an estab- lished institution in the average American household, may account for the infrequent appearance of any kind of soup upon our tables, and the even rarer offering of really good broth or potage. This important preliminary course of the family dinner and beginning of the serious busiaess of the hour at com- pany banquets is held in light esteem by no known civil- ized — or semi-civilized — nation except our own. The Frenchman wiU Uve, dance, and enjoy Ufe upon a bit of black bread and onion soup, made savory by a bone for which he has paid a sou. The ItaUan shreds cabbage and dog-fennel into his broth with the lavishness of the theo- logical student of old who heaved into the pot a lapful of poisonous wild things {Query: mushrooms?). The black broth of the Spartans is a classic legacy, and hungry Esau was no match for the artful junior — and Jew — ^who stirred the red lentile pottage before his eyea Our native housewife does not depreciate soups as she lO COTTAGE KITCHEN. doea certain " fancy dishes " because they are difficult to prepare, and adorn rather than provide her board. She honestly classifies them as " slops " that go for nothing in her bill-of-fare. I have seen crockery cupboards in re- spectable, comfortable famUies, where one might look in vain for a siagle soup-plate. I know other and wealthier households where soup is not served for months together, even for dinner-company. There is more than one reason for this notorious disregard of an article of food decreed by so many other peoples and ages to be excellent. In New England the lack of the^ cheerful hospitality that de- hghts soul and body in the Middle and Southern States is due, beyond doubt, to the fact that fewer servants are kept for domestic work ia the first-named section than in the latter. Yankee thrift rebels at the thought of having . " extra help " for purposes so unremunerative as entertain- ing strangers, and "company" becomes more and more a hardship to be avoided by every practicable and decent means. So, our notable housekeeper who washes her own dishes grows into the habit of counting the cost of what- ever iavolves another stroke of mop or toweL With the labor-saving instinct in the industrious woman's mind goea the desire to save time. Soup is another course — there- fore ten minutes more — ^in a meal that already takes at least half an hour out of the heart of the day. The change of plates exactly doubles the " bother " of service. " You can't — fix it as you wiU — set soup, meat, and pud- ding on all at once." Giving due place and weight to all these considerations, it is yet true that the main cause of the exclusion of soup from the tables of our middle and lower classes is that, not knowing how to make it, the product of their rare experi- ments in this line has discouraged the manufacturer and disgusted those for whom it was poured out. Dish-water SOUPS AND THE STOCK-POT. II is not soup, nor does the greasy paste which is its alternate better desM^e the name. " I observe that you insist upon the use of the soup- strainer in your receipts for soup-making," writes a corre- spondent. " Now, my John says you are wrong in this. He cannot reUsh anything of the kind unless the meat, vegetables, etc., are left in it, and the hquid pretty weU thickened with flour or com starch. ¥et he is very fond of soup." I answered : " My dear madam, your John may be fond of stews. He is>not a soup-lover." There are those who give the preference to broths, thickened vdth rice, barley, farina, tapioca, sage, and the like, over clear soupa They are more easily managed by a novice, and perhaps usually more nourishing, although considered less elegant for dinner-parties and other formal entertainments. Broths are good family fare — provided always that the strength of the materials used in the manufacture of them is thoroughly extracted before the liquor is drawn off. Clear soups are without flavor or nutriment unless this be done. The failure to comply with this essential regulation hes at the bottom of much of the contempt felt and expressed by many who have never seen or tasted good bouillon, or so much as heard of clear gravy soup. If this preamble to our practical talk upon soup-maMng seems superfluous, and the directions following it ridicu- lously simple and minute, the reader, in extenuation of what bores her, wUl please beheve my statement of the gross and general ignorance on the subject of this paper, illustrated in thousands of kitchens by such facts as I have just stated. Before leaving this point of the distinction between broths and soups, let me remark that' good clear (and 12 COTTAGE KITCHEN. strong) soup cannot be extracted from cooked bones and meat Family broth of fair quality may be made from the carcasses of poultry and game, and from bones and scraps of underdone beef, muttonj and veaL Let your materials be what they may, they should be put over the fire in cold water, and kept at a low tempera- ture for the first hour, at least. Bones should be cracked in several places, meat cut into dice, vegetables sUced or grated. But the chief .secret in the, to many, occult art of soup-brewing is steady, slow cooking for a long time. To be hasty in the process is to mar. Impatience but accel- erates ruin. The first fast boil hardens the outer network of fibrous sHn and the albumen next to this into a case almost impervious to water ; seals the generous juices away from influences that would else draw them to the surface. It is Grimm, I think, or may be Hans Andersen, who teUs the story of the peasant girl whom the king made into a great lady, because when left to watch the soup-pot she never once suffered it to boiL Our energetic Yankee housewife, whose specialty is " driving " herself and sub- ordinates, including fire and water, might go to school to the German girL For two hours the contents of the pot should simmer drowsily beneath a closely fitting lid. Then the heat may be increased until a gentle bubble agitates the Uquid, little more decided than that which shakes the water ia a " singing " tea-kettle. From the beginning to the close of the operation nothing is gained and much im- perilled by a "good hard boil." But neither shoiild the " bubble, bubble " be allowed to intermit. The practised ear of the cook, busied about other matters, will soon detect irregularity on this head. The best soup-maker I ever had in my kitchen was a young woman who only knew enough when she took the place to obey orders with SOUPS AND THE STOCK-POT. 1 3 Casabianca-ish doggedness. She would leave her meals ; drop knife and the potato she was peeling in the sink ; in- terrupt me in the middle of an order — I verily beheve would have started up from the soundest slumber of healthy youth — to dash at the range with " Is that soup a-bilin' hard ? " if the smothered murmur from the covered pot was quickened by but a few beats in a minute. Next — put no salt nor other seasoning in the soup until meat and vegetables have yielded up their goodness. As a rule, season just before you are ready to remove it from the fire. Condiments have a tendency to harden the fibres and flesh, and thus resist the persuasiveness of heat and water upon the object to be steeped into pulp. Whenever you can, make soup the day before it is to be used on the tabla The important process of freeing it from every particle of fat is then made easy by the congelation into a &na cake upon the top of the liquid of the oils that will arise even from lean meat. Circles and eddies of hot grease in one's plate of soup are offensive to sight and taste — demoralizing to the stomach. The soup made, the stock-jar comes to the front. A wide-mouthed stone pot vdth straight sides is best for this purpose. It should be well glazed on the inside, that it may not absorb fat or Uquid. Pour the soup — unstrained — ^into it and set by until the morrow, when it must be care- fully skimmed. If you have allowed a quart of cold water to each pound of meat — independent of marrow-bones and vegetables — you should now have a rich, gelatinous "stock" above the residuum at the bottom. Strain off from this, day by day, enough to supply soup for your family. If the stock is very strong you can dilute it for daily use. The stock-pot must be kept in the cellar or other cold place. "When the jelly runs low, put the entire contents of the jar over the fire, adding enough cold water to cover 14 COTTAGE KITCHEN. all well, and cook gently for a couple of hours. Then di-ain and press in a colander, and run the liquid thus obtained through your soup-strainer. Good broth may be made of this, but do not attempt to get clear soup from it. The mass left in the colander is as unfit for food as would be so much wet, raw cotton. I state this distinctly, lest economic zeal, but not accord- ing to knowledge, should induce our cottage housekeeper to trim it up into ragout or hash. Throw it away — not disdainfully, for it has done its work well if you have yours, and parted with every element of nutrition. I have heard of a rich family, the daughters of which wear velvet and fine laces every day, whose breakfasts, for some weeks, consisted chiefly of hashes variously seasoned and gravied, but all based upon the minced meat from which beef-tea had been made for the invalid motl\er. This is meanness — not frugality. The two differ as widely as do prodigality and parsimony. But to our stock-pot — a much more agreeable subject. When it has been thus emptied, and before fresh soup is poured into it, cleanse it thoroughly, washing with hot soap-suds, scalding several times, rinsing out with clear water in which a teaspoonful of soda has been dissolved, and finally setting it in the open air for some hours until it is perfectly odorless. This process should be repeated at least once a week even in winter ; in summer twice as often. Bits of underdone meats, scraps of lean corned ham, bones from roast, boil, and broU as they accumu- late, may go into the stock-jar. Vegetables should not be added after the soup is cooked, as they are apt ' to sour. But a few spoonfuls of stewed tomato, canned corn, beans or peas, are often a pleasant contribution to stock taken out for to-day's dinner. Nothing of the sort should be thrown away. A half-cupful of cold SOUPS AND THE STOCK-POT. 15 boiled rice, a cup of milk and an egg, joined judicious- ly to a pint of stock, can be wrought up into a deli- cious white soup. I^o fat or smoked fragments should be consigned to the stock-jar or soup-kettle. Festoons of cobweb in the drawing-room are not more sure indices of slovenly housewifery than are oily soups of unskilful cookery. If I seem to recur with needless frequency and emphasis to this point, it is because I have come to regard Fat as the evil element of American culinary effort. And no- where else is its rule more rampant in all the phases of boiled fat, stewed fat, fried fat, and foulest reek of all — burnt fat ! than in our cottage kitchens. Fish Soup. 2 cups of soup stock. 1 small cup of fine crumbs. 1 coffee-cup of cold fish, minced very fine and cleared of bones, fat, and skin. 1 cup of boiling milk. 1 egg, beaten light. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Pepper and salt to taste. Skim the stock carefully, heat it to boihng, and stir in the fish, add pepper and salt, and boU gently forty min- utes. Heat the mUk in a vessel set within another, the outer containing boiling water. "When the milk is hot pour it upon the beaten egg, mix well, put over the fire again and stir in the butter, then the crumbs and parsley. Stir two minutes and turn into a heated tureen. Set a hot colander above it and rub the soup through it. Stir up weU and serve. 1 6 COTTAGE KITCHEN. Oyster Soup. 1 quart of oysters.. 2 cups of milk. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 cupful of boiling water. Drain every drop of the liquor from the oysters through a colander, and set them aside io a cold place while you put the liquor and boiling water, with pepper and salt to taste, on the stove over a good fire. Bring the hquid quickly to a boil, add the butter, and when this has melted, the oysters. Let them heat rather slowly, and when they ruffle, which should be about five minutes after they reach the boil, take them from the fire. Have ready the milk, boiling hot, in another vesseL Put oysters and soup into the tureen, stir in the milk, cover the tureen, and let it stand two minutes in hot water before sending to the table. Send around crackers with oyster soup. Clam Soup. Drain the liquor from the clams, set these last aside in a cool place ; add to the juice an equal quantity of water, season well vrith pepper and salt and a little fimely-mineed onion, and bring to a boil. Strain through a coarse cloth ; return to the fire, and chop the clams quite small before stirring them into the hot liquor. Stew all together half an hour, add two tablespoonfuls of cracker-crumbs, a tablespoonful of butter and one of minced celery, or a teaspoonful of essence of celery. Simmer five minutes, while you scald in another vessel, set in boiling water, a cup of milk, slightly salted. Pour this into a hot tureen, then the soup, stirring weU, and it is ready for use. In warm weather, add a bit of soda, not larger than a pea, to Vhe milk before scalding it. SOUPS AND THE STOCK-POT. 17 Clam soup can be made -without milk, water beiag used instead. "When this is done, use more crumbs. Another way is to chop a whole parboiled onion fine and mix with the minced clams, cooking the misture forty-five minutes instead of thirty. This makes a nourishing and savory soup. Clam Chowder. i lb. of fat salt pork. 75 clams. 2 small onions or 1 large one, parboiled and chopped small. 1 tablespoonful of parsley. 12 Boston crackers, split and soaked half an hour in 1 cup of milk, slightly warmed. Cold water, pepper and salt. Chop the pork fine, and sprinkle a layer in the bottom of a pot. Cover this with the clams, season, scatter on it minced onion, and lay in a coating of the split, soaked crackers. Then more pork, clams, seasoning, onion and cracker, until the materials are used up. Cover an inch deep with cold water and bring to a slow sinuner. Cook forty-five minutes after the bubble begins, taking care that the fire does not touch the bottom of the pot, as the crackers will be apt to scorch. Strain the chowder, but do not shake or press it. Put the clams and crackers into a hot tureen, the liquor back in the pot, stir in a generous tablespoonful of fine crumbs, and, if you have it, half a cupful of tomato-juice, drained from the can which is to furnish a dish of stewed tomatoes for dinner. Boil up once and pour over the chowder. If you have not Tnillr to spare, soak the crackers in boiling water. It is a common mistake to imagine that chowder, like some other dishes reckoned as dainties by "high-livers," I 8 COTTAGE KITCHEN. miist therefore be excluded from tlie poor man's table. A moment's computation of tlie cost of the dish described in this receipt will proTe that the cause of this exclusion is not necessity. Such a chowder as the one described below is a dinner of itself and a good one, and can be put before a tired and hungry man at an expense of about thirty cents — at some seasons of the year for less. Cod Chowder. 2 lbs. fresh cod, cut into bits an inch square. 6 potatoes, peeled, shced, and parboiled. 1 shced onion. |-lb. fat salt pork, chopped. 6 spUt crackers, soaked in 1 cup of warm TniTIr or io boiling water. Pepper, salt, and a handful of minced parsley. Put first a layer of pork in the pot, then one of pota- toes well peppered, next fish, onions, parsley — ^beginning a second round with pork. Cover with boiling water, and stew gently half an hour. Line the tureen with the soaked crackers, and set in hot water until the chowder is done. Pour it in, cover, and send to the table. Send around green pickles with it. A httle pickled cu- cumber, chopped, is an improvement to the chowder if added just before taking it up. In the country, where butter is abundant, the house- mother may better the chowder by buttering the hot sod- den crackers before pouring the contents of the pot over them. Catfish Soup. 4 fresh-water catfish, or about 2 lbs. in aU. ^ onion, parboiled and chopped. SOUPS AND THE STOCK-POT. 19 1 cup of milk scalded, with bit of soda stirred in, not larger than- a pea. 1 teaspoonful essence of celery. 1 beaten egg. 3 pints of cold water. 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up in cold water. 1 tablespoonful of butter, and same of minced parsley. 1 sUce fat salt pork, minced. Skia and clean the fish, remove their heads, and cut up smalL Lay the pork in a pot, the fish on it, then the onion, and cover with the cold water. Stew forty-five minutes, or until the fish falls to pieces. Strain and squeeze through a colander, put over the fire again, stir in the corn-starch, butter, pepper, salt, and celery essence, boil one minute. Meanwhile have ready in a tin paU set in boiling water, the milk scalded and cooked one minute with the beaten egg and parsley, or until it begins to thicken. Pour this into a heated tureen, stir the boiling soup into it, and it is ready for the table. You may, if you Hke, Hne the tureen with spht water- or butter-crackers soaked in hot water or milk. A good soup in country neighborhoods where catfish are plentiful in ponds and creeks. Even in tovm they are among our cheapest fisL If you cannot get parsley, use celery-tops, omitting the celery essence. Lobster Bisque. 1 can of lobster, or 2 small fresh lobsters. 2 cups of milk. 3 pints of boiling water. 1 heaping tablespoonful of butter. ^ cup finely -powdered cracker. Salt to taste. 20 COTTAGE KITCHEN. As much cayenne pepper as mil lie on a silver half- dime. Chop the lobster rather coarse mth a keen-bladed chop- per, takrag pains not to tear it Put boiling water, salt, pepper, and lobster into a saucepan and cook gently forty miautes. At the end of this time have ready in a tin ves- sel (set in another of hot water) the scalding milk in which the crumbs have soaked for twenty minutes. Stir the butter into the stewed lobster, then the soaked crumbs and milk, turn out into a covered tureen, set in hot water five minutes, and send to table. Don't be frightened at the EVench name, or by the no- tion that lobster is an expensive luxury. On some parts of our coast they retail for fifty cents a half-dozen. Pre- served lobster is seldom more than 30 cents a can. The Usque is very dehghtful, costing httle except for the fisL Eel Soup. 2 lbs. of eels, cleaned, cleared of fat, and cut into short pieces. 1 small onion, minced. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 slice fat salt pork, chopped. 1 cup of milk, scalding hot. 1 tablespoonful of flour rubbed up with the butter. 2 quarts cold water. Pepper and salt to taste. 1 tablespoonfiil of chopped parsley. Put eels, onion, and pork on in the cold water and stew one hour, or until the fish is in rags. Eub all except the bones through a colander back into the pot, boU up and add the floured butter, parsley, salt, and pepper. Boil one minute. Put the hot milk into a tureen, stir in the soup, and send to the table. SOUPS AND THE STOCK-POT. 21 If you choose you may line the tureen with toasted split crackers, very dry and buttered. A Lenten Soup. 1 large potato. 1 onion. 1 turnip, legg. 