Marion Harland’s Complete Cook Book

Dinner Vegetables

The Aristocratic Asparagus

A writer upon dietetics says—whether truthfully or not each of us can judge for himself—“Asparagus has nothing plebeian about it, as has the onion, the potato, the cabbage, turnip or parsnip. It is essentially a gentleman’s vegetable, and is an aristocrat from tip to stalk.”

It is becoming more and more customary to serve certain vegetables as a course by themselves, instead of with the meat and its attendant vegetables, as in days gone by. The housekeeper, who is often sorely perplexed as to what entrée she shall serve with a dinner, eagerly welcomes this custom. Asparagus, artichokes and cauliflower may be sent in as separate courses.

Boiled Asparagus

Cut off the tough lower part of your asparagus-stalks and save them to stew for flavoring your next soup. Lay the asparagus in cold water for fifteen minutes, then tie carefully into a bundle with a piece of soft string. Put into a saucepan large enough for them to lie at full length. Cover with salted, boiling water and boil until tender. If young, twenty minutes should suffice. Drain carefully and lay neatly on a hot dish. Pass drawn butter with the asparagus.

Asparagus on Toast

Cut the woody part from a bunch of asparagus, and with a soft piece of twine tie it into a loose bundle. Have ready, boiling, enough salted water to cover the asparagus. The saucepan containing this should be large enough to allow the asparagus to lie at full length. Boil until tender, but not until the green tips begin to break. Spread upon a platter crustless slices of buttered toast; drain the asparagus, and lay it in a neat pile upon the toast. Of course the string must be removed from the bundle. Just before sending to the table pour a white sauce over the asparagus. An excellent plan is to pour this sauce only over the green ends of the stalks, leaving the white ends uncovered, that the fingers need not be soiled in handling the vegetable.

Baked Asparagus

Cut the tender halves of the asparagus-stalks into inch-lengths. Cook for fifteen minutes in salted boiling water, then drain. Grease a pudding dish and put in the bottom a layer of the asparagus. Sprinkle this with fine bread-crumbs, bits of butter, pepper and salt and small pieces of hard-boiled egg. Now put in another layer of asparagus, more crumbs, etc., and so on until the dish is full. The last layer must be sprinkled with crumbs and bits of butter. Bake for half an hour, and serve in the dish in which it is cooked.

Asparagus Tips Cachés

Cut the tops from square breakfast-rolls, and scoop the crumbs from the insides, leaving box-like crusts. Butter the outside and inside of these hollowed rolls and set them with the tops beside them in the oven to dry and brown lightly.

Boil asparagus tips tender in salted water and drain. Have ready on the stove a white sauce made by cooking together a tablespoonful of butter and one of flour, and adding to them a cup and a half of milk. Stir into this sauce the asparagus tips, and pepper and salt to taste. Fill the hollowed rolls with the mixture, replace the tops and set in the oven just long enough to become very hot.

Creamed Asparagus

Reject the lower halves of your asparagus stalks and boil the upper halves until they are very tender. Then drain and chop. Cook together a tablespoonful of butter and two of flour until they bubble, pour on them a pint of milk with a bit of soda dissolved in it. Stir until smooth and of the consistency of cream, add the minced asparagus, with salt and pepper to taste. Set this mixture aside until cool, then beat into it three well-whipped eggs and two tablespoonfuls of cream. Pour into a greased pudding dish and bake covered for twenty minutes; uncover and brown.

Asparagus á la Vinaigrette (No. 1)

Boil the asparagus according to the directions given in the preceding recipe. When done, drain and set aside until cold, then place in the ice-box until wanted. Lay upon a chilled platter and pour over the stalks the following dressing:

Put three tablespoonfuls of salad oil into a bowl and stir into it a tablespoonful of vinegar, a saltspoonful, each, of salt and sugar, and a dash of paprika.

The asparagus and the dressing that accompany it should be served very cold.

Asparagus á la vinaigrette (No. 2)

Cook as directed in recipe for boiled asparagus. While the vegetable is cooking make a hot French dressing by putting together in a saucepan over the fire half-a-dozen tablespoonfuls of salad oil, two of vinegar, two teaspoonfuls of French mustard, half a teaspoonful of sugar, salt and pepper to taste. When the asparagus is tender, drain, lay it in a deep dish, and pour over it the hot dressing. Cover and set aside to cool, then stand in the ice-chest for an hour or two before serving.

Asparagus Loaf

Cook three cupfuls of the asparagus tips until tender, then drain. Put into a saucepan two tablespoonfuls of butter and one tablespoonful of flour; cook together one minute. Add one cupful of milk, one-half teaspoonful of salt and one-fourth teaspoonful of paprika. Add the milk slowly, stirring all the time, and let it cook five minutes. Take from the fire and add four well-beaten eggs, one cupful of asparagus tips and a teaspoonful of chopped parsley. Line a well-buttered baking dish with the remainder of the asparagus tips; pour in the asparagus and sauce, and cook with the dish in water in the oven for fifteen minutes. Serve with egg sauce.

Artichokes

The American artichoke, indigenous to this country, has received, nobody living can say why, the absurd name of “Jerusalem artichoke.” It is a tuber, resembling in appearance a turnip when cooked, but far more agreeable in flavor.

The Italian artichoke articiocco was introduced into this country some years ago, and speedily became a fashionable edible. The part eaten is the succulent bud, cut before it expands into a flower.

Boiled Jerusalem Artichokes

Wash the artichokes thoroughly, pare and slice or trim them into an oblong shape. Cook in slightly salted boiling water until tender, but not broken, and pour melted butter over them. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and when turned into the dish, add a sprinkling of minced parsley and a few drops of lemon juice.

Baked Jerusalem Artichokes

Wash and pare the artichokes, and cook tender. Then cut into neat slices. Put them into a baking-dish, sprinkle on a layer of grated Parmesan cheese and cover with a white or cream sauce. Sprinkle buttered crumbs over the top and bake until the crumbs are brown.

Boiled Italian Artichokes

Cut off the stems, put the vegetables into boiling salted water, and boil for half-an-hour. Cut in half from top to bottom and serve half-an-one to each person. Pass with them a Hollandaise sauce. The stems are stripped off by the person eating the artichoke, the soft end dipped in the sauce and eaten. The fuzzy part should be scraped off and the bottom of the artichoke, which is really the most delicate portion, eaten with a fork.

Italian Artichokes With Sauce Tartare

Remove the stems and outer leaves from the artichokes, and with a sharp knife remove the cores or centers. Lay these in cold, salted water for half-an-hour, drain and put into a saucepan with enough salted, boiling water to cover them. Cook until tender, drain thoroughly, put into a heated vegetable dish, and pour over them a sauce made of a half-cupful of melted butter, into which you have beaten a teaspoonful of lemon juice, a few drops of onion juice, a saltspoonful of French mustard, a pinch, each, of salt and paprika, and a teaspoonful of salad oil. Beat this sauce all together over the fire, remove from the range, and stir it, very slowly, into one beaten egg. Unless this is done gradually, the hot liquid will curdle the egg. Beat hard for a minute before pouring over the artichokes.

Fried Italian Artichokes

Cut off the leaves and trim away the wool from the stalks. Cook tender, but not until broken, in salted water; drain and set on ice until perfectly cold. Make a good batter of half a cupful of flour sifted twice with a quarter teaspoonful of baking-powder and a little salt, wet up with half a cupful of milk into which has been beaten one egg.

Cut each artichoke, perpendicularly, into halves, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip into the batter and fry in deep cottolene or other fat. Drain off every drop of fat and serve hot with a tart sauce.

Bananas

Bananas Sautés

Peel, cut lengthwise into thirds; roll in flour, slightly salted and peppered. Heat two tablespoonfuls of butter, or clarified dripping in a frying-pan; put in the bananas and fry to a golden brown, turning several times. Serve upon buttered toast.

Bananas Fried Whole

Peel and cut off the tip at each end; sprinkle with pepper and salt, roll in beaten egg, then in fine crumbs, again in egg, and again crumb them. Leave them upon ice for an hour or two, and fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat to a delicate brown. Serve very hot.

Baked Bananas

Strip off one-third of the skin of each, and with a silver knife loosen the skin around the fruit. Arrange in a baking-pan with the stripped side uppermost. On each banana place a quarter teaspoonful of butter, sprinkle with one teaspoonful of sugar and a half teaspoonful of water for each banana, and bake about twenty minutes.

Scalloped Bananas

Peel, slice and arrange in a buttered bake-dish, alternately with fine crumbs. Sprinkle each layer with salt, pepper and butter, also with a little cream. Let the uppermost layer be crumbs, well-buttered and wet with cream. Bake, covered, half-an-hour, then brown.

Beans

Boston Baked Beans (No. 1)

Soak a quart of beans in cold water all night. In the morning soak them for two hours in warm water. Drain, put into a pot with enough water to cover them, and bring them slowly to a boil. When they are tender, turn then into a deep bake-dish; first pouring off the surplus water. Cut gashes in a half-pound piece of parboiled salt pork, and place this in the center of the dish. To a pint of the water in which the beans were boiled add a gill of molasses and a saltspoonful of French mustard. Mix well, and pour this over the beans and pork. Cover the dish and bake in a steady oven for six hours.

Boston Baked Beans (No. 2)

Wash a quart of beans, let them stand over-night in a gallon of cold water. In the morning, pour off the water and wash again. Then place in a pot, cover with plenty of water, and set over the fire.

Have the pork all fat if possible, unless lean is preferred. Score the rind deeply. Put the beans and pork over the fire and simmer until the beans begin to crack open, not any longer. Drain all the water from them and rinse again with cold water. Put about half the beans in the pot, and then the pork, rind-side up. Next, put in the remainder of the beans. Mix a teaspoonful, each, of mustard and sugar with pepper, and a great spoonful of molasses with a pint of boiling water and pour over the beans. Cover the pot, set in a slow oven and bake ten hours, adding boiling water whenever the beans look dry. Do not have the fire so hot that the water on the beans bubbles, and have no more water than will barely come to the top of the beans. Use an earthen pot.

New Jersey Baked Beans

Soak and boil the beans in the same way as before described—only change the water in which they are boiled an hour before they are done—and boil the pork with the beans; a slice of onion and a tiny piece of bay-leaf may be added to the first water. When they are ready for baking fill a shallow basin with them; place the pork in the center with the scored rind exposed, with one or two tablespoonfuls of molasses, some white pepper, and one tablespoonful of butter in small bits sprinkled all over the beans; bake, covered, about two hours. Enough of the water in which they were boiled should be poured in to make them soft, and about an hour before they are done one cupful of sweet cream, heated, with a pinch of soda, may be poured in upon the beans, loosening them with a fork that the cream may soak in.

Sunnybank Baked Beans

Soak over night and boil tender as already directed. Parboil half a pound of pork and chop fine. Have ready a large cupful of strained tomato sauce, well seasoned with onion juice, butter, salt and a good deal of sugar. Put a layer of minced pork in the bottom of your dish; then one of beans, next tomato sauce. Proceed in this way until the dish is full; add a very little hot water; cover closely and bake two hours, then brown.

It will be found very good, a vast improvement upon the conventional pork and baked beans. The top layer should be of tomato sauce.

Baked Beans With Tomato Sauce

Soak white beans over night in cold water, and in the morning put over the fire in boiling water, slightly salted. Cook until tender. Drain and put into a deep dish. Cover with a tomato sauce, made by cooking together a tablespoonful, each, of butter and flour until they bubble, and then pouring upon them a cupful of strained tomato liquor. Season to taste, and rather highly, unless you have previously added salt and pepper to the beans. Stir the sauce in with these and bake, closely covered, for two hours.

Beans Sautés

Soak beans over night and boil until tender. Drain very dry and sprinkle with salt. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a frying pan, and when this has melted fry in it a large onion sliced. When the onion has browned remove it with a perforated spoon, and stir into the butter a tablespoonful of minced parsley. Now add the beans and turn them over and over in the hissing butter until very hot. Sprinkle lightly with salt (if needed) and pepper. Turn into a colander, then into a hot dish.

Stewed Beans

Soak over night. In the morning parboil for one hour, drain, put them over the fire in enough weak stock to cover them and stew two hours, slowly. For the last hour set in a pan of boiling water to prevent scorching. All the stock should be absorbed, yet the beans should not be dry. At the end of two hours stir in a sauce made of one tablespoonful of butter, one teaspoonful of mustard and the same of molasses, with twice as much onion juice and the juice of half a lemon, mixed in half a cupful of boiling water. Leave, covered, upon the fire for ten minutes (still in boiling water) and turn out.

Lima Beans

Shell, lay in cold water for half an hour, and cook half an hour in boiling water, a little salted. Drain, dish, toss about over a lump of butter, and salt and pepper to your liking.

Lima Beans With White Sauce

Cook as directed in last recipe, but instead of dishing after draining, return to the saucepan with a good white sauce into which you have stirred a little chopped parsley. Simmer three minutes and serve.

Boiled String Beans

You can not destroy this dish more effectually than by “stringing” the beans in the slovenly manner practised by at least one-half of American cooks, or those who represent the American kitchen. The neatest way of ridding beans of backbones is to pare each the whole length with a sharp knife. The flavor is more delicate when this is done.

Lay a handful of the pods upon a board with the ends even, and cut through all into inch-pieces. Wash and cook in boiling salted water until tender. Drain, season with butter, salt and pepper, and serve.

Full-grown beans demand much more time for cooking than young. Underdone beans have a rank taste and are unwholesome.

Steamed Cream String Beans

By some they are called “butter beans,” by others “German wax beans.” They are sweeter and richer than the ordinary green string bean. Put into cold water for half an hour after paring the fiber lightly from each side of the pods, taking care not to touch the beans inside. Then, with a sharp knife cut them into slanting slivers, three for each bean, and each a little over an inch long. Wash and put the dripping beans into a saucepan containing a great spoonful of warmed (not hot) butter, pepper and salt to taste. Add three tablespoonfuls of warm water. Cover closely, and bring slowly to a gentle simmer. Now and then shake the saucepan upward to make sure the beans are not sticking to the bottom, but do not open it, as everything depends upon the steam. Young beans may be tender in forty minutes. Large or stale will not be fit to eat under one hour. Do not put more than three tablespoonfuls of water for a quart of beans, and dish without draining.

String beans of any kind are nicer when cooked in this way than any other.

Savory String Beans

String and cut the beans diagonally as just directed, and boil tender in salted water. Have ready a roux of butter and flour, and mix it with half a cupful of gravy of any kind. Stir until smooth, seasoning with pepper, salt and a little onion. Strain this sauce over the beans and cook for five minutes longer.

Beets

Boiled Beets

As the preliminary process to all dishes composed of beets is boiling it is well to learn exactly how this should be done. Too often the once ruddy vegetable is allowed to “bleed” out its juices until it has a pallid and uninviting appearance.

Wash the beets, rubbing them carefully with the palm of the hand to dislodge dirt, but not so hard as to abrade the tender skin. Drop into fresh cold water as you cleanse them. Put into a saucepan of salted boiling water and cook for an hour. Drain, scrape, slice and serve in a deep dish with melted butter poured over them. They are best when a tablespoonful of hot vinegar is added to the melted butter.

Creamed Young Beets

Cook with two inches of the stem on to prevent bleeding, and do not clip the tap root. Have ready a cupful of cream heated with a pinch of soda. Rub the skins off, top and tail the beets, and slice them thin into the cream, setting the saucepan containing it in boiling water. When all are in stir in a tablespoonful of butter rubbed into one of flour, pepper, salt and a teaspoonful, each, of sugar and onion juice. Simmer two minutes to cook the flour, and dish.

Brussels Sprouts

Boiled Brussels Sprouts

Remove the outer leaves and lay the sprouts in cold salted water for three-quarters of an hour. Drain and boil in salted water for about fifteen minutes, or until tender. Try with a fork, and if they are tender, but not soft, all through, they are done. Drain and lay in a hot dish and pour over them a half cupful of melted butter in which has been stirred a half saltspoonful, each, of salt and pepper. Serve very hot.

Brussels Sprouts au Gratin

Boil the sprouts tender in salted water, drain and cut each sprout in four pieces. Cook together a tablespoonful, each, of butter and flour, and when they are blended pour upon them a scant pint of milk. When you have a smooth sauce stir the quartered sprouts into this. Season to taste, turn all into a greased pudding-dish, strew thickly with crumbs and bits of butter, and bake to a light brown. Serve in the dish in which they were baked.

Cabbage

Those who know cabbage as it is served with the old-fashioned “boiled dinner” have no conception of the many delightful changes of which this so-called plebeian vegetable is susceptible. In summer, when it is young and tender, it is particularly good, and may be so cooked that it is as palatable and delicate to the taste as its refined cousin, the cauliflower. Have the water boiling when the vegetable is thrust into it, head down, and keep it at a hard boil until done. Some housekeepers claim that a teaspoonful of vinegar added to the water will dissipate the obnoxious odor.

Savory Boiled Cabbage

Cut a firm cabbage into four parts and reject the outer leaves. Wash carefully in two waters, taking care to dislodge any insects that may be concealed between the leaves. Have a large pot of boiling water on the range; dissolve in a tablespoonful of salt and a quarter of a teaspoonful of baking soda. Plunge the cabbage into this, and cook, uncovered, for fifteen minutes, drain, and fill the pot with more boiling water, adding salt as you do so. Cook the cabbage until tender, always uncovered, turn into a colander, press out all the water and set aside to get very cold. Chop fine and season with salt, white pepper, and a dash of tomato catsup. Heat in a saucepan a large cupful of well-seasoned soup stock, turn the cabbage into this and toss and turn until very hot. Now add a large spoonful of melted butter, and a teaspoonful of lemon juice, and serve.

Baked Cabbage

Boil cabbage tender in two waters, drain and set aside until cold, then chop fine. Mix together two beaten eggs, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, two tablespoonfuls of cream, a saltspoonful of salt and a dash of paprika. Stir this into the chopped cabbage and put it into a buttered pudding-dish. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top and bake until brown.

Fricasseed Cabbage

Boil and chop, as in the last recipe, and keep hot while you cook together in a saucepan a tablespoonful of butter and one (heaping) of flour; when they bubble pour upon them a cupful of hot milk. Stir to a smooth sauce; turn into this the chopped cabbage, cook for a minute, season and serve.

Stuffed Cabbage

Choose a fresh, firm cabbage. Lay in cold water for half an hour, and boil in salted water for ten minutes. Remove, drain, and allow it to get very cold. Meanwhile make a forcemeat of a cupful of boiled rice and the same quantity of chopped cold chicken with half a cupful of minced ham. Work to a paste and season. Stand the cabbage on the stem-end and carefully open the leaves, beginning at the center. Fill the spaces between the layers of leaves with the forcemeat; close the cabbage upon itself, tie it up firmly in a piece of coarse netting, put it gently into a pot of boiling salted water, and cook almost two hours. Take from the water, remove the netting very carefully, put the cabbage on a platter and pour a rich white sauce over it. If properly prepared, this is a delicious dish.

Baked Cabbage With Tomato Sauce

Boil a cabbage in two waters, drain, cut it fine, and season with salt and pepper. Grease a pudding-dish and put a layer of the cabbage in the bottom of it; cover this layer with tomato sauce and sprinkle with a few fine crumbs. Proceed in this way until the dish is full, having the last layer of crumbs. Bake for half an hour.

Shredded Cabbage and Cheese

Cut a cabbage into shreds and boil in salted water until tender. Drain and stand in a heated colander at the side of the range. Cook together two teaspoonfuls of butter and two of flour, and pour upon them a pint of hot milk. Season with salt and pepper, and stir in three heaping tablespoonfuls of grated cheese. Cook, stirring constantly, for just a minute. Turn the cabbage into a deep vegetable dish and pour the cheese sauce over it.

Cold Slaw

Wash a cabbage and lay it in cold water for half an hour. With a sharp knife cut it into strips, or shreds. As you cut these drop them into iced water. When ready to serve, drain in a colander, shaking hard to dislodge the moisture, and pour over all a dressing made by rubbing the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs to a paste with one beaten egg, a half cupful of salad oil, the juice of a lemon, mustard, salt and pepper to taste.

Cabbage Cream Salad

Prepare as in the preceding recipe, only cutting the shreds into inch-lengths before dropping them in iced water. Beat a pint of cream very stiff. Drain the cabbage, sprinkle lightly with salt, and stir it into the whipped cream, turning and tossing until it is thoroughly coated with the white foam. Serve at once with crackers and cheese. The cabbage should be tender and crisp for this dish.

An Italian Dish of Cabbage

Boil a cabbage in two waters; drain; when cold, chop coarsely, and season with salt and pepper. Butter a pudding-dish, put a layer of the cabbage in this; sprinkle with buttered crumbs and a teaspoonful of grated Parmesan cheese. Put in more cabbage, more crumbs and cheese, and, when the dish is nearly full, pour a cup of seasoned beef stock over all. Bake for half an hour.

Scalloped Cabbage

Boil a head of cabbage in two waters; drain; let it cool, and chop fine. Cover the bottom of a baking-dish with bread-crumbs; scatter over these tiny morsels of butter, seasoned with pepper, salt and a few drops of onion juice; spread with a layer, an inch thick, of the minced cabbage. Season this layer with salt, butter-bits, and a sharp dash of lemon juice. Repeat the crumbs, then a second stratum of cabbage, a cupful of boiling milk, and cover all thickly with bread-dust, well seasoned. Sift grated cheese upon the top, and bake, covered, until bubbling hot. Uncover and brown. You can use weak stock in place of milk if you have it. Boil a pinch of soda in the milk. An excellent family dish.

Carrots

Stewed Carrots

Wash, scrape off the skin, cut into dice and leave in cold water for half an hour. Put, then, into the inner compartment of a double boiler with no water upon them except that which clings to them after washing. Cover closely, and cook tender. An hour should be long enough for this. Turn into a deep dish, pepper and salt, and cover with a good white sauce.

Mashed Carrots

Scrape and slice carrots, and boil tender in two waters. Drain, rub through a colander, and mash with a potato-beetle. Beat light with a tablespoonful of melted butter, add salt and pepper, and serve very hot.

Carrots Sautés

Boil young carrots, not longer than your forefinger, for eight minutes in salted water. Rub and scrape off the skins; cover with boiling water and cook tender. Drain, lay for a minute in cold water until you can handle them, and cut each carrot in two, each half into strips. Heat a tablespoonful of butter in a frying-pan with a half teaspoonful of white sugar, a little salt and pepper, and when it boils lay in the strips of carrot. Cook three minutes after the bubble recommences; sprinkle with chopped parsley, toss about for one minute, drain and serve hot.

Carrot Croquettes

Wash and scrape and cook until very tender. Mash smooth and beat to a paste with the yolk of a raw egg, a good spoonful of softened butter, pepper and salt to taste. Let this paste get cold and stiff before making into croquettes or balls. Roll in beaten egg, then in fine crumbs; set on ice for an hour and fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. Drain and serve hot.

Cauliflower

Cauliflower Boiled Whole

Choose a fine, white head for this purpose. Put it, flower downward, into ice-cold salted water for half an hour. Tie, then, in coarse cheese-cloth or netting, and plunge, head foremost, into a pot of boiling salted water. Cook half an hour, drain, take off the cloth and dish. Pour a rich white sauce over it.

Cauliflower au Gratin

Cut a large cauliflower into eight pieces and boil tender in salted water. Drain, lay in a deep pudding-dish, stems down, and pour over it a plain white sauce into which two hard-boiled eggs have been chopped. Sprinkle with bread-crumbs and bake to a light brown.

Cauliflower With Tomato Sauce

Boil a whole cauliflower for ten minutes in fresh water; drain and boil until tender in salted water. Put into a vegetable dish, flower side up, rub thoroughly with butter, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Last of all, pour over the cauliflower a pint of tomato sauce.

Celery

Stewed Celery (No. 1)

Wash the celery, cut into half-inch bits, and stew tender in slightly-salted boiling water. Drain this off and add a cupful of milk. Cook for three minutes, stir in a teaspoonful of butter rubbed into a teaspoonful of flour, boil up once, season to taste, and serve.

Stewed Celery (No. 2)

A bunch of indifferent celery may be utilized for this dish. I have rescued stalks frosted accidentally through the cook’s carelessness, laid them in ice-cold water for two hours, prepared them as I shall direct, and presented as palatable food that whose end would otherwise have been the garbage pail.

After stewing tender and draining, transfer to another saucepan in which you have heated a cupful of milk (with a pinch of soda in it), thicken it with a tablespoonful of butter rubbed in a teaspoonful of flour, and stir to a boil. Mix the celery well with this, season with pepper and salt, heat all together for one minute, and dish.

Brown Stew of Celery

Wash and cut into small bits a bunch of celery. Put it into a saucepan and pour over it a pint of cleared beef stock. Stew until tender. Drain the celery and set aside while you return to the saucepan the stock in which it was cooked. Thicken this with a paste made by rubbing a heaping teaspoonful of browned flour into one teaspoonful of butter. When you have a smooth brown sauce, stir in the celery, and when this is very hot, season and serve.

Savory Celery

Scrape, cut into inch-lengths, lay in cold water for an hour; cook tender in salted hot water. Drain, and return the celery to the saucepan. Have ready heated a cupful of weak stock, or gravy, strained through a cloth, seasoned with paprika, salt and onion juice, then thickened with a tablespoonful of browned flour rolled in the same quantity of butter. Pour this over the celery, heat all together for one minute, and dish.

The outer green stalks of celery may be used thus, and more satisfactorily than a tyro might think possible.

Fried Celery

Scrape and boil as directed in foregoing recipes; drain, and spread upon a cloth in a very cold place. They must be dry and firm before you dip each piece in beaten egg, then in seasoned bread or cracker-dust. Set again in the cold for an hour, and fry in deep cottolene or other fat to a golden brown. Drain in a hot colander and serve.

Stewed Celery Roots

Wash and scrape the roots of celery and stew in salted water until very tender. Drain and cut into small dice. Have ready in a saucepan a pint of hot milk, thicken this with a teaspoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter, turn a cupful (heaping) of the celery dice into this sauce, stir until very hot, season to taste and serve.

Besides being a palatable dish when thus cooked, celery root is an admirable nervine, and therefore indicated as beneficial diet for brain-workers and nervous invalids.

Green Corn

Boiled Corn

Strip husk and silk from the ear and put over the fire in plenty of boiling water, slightly salted. Boil hard for twenty minutes if the corn be young and fresh.

Send to table wrapped in a napkin.

Stewed Corn

Cut from the cob with a sharp knife; put over the fire in just enough boiling salted water to cover it. Stew gently ten minutes; turn off the water and add a cupful of hot milk (with a pinch of soda in it). Cook ten minutes more, stir in a tablespoonful of butter rubbed up with a teaspoonful of flour; boil one minute and turn into a hot, deep dish.

Green Corn Pudding (No. 1)

Grate the grains from twelve ears of corn; beat into the corn the whipped yolks of four eggs until thoroughly incorporated; stir in now two tablespoonfuls of melted butter and one tablespoonful of powdered sugar; salt to taste, and add the whites of the eggs whipped to a froth. Lastly stir in a tiny pinch of soda; turn into a buttered pudding-dish and bake, covered, half an hour. Uncover, brown quickly, and send to table at once.

If this delicious “soufflé” be made of canned corn, chop it very fine.

Green Corn Pudding (No. 2)

Mix together two cupfuls of grated corn, two beaten eggs, a half pint of milk, a pinch of soda, a tablespoonful of melted butter and a tablespoonful of sugar. Grease a shallow baking-dish, turn the mixture into this, sprinkle with buttered crumbs, cover and bake for half an hour, then uncover and brown.

Green Corn Pudding (No. 3)

Grate the kernels from twelve ears of corn and stir into them the beaten yolks of six eggs and a tablespoonful, each, of melted butter and granulated sugar. Now beat in a quart of milk, a half teaspoonful of salt and, last of all, the stiffened whites of the six eggs. Turn into a greased pudding-dish and bake, covered, for half an hour, then uncover and brown.

This, when properly made and baked in a quick oven, is a veritable soufflé and incomparable.

Corn Fritters

Cut from the ears a pint of sweet corn. Beat together a cupful of milk, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, one egg, whipped light, salt to taste and enough flour to make a thin batter. Into this stir the grated corn. Beat hard and cook as you would griddle-cakes upon a soapstone griddle. They are a palatable accompaniment to roast chicken.

Green Corn Balls

Grate enough green corn from the cob to make two cupfuls; into this stir a beaten egg, a teaspoonful, each, of sugar and melted butter, with salt to taste. Add enough flour to enable you to form the mixture into balls, roll these in flour and fry in deep fat.

Succotash

Cut the corn from eight ears and put it into a saucepan with a pint of young Lima beans and enough salted boiling water to cover them both. Boil until the vegetables are tender; drain and turn into a double boiler with a cupful of boiling milk. Cook for ten minutes, then stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and simmer for five minutes longer. Season to taste and serve. Large “Limas” should be cooked ten minutes before the corn is added.

Corn and Tomatoes

Grate the grains from six ears of corn; pare and cut into small pieces four ripe tomatoes. Put over the fire in a saucepan; stew half an hour; season with a great spoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of sugar and one of onion juice; salt and pepper to taste. Cook five minutes more and dish.

Scallop of Corn and Tomatoes

Pare and cut small a dozen ripe tomatoes and turn them, or the contents of a can of tomatoes, into a chopping bowl and chop the large pieces of the vegetable into small bits; then set in a saucepan over the fire and bring to the boil. Drain the liquor from a can of corn, or grate the grains from a dozen ears, and put the corn into a bowl of fresh water. After ten minutes drain the water off, and transfer the corn to a saucepan with enough boiling water to cover it. Let it simmer for five minutes, pour off the water and add the boiling tomatoes to the corn. Let both cook together for five minutes, during which time stir into them a heaping teaspoonful of butter, two teaspoonfuls of granulated sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour the mixture into a greased bake-dish, sprinkle bread-crumbs and bits of butter over the top and bake for half an hour.

Green Corn Croquettes

Grate the corn from a dozen ears, or drain the liquor from a can of corn, and chop the kernels fine. Cook together a tablespoonful of butter and two of flour, and, when these are blended, add slowly a pint of milk into which has been stirred a pinch of soda. Cook this mixture, stirring all the time, until you have a thick white sauce; add to it the chopped corn and half a teaspoonful of powdered sugar, with pepper and salt to taste. Remove from the fire and set aside to cool. When cold, form with lightly-floured hands into croquettes, and dip each croquette in beaten egg and cracker-dust. Set all aside in a platter in the ice-chest for several hours, then fry in deep, boiling fat.

Corn Omelet

Grate the corn from four ears of boiled corn. Beat four eggs well, add three tablespoonfuls of cream and cook in a hot pan. When ready to fold, sprinkle with salt and pepper, add the corn and turn out on a hot dish. Heat the corn slightly over hot water before putting into the omelet.

Creole Chowder

Heat a generous lump of butter and in it brown four sliced onions. Add four peeled tomatoes, four chopped green bell-peppers, and the corn cut from four cobs. Add as much water as may be needed in cooking, season with salt and sugar and a little black pepper. A full hour’s cooking will be necessary, and the chowder must be served piping hot.

Cucumbers

Many persons look upon the cucumber with fear as a source of indigestion and gastric discomfort. One able dietitian has left on record his opinion that a square inch of verdant cucumber is about as fit to be put into the human stomach as would be a like quantity of Paris green.

Our cucumber, like many another abused article, is maligned because its enemies have never made the attempt to do it justice. If a few simple rules are followed it will prove less indigestible and more palatable than foes and friends imagine. When cooked, it loses many of its disturbing qualities. But, as some people enjoy the crisp freshness of its raw state, it is well to learn just how to prepare it properly.

Raw Cucumbers

See to it that the cucumber is fresh and lay it on the ice until wanted. Do not be content with leaving it on the shelf of the refrigerator. It must be in actual contact with the ice. Just before sending to the table, peel quickly and slice thin, scattering crushed ice among the slices. At the table make a French dressing of one part vinegar, three parts oil, salt and pepper to taste, and pour over the cucumbers as you dish them. To allow the vegetable to lie for even fifteen minutes in the dressing is to toughen the fiber and make it as indigestible as gutta percha.

Stewed Cucumbers

Peel eight medium-sized cucumbers and cut them into slices an inch thick. Lay in iced water for half an hour. Have a pint of unsalted, hot beef stock in a saucepan, drain the cucumbers and lay them in this. Stew until tender, then remove with a skimmer and lay in a vegetable-dish. Cook together a tablespoonful, each, of butter and browned flour, and pour upon them the stock in which the cucumbers were cooked. Stir until you have a smooth brown sauce; add a saltspoonful of salt, the same amount of pepper, a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet and a half teaspoonful of onion juice. Stir all together and pour over the stewed cucumbers.

Stuffed Cucumbers

Cut good-sized young cucumbers into halves, lengthwise, and remove the seeds. Fill the hollows thus left with a forcemeat made of equal parts of chopped roast beef and minced boiled ham, with half as much fine bread-crumbs. Moisten this stuffing with melted butter and season to taste. Place the halves of each cucumber carefully together and tie with soft twine. Place in a roasting-pan, pour about them a cupful of skimmed beef stock, and cook until tender. Remove the strings, transfer the cucumbers to a hot platter, thicken the gravy left in the pan and pour it about them. This is a Syrian recipe.

Baked Cucumbers

Peel medium-sized cucumbers, arrange them in a bake-dish and pour about them a couple of tablespoonfuls of water in which has been melted a tablespoonful of butter. Dust with salt and pepper, and bake, covered, for half an hour. If you wish, you can scallop them by cutting them in slices, sprinkling with crumbs and basting with bits of butter. Bake, covered, until tender; uncover and brown.

Fried Cucumbers

Peel and leave in ice water for half an hour. Slice lengthwise, making three slices of each cucumber of fair size, lay in fresh iced water for ten minutes more. Wipe dry, sprinkle with pepper and salt, dredge with flour and fry to a light brown in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. Drain, and serve dry and hot.

Chestnuts

The large Spanish chestnuts sold by grocers in the city, and in the markets, make excellent puddings with or without sugar, and, as vegetables, go well with poultry and beef.

Chestnut Pudding

Boil and skin enough chestnuts to make a cupful when rubbed through a colander or vegetable press. Beat four eggs light, stir the chestnut into the yolks; add a tablespoonful of melted butter and two tablespoonfuls of fine cracker dust, two cupfuls of milk, a tablespoonful of sugar, salt and pepper to taste; lastly, the frothed whites. Bake, covered, in a buttered pudding-dish for half an hour; uncover, brown and serve before it falls. Eat with meat.

Chestnut Croquettes

Shell and boil five cupfuls of large chestnuts; skin, and rub through a colander. Work into them a tablespoonful of butter, a little salt, a few drops of lemon juice and a dash of paprika. Turn into a double boiler, and make very hot, then set aside to cool. When cold form into small croquettes, roll in egg, then in cracker-crumbs and set in the ice for an hour before frying in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. Peanut croquettes may be made in the same way.

Dandelions

Make a wholesome and, to some tastes, palatable “greens” in the spring of the year. They must be gathered while very young and tender, or they are bitter. The best time to cut them is just before they flower. Throw at once into cold water, as they wilt soon after they are picked.

Stewed Dandelions (No. 1)

Cut the stems from a half peck of dandelion leaves, and break each leaf into small bits, dropping these into cold water as you do so. Wash thoroughly, drain, and lay in cold water for fifteen minutes. Drain again, and put over the fire in a porcelain-lined saucepan, with enough salted water to cover them. Simmer for fifteen minutes while you make the following sauce:

Cook together a tablespoonful, each, of butter and flour, and pour upon them a pint of milk, in which a pinch of soda has been dissolved. Stir to a smooth white sauce. Drain the water from the dandelion leaves, and stir these into the sauce. Season to taste, and beat in, very slowly, a whipped egg. Remove at once from the fire and turn into a deep vegetable dish.

Stewed Dandelions (No. 2)

Pick the leaves from the stems, and drop into iced water. Take them up by the handful, dripping wet, and put, with no other water, into the inner vessel of a farina boiler. Fill the outer kettle with boiling water; cover the inner closely, and cook fast for half an hour. Rub the leaves through a vegetable press or a colander into a saucepan; beat in a tablespoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, salt and pepper to taste, a teaspoonful of lemon juice, and, at the last, three tablespoonfuls of hot cream to which has been added a pinch of soda. Stir until smoking hot over the fire, turn out into a heated dish, garnish with sippets of fried bread, and serve.

Dandelion greens cooked thus are almost as good as spinach à la crême.

Eggplant — A Much Abused Vegetable

Tens of thousands of average American housewives know but one way of cooking it, and not one in a hundred performs that one properly.

Fried eggplant is one of the many dishes which remind the eater of the small girl of nursery-rhyme fame, who—

“When she was good was very, very good
But when she was bad she was horrid.”

When only half fried, or soaked with grease, this vegetable is an abomination to the educated palate and the self-respecting stomach. When tender and thoroughly cooked, it is one of the most delicious of the summer and fall garden products.

Fried Eggplant

Peel an eggplant and cut into slices half an inch thick. Lay in cold salt water for an hour; wipe each slice dry and dip, first in beaten egg, and then in cracker dust. Set in a cold place for an hour and fry in deep boiling cottolene or other fat. Drain in a heated colander before dishing.

Stuffed Eggplant on the Half-Shell

Wash and wipe a large eggplant and parboil it in boiling salted water for ten minutes. Let it get perfectly cold, cut in half lengthwise, and scrape out the center, leaving the walls of the vegetable three-quarters of an inch thick. Chop the pulp fine and add to it a small cupful of minced chicken, half a cupful of minced ham, a quarter of a cupful of bread-crumbs, a tablespoonful of melted butter, salt and pepper to taste. Mix well, add enough soup stock to make a stiff paste, and fill the hollow sides with this. When full and rounded, sprinkle the forcemeat with bread-crumbs, and lay the halves, side by side, in a bakepan, pouring three cupfuls of soup stock around them. Bake nearly an hour, basting every ten minutes. Remove the eggplant to a hot platter, thicken the gravy left in the pan with browned flour, boil up once on top of the range, stirring constantly, and pour this browned sauce about the base of the halved eggplant.

Scalloped Eggplant

Pare off the skin, cut into dice and lay in cold salt water for an hour. Then parboil for twenty minutes. Drain well and pack in a buttered bake-dish, alternately, with fine crumbs. Dot each layer with butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and strew with finely-minced sweet green peppers. Fill the dish in this order, cover with a layer of crumbs wet with cream; dot with butter, cover and bake half an hour, then brown.

Eggplant Stuffed With Tomatoes

Halve the eggplant and remove the insides as in the last recipe but one. Make a forcemeat of the eggplant pulp, a cupful of chopped ripe tomatoes, one chopped green pepper, and a cupful of bread-crumbs. Season with a tablespoonful of melted butter and salt and pepper. Fill the hollow sides with this mixture, bind the two halves together with wide tape, and bake, basting frequently with melted butter and hot water. When tender, transfer to a hot platter, cut and remove the tape, and pour hot tomato sauce about the eggplant.

Stewed Eggplant, With Sauce Piquante

Prepare as for eggplant on the half-shell by halving and scooping out the pulp, leaving substantial walls. Chop the pulp and cover with hot water. Season with a tablespoonful of onion juice, salt and pepper, and simmer for fifteen minutes. Take from the fire, drain, turn into a bowl and work in two tablespoonfuls of soft bread-crumbs, one tablespoonful of finely-chopped capers, two tablespoonfuls of cold boiled tongue, minced, and, when well-mixed, add salt to taste.

Pack this forcemeat closely into each half, and fit the two parts together, binding securely together with tapes or soft twine.

Put into your covered roaster; pour enough weak stock around it to come one-third of the way up the side, bake, covered, half an hour, then turn and cook the other side. Undo the strings, lay the eggplant carefully in the middle of a hot dish, and pour a good sauce piquante over and around it.

Hominy

The small-grained hominy, called at the South “samp,” after the manner of the aborigines who bequeathed it to us, must be used in the recipes which follow.

Plain Hominy Pudding

Soak a cupful of hominy for three hours in tepid water. Drain, and put over the fire in plenty of boiling water, slightly salted. Boil fast for thirty minutes or until tender; turn off the water and pour in a pint of hot milk, with a little salt. Cook for fifteen minutes, stir in a generous lump of butter and turn into a deep dish.

Eat with sugar and cream.

Baked Hominy

Stir into a pint of milk a cupful of cold boiled hominy, and when this is smooth, add a tablespoonful of melted butter, a tablespoonful of sugar, a saltspoonful of salt and four well-beaten eggs. Beat very light, pour into a buttered pudding-dish and bake for about half an hour or until “set” and brown. This is a good accompaniment to roast beef.

Hominy Croquettes

Into two cupfuls of boiled hominy work a tablespoonful of melted butter; when the cereal is free from all lumps, add to it two beaten eggs, and when these are thoroughly incorporated, season the mixture with salt and pepper. Flour your hands, make the paste into small croquettes, and set aside until stiff and very cold. Now dip each croquette into beaten egg, roll in cracker-crumbs, and when all are thoroughly coated set in the ice-box for two hours. Fry to a golden brown in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat.

Hominy Fritters

Rub two cupfuls of cold boiled hominy to a smooth paste with one tablespoonful of melted butter. Next, thin with warmed milk, and add three well-beaten eggs. Finally, stir in a cupful of flour which has been sifted twice with a teaspoonful of salt and half as much baking-powder.

Drop by the spoonful into boiling, deep cottolene or other fat; or, better still, cook upon a soapstone griddle.

Kale

This vegetable, otherwise known as “sea-kale,” should be better known in our country. In England it takes high rank and holds it creditably.

Pick it over carefully, clip off the stems and lay it in cold water for an hour. Drain, and put it into a saucepan full of salted boiling water. Cook until tender, drain and chop fine. Return to the saucepan with three tablespoonfuls of melted butter, salt and pepper to taste. Serve very hot on squares of buttered toast.

Macaroni

Few articles of diet are more toothsome and more wholesome than macaroni in its various forms when properly prepared. Like rice, it is so often miserably cooked that its excellent qualities are not generally recognized. Macaroni may be bought in several shapes, the large, or pipe-macaroni being perhaps the most common. Besides this there are the smaller and more delicate vermicelli, spaghetti and the flat ribbon, or egg-macaroni. Recipes for the cooking of one may be used in the preparation of any of the divers phases of this food.

Baked Macaroni (No. 1)

Break into inch-lengths half a pound of macaroni. Boil it until tender in weak broth. Drain off the liquor; put the macaroni into a pudding-dish that will stand the fire; pour over it a half cupful of the stock in which it was boiled, and put a tablespoonful of butter, broken into small pieces, here and there through it. Sift over it fine bread-crumbs and grated cheese; dot with bits of butter and brown in the oven.

Baked Macaroni (No. 2)

Break half a pound of macaroni into short lengths; cook until tender in boiling, salted water. It must be clear and soft, but not broken. Drain and put a layer in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Dot with butter, sprinkle lightly with cayenne and salt to taste; cover with grated cheese, and on this dispose another layer of macaroni. Fill the dish in this order, having cheese for the top layer. Pour in a cupful of milk; cover, and bake half an hour. Uncover and brown.

Creamed Macaroni

Put a cupful of macaroni into two quarts of boiling salted water and cook for twenty-five minutes, or until tender, but not broken. Drain off all the water and keep the macaroni hot in a covered dish while you make the cream sauce to pour over it. Cook together in a saucepan until they bubble, two teaspoonfuls of flour and the same quantity of butter; pour over them a pint of hot milk, and, as this thickens, stir into it two heaping tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese. Pour this sauce upon the macaroni just before serving, lifting the latter lightly with a fork that the creamy sauce may reach every part.

Macaroni With Cheese Sauce

Boil tender in salted water and drain. Cook together in a saucepan a great spoonful of butter and a cupful of grated Swiss cheese. As soon as the cheese is melted, turn the macaroni into the saucepan and stir and toss with a silver fork until thoroughly blended with the sauce. Serve at once.

Macaroni and Chicken

Boil half a package of spaghetti tender, drain, drop into cold water, and drain again. Lay on a biscuit-board and cut into pieces about half an inch long. Thicken a pint of chicken stock with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter. Stir into this a cupful of cold boiled or roast chicken, chopped fine, and the cold macaroni. Last of all, beat in slowly a whipped egg, remove from the fire, season to taste, turn into a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle crumbs over the top and bake for half an hour.

Send around grated cheese with it. You may use veal if you have no chicken.

Macaroni and tomatoes (very nice)

Break half a pound of pipe macaroni into inch-lengths, and boil in salted water until tender. Drain, and put a layer of the macaroni in the bottom of a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle with pepper, salt, onion juice and grated cheese, and cover all with a layer of stewed and strained tomatoes that have been previously seasoned to taste. On these goes another layer of macaroni, and so on until the dish is full. The topmost layer must be of tomatoes sprinkled with crumbs and good-sized bits of butter. Set in a hot oven, covered, for twenty minutes, and then bake, uncovered, until the crumbs are well-browned.

Spaghetti With Swiss Cheese

Break a half pound of spaghetti into bits not more than an inch and a half in length, and boil in slightly salted water for twenty minutes. Turn into a hot colander and set at the side of the range to drain. Grate enough Swiss cheese to make a generous half cupful and turn into a saucepan with three tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Stir well; add the hot spaghetti, toss and stir for a minute, or just long enough to melt the cheese; add a dash of paprika and serve in a hot dish.

Macaroni Rissoles

Have ready a cupful of cold, boiled macaroni cut up small. Make a white sauce by cooking together a tablespoonful of butter and two of flour and stirring into them a cupful of hot milk. Stir until thick, add a large tablespoonful of grated cheese, and, gradually, the whipped yolks of four eggs, beating all the time. Work the macaroni into the sauce and set aside until the mixture is very cold. With floured hands form into small balls—not quite as large in circumference as a silver dollar—roll in beaten egg, then in fine cracker-crumbs, and set in the ice-box for two hours. Fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. Serve with tomato sauce.

Macaroni Piquante

Break spaghetti into very small bits less than an inch in length. Boil these for twenty minutes, or until tender, in salted water. Drain and keep hot while you make the following sauce:

Cook together in a saucepan a heaping teaspoonful, each, of butter and browned flour, and when these are blended to a brown roux, pour upon them a pint of beef stock, and stir until smooth. Now add four tablespoonfuls of tomato catsup, six drops of Tabasco sauce, a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, a pinch of salt and a dash of paprika. Turn the boiled spaghetti into this sauce, stir all together, and pour the mixture into a greased pudding-dish. Sprinkle buttered crumbs and grated cheese over the top and bake until brown.

Macaroni á la Napolitaine

Have a long fish kettle half full of boiling, salted water, and lay a half pound of unbroken pipe-macaroni in this. Boil for twenty minutes or until tender. Carefully drain the water from the kettle and slip the macaroni gently upon a heated platter, where it may lie at full length. Set the platter in the oven to keep warm while you make a sauce by cooking together in a saucepan two tablespoonfuls of butter and one of flour, and pouring upon them a pint of strained tomato liquor. Stir to a smooth sauce, then season with onion juice, celery salt, pepper, and four tablespoonfuls of Parmesan cheese. Pour this sauce over the macaroni on the platter. When you serve, cut the mass with a sharp knife into manageable lengths.

Mushrooms

It is a pity there should be such a popular dread of the poisonous “toadstool” that his nutritious and innocuous brother—the edible mushroom—is shunned by thousands of rational creatures. The most wary need not fear this joy of the epicure when it is bought at market or at a responsible grocer’s shop. Trustworthy dealers run no risks in purchasing the wares from those whose business it is to cultivate and sell them. Mushrooms bought under these circumstances are no more to be feared than artichokes or Brussels sprouts. They form delicious entrées and tempt the most jaded appetite.

Broiled Mushrooms

Peel carefully with a small knife and cut off the stems. Lay the mushrooms in a deep dish and pour melted butter over them. Remove them gently to a greased gridiron and broil over clear coals until delicately browned on both sides. Lay diamond-shaped slices of thin buttered toast in a dish, and the mushrooms upon these, sprinkle with pepper and salt and pour a little melted butter over all.

Fried Mushrooms

Melt a great spoonful of butter in an agate frying-pan. Peel the mushrooms and cut off their stems, scraping the latter. Lay the mushrooms with their scraped stalks in the frying-pan and cook, turning often, until done. Serve very hot.

Stewed Mushrooms

Peel the mushrooms and simmer gently in salted water until tender. Ten minutes should suffice. Drain and keep hot while you make a white sauce of a half pint of milk thickened with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter. Turn the mushrooms into this and stir over the fire until very hot. Season with salt, pepper, a dash of mace, and serve.

Baked Mushrooms

Peel very large mushrooms and cut off their stems. Grease a shallow pudding-dish and put a layer of mushrooms, under sides upward, into this. Into each mushroom pour a few drops of melted butter. Do not put more than two layers in the dish. Bake, closely covered, in a quick oven until tender. This should be in about twenty minutes. When done, remove the cover, pour melted butter over the mushrooms, and serve very hot in the dish in which they were cooked.

Fricasseed Mushrooms

Peel and remove the stems from large mushrooms. Make a forcemeat by chopping the white meat of a cold roast chicken fine with a few small mushrooms and moistening it with chicken stock. Grease a pudding-dish and lay the large mushrooms, tops down, in this. Fill the mushrooms and the space between them with the forcemeat. Sprinkle bits of butter over all. Pour in enough of the chicken stock to make the contents of the dish very moist, lay a few wafer-like slices of bacon on top of the scallop, and bake, covered, in a hot oven for a quarter of an hour. Uncover, and cook for five minutes longer. Serve in the dish in which they were cooked.

Onions

A once-despised vegetable which now takes rank as a highly-respectable edible upon good men’s—and women’s—tables. Delicate spinsters no longer faint at fumes of boiled onions, and finical housewives have forgotten the rusty joke about cooking onions in the middle of a ten-acre lot. There are ways of extracting the coarser flavor that once condemned them with dyspeptics. Cooks have learned that there is as much difference between a well-done and a parboiled onion as between half-cooked and mealy potatoes. Housewives and physicians now appreciate the nutritive values of the esculent bulb, and prize it for these as well as for the seasoning which nothing else supplies. Onion juice is indispensable to the flavor of ragouts and soups, and is obtained by grating, not chopping. The superiority of this mode of getting the essence of the vegetable can not be rightly estimated by one who has not tried it. Onion seasoning should be tasted, never seen.

Stewed Young Onions

Cut off the stalks, remove the skins and lay the onions in cold water for half an hour. Put them over the fire in hot, salted water and cook for twenty minutes. Drain off the water and return the onions to the fire with a cupful of hot milk, in which has been dissolved a bit of soda the size of a pea. Add a tablespoonful of flour and stew slowly until the sauce is like thick cream.

Boiled Onions

Peel and lay for an hour in cold water. Boil in two waters until tender. Drain, sprinkle with pepper and salt; put into a deep vegetable-dish and pour over them a great spoonful of melted butter.

Baked onions (No. 1)

Peel the onions and boil for ten minutes. Drain, arrange in a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and pour over all a white sauce, to which a beaten egg has been added. Sprinkle with fine crumbs, set in the oven and bake, covered, for twenty minutes, then uncover and brown.

Baked onions (No. 2)

Cook tender in boiling water changed once after fifteen minutes; drain and arrange, side by side, in a baking-pan. Melt a tablespoonful of butter in a cupful of hot soup stock, season with salt and pepper and pour over the onions. Cook in a hot oven until the onions are brown, when they may be lifted with a perforated spoon and put into the dish in which they are to be served. Put the pan of gravy on top of the range, thicken the contents with browned flour and pour over the onions. Serve very hot.

Savory Onions

Select young onions for this dish. Lay the onions in a saucepan with a very little salted water and simmer for ten minutes. Drain off the water; pour over the onions a small cupful of beef stock and cook for ten minutes longer. With a split spoon remove the onions to a hot dish, while you thicken the gravy left in the pan with a heaping teaspoonful of browned flour rubbed to a paste in the same quantity of butter. When you have a smooth brown sauce season it with a teaspoonful, each, of kitchen bouquet and tomato catsup, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour this sauce over the onions.

Stuffed onions, creamed

Boil eight large onions gently until quite tender, but not broken. Drain, and when cold, carefully remove the hearts or centers. Chop three of these hearts fine and mix with them a cupful of minced ham and season to taste. Moisten with rich cream and the beaten yolk of an egg. Fill the centers of the onions with the mixture, put a piece of butter in the top of each, set side by side, in a deep dish, pour a little milk about them and bake, covered, for twenty minutes. Then uncover, sprinkle with buttered crumbs and bake ten minutes longer. Serve hot.

Scalloped Onions

Parboil onions and drain. When cold, cut into bits. Put a thick layer of these in the bottom of a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper and dot with bits of butter. Cover with a very thin layer of crumbs moistened with milk. Put in more seasoned onions and more crumbs, and proceed in this way until the dish is full. Then pour in carefully a little cream, cover and bake for half an hour; uncover and brown.

Onion Custard

Cook the onions tender in two waters; drain, and lay in a deep pudding-dish. Thicken a pint of hot milk with a teaspoonful of corn-starch rubbed into two teaspoonfuls of butter and gradually pour this white sauce upon two beaten eggs. Season with pepper and salt and pour the mixture about the onions. Bake until the custard is set.

Green Peas

They lose sweetness with every hour—I might say with every minute—that passes after they have been picked. The passage from garden to kitchen and from pod to pot should be made as short as possible. As you shell throw them into cold water, not holding them in the hand until they are heated and moist. As soon as the last is shelled, drain and cook.

Boiled Green Peas

Shell and lay in cold water for ten minutes. Drain, turn into slightly salted boiling water and cook for about twenty-five minutes, or until very tender, but not broken. Drain in a colander, put into a dish, stir into the peas a lump of butter, and sprinkle very lightly with salt and pepper.

Green Pea Pancakes

Boil a pint of shelled peas, and mash while hot, adding a tablespoonful of butter and salt and pepper to taste. Now beat in two whipped eggs, a half pint of milk and five tablespoonfuls of prepared flour. Beat hard and fry on a hot griddle. A soapstone griddle is best. Then they are baked—not fried.

Green Pea Soufflé

Boil a pint of shelled peas until very tender, and mash with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Beat three eggs light and stir into them a pint of milk and the mashed peas. Season with salt and pepper, beat hard and turn into a greased pudding-dish. Bake, covered, for twenty minutes; uncover and brown. Serve this soufflé as soon as it is removed from the oven.

Green Pea Fritters

Shell enough peas to make a quart without the pods. Lay the peas in cold water for a half hour; put over the fire in two quarts of boiling salted water and cook for half an hour, or until very tender, but not broken. Drain free of water, turn into a bowl and mash soft with two tablespoonfuls of butter and with salt to taste. Beat four eggs very light, add to them three gills of milk and a cupful of flour with which has been sifted a teaspoonful of baking-powder and a half teaspoonful of salt. Stir the mashed peas by the great spoonful into this mixture and beat until you have a smooth, light green batter. Have your soapstone griddle very hot and drop your batter by the spoonful upon this. When done on one side turn and bake to a delicate brown. Serve very hot as a vegetable to accompany any kind of meat or poultry.

Green Pea Croquettes

Peas that are getting hard will do for these. Boil in just enough salted water to cover them well. While hot, run through the vegetable press. Beat to a smooth paste with a tablespoonful of butter and two of flour. Pepper and salt to taste, drop in a dash of onion juice; lastly, beat in a well-whipped egg. Stir in a vessel set within another of boiling water until hot all through, and set away until cold and stiff. Mold then into croquettes, dip in beaten egg and cracker-crumbs; leave on ice for half an hour before frying in boiling deep cottolene or other fat. Drain and serve very hot.

You may use canned peas if you can not get fresh.

Peppers

The large, green peppers, known to the green-grocer as “sweet peppers,” have grown rapidly into favor as a fresh vegetable, within the last decade. They must be seeded with the utmost care. A touch of the seeds against the green sides will ruin the latter for present use. Get hold of the inner stem and draw the clustered seeds through the opening at the stem end, without touching the inside walls.

Fried Green Peppers

Cut open lengthwise and extract all seeds and tough white fiber. Slice crosswise. Lay in cold salted water for ten minutes, then wipe dry. Melt four tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan and sauté the sliced peppers in this. Lay about broiled steak or chops.

Stuffed Peppers

Make a forcemeat of a tablespoonful of minced ham, one of minced chicken, three chopped mushrooms and a cupful of boiled rice. Make this paste wet by adding to it a chopped tomato and enough melted butter to make it of the right consistency for stuffing. Smooth the stem-ends, cut the blossom-ends from green peppers and take out the seeds and inside fibers. Lay the green shells for three minutes in salted boiling water, then plunge into iced water. Let them lie in this for fifteen minutes. Drain and wipe dry. Fill with the forcemeat, replace the tips, and stand the peppers, side by side, in a dripping-pan containing a quarter of an inch of soup stock. Cook for twenty minutes, basting twice with a little salad oil. When done, stand the peppers on a platter and pour a little salad oil about them.

Peppers Stuffed With Fish

Trim the stem-ends of your green peppers so that they will stand up. Cut off the tips and, with a small keen knife, extract the seeds and as much of the tough fiber as will come away. Mince white fish fine, moisten it with a white sauce, season and fill the peppers with this mixture. Stand in the oven long enough to heat through, and serve.

Scalloped Peppers au Gratin

Cut large green peppers in half, lengthwise, extract core and seeds and fill them with minced cold cooked fish, well seasoned, mixed with one-third its weight of fine bread crumbs. The mixture (forcemeat) must be wet with gravy or tomato sauce. Round the contents of the halved pepper in the shape of the missing other half, sprinkle with fine crumbs, and bake to a light brown.

You may use for these scallops of cold chicken, lean lamb or veal. See that you do not get the forcemeat too stiff.

Scalloped Peppers on the Half-Shell

Halve the peppers lengthwise, remove seeds and membrane, and parboil for five minutes. When cold, fill the halves with minced roast beef and fine bread-crumbs moistened with tomato juice. Bake in a covered pan, basting every ten minutes. At the end of a half hour remove to a hot platter and serve with tomato sauce poured over and around the halved peppers.

Peppers and Rice

(A Creole dish.)

Cook half a cupful of rice in plenty of boiling water, a little salt, for twenty minutes hard. Drain in a colander and set at the back of the range to dry off. Heap within a deep dish.

Prepare your peppers as already directed. Slice as for frying in the usual way. When you take them from the cold salt and water, fry them in a great spoonful of butter. Lift them from the pan and chop rather coarsely. Add to the hot butter and peppers a teaspoonful of onion juice and two tablespoonfuls of stock. Boil up and pour upon the rice. Set in the oven, covered, for three minutes, and serve.

Poke Stalks

Cut as you would asparagus, when they are but a few inches high. They are then tender and succulent, and are thought by some imaginative vegetarians to resemble the “aristocrat” in flavor.

They are undeniably wholesome—also inexpensive.

Scrape the stalks and lay in cold water for an hour. Tie loosely together with a piece of soft twine, put over the fire with enough salted water to cover them, and boil until tender. Drain, sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper and lay upon a platter on slices of buttered toast. Pour white sauce over all.

Potatoes

“The Tyrant Potato” is not assailed ignorantly, nor yet flippantly. After careful study of its properties, its works and its ways, the utmost concession that is now made to peculiar prejudice is in the declaration that, since people will make potatoes nine-tenths of their vegetable diet, it is essential to the national digestion that the ninety-three parts of water and of starch contained in the tuber be cooked in such manner as shall render the esculent as palatable and as little hurtful as is practicable when the constituents are not to be ignored.

The above protest stands at the head of that section of the “National Cook Book” which is headed “Potatoes.” I wrote it ten years ago, and am “of the same opinion still.”

Talk against it as we may, the potato holds its sway in defiance of chemistry and dietetics, and our Johns, one and all, insist upon its daily appearance. As one weary housewife said to me:

“If I give my fingers to be burned in the preparation of a half dozen vegetables and have not potatoes in the number, my culinary and housekeeping skill are as sounding brass and tinkling cymbals—to my husband, at least. And I am so tired of the same old ways of cooking the same old potatoes!”

Her remark made me wonder why housekeepers adhere to the “same old ways.” Why not try new ones?

One hint may be acted upon with advantage to cook and to eaters.

One of the bugbears to the housewife is paring potatoes. It is not a pleasant task, and the necessity of performing it recurs with disagreeable frequency.

The housekeeper is wise if, while the potatoes are in the process of peeling, she pares and cooks more than enough for the repast for which they are intended, and by utilizing the cold left-overs does away with the necessity of peeling more of the tyrannical starch-and-water for the next meal.

A majority of the recipes herewith given are based upon the supposition that she has done this.

New Potatoes With Cream Sauce

(Contributed)

Boil the potatoes in salted water until done. Drain and cover with a white sauce made as follows: Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan and when it begins to bubble add two tablespoonfuls of flour; let them cook for one minute, then add one pint of hot milk, season with salt and pepper and a half teaspoonful of chopped parsley.

Potatoes, Boiled au Natural

Wash, drop into boiling water slightly salted, and cook fast until a fork will pass easily into the largest. Turn off the water, throw in a handful of salt, and set the pot, uncovered, at the back or side of the range, to dry the potatoes “off.” Serve in their skins.

Boiled Potatoes

Pare with a sharp knife, and as thin as possible. Much of the mealiness of the potato depends upon this. The scullion who slashes away chunks of her beloved edible really deprives it of its chief merit, and all its comeliness. Have a pot of boiling water ready, salt it slightly and boil fast until a fork pierces the largest readily. Throw off the water immediately, sprinkle with salt, and dry out as directed in last recipe.

Baked Potatoes (No. 1)

Select fine potatoes of uniform size. Wash, wipe and bake until the largest yields to the pressure of thumb and finger. Serve wrapped in a hot napkin. If the eater will knead his potato skilfully between his fingers before breaking it open, he will find a mealy mass upon opening it. Never cut a baked potato. It makes it “soggy.”

Baked Potatoes (No. 2)

Pare and parboil; then set in an open bakepan in the oven and bake about half an hour, basting freely with butter or dripping until you have a delicate brown “glaze” upon each.

These may be eaten as a separate dish, or as a garnish for roast beef.

Stuffed Potatoes

Bake eight large potatoes until done. Cut off the tops with a sharp knife and scoop out the insides with a small spoon. Set aside the skins for future use. With the back of a spoon mash the potatoes smooth, rub into them two tablespoonfuls of butter, a gill of cream, two teaspoonfuls of finely minced onion, a teaspoonful of minced parsley and salt and cayenne pepper to taste. When you have worked these ingredients to a smooth mass, beat in the stiffened whites of two eggs. Fill the empty potato skins with this creamy mixture, heaping it high. Stand the potato cases on end, side by side, in a baking-pan and set in the oven until the potato protruding from the tops is a delicate brown.

Potatoes on the Half-Shell

Bake large smooth potatoes, and cut each carefully in half lengthwise. Scrape out the insides, leaving the skins whole. Beat what you have taken out to a cream with melted butter, cream or milk, season with pepper and salt, and fill the “shells,” rounding the potato on top. Put a dot of butter upon each and brown lightly upon the upper grating of your oven.

Potato Soufflé

Into two cupfuls of mashed potato work three cupfuls of hot milk in which two tablespoonfuls of butter have been half melted. Beat out all the lumps until you have a smooth purée. Season with salt and pepper. Beat four eggs very light and whip them into the potato and milk. When thoroughly mixed pour into a deep greased pudding-dish and bake in a good oven until “set” and delicately browned.

Potato Croquettes

Warm in a double boiler two cupfuls of mashed potatoes and stir into this two teaspoonfuls of butter and the beaten yolks of two eggs. Add enough milk to make the paste of the right consistency to handle easily. With lightly floured hands form into croquettes and set aside to cool. When cold, dip in beaten egg and roll in cracker-dust. Set in the ice-box for several hours longer and fry in deep cottolene or other fat.

Potato Fritters

Peel and boil four large potatoes, and when they are cold cut into tiny bits. Make a batter of two eggs—beaten light—a cupful of milk and a cupful and one-half of flour sifted twice with a half teaspoonful of baking-powder. Now add the minced potatoes, mix well and season with salt. Drop this mixture by the spoonful into deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. When the fritters are done lift them out with a perforated spoon, and lay them in a hot colander to drain free of fat.

Scalloped Potatoes

Put a layer of sliced cold-boiled potatoes in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish, sprinkle with crumbs and bits of butter. Put in another layer of potatoes and more crumbs until the dish is full, having the topmost layer of the buttered crumbs. Moisten all by pouring carefully into the dish a cupful of well-seasoned white stock. Bake for twenty minutes.

Stewed Potatoes (No. 1)

Peel, cut into neat, small dice and lay in cold water for an hour. Put over the fire in boiling water, slightly salted, and cook tender. Turn off the water and pour in a large cupful of hot milk, in which you have stirred a pinch of soda. Boil one minute and stir in a tablespoonful of butter rubbed into one of flour. Pepper and salt, add a tablespoonful of onion juice and a tablespoonful of minced parsley. Simmer for another minute, and serve.

Stewed Potatoes (No. 2)

Peel potatoes and cut them into neat squares. Lay in cold water for an hour, drain, and put them over the fire in salted boiling water. Stew until they are tender, but not soft. Turn into a colander to drain. Cook together in a saucepan a heaping teaspoonful, each, of butter and browned flour, and pour upon them a pint of weak beef stock. When you have a smooth, thick sauce, season with pepper, salt and a little onion juice, and mix with the potato dice.

Hashed and Browned Potatoes

Pare, cut very small and evenly, and put into a saucepan with a finely minced onion and a stalk of celery chopped into tiny bits. Cover with salted boiling water and cook tender. Drain off the water, supplying its place with milk, heated with a pinch of soda. Bring to a bubble and stir in a large tablespoonful of butter, rubbed to a cream with one of flour. Pepper, salt, mix well—but taking care not to break the potatoes—take from the fire, stir and toss for a moment, then turn all into a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle crumbs on the top and brown in a good oven.

Potatoes á la Duchesse

Peel and boil enough potatoes to make a pint when mashed. Mix with them the yolk of an egg, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter and the same quantity of cream. Turn this mixture upon a pastry-board and press it flat and smooth. With a sharp knife cut the potato paste into squares of uniform size. Slip a cake-turner under each square and transfer it carefully to a greased baking-pan. Set in a cold place to stiffen, then sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese, and bake in a quick oven to a delicate brown.

Potatoes á la Lyonnaise

Cut cold boiled potatoes into tiny dice of uniform size. Put two great spoonfuls of butter into the frying-pan and fry two sliced onions in this for three minutes. With a skimmer remove the onions and turn the potatoes into the hissing butter. Toss and stir with a fork that the dice may not become brown. When hot, add a teaspoonful of finely chopped parsley and cook a minute longer. Remove the potatoes from the pan with a perforated spoon, that the fat may drip from them. Serve very hot.

Savory Potatoes

Heat in a double boiler a quart of milk and put into it three sliced onions. Boil for ten minutes, strain out the onions, return the milk to the fire, and stir into it two teaspoonfuls of butter rubbed into two of flour, and two teaspoonfuls of minced parsley. When the milk is as thick as cream, add to it two cupfuls of sliced cold boiled potatoes. Season with pepper and salt, and as soon as the potatoes are hot, pour all into a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle bread-crumbs over the top and bake until brown.

Potatoes and Corn

(A “left-over.”)

Cut the kernels from six ears of boiled corn. Cut eight cold boiled potatoes into small dice of uniform size. Put into a frying-pan a tablespoonful of butter and turn the potatoes and corn into this; salt and pepper. Fry, tossing and stirring constantly, for ten minutes.

Fried Potato Hash

Chop cold boiled potatoes, season with salt, pepper and onion juice. Have two tablespoonfuls of good dripping, hissing hot, in a frying-pan; put in the potatoes and pat smooth. Cook slowly, turning the frying-pan occasionally that they may brown evenly on the bottom. In about twenty minutes they should be nicely colored and crusted into a thick sheet. Reverse carefully upon a hot platter.

Brown Creamed Potatoes

Cut eight potatoes into small dice of uniform size, boil tender in salted water, drain and stir into a pint of milk which has been thickened with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter; season. Turn all into a deep dish and bake until brown.

Potatoes With Cheese Sauce

Boil a dozen potatoes and, while hot, mash soft with hot milk and melted butter, adding salt and white pepper to taste. Whip light and heap in the center of a fire-proof platter. Smooth the sides of the mound with a knife and carefully remove about a cupful of potato from the center of the mound, leaving a cavity in its place. Dip a feather or brush in the beaten white of an egg and wash the inside of the hollow and the top and sides of the mound with this. Now set in the oven to get very hot and to brown lightly. When done draw to the door of the oven and fill the hollow with the sauce—made according to the following recipe—sprinkle the potatoes and cheese with crumbs and return to the oven for five minutes before sending to the table.

Sauce for the Above

Heat a cupful of milk with a generous pinch of soda; season with pepper, salt and onion juice, and thicken with a heaping tablespoonful of butter cooked to a roux with one of flour; cook one minute and add three large spoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese.

Mashed Potatoes

Boil and mash white potatoes and whip to a cream with a cupful of hot milk and a tablespoonful of melted butter. Whip for fully five minutes with two forks, then pile upon a hot platter.

Potato Hillock

Boil potatoes, dry at the back of the range, salting well, and rub through a vegetable press or colander upon a fire-proof platter. As they fall let them form a conical hillock in the middle of the platter. Grate cheese thickly over the hillock and brown lightly upon the upper grating of your oven.

Potatoes Parisienne

Parisienne potatoes are cut into small balls from raw potatoes with a French vegetable cutter or a round spoon. They may be either fried, or boiled and served with maître d’hôtel sauce.

French Fried Potatoes

Peel potatoes, cut into strips, and lay in iced water for at least an hour. Drain and pat dry between the folds of a clean dish-towel that should absorb every drop of moisture. Have ready a kettle of deep cottolene or other fat, heated gradually until it is boiling hot. Test this by dropping in a bit of the potato. It should rise to the top and brown immediately. Put in the potatoes, fry to a golden brown, drain, first in a hot colander, then shake in heated tissue paper before transferring to a hot dish lined with a napkin.

Saratoga Chips

Peel the potatoes and proceed as directed in preceding recipe when you have cut them into slices as thin as shavings.

Potatoes au Gratin

Slice potatoes thin and put in layers in a greased pudding-dish, sprinkling each layer with salt, pepper and bits of butter. When all are in, pour in a gill of hot water or hot milk, and sprinkle the top layer of potatoes thickly with cracker-crumbs mixed with salt and pepper and bits of butter. Bake, covered, for half an hour. Uncover and brown.

Potato Omelet

Make an omelet in the usual way; have ready by the time it is done, and lay upon it, this mixture, then fold down:

Cook one small minced onion in one tablespoonful of dripping until yellow, add one cupful of cold boiled potatoes, chopped fine, and cook until slightly colored, stirring frequently. Shake into it a little pepper and salt and one teaspoonful of finely minced parsley.

Set into the oven to keep warm until the omelet is ready.

Potato Dumplings (No. 1)

Grate ten or twelve large raw potatoes. Put the grated pulp into a muslin bag and press out the juice. Turn into a bowl and add one-third as much boiled potato that has been run through a vegetable press. Salt to taste and beat in a raw egg until you have a smooth, creamy paste. Make into dumplings with well-floured hands, and roll each in flour to prevent them from sticking together while they are boiling.

Have a pot of water at a hard boil, drop in the dumplings and cook from ten to twelve minutes. Test by taking one out and cutting in two to see if it is done in the center. Take up with a skimmer and serve at once, as they soon get heavy.

Serve them with any kind of roast meat, or alone with gravy.

Potato Dumplings (No. 2)

Peel medium-sized potatoes that have been partly boiled (not quite soft). When cold, grate; to three parts of the potatoes take one part of grated wheat bread, and add small squares of wheat bread browned in butter, then crushed into crumbs.

To each pint of the above add two eggs, well-beaten, two ounces of melted butter and nutmeg to suit taste. Mix all thoroughly and form into round dumplings the size of an egg, or larger, as preferred. Roll in flour and boil in salted water until dry inside, or about fifteen minutes.

Serve with roast meats.

Always use mealy potatoes.

Potato Balls (“Kartoffelklösse”)

(A German recipe.)

Peel, boil and mash potatoes; put aside to cool.

Three cupfuls of potatoes, one cupful of bread, two eggs, well-beaten, separately; pepper, salt and nutmeg to taste, and some chopped parsley that has been heated in butter. The bread should be prepared as for croutons, crusts removed, cut in squares, browned in butter in the oven, then crushed. The mixture should be very stiff. Mold into small balls and drop into boiling, well-salted water; keep water boiling for fifteen minutes, when the klösse should be about twice the original size and done to the center. They may be served with bread-crumbs browned in butter, placed on the top of each dumpling, or with tomato sauce. With chopped meat filling the center of the dumplings they can also be varied. If too moist, use flour or bread-crumbs in molding. A good cook has the knack of dropping from the spoon without molding, but this is hard to do. The klösse should be the size of small apples when finished. Americans very often use a trifle of baking-powder to insure lightness in these. Germans depend on good beating.

Sweet Potatoes

Boiled Sweet Potatoes

Wash and cook in boiling water until soft. Set in a moderate oven for ten minutes to keep them from being watery.

Baked Sweet Potatoes

They are seldom cooked in any other way at the South, where they are native to the soil, and at their best estate.

Wash and wipe and bake in a good oven until tender.

Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Parboil in their skins, peel and lay in a bake-pan. Cook, basting often with butter, until they are a golden brown.

Scallop of Sweet Potatoes and Bacon

This is a good “left-over” when you have a little cold corned ham and some cold boiled or baked sweet potatoes. Mince the meat—the fatter the better—and put a layer in the bottom of a bake-dish. Cover with sweet potato dice, pepper, and put in more bacon. When all the materials are used up, cover with crumbs; add enough milk to wet the crumbs, cover and bake half an hour. Uncover and brown.

Sweet Potatoes au Gratin

Parboil the potatoes, peel and slice while hot. Butter a deep dish well; put in a layer of potatoes, sprinkle with sugar, salt, pepper, and dot with butter; then a stratum of fine crumbs; season in the same way, leaving out the sugar. The uppermost layer should be of crumbs and well buttered. Pour in four tablespoonfuls of warm water to generate steam, cover closely and bake half an hour. Uncover and brown.

This is an especially nice dish for a family dinner, and always liked by children.

Buttered Sweet Potatoes

Boil sweet potatoes and peel them. Lay in a deep dish and upon each potato put a teaspoonful of butter. Set in the oven and heat until the butter sizzles about the edge of the dish. Then send to the table.

Sweet Potato Croquettes

Into two cupfuls of boiled and mashed sweet potatoes beat a tablespoonful of butter, and stir in a saucepan over the fire until smoking hot. Now remove and add a tablespoonful of cream and the yolks of two eggs. When cold, form into croquettes and roll each croquette in beaten egg and cracker-crumbs. Arrange all on a platter and set in a cold place for several hours before frying in deep cottolene or other fat to a golden brown.

Sweet Potato Puff

Into two cupfuls of boiled and mashed sweet potatoes beat three whipped eggs, a cupful of milk, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter and seasoning to taste. Beat hard and bake in a greased pudding-dish.

Sweet Potato and Chestnut Croquettes

Boil and mash enough sweet potatoes to make two cupfuls, and enough Spanish chestnuts to make one cupful. Rub the nuts and potatoes together while hot and beat into them two tablespoonfuls of butter, four teaspoonfuls of cream, two beaten eggs, and season to taste. When cold, form into croquettes, roll in egg and cracker-crumbs, and set in a cold place for an hour before frying in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat.

Rice

Boiled Rice

Into three pints of hot salted water, when at a fast boil, throw half a cupful of raw rice, previously washed and picked over. Keep it at a furious boil for twenty minutes, when test a grain to see if it is done. If it is soft, drain away every drop of water; set the uncovered pot at the back of the range for two minutes to dry off the rice, and serve. Not a spoon should touch it while cooking, and each grain should be whole and apart from the rest.

This, the one and only way to boil rice properly, is also the easiest. Shake the saucepan up three times while the rice is in cooking, to make sure it does not clog.

Pasty rice is as abhorrent to those who have eaten it cooked according to this recipe as sodden, gluey potatoes.

Serve in a hot, uncovered dish. Eat with butter, salt and pepper, and you will not regret the tyrant potato, should he fail to appear.

Buttered Rice

Spread three cups of cold boiled rice upon a platter and set in the open oven that every grain may dry. Meanwhile, heat a little butter in the frying-pan and fry a sliced onion in it. When the slices are browned remove them with a perforated spoon, and lay the rice by the spoonful in the pan. Stir until each grain is coated with the butter; turn the rice into a heated colander, shake hard, and set at the side of the range for five minutes. Serve in a deep vegetable dish.

Rice Croquettes

Boil as directed in first recipe; drain, and beat in two whipped eggs, half a cupful of milk (or cream if you have it), a little butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, a little mace, pepper and salt. Set by until perfectly cold, form into croquettes, roll in egg and fine crumbs, leave on ice for an hour and fry in boiling deep cottolene or other fat.

You can make the croquettes of cold boiled rice if you have it, but it is hardly as good for the purpose as the hot. The croquettes seldom have the consistency of those made up while the rice is hot.

Rice and Tomato Croquettes

When the rice has boiled ten minutes drain off the water and cover the rice with tomato juice, already heated and seasoned with pepper, salt and sugar. Cook ten minutes more, or until the rice is tender. Take from the fire, add a great spoonful of butter and a teaspoonful of onion juice; the beaten yolks of three eggs, and, when you have beaten these in, two tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese. Set in a pan of boiling water and stir over the fire for five minutes. Turn out and let it get perfectly cold. Make into croquettes, roll in egg and cracker crumbs; set on ice for an hour and fry in hot, deep cottolene or other fat. Drain and serve.

Boiled Rice With Tomato Sauce

Boil in the usual way, dish, and pour over it, loosening with a fork that the sauce may penetrate to every part, a generous cupful of rich tomato sauce, seasoned with pepper, salt, onion juice and sugar, and, finally, with two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese.

Savory Rice

Prepare as in last recipe, but add a small cupful of good stock to an equal quantity of tomato sauce; cook together for two minutes and pour over the rice.

Rice Pudding as a Vegetable

Boil one cupful of raw rice twenty minutes, or until soft, but not broken. Beat four eggs light, and when you have stirred a tablespoonful of butter into the rice add these and season with pepper and salt. Stir in, gradually, a scant quart of milk; beat all well for one minute, turn into a buttered pudding-dish and bake, covered, half an hour; then brown.

It should be as light as a soufflé, and must be eaten at once. A pleasing accompaniment to roast poultry of any kind.

Savory Rice Pudding

Boil and drain a cupful of rice. Stir into it, while hot, a tablespoonful of butter and a cupful of hot milk with which has been mixed a teaspoonful of corn-starch dissolved in cold water. Add a well-beaten egg, salt and pepper, and spread upon a platter to cool. Meanwhile make ready two cupfuls of chopped meat of almost any kind—poultry, veal, lamb, mutton, beef, giblets, liver—or a mixture of several—whatever you have on hand. Chop half a can of mushrooms and work in; season highly with paprika, kitchen bouquet and onion juice. Some even put in a little curry. Moisten slightly with gravy and when the rice has cooled mix all well together. Butter a cake mold lavishly, put the pudding into it; fit on a close top and set in a pot of boiling water. Cook steadily for at least two hours. Dip the mold into ice-water to loosen the pudding from the sides, and turn out upon a hot platter.

Send tomato sauce, mixed with grated cheese, around with it, or any gravy you may chance to have left over.

Molded Rice (No. 1)

Boil a cupful of raw rice ten minutes; drain and pour over it, in place of the water, two cupfuls of chicken gravy or stock made from chicken, duck or turkey bones, seasoned well with salt, pepper and onion juice. Set in boiling water uncovered, and cook gently until quite dry. Turn into a bowl wet with hot water, press down firmly and reverse the bowl upon a hot platter. Cover the mound with grated cheese, brush all over with beaten white of egg, sift grated cheese upon the egg, and set upon the top grating of your oven to color slightly.

Molded Rice (No. 2)

Boil a cupful of rice in plenty of hot salted water until soft. Drain and dry off. Stir into it a great spoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of onion juice and the beaten yolks of two eggs, with salt and pepper to taste. Stir over the fire in a bowl set in boiling water for two minutes, using a fork that you may not break the rice to pieces. Turn into a round-bottomed bowl wet with cold water, and press down hard. Reverse the bowl upon a fireproof platter, cover the molded rice thickly with a meringue made of the whites of the eggs beaten stiff, and set upon the top grating of the oven for three minutes to form.

Eat with drawn butter.

Spanish Rice (Very Nice)

Boil one cupful of rice until tender in plenty of boiling water, salted; drain and dry off. Chop a quarter of a pound of fat salt pork, and fry in a pan. When it hisses put into the pan two medium-sized onions, also minced. Chop two green sweet peppers (seeded, of course), and mix with the rice, then the pork and onions, and enough tomato sauce to moisten the mixture well. Butter a bake-dish, add salt and pepper, if needed, to the rice, and put into the dish. Coat thickly with fine crumbs and bake, covered, for twenty minutes; then brown.

Rice Timbales

Pack hot boiled rice in slightly buttered timbale molds; let them stand in hot water for ten minutes; run a pointed knife around the sides; turn from the molds and serve as a garnish for curried meats or boiled fowl.

Salsify, or Oyster-Plant

Stewed Salsify

Scrape the roots, throwing them at once into cold water, that they may not blacken. Cut into inch lengths and put over the fire in boiling salted water. Stew until tender. Drain off the water and pour upon the salsify in the saucepan a cup of hot milk. After it has simmered five minutes add a tablespoonful of butter and three tablespoonfuls of cracker dust; season to taste and serve.

Mock Fried Oysters

Wash, trim and cook a bunch of oyster-plant (or salsify) in boiling salted water until tender. Drain and scrape off the skin. Mash well, and if stringy rub through a colander.

To one pint of the mashed salsify add one teaspoonful of flour, one tablespoonful of butter, one well-beaten egg, and salt and pepper to season highly. Take up a small spoonful and shape it into an oval about the size of a large oyster; dip each lightly in flour or very fine cracker crumbs, and brown on each side in hot butter.

Salsify Fritters

Scrape the salsify and grate it fine. If you have a machine for grinding vegetables, use that, as the process of grinding is so rapid that there is not time for the salsify to discolor before it is prepared. Have made a batter of two beaten eggs, half a cupful of flour, a gill of milk, and salt to taste. Beat hard, and whip the grated salsify into this. Drop by the spoonful into deep, boiling cottolene or other fat. When the fritters are of the right shade of brown, drain them quickly in a hot colander to free them of superfluous grease. Serve very hot.

Scalloped Salsify

Wash and trim, but do not scrape fine roots of salsify. Boil in salted water until tender. Drain, scrape, clean and cut into inch lengths. Pack into a buttered bake-dish, alternately with thick white drawn butter, well seasoned, and fine bread-crumbs, seasoned and buttered. The top layer should be crumbs wet with cream. Cover closely and bake half an hour; then brown delicately.

Not a bad imitation of scalloped oysters.

Spinach

“Spinach is one of our most valuable vegetables. It contains salts and is slightly laxative. In order to retain all the nutritive value and the salts in the spinach it is best to cook in a steamer. It should be cooked just long enough to be tender, which is from ten to fifteen minutes. Spinach, if cooked too long, will lose its flavor and color.”

Thus writes an able authority upon dietetics. In three sentences we have here condensed the cardinal rules for preparing this queenly esculent for the use of the human animal. Opposed to one clause of the summary we have the story of a noted epicure who found spinach so much better when warmed up for the thirteenth time that he ordered his cook to cook it thirteen times on the first day of serving.

Boiled Spinach, Plain

Pick over the spinach, rejecting all yellow or dried leaves. Wash in four waters, letting it soak in the last cold bath for three-quarters of an hour. Put into a large pot over the fire with just enough cold water to cover it. Cook for twenty minutes, or until tender. Drain in a colander, then turn into a wooden chopping-bowl and chop very, very fine. Return the spinach to the saucepan, stir into it a great spoonful of butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Mound the spinach on a hot platter, and garnish with slices of hard-boiled eggs.

Spinach á la Crême

Pick over and wash the spinach as in the last recipe. After soaking in the fourth water, put the leaves, with the moisture still clinging to them, into a large pot, and cover closely. The moisture on the leaves and the juice of the vegetables will form enough liquor to prevent scorching. Cook for twenty minutes, stirring well several times during the process. Sprinkle with salt and turn into a colander to drain. Press out the liquid, turn the spinach into a chopping-bowl and chop as fine as possible. Cook together in a saucepan one tablespoonful of flour and two of butter, and, when they are blended, pour the spinach upon them. Season and cook for several minutes, stirring constantly. Pour upon the spinach a small cupful of cream in which a pinch of soda has been dissolved, and cook three minutes longer, still stirring. Now add pepper and salt to taste and a pinch of nutmeg, and beat hard for three minutes. Serve smoking-hot, garnished with small triangles of toast.

Spinach Puff

Boil as in the former recipe, chop “exceeding small,” and beat in a tablespoonful of melted butter, salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg. Set aside until cool, then stir in a gill of cream, the whipped yolks of two eggs and the stiffened whites of three. Beat hard and turn into a deep, greased pudding-dish. Bake for twenty minutes, and serve at once.

Spinach Soufflé

Boil the spinach and chop fine. Add the beaten yolks of two eggs, a tablespoonful of melted butter, salt and pepper to taste. Set this mixture away to cool. When cold, beat into it a half-gill of cream and the frothed whites of three eggs. Turn into a buttered pudding-dish, and bake quickly in a hot oven to a light brown. Serve as soon as it is removed from the oven.

Spinach Pátés

Boil the spinach, press out every drop of water and chop fine. Cook together in a saucepan a tablespoonful of butter and two of flour. Add the spinach with pepper and salt to taste; cook for five minutes. Butter the insides of muffin-tins or pâté-pans, and press the spinach hard into these. Set in the oven to keep hot while you make a white sauce. Carefully turn out the forms of spinach on a hot platter, lay a slice of hard-boiled egg on the top of each form and pour the white sauce around it.

Squash

The summer squash differs from the winter variety in having a tender shell and in being very juicy. Both may be cooked in a variety of ways, and form many appetizing dishes. In opening the winter squash it is often necessary to exert great strength to break through the outer rind—some housekeepers using a small saw for the purpose. The summer vegetable may be easily peeled or sliced with an ordinary case-knife.

Boiled Squash

Wash two summer squashes, pare them, and cut into pieces about an inch square. Put them over the fire in a saucepan of boiling water and boil steadily for twenty-five minutes. Drain in a colander, pressing hard to extract the water, turn into a wooden bowl and mash with a potato-beater until free from lumps. Now beat in a heaping tablespoonful of butter; salt and pepper to taste. Return to the fire just long enough to get very hot, stirring all the time. Serve in a deep vegetable dish.

Baked Squash

Peel, boil and mash two small squashes. When cold, beat in two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, two whipped eggs, a gill of cream and salt and pepper to taste. Turn into a greased bakedish, sprinkle with bread-crumbs and bake for a half-hour. A good way to use squash left over from yesterday.

Creamed Squash

Peel two summer squashes and cut into dice of uniform size. Boil for fifteen minutes in salted water, or until tender, but not broken. Drain carefully in a colander and keep hot while you cook together two heaping teaspoonfuls of butter and the same quantity of flour until they bubble; then pour upon them a cupful and a half of sweet milk. Stir until smooth; turn in the squash dice, season liberally with salt and white pepper, and serve.

Scalloped Squash

Peel, wash and boil three summer squashes according to directions given in the recipe for boiled squash. Beat two eggs light, and whip into them a small cupful of rich sweet milk, and a tablespoonful of melted butter. Beat this mixture into the mashed squash, season with salt and pepper and turn all into a greased pudding-dish. Sprinkle with bread-crumbs and bits of butter, and bake.

Squash Pancakes

Boil and mash two squashes, and when cold beat into them two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, a quarter of a teaspoonful of salt, a pint of milk, two eggs and a cupful of flour in which has been sifted a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Beat hard for five minutes. Have a soapstone griddle heated, and drop the mixture by the spoonful on this. If the cakes are too stiff, add a little more milk. Serve hot with butter. These are good with broiled steaks or chops.

Squash Fritters

Peel and slice the squash, and boil in salted water for a little over five minutes. Carefully remove the slices and drop into iced water. When cold, drain in a colander and pat dry between the folds of a dish-towel. Dip each slice in beaten egg, then in cracker crumbs, and when all are thoroughly coated set in a cold place for an hour. Have ready a kettle of boiling dripping; drop the squash slices carefully into this and fry to a golden brown. Drain in a heated colander, sprinkle with pepper and salt, and serve.

Tomatoes

The nineteenth century was a third gone before the world on this side of the sea began to appreciate the beneficent qualities of what our foremothers used to call “love apples.” There is no other vegetable that is of more value as a liver regulator and blood-cooler than the tomato. The small quantity of calomel it contains acts as a corrective of biliousness, and stimulates all the secretions of the body to activity. Eaten raw, it is cooling and delicious, and it may be cooked in so many and varied forms that one does not soon weary of it.

In the average home it appears as a salad, in soup, stewed, and perhaps baked or scalloped. When it has been thus served many housekeepers consider that they have exhausted its capabilities. On the contrary, they have hardly touched upon its possibilities.

The increasing familiarity with sauces as the cook’s potent aids in converting old dishes into new, has made tomato sauce popular as an accompaniment of certain compounds of macaroni, but even those who use the sauce in this manner do not all know how admirable it is served with boiled or baked fish, or with roast mutton, or as a vehicle for shrimps, or as a zest for eggs. Apart from this, the tomato, not made into a sauce, but employed either fresh or canned, may come to the table in a variety of easily-prepared and savory combinations that will appeal to the family caterer as being the new and inexpensive dishes she is always seeking.

Raw Tomatoes

Never scald them. Pare and strip off the skins. Set on ice until you are ready to serve. Cut up quickly, lay within a chilled bowl and season, as you serve, with French dressing.

Raw Tomatoes and Cucumbers

Cut off the tops of large, firm tomatoes and carefully remove most of the pulp. Keep pulp and tomatoes in the refrigerator while you peel and cut into small dice ice-cold cucumbers. Mix the cucumber dice with the tomato pulp, fill the tomato shells, set them on crisp lettuce leaves and pour a great spoonful of mayonnaise dressing over each.

Creamed Tomatoes

Cut firm tomatoes into thick slices and fry them until tender in a couple of spoonfuls of butter. Have ready a white sauce made by cooking together a tablespoonful, each, of butter and flour to the bubbling point, and then pouring upon them a half-pint of milk—or, better still, a half-pint of mingled milk and cream. Cook, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens, dish the tomatoes and turn the sauce upon them, after seasoning them suitably with pepper and salt.

Stewed Tomatoes

Peel, slice and put a quart of tomatoes over the fire in a nickel-steel-plated or agate saucepan—never in tin. Stew fast twenty minutes. Season with a lump of butter rolled in flour, a teaspoonful of sugar, salt and pepper to taste, and two teaspoonfuls of onion juice. Stew five minutes longer, and serve.

Some cooks substitute fine dry crumbs for the flour. Unless some thickening is used, the tomatoes will be watery and thin.

Raw Tomatoes and Whipped Cream

Pare large, smooth tomatoes carefully, and set on ice until chilled to the heart. Cut each in half when ready to serve, sprinkle lightly with salt and paprika, and heap with whipped cream.

A welcome entrée in summer. Send around heated and buttered crackers and cream cheese with them, or thin slices of buttered graham bread.

Tomato Croquettes

These can be made either of fresh or canned tomatoes. Rub through a colander half the contents of a can of tomatoes into a saucepan with a thin slice of onion, salt, pepper, two or three cloves, and one tablespoonful of sugar. Cook for fifteen minutes, thicken with corn-starch—four teaspoonfuls of it rubbed to a cream with a generous lump of butter. Let it boil up and add one egg. Pour the mixture out to cool. When cool, form into croquettes, and dip them, first, in beaten egg, then in fine crumbs; set on ice for two hours before frying in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat.

Stuffed Tomatoes (No. 1)

Cut the tops from large, firm tomatoes, and with a small spoon scoop out the insides. To half of this pulp, chopped, add as much minced boiled ham and two tablespoonfuls of bread-crumbs. Season to taste and fill the tomatoes with this mixture. Set in a baking-pan and bake for twenty minutes, covered; then brown.

Stuffed Tomatoes (No. 2)

Cut the tops from large tomatoes and scrape out the pulp. Mix with this one part of bread-crumbs to two parts of minced boiled ham. Fill the tomato shells with this mixture, put a bit of butter upon the top of each, and set, side by side, in a bake-pan. Pour a cupful of soup stock over and around the tomatoes, and bake until tender.

Scalloped Tomatoes

Grease a pudding-dish and put in the bottom of it a layer of peeled and sliced tomatoes. Cover with a layer of salted and peppered crumbs, sprinkle with bits of butter and a little sugar. Now put in another stratum of tomatoes and more crumbs. When the dish is full pour over all a cupful of well-seasoned soup stock, sprinkle the top with crumbs, and bake, covered, for fifteen minutes. Uncover and brown.

Tomatoes and Corn

Put a cupful, each, of stewed tomatoes and boiled corn over the fire together, bring to a boil, add half a teaspoonful of white sugar and, if you like, a dash of onion juice; cook one minute longer and serve.

A good way of using yesterday’s left-overs of these vegetables.

Tomato Fritters

Make a batter of a cupful of flour, a cupful of water, a tablespoonful of butter, a saltspoonful of salt and the white of an egg. The water should be just warm enough to melt the butter, but not hot. Stir the two into the sifted and salted flour, mixing carefully, and, lastly, beat in the whipped white of an egg. Into the batter thus made dip rather thick slices of peeled tomatoes, and fry in deep hot fat to a light, delicate brown. The tomatoes may be sprinkled with salt and pepper before dipping them in batter, or the fritters may be seasoned after they are cooked.

Tomatoes Stuffed With Meat

Select large, firm tomatoes, cut off the tops and scoop out the inside pulp. Do not peel. Chop fine a cupful of cold meat—it may be fowl, tongue or ham, or even lamb, mutton or beef, if the latter are well seasoned. With the meat put a half cupful of fine bread-crumbs, a tablespoonful of butter, and salt, pepper, parsley and onion juice. The quantity of these to be used must be determined by the amount of seasoning there is already in the meat. After sprinkling the inside of the tomato shells with a very little salt and pepper fill them with the mixture of meat, crumbs, etc. If this seems too dry it may be moistened with a small quantity of gravy or soup stock, or even with milk or cream. Arrange the tomatoes in a pudding-dish, replace the tops, lay a cover over them and bake half an hour. Serve in the dish in which they were cooked.

Tomatoes Stuffed With Corn

Prepare the tomatoes as in the preceding recipe, place them in the bake-dish and fill them with a mixture of a cupful of grated green corn, half a cupful of bread-crumbs, a tablespoonful, each, of milk and butter, a teaspoonful of white sugar, and salt and pepper to taste.

Tomatoes Stuffed With Rice

Fill tomato shells prepared as above directed with cold boiled rice, to which have been added two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, half a teaspoonful of onion juice, salt and paprika. When the shells are filled strew the contents of each thickly with grated cheese before laying on the tops. Bake, covered, half an hour.

Tomatoes Stuffed With Macaroni

Prepare as in last recipe, substituting cold, boiled macaroni, chopped, for the rice, and mixing cheese with the filling, besides strewing it on the top.

Tomatoes à la Créme

Cut unpeeled tomatoes into thick slices. Put into a frying-pan three tablespoonfuls of butter, and fry the tomatoes for three minutes in this, or until they are tender. Remove carefully and keep hot on a platter set in an open oven. Into the butter in the pan stir a tablespoonful of flour and cook until thoroughly blended; then pour in gradually a half-pint of rich milk in which a pinch of soda has been dissolved. Stir all to a smooth sauce, season and pour over the fried tomatoes.

Tomatoes and Poached Eggs

Cook tomatoes by either of the preceding recipes, or stew them until tender. If you do the latter, strain off the thin, watery liquor that comes from them in cooking, and set it aside for sauces or for seasoning. Make of the thick portion of the tomato a layer in the bottom of a platter, seasoning to taste with pepper and salt, and, if desired, with a few drops of onion juice; make all very hot and lay on the bed thus prepared carefully poached eggs. If fried eggs are preferred, they may be substituted. Dust them with a little salt and pepper and serve at once.

Tomato Omelet

Peel and chop four tomatoes. Soak a cupful of bread-crumbs in a cup of milk and stir them into five beaten eggs. Add the chopped tomatoes, season to taste and turn into a frying-pan in which two tablespoonfuls of butter have been melted. Cook until set, turn upon a hot platter, pour tomato sauce about the omelet, and send at once to the table.

Curried Tomatoes

Put into a frying-pan a heaping tablespoonful of butter and half a small onion, grated. Cook until the latter begins to brown—about two minutes—and stir in a scant teaspoonful of curry powder. In this fry thick slices of tomato until tender, sprinkle with salt and serve.

Another method of preparing curried tomatoes is to cook them by the recipe given for creamed tomatoes, adding a teaspoonful of curry powder to the cream sauce and pouring this over the fried tomatoes.

Curried Green Tomatoes

Cut large green tomatoes into very thick slices. Melt in a frying-pan three tablespoonfuls of butter and fry in this a small onion, sliced. At the end of two or three minutes stir into the melted butter a teaspoonful of curry powder. Lay the tomatoes in this mixture and fry them on both sides. When done, drain, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve.

Turnips

Mashed Turnips

Peel, lay in cold water for an hour; boil tender in hot, salted water; throw this off and fill up the pot with boiling water, slightly salted. Cook five minutes in this, drain well and rub through a colander or vegetable-press. Beat in a lump of butter rolled in a little flour, salt and pepper to taste; return to the saucepan and cook one minute, stirring all the time.

Turnips Boiled, Plain

Pare and quarter. Cook tender in two waters; drain, dish; pour a little melted butter, seasoned with pepper and salt, over them, and serve hot.

Young Turnips Stewed With Cream

Pare, lay in cold water one hour; cook tender in two waters; drain and cover with hot cream (heated with a pinch of soda) or hot milk, if you have no cream. Simmer gently for five minutes; stir in a white roux made by cooking together a tablespoonful of butter and one of flour, salt and pepper, and serve very hot.

Young Turnips With White Sauce

Peel, lay in cold water for an hour; boil for ten minutes in fresh water, cover with boiling, slightly salted water, and cook tender. Drain, dish, season and pour over them a good white sauce of drawn butter.

Fried Turnips

Peel and slice young turnips, dropping them into cold water as you do so. Turn into a pot of boiling water, and cook for twenty minutes. Drain carefully, so as not to break the slices. When cold, dip each slice in beaten egg, then in salted cracker dust, and spread all upon a platter. Let them stand for an hour and fry in deep, boiling fat to a golden brown.

Turnips and Carrots Sautés

Peel and cut into dice of uniform size enough cold boiled turnips and carrots to make a cupful of each. Mix and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Melt two tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan and turn the vegetable dice into this. Toss and turn in the hissing butter for five or ten minutes; drain in a hot colander and dish.

Kohlrabi Turnips

Separate the turnip of the vegetable from the leaves that surround it and wash thoroughly. Cut into quarters and boil for twenty minutes in salted water. Drain; sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve hot with melted butter.

Kohlrabi With Leaves

Remove the outer leaves from the swelled stalk, or turnip; wash thoroughly and throw into cold water. Drain both and put them on to boil in separate vessels of salted water. When the turnips have cooked for ten minutes, drain and pour over them fresh boiling water, to which a tablespoonful of vinegar has been added. Boil for ten minutes longer; drain, scrape and slice. Dip the slices, one by one, in melted butter and lay about the edge of a hot platter. Drain the leaves which have been cooked tender, turn into a chopping-bowl and chop very fine. Return to the fire with two tablespoonfuls of butter, pepper and salt to taste. Beat to a smoking mass, and heap in the center of the heated platter, about the edge of which you have laid the sliced vegetable.

A Word About Nuts

Nuts of all kinds are gaining in favor as articles of diet, and are at their best in the autumn and winter. They may be bought, shelled and packed in boxes, so that they are ready for immediate use. The housekeeper of moderate means, with an abundance of time at her disposal, will find that it is cheaper to buy the nuts in their shells and crack them herself. If she is so fortunate as to be able to despise the petty economies she will rejoice in the prepared nuts. They will save her much tedious labor.

If Spanish chestnuts are not to be procured when wanted, large domestic chestnuts may be boiled and used in their stead.

Chestnut Croquettes

Boil a quart of Spanish chestnuts in salted water. While still hot, remove the shells and skins and rub the nuts through a colander. With a wooden spoon work to a smooth paste, adding, as you do so, a tablespoonful of butter, a saltspoonful of salt, a dash of paprika, a quarter of a teaspoonful of onion juice, a handful of fine bread-crumbs, and the unbeaten yolk of an egg. Put the paste in a double boiler over the fire and heat through. With floured hands form into croquettes, dip in beaten egg, then in cracker dust, and lay on a platter in the refrigerator for two hours. Fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat; drain in a colander, and serve very hot.

English Walnut Croquettes

Crack, extract the kernels, blanch by pouring boiling water over them, stripping off the loosened skins and dropping into cold water. Leave there for ten minutes; take out, dry between two soft towels and, when crisp and perfectly dry, proceed as with chestnuts in last recipe.

Peanut Stuffing for Roast Duck

Prepare the ducks for roasting and make a stuffing of bread-crumbs seasoned with butter, pepper and salt. Chop a cupful of roasted and shelled peanuts to a powder and rub them into the bread-crumbs. Stuff the ducks with this mixture and roast, basting frequently.

Savory Chestnuts

Boil and shell and skin large Spanish chestnuts; break each in half and cover with a thin giblet gravy. Or you may make a gravy of the legs and necks of a pair of fowls, and thicken it with browned flour rolled in butter. The gravy must be brown. Cook the chestnuts in it for ten minutes. This is a pleasing accompaniment to roast poultry of any kind, particularly roast turkey.