A Course of Lectures on the Principles of Domestic Economy and Cookery. Juliet Corson

little particles after you have taken up the meat. Now you have the meat cooked quite tender and the broth strained. Then you make the sauce. Any of the ladies who were at the lesson this morning and saw the white sauce made, will understand the principle upon which the sauce is made for the stew. Put a heaping tablespoonful of butter and a heaping tablespoonful of flour into a saucepan for the quantity of broth which you would be likely to have from about three pounds of meat; that would be broth enough to cover it. Stir the butter and flour until they are smoothly mixed; then begin to add the meat broth gradually until you have used enough of the broth to make the sauce like thick cream. If you find that you have not enough broth from the meat, add a little hot water, to make the sauce or gravy like thick cream; then put the meat into it. Season it palatably with salt and pepper, remembering that you already have some seasoning in it. Stir the meat in the saucepan over the fire until it is hot, and then serve it. That gives you a plain white stew of meat. You can transform that into a dish called in French cookery books blanquette, or white stew of meat, by adding to it just before you take it off the fire a tablespoonful of chopped parsley and the yolk of one egg. You will add the egg by separating the yolk from the white, putting the yolk in a cup with two or three tablespoonfuls of gravy from the meat and mix it well; then turn it all among the meat, stir it and dish it at once. Don’t let the stew go back on the fire after you put in the yolk of egg; it may curdle the egg if the sauce or the stew boils after the egg is added. So you see you have a plain white stew, or a stew with the addition of chopped parsley, or chopped parsley and the yolk of an egg. Do not use the white of the egg.

      Question. Why is not the fat meat as good as the lean?

      Miss Corson. Do you mean why is it not as nutritious? Lean meat nourishes muscle and flesh. Fat meat affords heat to the system. That is the reason why we naturally crave more fat meat in cold weather. It is not so strengthening; it is heating and in that nutritious. A great deal of its substance, of course, is wasted in the cooking. That is another reason why, weight for weight, fat meat is not so nutritious as lean.

      Question. In making this stew brown or white do you use bones?

      Miss Corson. You can use bones. In making the soup to-day I used cooked lean meat that was on hand over from the soup this morning. You can use the breast of any kind of brown meat; you can use the ends of the ribs of roast beef; you remember the rather fat ends of the ribs of roast beef? After cooking the beef have these cut up in small pieces; after you have cooked them in the stew if there is any excess of fat, as there probably will be, skim that off and put it by to add to any brown stew or gravy; the fat replaces drippings in that case. That is a very good way to use ends of ribs of beef. Cold beefsteak makes a nice brown stew, treated in this same way.

      Question. Do you skim the stew?

      Miss Corson. No. Not unless you are going to make a perfectly clear soup need you ever skim; because, as I explained this morning, the scum which rises on the surface in boiling meat is not dirt, it is albumen and blood, with the same nutritious properties as the meat itself, and you do not want to remove them. If the water boils away in cooking soups and stews always add a little more; it will save time if you add boiling water, unless as in the case of peas, you add cold water for the purpose of softening them. You will find, if you are trying to cook dried beans, that it will be well to add cold water, and boil them gradually.

      Question. In cooking beans isn’t it a good way to let the beans come to a boil and then pour off the water and put on more cold?

      Miss Corson. That is simply a question of taste. It is not necessary to do it. If you pour away the first water in which they come to a boil, you pour away a certain amount of their nourishment, which already has escaped in the water. Some people say that they like to pour away that first water, because it carries off the strong taste of the beans. That is a question for any one to settle individually. The water would not have the strong taste of the beans if there were not some of the nourishment of the beans in it. While we are on the subject of beans I might tell you a good way to cook beans plainly, a favorite way in the south of France, the beans to be served with roast mutton. Cook them in just water enough to cover them, after having first washed them, adding only water enough to keep them covered all the time. They are dried white beans. Then at the last, when the beans are tender, leave off the cover of the sauce pan and let the beans cook, so that nearly all the water is evaporated, and the beans have about them simply water enough to form a very thick sauce, just enough to moisten them. Then they are seasoned with salt and pepper. In that way they are served as stewed beans, with roast mutton or roast lamb.

      In regard to the lentils that I was talking to you about, I think you may be able to learn something more about them from Prof. Porter. He probably would know. You long ago have made their acquaintance in the form of the tares that the enemy sowed among the wheat. Lentils are really a species of tare or vetch. If you do not know about them—if they are not known in the market—it really would be worth while to make some inquiry which would lead to the introduction of them; but very likely if there are German people here, as I suppose there are—there are always German people in every thriving city—they will already have had them for sale in their special groceries; you can get them in that way, and they make a very good winter vegetable to use alternately with others. You cook them either by soaking them over night, or boil them just as we boiled the peas, until they are tender, and then drain them, and either heat them, with a little salt and pepper and butter, after they are drained, or fry them. They are exceedingly nice fried with a little chopped onion or parsley. If you have a pint bowl full of lentils, use a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, a tablespoonful of onion, very finely chopped; put the onion in the frying pan with a tablespoonful of butter or drippings, and let it brown; then put in the lentils and chopped parsley, a little salt and pepper, stir them till you have them hot, and serve them. They are exceedingly good.

      Prof. Porter. I may say that the first cousin of the lentils is well known among our Minnesota farmers in our wheat fields, and they are such an intolerable pest that we prefer paying the duties on the German article and importing them.

PEA SOUP—Continued.

       Table of Contents