ROASTING AND GRILLING

["SALADS ....", "SWEETS AND OMELETTES . . . .", "ITALIAN PASTES . . . .", "SAVOURIES . . . . .", "THE TABLE . . . . ,", "SOME BOOKS : AND A BOOK", "CHAPTER I", "THE ROOTS OF THE MATTER", "Hardly had the Belgian and German guns at Liege begun their awful dialogue before England was loud with voices telling the non-combatant how to comport himself in war-time.", "The advertising agents instantly primed the shop- keepers with the cry : \" Live as usual : Spend as usual: Pay as usual.\" We were told that only bad citizens would cease to play golf, to follow the fashions, to enjoy hoUdays, to eat daintily, to dance, to shop, to go to the play. \" Live as usual.\"", "This advice is not wholly bad. It aims at keeping money in circulation and men and women in employ- ment. But many writers of letters to the papers are pressing it too far. They seem to argue that every well-established habit of luxury and extravagance is a sacrosanct vested interest which must be kept in being. If we have been accustomed to eat caviare at a guinea a pound we must go on eating it, so that the caviare merchant shall not be ruined. If it has been our practice to buy half-a-dozen pairs of white kid gloves every week, we must pity the poor glover and go on buying. And. so on.", "Now the truth is that War is an unusual state of life which demands unusual arrangements. Since the last days of July, twenty million men have been rushed away from the farms and fisheries and mills and", "14 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "forges of Europe to fight. Fifty strokes of a dozen pens have changed twenty miUion producers into twenty miUion consumers. In other words, Europe is not living as usual, and we must adjust ourselves to her new life.", "Even if we could be sure that there will be no scarcity of food and fuel and raiment, most of us would still be unwilling to live our usual comfortable lives while scores of thousands of Englishmen are faring roughly in the field. More. A time of War is a time for bracing up the whole life of a nation. The Enghsh had become too self-indulgent. Too many of us have been living right up to or beyond our incomes. In proportion to our numbers and responsibilities, we have had too many purveyors of luxuries, too many entertainers, too many actors and actresses and funny-men and musicians and novelists and painters and paid reformers and professional sportsmen. To take a single illustration, we have had too many pale young men in \" the drapery \" and not enough strapping fellows in the Army. When the War is over, we ought to be tougher, simpler, and therefore stronger.", "Those who find these arguments superfine will perhaps listen to one more reason against \"living as usual \" — namely, that most of us will lack the money. Directly and indirectly, this War will cost England hundreds — perhaps thousands — of millions of pounds. Incomes will be smaller and taxes bigger ; and there will be appeals for the sick and wounded, for the \\vidow and the orphan, which only hearts of flint will resist.", "These are the principal reasons for publishing a", "THE ROOTS OF THE MATTER 15", "short manual of Home Cookery in War-time, such as may put us on sounder terms with both our con- sciences and our purses.", "It is taken for granted throughout the following pages that the reader knows the A B C of cookery already, and that nobody is to expect much more than a number of sound hints on the departures from ordinary kitchen routine which the War may demand. Let nobody therefore open this book in order to learn how to peel a potato or trim a chop or choose a sir- loin of beef. I assume from the outset that I am speaking to housewives who already possess an ele- mentary all-round cookery-book, even if it be no bigger than the shilling edition of Mrs Beeton's justly admired work. The first principles of boiling and frying and baking and braising and steaming will be discussed only in so far as I believe that they are misunderstood in England.", "Although we may learn much from France, this is an English book for English homes. France is, with- out doubt, the seat of the finest cookery in the world, and this praise applies not only to the haute cuisine but also to the wonderful cuisine hourgeoise. All the same, we must keep our heads. Englishwomen often return from holidays in France (where they have been whetting tr^ir appetites in the sea air and were in a mood to be ^ased with everything), and straightway set about Fi ^ chifying both their kitchens and their tables. They /ush to buy books which purport to", "i6 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "expound French cookery to the Enghsh housewife ; and, in forty-nine cases out of fifty, they end by throwing up the experiment after making themselves and everybody else miserable. To take one example only, thousands of happy homes have been tempor- arily blighted by the tyranny of the stock-pot. Young wives find it writ large in the books that no kitchen is complete without a stock-pot, and that it is next door to downright sin not to keep one in constant use. Now a stock-pot is all that was ever claimed for it, provided the cook is to the manner born and that it is used in what may be called stock-pot conditions. In a country house, or farm, where rude plenty is the order of the day, a stock-pot is all to the good. It costs nothing for fuel, because the big kitchen fire is always burning. Every day there are many mouths to feed and a large quantity of stock is an unmixed blessing. But the case is altogether different when one turns to the small kitchen of a modern English house or London flat, where the gas stove has estab- lished itself so firmly that the kitchen range remains unkindled for six months out of twelve. In such kitchens the stock-pot takes up precious room and adds to the gas bill an amount out of all proportion to the value of the stock. Further, the mistress of a small establishment soon finds that she has not nearly so many odds and ends to throw into the stock- pot as she expected. In these days the butcher trims the meat more thoroughly than of yore and his ex- ample is followed, more or less, by all the other purveyors of eatables. Our grandmothers conducted their housekeeping in vastly different conditions. The huge joints for their large families, the poultry", "THE ROOTS OF THE MATTER 17", "and game which were skinned or plucked and cleaned in their own kitchens, and their wealth of raw and rough materials of every kind yielded them a constant supply of good by-products which were too often wasted although such scraps would have rejoiced a Frenchwoman's heart. Nowadays the poulterer cleans and trusses our birds, too often taking away the parts that would yield many a delicacy, such as a Cock-a-leekie a la Franfuise (Leek Soup with giblets) or a Risotto au foie de volatile. The poul- terer fillets our fish, the greengrocer often delivers only the choicest hearts of cabbage or cauliflower or lettuce, while the grocer sells us most of his goods in bottles and jars and tins and packets which contain nothing over and above what can be directly con- sumed. So let the superstition of the stock-pot as a universal obligation go ; and with it let us bury most of the nonsense about two penny- worth of bones. Soup for twopence has a plausible sound ; but when one reckons the cost of the gas and the flavourings, it will generally be found that a small quantity of one of the admirable new vegetable extracts (put up like Liebig's) costs no more money and gives a better result for less trouble. The dis- coverer of bone-soup a hundred years ago was patted on the head by kings and even by a Pope, but bare bones as now chopped up and simmered are a delusion and a snare. I have made grand stock from a ham-bone, correcting its saltiness by omitting all salt from the vegetables afterwards added : but that ham-bone had something on it and in it.", "Instead of worrying with an unwieldy stock-pot, the good housewife will use the beaux restes of her", "i8 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "game and poultry for special soups and for entrees of distinction instead of sacrificing them to augment a gallon of characterless stock. Without running a stock-pot three hundred and sixty-five days a year, stock can be made frequently from clean odds and ends, or from cheap meat, and used right up. When all else fails, foundations can be made cheaply and cleanly from beans. Butter beans and their like yield light-coloured stock, while flageolets and their brethren will give stock of darker hue. These bean stocks can be bottled and kept for some time, pro- vided they are occasionally poured out and heated up.", "Some people will feel that the foregoing paragraphs promise poorly so far as economy is concerned. Like rustics who believe that medicine must taste nasty if it is to do you good, they are persuaded that we must put up with unattractive food if we are to save money in war-time. This is a deadly error — deadly because it soon drives back those who hold it into their old extravagance. Men and women who have been accustomed to eat pleasantly and daintily will not succeed in making an abrupt change to coarse and unpleasant diet without injury to their health and tempers which will be found expensive in the long run. Everybody has heard of things that are \" Cheap and Nasty \" ; but the cook's motto in war-time will be Cheap and Tasty.", "Cheapness and tastiness, however, are not every- thing. A dish might cost little, and look appetising,", "THE ROOTS OF THE MATTER 19", "and taste good, while at the same time it might be indigestible or without value as nourishment. We must have Foods that feed. But these pages will not be extended by means of long lists of foods arranged under elaborate headings in scientific terms. The few housekeepers who concern themselves with academic dietetics have not waited for the appearance of this little book in order to learn about proteids and starch and nitrogen and carbohydrates : and they know the chief points of \" Food Values \" already. As for the majority, they would either skip such information or read it and forget it a minute after- wards. But there is a more practical reason for omitting scientific tables. It sounds old-fashioned to say it, but in matters of diet we still get on best without too much theory. A day will dawn when the analyst will be able to tell us so much about our food that the art of medicine will be almost absorbed in dietetics ; but that day has not dawned yet. People who live according to food tables certainly do not always convince us that they have found the golden secret of health and happiness. In the present state of chemistry, all the food tables ever printed are worth less than the old saw, \" One man's meat is another man's poison.\" To certain constitu- tions certain foods are almost venomous. The writer knows a woman who can eat practically every- thing save honey ; and a man who has the digestion of an ostrich for all other foods, but is upset by capers. To many people, some allowance of cereals and milk and sugar seems of vital importance, while others hate all such things and keep alive on lean red meat, fresh green vegetables and sharp wine. Through", "20 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "not recognising these wide variations of constitution, most of the authors who have given us instruction in cheap cookery have done as much harm as good. They prescribe messes of pottage in which spHt peas and lentils and all kinds of pulse predominate to such an extent that there is positive danger to those whose bodies are not built for such diet.", "It follows that the Compleat Cook must under- stand not only the food but the feeders. This will help her to steer clear of many a disappointment. Now and then it will call for the taking of additional pains, because it may be necessary to provide two small dishes instead of one large. On the other hand, it will often help towards economy, because beaux restes are often enough for one but not enough for two. Many a housewife, in the intimacy of a small home, wiU urge her son or husband to finish some small remnant on the ground that it is not worth keeping and that it would \" only have to be thrown away.\" The son or husband has probably already eaten quite as much as is good for him — otherwise he would have asked for what is left on the dish — but he accepts the morsel and overfeeds himself. Once let a housewife accept the notion of occa- sionally making up a tiny entree, enough for one person only, and she will often find the problem of an informal home dinner half solved. The Brute wiU get something he likes ; while she herself, for a change, will be able to enjoy a little dish all her very own, according to her mood and appetite. Where the staff is small (and this book is written first and foremost for modest establishments) wives are usually averse from any multiphcation of entrees on the", "THE ROOTS OF THE MATTER 21", "ground that they make so much washing-up. This, however, is a hardship that must be faced. It will be faced the more easily when one examines it fairly. A choice of entrees does not increase the washing-up so frightfully, after all. In any case, the cook who is willing to lose the charm of variety and the satis- faction of economy merely to save fifty or sixty seconds in the washing-up had better put this book down and read no more of it. But let her first examine her conscience and ascertain whether her horror of washing-up may not be due to her skimping the dry-soap and the clean dry towels.", "Food values bring to the mind the whole question of Food Fads. The War has stirred up scores of well- meaning enthusiasts, who are convinced that the Kaiser is really doing us a good turn, because England will be led to solve her food problem by vegetarianism, or paper-bag cookery, or \" unfired diet,\" or the steady munching of nuts. Let us be quite fair. There is something useful at the heart of every fad, just as there is truth buried inside nearly every error. We shall therefore do wisely to profit by the kernel of any fad that is thrust upon us, so long as we throw the husks away. Vegetarianism, for example, has a good deal in it, just as there is a good deal in \" Temper- ance.\" The true wisdom is to steer between the Scylla of excess and the Charybdis of total abstinence. By combining the more liberal use of vegetables with some of the flavourings and strengthenings of ordinary cookery (such as good gravy or meat broth) we could often save money and increase our enjoyment. As", "22 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "for \" natural \" and \" unfired \" food, it is true that un- cooked food, such as apples and pears and salads, can do nothing but good to those who use them wisely. The paper bag, which was known to cooks long before the oldest EngHshman now living was born, is excellent for some dishes, always provided that the right kind of paper is chosen and that it is used in the right way ; but the cook who tries to use paper bags for every- thing has become a faddist to be pitied and avoided. As for nuts, they certainly have a high food value, and all the best-known monkeys do exceedingly well on them so long as they can get insects and reptiles also ; but only a minority of human beings, bred and born as we are, can exist upon them as a staple food. If nuts should abound in our copses this year, we ought to thank Providence and see that none are wasted; but there must be something besides a sack of nuts in the pantry. Other fads, especially the proprietary and much-advertised fad foods which claim to have been predigested, and to contain the nourishing elements of eggs or milk or meat or wheat in a highly concentrated form, are not to be received with our arms too widely open. The human body has been fitted, through long ages, to receive new life from foods which are not concentrated at all. Their body- building and heat-making and blood-enriching and bone-forming and nerve-strengthening elements are dispersed in vehicles (or \" inert \" substances) which call for mastication and for consumption in such bulk that, without being a glutton, one escapes the sensation of an empty stomach. It may be quite true that a spoonful of this or that or the other patent preparation is equal in food value, from the anal", "THE ROOTS OF THE MATTER 23", "point of view, to a nice little lamb cutlet with green peas and a couple of new potatoes. It may also be true that the spoonful of essence can be swallowed in ten seconds, while the lamb cutlet requires ten minutes. Nevertheless the essence, with its too swift and local onslaught upon the system, will be found to do the consumer worlds less good. \" A Lunch in a Tea-spoon \" and a \" Two-minute Dinner \" are the ideals of many serious persons who tell us that we should eat to live and not live to eat. No man, however, is living aright if he becomes a miserable creature. To sit decently over a snowy cloth and to treat respectfully the good gifts of God as they come before us in all their variety cannot fairly be called \" Living to Eat.\" Indeed such a meal, enlivened by talk, is a refining and spiritualising of the act of feeding and is all on the side of progress. [The con- centrated fad-foods are often useful in emergencies, and a really clever and original cook can turn them to all sorts of uses. For the most part, however, they are dear, because the purchaser must pay not only for the contents of the packet but for a proportion of the enormous sums which have been spent in adver- tising the brand.]", "To those who have decided by this time that I am a reactionary empiric, I give the advice that they should hurry back to the shop of the unprincipled bookseller who sold them this deplorable work and that (after tendering the shilling or so of difference in price) they should insist on his exchanging it for the popular edition of Sir Henry Thompson's \" Food", "24 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "and Feeding.\" Sir Henry Thompson's is a good book. I do not say that a novice would arise from its perusal a Compleat Cook, as Minerva sprang full- armed from the brain of Jove. But \" Food and Feeding \" is sane and learned and human. Its analyses of food values are both scientific and practical.", "I must here warn beginners against certain statements as to food values in the propaganda of Food Reformers. Only this morning I encountered some perilous advice about Brazil nuts, \"the kernels of which contain over ninety per cent.\" of outright nutriment. A little knowledge is dangerous indeed to those who do not know how to apply it. I often meet a young man, with a fine scorn for \" flesh- eaters,\" who is overfeeding himself so grossly on nuts and sugary dried fruits that he would be more temperate if he ate a pound of beef every day.", "Too much dietetic doctrine rivets his chains more firmly than ever on the hypochondriac. I remember obtaining leave one day from an indulgent hostess in a house on the south coast to make some horse- radish cream my own way. Now all persons who have rubbed a large fresh-pulled horse-radish on a small and worn-out nutmeg grater know the price that must be paid in smarting eyes and scalding tears : and they will not blame me for having felt annoyed when a dear old gentleman, of conservative tempera- ment, at the luncheon-table, refused my cream on the ground that he didn't see any reason for changing the old recipe. Perceiving, however, that he was a h3^o- chondriac, I let drop the remark that horse-radish", "THE ROOTS OF THE MATTER 25", "was good for the heart. He continued to eat his roast beef plain : but it is literally true that, late in the day, I stumbled on the same dear old gentleman, in a grandfather's chair, eating the remains of my cream with a spoon.", "In the houses where this kind of book is bought and read, men and women are over-nourished rather than underfed. This means that meals of high \" food value\" may do more harm than good. Grown-up persons do not need much feeding. Indeed the first and best hint for saving money on our food in war-time is as plain as a haystack : because it is merely : Let us eat less. Watch some men, especially city men, at their midday lunch, and you will see that each mouthful is too large and that it is swallowed too quickly. Without running into the other extreme, and mincing like Victorian schoolgirls, we ought to eat and drink temperately, deliberately ; for in no other way can we fully enjoy our food and benefit by it.", "Smaller quantities and cheaper qualities of food will not mean a blunting \"of the reasonable pleasure of the table, so long as we have variety. One reason why so many Englishmen insist on having always the prime joints of meat and the dearest cuts of bacon is to be found in the monotony of their diet. When there is no charm of surprise to whet the appetite, the palate finds its satisfaction in superfine and there- fore expensive quality. That cat meant well which", "26 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "brought Sir Walter Raleigh a pigeon every day while he was writing his unreadable \" History of the World \" in the Tower of London, but I do not doubt that the prisoner became dreadfully peevish on the days when the pigeons were not plump and tender.", "I count among my friends an interesting couple who firmly believe that they are enthusiasts for cookery. Their culinary library certainly contains seven thousand recipes : but they do not eat seventy different dishes in a year.", "Variety is charming : and, controlled by common- sense, it is cheap.", "A wit once wrote a parody on a cookery-book and began one of his recipes with the words, \" Take about eight ounces of anything you have got.\" He wrote more wisely than he knew. If I were asked to state in a single sentence the fundamental rule for Home Cookery in War-time I should say : '* Plan your dishes with what you have.\" In the chapter on \" Going to Market \" I shall try to bring out this truth from another point of view ; but it is so important that it had better begin to be hammered into the reader here and now. Cook with what you have, or with what you can most easily obtain.", "Perhaps I shall be allowed to illustrate this point by a simple personal experience. One Sunday after- noon I found myself alone in a tiny house just outside London. The \" cook-general \" had been called away immediately after serving a conventional British Sunday midday meal consisting of roast beef,", "THE ROOTS OF THE MATTER 27", "boiled potatoes and white cabbage. The house was one where I knew that I could do just as I pleased without offending my hostess and her family, who had stated that they would return about half-past eight for a homely supper of cold beef and pickled walnuts and red wine. It was January, and a sharp frost prevailed. Cold beef and pickles had a shivery sound. Could nothing be improvised that would give a warmer welcome ? I looked round the pantry and found little beyond a fine Spanish onion, a couple of turnips and the remains of the midday meal. On a shelf, however, there stood a little white pot of the vegetable extract called \" Marmite,\" which tastes like Liebig or Bovril, though meat has nothing to do with it. I sliced the Spanish onion into the thinnest possible slices and put them in a large enamelled stew- pan on the gas stove, with enough boiling water for them to move in freely, and set them to boil. Having prepared the turnips, I cut these also into quite small pieces so that they should cook more quickly. Mean- while I foraged in other cupboards and found some tomato catsup, some Worcestershire sauce, some tapioca and about a tablespoonful of Burgundy at the bottom of a decanter. As soon as the pieces of onion and turnip showed that they were half cooked, 1 put a teaspoonful of the Marmite at the bottom of a basin and poured on the water from the stewpan. After this had been well stirred, the basin contained a quite respectable broth which I seasoned and poured back over the turnips and onion. While the cooking of these vegetables in the broth continued, I cut up the cold white cabbage, of which there was quite a con- siderable quantity, as too much had been boiled in", "28 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "the first instance. The strips of cabbage were trans- ferred to the stewpan, together with some of the gravy of the beef and a meagre handful of tapioca. By this time it was possible to turn down the gas under the briskly boiling stewpan and to add a tea- spoonful of Worcestershire sauce and about six times the quantity of the tomato catsup. The cold potatoes were broken up with a fork and stirred in with the other things. These operations were taken in hand at about five o'clock, and they occupied less than half-an- hour. The pan, with the lid on, remained over the smallest possible flame for about three hours. If my friends had returned an hour late, no harm would have been done. Of course I interrupted my reading and writing occasionally to stir the stuff with a wooden spoon and to taste it from time to time. The tastings proved the need for a little more salt and pepper. About eight o'clock I added the glass of wine ; but, long before this time, the frosty air was warmed and cheered by the most savoury and com- fortable of odours. Soup-plates were laid to warm in a bowl of hot water, while I cut some slices of bread and butter in the country fashion, not too thin, and each piece the whole breadth of the \"household loaf.\" This rather close-grained bread, when it is a day old, carries a surface of butter delightfully as compared with the square loaves baked in tins.", "My mess of pottage — it was certainly a mess — ^had been intended merely as a piping-hot prelude to the cold beef ; but everybody came up for a second helping and the beef went away untouched. The contents of the stewpan seemed to be inexhaustible. Of course the bottle of Macon made a difference, as", "THE ROOTS OF THE MATTER 29", "the pottage was not fluid like a soup. One ate it with a fork and a spoon.", "This is a rather long account of a very rough-and- ready experiment, but it will serve to bring out the principal doctrine of these pages. Among those who devoured the dish so heartily sat a woman who hates onions, and a man who loathes tapioca, and a child with a horror of Worcestershire sauce ; yet not one of these persons discerned their abominations. The onion had boiled down into a perfect unity with the broth, and the tapioca survived only as a slight thickening, suggestive of the kind of stock which cools into a good jelly. The cabbage maintained its texture, as had been intended. But let it be most clearly understood that the whole thing was carried through as a homely rustic supper, as far from res- taurant ideals as the South Pole is from the Equator. When the lady who hated onions asked me for the recipe, I was careful to explain that recipes belonged to entirely different undertakings. A recipe expresses the best possible way of cooking a certain dish, and it presupposes that the cook will obtain all the specified ingredients in their given proportions. My modest pottage was arrived at by an exact reversal of recipe methods. In carrying out a recipe, one says : \"I want to make a certain soup : I must get together the necessary things.\" On that nipping Sunday night, however, I said : \" Here are certain things : what can be best done with them for some hungry people returning from a cold journey ? \" If there had been carrots in the house instead of turnips, or if the remains of the cabbage had been scanty, or if the cold sirloin had been more undercooked, no doubt I", "30 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "should have prepared something entirely different. Any merit that there was, lay in the adjustment of means to ends. And if the housekeepers of England will accept this principle and apply it they will have acquired half the art of Home Cookery in War-time.", "CHAPTER II", "THE KITCHEN AND THE LARDER", "When a battleship clears for action, all sorts of things are pitched overboard. Down into the green depths go the piano and all the landlubbers' tables and chairs. And, if we are to take up the simplifying of our daily lives in real earnest and with a determination not to drift back into our old ways, we shall do well to go through our larders and our kitchens and to put them, so to speak, on a War footing. For example, almost every pantry contains tinned and bottled and jarred provisions, and oddments of dripping and condiments, which have been on the shelves quite long enough. Let these be brought out into the day- light and examined. On the principle laid down at the end of the foregoing chapter, it should be found possible to get rid of some of them by working them up into unconventional combinations which will have the charm of novelty and perhaps even the excitement of discovery. But of course no prudent storekeeper will use her tinned fruits and tinned vegetables and tinned fishes while the fresh article is cheap and abundant. Only an hour or two before writing this paragraph I have had the deplorable experience of eating some tinned French beans in a house where the new crop of the same vegetable can be bought for twopence-halfpenny a pound ; and I learn that preserved pears were served yesterday at a", "32 HOME /COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "luncheon given by some high-minded ladies to discuss this very question of cheap food in time of War.", "In overhauHng the shelves it will probably be found that there has been waste in buying. When servants are allowed to go shopping, or to give orders at the door to the tradesman's assistant, or to draw up lists of requirements, they almost always buy extravagantly. Sometimes out of a mere desire to be important, sometimes from a much lower motive, they ask for the largest bottles of vinegar and of oil, the biggest tins of mustard, and enough pepper to make a whole parish sneeze. Before these things are half consumed the vinegar develops ropy dregs, the oil turns bad, and the pepper becomes all meek and mild. Now is the time to make rough estimates of the weekly con- sumption and to see that money is saved in such a way as to heighten rather than lower the quality of one's stores.", "Forgotten jars will come to light. It may be that the price of fruit will be so low that it will still pay to make large quantities of jam, in spite of the higher price of sugar, and every jar or wide-mouthed bottle may come in useful. Indeed sugar is not indispens- able. Bottled fruits are exceedingly cheap to prepare and are more useful than jam, except where there are children and people with a sweet tooth. Those who do not possess the proper equipment for fruit -bottling may simply place the fruit in bottles (taking care that they are perfectly dry) and then put the full bottles for a quarter of an hour in a hot oven, finally filhng them up with boiling water. And this is the place for a useful hint. A stopper of mutton fat will solve the almost hopeless problem of finding bungs or", "THE KITCHEN AND THE LARDER 33", "metal tops to fit the jars and bottles. Mutton fat is very cheap indeed, and the butcher is glad to sell it. Pickles should not be forgotten. When they are home-made according to the very simple directions in the regular cookery books, they are nearly always relished, and they send down many a piece of cold meat which would otherwise be a penance. Nas- turtium seeds are excellent when pickled, and they put a wonderful amount of life into all sorts of dishes, although few cooks serve them except with mayon- naise, or boiled cod, or mutton.", "In the kitchen and the scullery a similar stock- taking should be made, and utensils which have been long disused should be either furbished up and brought into action, or packed away in a box to be given to the most suitable Relief Committee, or to poor persons who have a genuine use for them. At the same time perhaps it will be necessary to spend a few shillings on earthenware cooking-pots. This is not a time for laying out money lightly, but the cost of a few cas- seroles, large, small and medium, will soon be recouped. Indeed such vessels are absolutely necessary to the successful practice of cheap and nourishing and appetising cookery. What we call roast joints (by which most people mean joints baked in an oven) are not cheap as a rule, and they are often unattractive after the first day. Besides, quite apart from the question of economy, meat is far better when it is cooked slowly at a more moderate temperature. For those who live in or near London the best and cheapest region in which to buy a casserole is Soho, c", "34 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "where the right article is in constant demand by French menag^res and restaurateurs. The shop- keeper who sells it is generally willing to tell the English novice all sorts of curious things about the wrong and right use of a casserole. For example, he will probably advise that it should be rubbed all over with half of a raw onion before its first exposure to the fire, as he believes that it will last much longer after such treatment.", "Any enamelled saucepan which has failed to keep a whole skin must be sentenced to death. It is not to be given to the charwoman or even thrown into the dustbin. If a saucepan with a bald patch in the lining is dangerous to you and your family, it will be equally dangerous to the charwoman's son Clarence or to the dustman's little daughter Eva. If you are dead against waste, you can save the saucepan for a day when you wish to relieve a fit of bad temper and you can then bash it out of shape with your largest hammer. In short, you may do anything you like with it except allow it to be used for cooking. One day last week I took a lot of trouble telling some friends how to prepare a new Friday soup, with milk, cocoanut butter, fish stock, a minced onion, a packet of dried fish in flakes, and some small pieces of macaroni. In working out this novelty I had been attentive to details and it was hard to see how my friends could go wrong. They chose, however, to effect the cooking in a large enamelled stewpan from which the enamel had disappeared in the most vital spot. Of course the pieces of macaroni stuck to the bare metal and the whole mixture was ruined, although I had succeeded beyond my hopes a day or two", "THE KITCHEN AND THE LARDER 35", "before by using exactly similar materials in a sound vessel. [Some of the worst of the cheap enamelled goods came from Germany, and it is to be hoped that we shall not try to capture this branch of Germany's trade.] There is one kind of saucepan which I cannot help recommending by name. If bears the well-known \" Gourmet \" mark and most ironmongers seem to be able to get it. The lid (as well as the sides and the bottom) is enamelled internally and there is an extra bottom with a fireproof lining so that the contents of the pan cannot burn. I am not referring to an ordinary double-cooker, in which the food- receptacle fits into a lower pan of boiling water. There ought, however, to be a double-cooker in every good kitchen, as well as arrangements for doing the work of a bain-marie. In short, there must be an all-round equipment for the kinds of cookery which avoid close contact with fierce heat.", "A cheap steamer ought to be in every kitchen, but it is sometimes missing even in houses which contain all sorts of expensive and foolish little futilities for making mayonnaise or cutting up cucumbers. Most kinds of fish and vegetables are far better steamed than boiled, while a much greater proportion of their most valuable elements is retained. I remember once being allowed to taste the convicts' dinner at Portland. It included some steamed potatoes so delicious that (having wrestled with an infamously boiled potato at the hotel only an hour or two before) I could no longer believe that the way of the trans- gressor is hard.", "A frying-pan is a tool to be mentioned with circum-", "36 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "spection. Of late years a saying has been going round to the effect that if you want to get rid of indigestion your first act must be to throw the frying- pan away. To those people who are too lazy or too obstinate to learn the true method of frying, such advice is excellent, because most of the fried food served in England is indigestible in the extreme. True frying, however, is quite a different thing from the flinging of slices of fresh or cured flesh or cylinders of sausage meat to be scorched with a little grease in a shallow pan. The sound way is to use a pan deep enough to hold a bath of boiling fat in which the food to be fried can be completely immersed. Full direc- tions on this point will be found in every standard cookery book and must be studied by every cook who has not mastered them already. As boiling fat is nearly twice as hot as boiling water, it is obvious that wonders can be worked with its aid ; because a film forms instantly on the food placed in the bath and all the finest juices and flavours are prevented from escaping. A little practice with white blotting-paper or a cloth will soon enable any handy and intelligent person to rid the finished friture of greasiness, because the frying-fat at its hottest is not at all sticky but comes away with surprising ease. Cooking oil, which need not be the purest pressings from the olives of Provence, but should not be of too low a grade, is the best frying medium. Of course it can be used over and over again, provided one watches for the little danger-signal of smoke so that it never over- passes the safe maximum of heat. Beef dripping is also an excellent frying fat, and it seems easier to procure than of old. Indeed th", "THE KITCHEN AND THE LARDER 37", "Mayfair purveyors has begun to sell the highest quality of beef dripping at sixpence a pound.", "Turning from the kitchen to the china closet, it will be seemly to put away the thinnest glass and the most costly china. During the War we shall hate the idea of drinking expensive Champagne and rare vintages of Burgundy and Claret and we shall be equally impatient of elaborate and ceremonious dinners. So let the fine things be hoarded against the day of victory. We shall enjoy our less luxurious fare all the more if we eat it from plain white or willow-pattern plates — preferably the plain white. And let the most exquisite of our napery be stored up with the finest of our glass and china. When our relatives and friends come back from the War, we shall like them to know that we have not been clothing ourselves in purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day, but that we have tried to share, afar off, what St Paul would have called \" the fellowship of their sufferings.\"", "CHAPTER III", "GOING TO MARKET", "No man can make an omelette without breaking eggs, or grill a steak when he has no steak to grill, or braise a Spanish onion which he does not possess. The fame of Mrs Glasse survives solely in the misquotation which advises you to \" First catch your hare and then cook it.\" In these days we are no longer pot-hunters. Having acquired money in a struggle for existence fiercer than any cave-dweller's, we go to the men who sell birds and beasts and fishes and eggs and butter and vegetables and fruits. They also are struggling for existence, and, even in Peace-time, it is necessary that we should watch them keenly.", "The English are not a thrifty nation. With the exception of a small minority, made up for the most part of self-made people, everybody lives up to his income. Two husbands out of three are convinced that their households ought to be run more cheaply ; and forty-nine wives out of fifty honestly believe that no other woman could perform the marvels of parsi- mony which they accomplish every day. This is a curious state of things. Nearly all wives are loyal and nearly all of them find it hard to make both ends meet ; yet the year's menus in a typical English home would suggest that a nice little sum is being saved up for a rainy day. The explanation is two- fold. Enghsh housekeepers rarely get the most out of", "GOING TO MARKET 39", "what they buy ; and they rarely buy to the best advantage. This chapter is concerned with the question of buying.", "I lived six years ago in a house so situated that there was a wide choice of routes to London. To reach one of the tram-lines I had to pass through a quarter inhabited by the upper working class, who favoured bay-windowed houses, all alike, with plaster horses in the semicircular windows over the front doors and with tinny pianos or raucous harmoniums in the never- ventilated parlours. Sometimes I went in the opposite direction, to a station, and walked up leafy avenues where every house lacked a number and was dubbed \"Sans Souci,\" or \"The Wigwam,\" or worse. And every morning I saw the same sad sight. Neither Mrs Smith of 749 Jubilee Road nor Mrs Smythe of \" The Rowans,\" Beechcroft Avenue, seemed to realise that she ought to go to market. She expected the market to come to her. In Jubilee Road the market took the form of a coster's barrow in charge of a beery gentleman whose voice was the worse for wear. In Beechcroft Avenue the market was represented by a pert young man in a ready-made blue suit, who always had enough time on his hands to exchange gallantries with Mrs Smythe's housemaid. I do not doubt that both Mrs Smith and Mrs Smythe truly loved their husbands and that they would have given their little fingers to avoid the recurring financial discussions which soured life at \" The Rowans \" and at No. 749. It simply did not occur to them that a market which comes to one's door is no market at all.", "40 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "I have lost sight of both these equally estimable ladies, but I do not doubt that they are being hurried to their graves by the houndings of monetary worry. As this book is written more for \" The Rowans '* than for Jubilee Road (where literature is not habitu- ally encouraged), it will be practical to confine our- selves to the errors of Mrs Smythe. Shortly after the departure of Mr Smythe to the city, his spouse hears the bell ringing and is met by her servant with the words : \" The butcher, mum.\" Now what takes place in Mrs Smythe's mind ? She tells herself that she had ribs of beef on Sunday ; that she ordered veal cutlets for Tuesday night ; that a beef steak was bought on Wednesday ; that Friday will be a fish day ; and that therefore to-day, Thursday, it would be nice to have half-a-leg of mutton — the shank end. Accordingly she says : \" Tell him to send half-a-leg — the shank end — of mutton, not too big.\" Sometimes, by good luck, this turns out to be a happy shot. But on other occasions it will not do at all. The young man in the blue suit passes from \" The Rowans \" to *' The Lindens,\" and thence to \" The Hollies \" and \" The Beeches \" and all the other trees of the forest. When he returns to the shop, his notebook is an awkward document. If divine Providence had only been pleased to give mankind a sheep with nine legs and only one shoulder, the butcher's task would be easy ; but this, after all, would not solve the problem, as the next day's orders might require a sheep consist- ing entirely of chump chops. The butcher does his best ; but, like soldiers and other men of blood and steel, butchers are usually men of few words, and they have a deep-seated horror of ladies' tongues.", "GOING TO MARKET 41", "It follows that Mrs Smythe, who is a good customer, pa5ang promptly and never complaining, may not get her shank end after all, but has to put up with the upper half of the leg, while the chatelaine of \" Kenil- worth,\" who spends thre^-and-ninepence a week and is always threatening to go to another butcher, gets the pick of the shop. Meanwhile the butcher is loaded up with fore-quarters and saddles which no- body wants. Further, as he has delivered all the half- legs on credit, he has to take the risk of never getting his three-and-ninepence from \" Kenilworth,\" which means that \" The Rowans \" must pay perhaps a half- penny a pound more. Also, somebody must pay for the young man's blue suit and for his modest expenditure when he takes Mrs Smythe's maid out on Sunday afternoons. In short, the whole affair is what the learned would call an uneconomic trans- action. And when it is extended to the fishmonger, the greengrocer, the Italian warehouseman and the provision merchant, the wonder is how Mr Smythe has kept a roof over Mrs Smythe's head.", "On the way to my station stood a row of shops — the very shops from which the blue young man and his colleagues went forth every morning. And there or thereabouts I often saw an edifying sight. A young matron, a neighbour of the lady whom I have called Mrs Smythe, though her superior in birth and social standing, was to be met every day, like a French- woman with her bonne, going to market. She was always prettily but sensibly dressed in blue linen or old-fashioned print ; always unfiurried ; always beaming and healthy. Once or twice I happened to be in shops while she was shopping. I noticed that", "42 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "she never took a memorandum from her Httle bag in order to buy the materials for a premeditated menu. The market came first and the menu afterwards. Holding to the great principle that what is cheapest and most abundant in the market is generally what is best, she seemed to get the pick of everything at about two-thirds the prices paid by her stay-at-home neighbours for less desirable purchases. Yet there was no beating down or chaffering in the French manner. Her rosy little servant received the pur- chases into a net bag there and then, thus ending all risk of underweight and overcharge and changing, not to mention the ugly dangers of corrupt manoeuvres on the part of the young man in blue. No doubt this clever woman had acquired a general sense of menu- making which enabled her to resist the seductions of mere cheapness, so that she would not, for example, have combined salmon, and duck, and strawberries- and-cream in one short dinner ; but her obvious rule was to base her cuisine upon the market. I invoke her gracious image as I write and beseech her to be the patron saint of this chapter.", "I am bound to warn my docile readers that when they put these counsels into practice they will not enjoy their first shopping expeditions. In some places it still requires a little courage to go out with one's servant and to come back with one's dinner. But this War will be a poor affair if it does not blow away the remains of snobbery from all decent people. The idea that nobody of gentle birth can be seen carrying a parcel is not quite dead, but the War", "GOING TO MARKET 43", "should kill it. Thousands of the best of our race are carrying heavy knapsacks at this moment under a scorching sun, and it will not disgrace their sisters to bear home a whiting or even a cauliflower. Some of the tradesmen will sniff a little superciliously ; but, when one thinks it over, such sniffs are not of the first importance. Besides, the sniffs sometimes mean that the tradesman discerns the beginnings of a new relationship in which he will be obliged to treat his customer with more punctilious fairness.", "The housewife with common-sense will soon dis- tinguish between tradesmen who are white and trades- men who are shady. Among the shops to avoid is the shop with two prices for the same article. Some tradesmen will sell you, without a word of haggling, for elevenpence, a pound of bacon for which they will ask another customer tenpence or a shilling, and there is the same risk with all goods at fluctuating prices. No doubt it is to avoid this danger that thousands of people have given up shopping altogether and have decided to \" Order everything from the stores.\" The best stores give good value and careful service ; but, with all respect to them, better and cheaper cookery can be achieved by the housekeeper who will learn the ways of her local market. Happily, almost every part of London is now blessed with a few good shops where the prices of perishable foods are pro- minently displayed. Many of the fishmongers, for example, exhibit blackboards on which they chalk the prices of the day, sometimes adding the informa- tion that such and such a fish is cheap. The largest greengrocers also state their prices plainly. But when one turns to the butcher it is rare to see price", "44 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "tickets, except in the low-grade establishments. For this omission the butcher has a partial excuse. People are a little unreasonable in their ideas of boning and trimming a piece of meat at the butcher's expense, and they will often, after deciding on a joint, say that it is rather more than they want and that they cannot take it unless it is reduced in size — an operation which may mean a loss. Still, the butcher is a man who wants careful watching.", "As soon as you have decided which butcher seems likely to suit you best, it is well to treat him openly and to trust him so long as he plays the game. It is quite a mistake to think that he despises everybody who does not buy sirloins of beef, legs of lamb, fillet steaks and the other prime cuts. The truth is that he is quite glad to sell, at half the price of the prime cuts, the brisket and the flank which hardly anybody asks for, although these parts can be made delicious by processes explained in all cookery books. Necks of mutton and stewing beef, which are better for many purposes than legs and sirloins, are part of the butcher's stock and he wants to sell them.", "When one has become a fairly good and regular customer, it is fair to insist that the butcher shall not be disobhging with such things as calf's liver, sweet- bread, tongues and ox-tails. In some shops the request for these things is always met by a smile and a shake of the head, sometimes accompanied by valuable anatomical information to the effect that an ox has only one tail and that everybody cannot expect to get it. An ox-tail is a most desirable pur-", "GOING TO MARKET 45", "chase, especially in cold weather, and no housekeeper ought to accept constant refusals. As for the sweet- bread and the pick of the calf's liver, I remember a town where an English resident could hardly get these delicacies at the principal butcher's. A French- woman, always alluded to with great reverence as \" Maddum,\" doggedly insisted on having them for her rather extensive entertaining, and, if the butcher presumed to disappoint her, he was promptly and sharply told that she would not darken his shop door again. This was an extreme case ; but selfishness almost as great is to be found in every locality, and it is one's duty gently to insist that greedy people shall not be rewarded for their meanness.", "A good butcher will be rather flattered than other- wise if you ask his advice, provided that you do so at a slack time of his day. He will pickle or marinate the cheaper cuts for you and, when he finds that you are not a grumbler and that you want him to have his fair profit, he will give you the advantage on stocks which he wants to sell. He does not like suspicions expressed about the origin of this or the other joint, but when he is fairly and openly asked if he can supply chilled South American beef (which is often excellent), or the admirable New Zealand lamb known as \" Canterbury,\" he will answer you honestly. Should he sell you any chilled meat, it will be as well to con- sult him about thawing it, as sad things have happened through a neglect of this precaution. I write this page a day or two after meeting with a case in point. A body of Red Cross workers, most of whom hold certificates for proficiency in cooking, sat down to their own dinner after a laborious day. Their joint —", "46 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "a leg of lamb — came out of the oven smelling ador- ably. It was browned and apparently a little over- cooked, in the way which nearly every woman loves. But, when the carver's knife laid it open, the inside had the appearance of raw meat and, when touched with the finger, struck almost as cold as meat that had not been cooked at all. The certificated cooks pounced on all the fr^dng-pans they could find and made a dinner of slices fried in the English style.", "Smaller purchases should not be left for the butcher's boy to deliver but should be taken straight home. Larger cuts ought always to be weighed as soon as they arrive : because the weight sometimes fails to agree with what was charged for. And here and there a butcher will be found trying to play the meanest of all mean tricks, such as sending home the hoof of a full-grown sheep with the leg of a baa-lamb, and adding to the bones and fat which you have asked him to remove from your joint some bones and fat belonging to an entirely different beast. A little observation suffices to teach anybody of intelligence whether he is being made to carry more than his fair burden of fat and bones.", "At the fishmonger's, marketing is easier than at the butcher's. In these days of abundant ice all the year round, bad fish is a rarity. Among the good fish it requires skill and experience to choose out those which have been most lately caught. Most house- wives are forced, therefore, to depend upon the fish- monger's good faith, and happily they may often do so without disaster. Should a beginner read these lines,", "GOING TO MARKET 47", "I can only warn her to see that the flesh of her fish is not flabby, that the eyes are bright and not sunken, and that there is no stale odour.", "On some days cod is very cheap. It is a fish which many people find insipid, because it is so often served sodden from a pan of boiling water, with plain pota- toes and a so-called sauce which would do admirably for bill-posting but for little else. Steaks of cod, nicely grilled, are delightful. A large piece of steamed cod can also be made attractive, and what remains of it should be pounded smooth, and flavoured and potted for breakfast.", "Herrings are likely to figure among our principal blessings while the War lasts. Large quantities of them used to be sent to Germany, and we shall have the benefit of what the Germans must now do without. If herrings were caught in only one bight or sea-lough in all the world, gourmets would cheerfully pay a crown apiece for them and would give herring dinners in the most expensive restaurants. But, these fish being absurdly cheap, an idea has got about that they are slightly vulgar and one has had to be a bold man to include the herring in the menu of a formal dinner. At formal dinners, salmon, lobster, trout, turbot and soles — especially soles — have had it nearly all their own way. Some diners-out come to hate the sight of salmon by the third week of the season, and would be filled with secret joy if they could exchange a portion which has cost the hostess a shilling for a small fresh herring which would cost a penny or less. Herrings require some surgical skill and patience, because of the bones ; but many other delicacies, such as quails and walnuts, demand deft", "48 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "handling, and we do not shun them on that account. A grilled herring with potatoes is said to be an almost perfect food, and when the peasantry of Munster and Connaught can add buttermilk to this diet they seem to be the happiest and healthiest of men.", "Of recent years the fishmongers have begun to sell a fish called rock salmon, which is remarkably cheap and very good eating. After pursuing some pains- taking studies, I find that the fish appears to be called rock-salmon because it is not salmon and has nothing to do with rocks. Its true name is \" cat- fish,\" and when encountered in the water it cer- tainly has a cattish head which is less attractive than that of a smoke-blue Persian pussy at a show. It is by no means an unclean fish ; indeed its head is furnished with an arrangement which enables it to crack open oysters and to feed upon them. One might almost say that in buying sixpenny-worth of rock salmon one is sometimes getting oysters to the value of about five shillings thrown in. When no third party is Hstening, I generally ask the fishmonger for cat-fish by its proper name, but some of the rising generation of fishmongers do not know what is meant. Rock salmon can be served in many ways, but I find it best steamed and served with a rosy sauce.^", "Whiting, \" the chicken of the sea,\" when fried in a deep bath of oil or dripping, make a pleasant change at a low price. Skate, which is heartily despised by hundreds of thousands of people, will delight the", "^ After writing the above lines, my attention was drawn to a cookery book in which rock salmon is identified with hake ; but in the London shops it is certainly cat-fish. I bought one weigh- ing nearly four pounds for a shilling on 8th September 1914.", "GOING TO MARKET 49", "palates of hundreds of thousands of others when it is prepared au beurre noir — that is to say, with butter melted and turned dark by means of a few drops of vinegar and some capers. And nearly everybody will like skate, d VIndienne, which is practically a curry, the fish being served amidst some well-boiled rice and drowned in curry sauce.", "By going to the fishmonger's instead of letting his assistant come bicycling round to your tradesmen's entrance for orders, you will often be able to buy the finer kinds of fish at low prices. The market is occasionally glutted. I could name a restaurant in London where a low-principled proprietor was in the habit of passing off halibut for turbot in some of the made dishes, such as Coquilles de Turbot and Turbot Mornay. Through inattention to the market he served these impostures two or three days running when turbot was selling much more cheaply than halibut. And I have known a day when a stay-at- home housewife \\fas giving cod to her family at a price which would have bought (allowing for the more concentrated nature of the richer fish) an equal ration of salmon.", "Plaice, limandes (generally spoken of as lemon soles) and other second-class fish are sometimes dear out of proportion to their merits. But mackerel is always a good purchase when there is no doubt about its freshness. Indeed mackerel is often much more enjoyable than salmon when hot, and it is also a tasty and satisfying cold luncheon dish when it has been \" soused.\" Fresh haddock must not be over- looked ; but some of the richly coloured objects which are passed off as fillets of haddock are dis-", "50 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "appointing. The genuine smoked fillet stews beauti- fully in milk and butter in an earthenware pot ; but the wrong article can only be commended to those who eat fish as a penance.", "Shellfish are often cheap. Great care needs to be taken with mussels, but when you have the right specimens and know how to prepare them they are hailed with joy by those who like them, especially when marinated in the French way, with a sauce like a fish soup, which one can eat with a spoon. A few mussels are also necessary when one wants to improve some steamed fillets of rather tasteless fish by dressing them in the mode which all cookery books describe under the name of Normande. As for scallops, there is nothing much more distinguished than a Coquille St Jacques. The scallop shells ought not to be thrown away, and the hot scallops should be served therein.", "The papers, especially the religious weeklies, usually contain brief advertisements in which certain Grimsby firms offer to send by Parcel Post small packages of fresh fish already prepared for cooking. They some- times give the purchaser quite a large quantity for a couple of shillings. In the long run, however, most people find this no cheaper than buying fish locally. Where there are large families and the church's precept is closely obeyed on days of abstinence, these Grimsby packages may be taken regularly with advantage ; but in small households there would often be waste unless the cook is clever at potting the surplus.", "What has been said about carrying home one's smaller purchases from the butcher applies to the", "GOING TO MARKET 51", "fishmonger as well. I have seen fillets of sole which could not possibly have been fitted to the skeletons of the fish which I had chosen and paid for. Still, on the whole, the fishmonger will treat you fairly well if you are reasonable with him and are not above taking his advice.", "At the poulterer's, a patriotic housewife will deny herself the luxury of young chickens until the War is over. We ought to let most of the chickens grow up to lay eggs for us. Eggs will be dear. By increas- ing our home output, we may succeed in permanently securing a larger share of the egg trade for our own population. As for the bigger chickens, these should be kept as much as possible for the sick and wounded. Chicken broth and little pieces from the breast are tempting to many a convalescent, although their food value is slightly overrated.", "By casting a glance every day at the poulterer's counter you are sure to pick up great bargains from time to time. During the first month of the War I have seen rabbits, poultry and grouse at such low prices that they have often been cheaper than mutton and beef. Probably we must expect a great shrinkage in the imports of the frozen and rather tasteless game birds from the East ; but, on the other hand, English game birds may be cheap, as thousands of brace which would have been shot to give away will drift into the market. One may express the hope that venison will also come into its own again during the War. Pro- vided that people will get away from the loathsome superstition that venison must be outrageously high", "52 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "before it is fit to eat, tlie national larder can be en- riched to a great extent with this meat. A haunch of venison with a puree of chestnuts, some diamonds of scarlet runners, and a little red-currant jelly will make a meal full of old-world charm and often twenty per cent, cheaper than an equally ample repast of mutton or beef or veal. Indeed the whole question of venison cookery, which would require a book as large as this for its proper discussion, is well worth going into, and every housekeeper should risk a few experiments.", "The poulterer, when he plucks and cleans and trusses a bird for you, ought not to keep the liver and the giblets. Indeed, by watching every point, you may find birds almost the most economical food you can buy. I bought a brace of black game the other day for three shillings and threepence. They served six persons on two nights — first as a roast and second as a salmis, and I made some soup from them the third day.", "Under the ugly name of the greengrocer there is in every town and suburb a man who buys and sells the most beautiful of all our foodstuffs. Nobody will claim that a butcher's is a gallery of pictures or that fish out of water provoke gaiety. But a well-stocked greengrocer's is a thing of beauty and a joy until closing time. Apples as rosy as the cheek of a country wench, peaches with a bloom that the most exquisite dame must envy, grapes like great beads of amber, and oranges and lemons like a windfall of tiny suns and moons keep company with scarlet tomatoes.", "GOING TO MARKET 53", "with yellow bananas, with purple beets and with every shape and size and hue of leafage and rootage.", "It would be an exaggeration to say that green- grocers without exception have lived up to the splendours of their wares ; nor does it often transpire that they are poets and painters in their scanty leisure. Until the twentieth century came in, the vegetable shop was generally an unlovely place. At the top of the scale there were a few vegetable dealers whose stocks were well kept and well shown ; but one had to pay what might be called florists' prices, as if everything had been grown under glass or imported in tissue paper and cotton-wool. Things have changed for the better. Many greengrocers, whose prices are almost as low as the lowest, make a point of dressing their fronts with so much richness and abundance that one is thrilled as by the sight of a huge cornucopia outpoured. The interior of the shop cannot be as spotless as a high-class dairy, because earth is always being liberated from tubers and soiled leaves are constantly being torn from greens. Still, a well-managed greengrocer's ought to be pleasant both outside and inside. When it is found to be slovenly, a housekeeper will usually be safe in leaving it alone. She should beware, however, of expecting the standard of the fruit and vegetable tents at a big flower show. Prize exhibits are beauti- ful to look at, but they are often second-rate when one tries to eat them. If the greengrocer should cleanse away every speck of Mother Earth from his turnips and horse-radishes and potatoes, he would have to raise his prices, and at the same time he would", "54 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "rob the stuff of a coat which protects it from the many contaminations of street air.", "Vegetables need and will repay a lifelong course of close observation. Some cooks will calmly ask for so many carrots and so many turnips to compound a certain stew, as if carrots and turnips are as un- alterable as half bricks. Yet there is a world of difference between one carrot and another carrot, one turnip and another turnip. Some turnips might almost have been turned by a lathe out of white wood, and some carrots are limp, with a colour more yellow than red. And these remarks apply to all other vegetables in greater or less degree. It follows that the recipes in cookery-books are often no more than indications of an ideal, and that they must be modified in practice according to the stronger or weaker flavours, the more tough or more tender fibres of the ingredients. Again, a point is reached in the growth of most vegetables when they become unpleasant. French beans and scarlet runners are sometimes sold in a state which no reasonable amount of boiling can correct, and radishes are still marketed when all their briskness has given place to a faded flabbiness. The less honest or less able greengrocer stocks his shop with stuff that his colleagues will not touch.", "In some parts of London one comes upon what looks like a row of costers' barrows but is really an open-air fruit market. If any reader of this book should visit Soho to buy a casserole, as already ad- vised, it would not be a waste of time to walk along Little Pulteney Street, which runs westward from Wardour Street. On Fridays and Saturdays especi-", "GOING TO MARKET 55", "ally the fruit and vegetable market is a wonderful sight. Those who are willing to put on old clothes, and to leave all airs and graces at home, will be recompensed for any ungentle little bustlings and jostlings. One must be a bit of a linguist, a working acquaintance with the Cockney language being almost essential. And one must muzzle one's sense of the ridiculous. A few months ago I used to buy in this street enormous grape-fruits, of a ripeness and flavour unknown to me elsewhere. I paid on an average three-halfpence each. When cut in half and properly prepared, each fruit was enough for two persons. Unhappily, however, I tried to do the proprietor of the barrow a good turn by pointing out the defects in his placard, which read :", "GRAIPE FRUIT", "THE ONLY FRUIT IN THE WORLD CONTANING", "150 PER SENT OF QUININE", "Whether the scribe thought that I was going to indict him under the Food and Drugs' Act I cannot say, but he flew into a hot rage and challenged me to produce the man or woman or babe unborn that had ever known him acting not straight or fair. I have also learnt, as soon as I see grand globe artichokes in Little Pulteney Street at tenpence a dozen, to buy them without a smile when the proprietor commends them as \"These 'ere chokes,\" and to be equally discreet when, in the asparagus season, I receive sporting offers of \" Grass.\" The barrows are a guide to the", "56 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "waxing and waning of seasons. When a given fruit or vegetable has passed its hey-day, it disappears entirely. And yet many exotics find their way into this unlovely thoroughfare, where I have bought beautiful boxes of fresh purple figs and mandarins for sixpence the box of two or three dozen. Pine- apples are also to be found, though not so abundantly as one might expect. When a pine -apple is full-ripe and even shows in one spot an over-maturity which would spoil it for a West End fruiterer's window, it is at its best for immediate eating. I shall explain in the proper place a way of serving it. Still, we ought to trade with our local greengrocer as a rule, so long as he behaves himself. The man with the barrow pays no rates or rent. He would fall dead at the mere suggestion of paying income tax, although he is often rich enough to buy up two or three men who pay it regularly. Besides, the local man is at hand for our convenience in wet weather or fine, and this ought not to be forgotten.", "One of the greatest mistakes of the ordinary house- keeper, from the point of view of the gourmet, and one of the chief reasons for the expensiveness of her housekeeping, is the habit of visiting the greengrocer last when marketing. Nearly every English cook chooses the meat first and the vegetables afterwards — hardly ever the vegetables first and the meat to suit it. I think this is one more sound explanation of the monotony of English menus, and I recommend an occasional reversal of the order. By going now and then to the greengrocer first one will start a new train of ideas.", "For instance, there are days when small white cab-", "GOING TO MARKET 57", "bages are at their best and cheapest, and the sight of them might well suggest cabbages cunningly stuffed, one for each person. Again, one's eye sometimes encounters a new-dug pile of Jerusalem artichokes. [These very cheap tubers are certainly not artichokes, and they have no connection with Jerusalem, their English name being corrupted from girasol which means that the plants try to turn themselves towards the sun.] With the good and sound Jerusalem arti- chokes a cook makes a Crdme Palestine ; and a dinner which begins with Creme Palestine must be so care- fully thought out, with a view to a proper sequence and contrast of colours and textures and flavours, that all the other buying for the day may turn on this pivot. Occasionally there is an abundance of fresh mush- rooms at a low price, and, when this happens, a cook will not neglect her opportunity.", "Another shopman whom we must visit now and then calls himself rather arrogantly the Provision Merchant. He sells Cheshire cheese and York ham and Irish bacon and new-laid eggs '' from his own farm,\" as well as some cheese and ham and bacon and eggs which have made rather longer journeys. In these days he is constantly adding other \" lines,\" such as poultry. New Zealand lamb, tinned fish, and jam. He is also adopting, in many cases when he ought to know better, undignified methods of pushing the sale of \"overweight \" nut butter and margarine, a pound and a half being sold at the price of a pound, with perhaps an aluminium butter-knife thrown in. In his Cheddar cheese department there are often clear", "58 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "proofs that he is an Imperialist, free from parish- pump narrowness, and that he feels bound to encour- age the nascent agriculture of Canada and our other great dominions overseas. Happily, some of his tribe carry on their business honourably, and when these are found their customers will naturally stick to them. The good provision merchant generally prefers a quiet window, furnished with a stack of flitches of bacon and a few cheeses ; but his baser rival loves a garish front and is usually trumpeting some coupon- scheme so as to reconcile you to his coarse sardines and rank tea.", "Of the twentieth-century grocer it is hard to speak with brotherly love. At one time the epicier (or \" spicer \"), as the French call him, was something of an artist. With the peculiarities of the local water supply before him, he blended tea so sensitively that no packet tea would have had a chance against it. He received many of his materials in the rough and in the unready. Turning a great wheel adorned with gilded lions or dragons, his apprentices cut loaves of sugar in cubes, while the sons of bishops and the nephews of admirals stared in through the window and bitterly cursed the hard fate which had caused them to be born too high in the social scale. The grocer had blue and white jars, and lacquered boxes, and baby drawers, and scoops big and little. As you looked at his stock it was hard to believe that it had not been brought to him in an argosy or on pack-mules. To-day's grocer is not out of the same batch. All that his young men know of the particular packet of", "GOING TO MARKET 59", "jar or tin can which they are selling is that it is \" eleven three farthings \" ; that the packers are splendid people ; that they are selling quite a lot of it ; and that they have another kind at \" ten and a half.\" This sort of young man has memorised a price-list ; but instead of having all the seas and orchards and spice gardens and cornfields of the world before his eyes, his mental picture gallery is furnished with nothing but labels and show cards.", "In some books on housekeeping it is recommended that one ought to search out the grocers who still do their work in the old way, and some trustful young matrons therefore patronise none but shops with nice placards concerning ' ' Our own blend. ' ' A few genuine old grocers' shops survive which may be almost in- fallibly distinguished by their atmosphere when one is not guided to them by their reputation. But most of the \" Own blend \" shops are delusions. Most of them. Not all. The exceptional grocers who put skill and conscience into the choice of their own brands (even though they may do the actual bu3ang and blending and packing by proxy) give the best value in the world. The proof is in the eating and drinking ; and when a tradesman of this kind has convinced you that he is a man of brains and character you ought, as I have advised in the foregoing pages, to trust him and to make use of his experience.", "There is one kind of grocer from whom I have never obtained, and never expect to obtain, any satisfaction. I refer to the kind of man who seems to revel in ugli- ness. When \"a, new neighbourhood,\" as he would call it, is opened up by the speculative builder, this kind of grocer-man is one of the first to arrive upon", "6o HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "the scene. His chosen pitch may be close to an old grey bridge or a timber cottage or a grand grove of elms ; but this makes no difference. Up go his yellow bricks and his blue slates, and in goes his sheet of plate glass, behind which he is yearning to show P5n:amids of orange-coloured cartons, tomato tins labelled in flaming scarlet, and show cards with skim- milk-white letters on backgrounds of the most odious royal blue. If a man should propose to preoccupy the same bit of ground with a whitewashed inn, where nut-brown ale and brown bread and honest cheese would be sold to the pleasant swinging of a signboard with a running horse on it, he would not be allowed to move an inch without the permission of the Bench. Surely there ought to be some sort of a Bench to license the grocer and to see that he neither disfigures the landscape nor poisons the inhabitants. More often than not these shops — I beg their pardon, these \" stores \" — are stocked with \" lines \" chosen merely as \" sellers \" at the very lowest prices. When there has been no other grocer to turn to, I have sometimes bought stuff at these places. The proprietors gener- ally exhibit a certain proportion of well-known brands, partly because some of their customers insist on these and partly to make a respectable show, but they are always endeavouring to sell the just as good. For- tunately the \" just as good \" has to conform to the law, and I have often found words in small type on the labels which have been useful as clues to the nature of the shop. The strawberry jam is made from the choicest Kent strawberries (large type) \" improved \" (small type) with ** other choice fruits.\" The mustard turns out to be \"blended with the choic", "GOING TO MARKET 6i", "and so on, until one gets the impression that if it were not for the Food and Drugs Act hardly an honest article would cross the counter. The poor are cruelly imposed upon at this kind of shop. To save a penny in the shilling they let themselves be cheated out of threepence, and, in some cases, they get deleterious ingredients into the bargain. Even educated house- wives often fail to read labels and to use common- sense. I have seen baking powders and vinegars which might have been the deadly inventions of German spies improving on the slow old process of poisoning the wells. Fortunately, however, demand governs supply, and there are so many sensible women who will not be put off with shams and rubbish that it is possible nearly everywhere to find a grocery stocked with good things. Indeed I have heard a grocer say quite cynically that he had tried both methods and that honesty was the only paying policy for a high- class trade.", "A housekeeper, having found the best shop, should often visit it herself. All kinds of new imports keep coming along, as well as all kinds of new sauces and materials for sweets and savouries. As she walks about the shop, waiting for change or for some informa- tion, many a notion will strike the resourceful cook. Forgotten stores in her own pantry come back to her mind, or she remembers once favourite dishes which she has somehow ceased to serve. It is for some such reason as this that I have never myself felt quite happy in dealing with the huge Stores. As soon as a housekeeper finally loses all patience with small and personally-managed local shops, and decides to order everything by telephone or post card from the", "62 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "Stores, she saves herself many little worries, but cuts herself off from all-alive housekeeping and drifts nine times out of ten into the monotony which is the chief defect of our English cuisine.", "The baker follows a calling of exceeding dignity. In London and our greater towns hardly anybody kneads and bakes in her own house to-day. It is through the baker that we can eat each day our daily bread, and it would be ungenerous to deny that he often does his best. While millers and bakers are not always as white as they are dusted, I think their inner blackness has been exaggerated, and that few of them spend the silent night in adding chalk to the flour and sand to the household bread. But while there are not vast numbers of knaves among them, it must be admitted that they do not all bake well. Should any reader of this book be so unlucky as to live in a place without a good baker, I urge her not to sit down too meekly under the loss. Good bread is of such obvious importance that I must almost apologise for saying so. Where good household bread is not to be got, let the housewife try to get into touch with some- body who supplies yeast, and let her set about that hard but honourable task which will fill her soul with just pride and her cupboard with honest loaves. Failing yeast, one can fall back on German barm — which, by the way, is not all made in Germany. Failing the barm, the chemist must be asked for three ounces of bicarbonate of soda and two ounces of tartaric acid, which must be well mixed in three ounces of ordinary arrowroot. If kept dry this baking", "GOING TO MARKET 63", "powder will be found all that is desirable, and it will enable any careful cook to turn out wholesome bread. Such bread should be made of a mixture of four parts of wheat meal (not too coarse) to one part of fine flour. Suppose you are using two pounds of the mixture. Along with a heaped tablespoonful of baking powder and a little salt there ought to be about two ounces of butter. Use either milk and water or milk alone to make an almost liquid dough which should be baked in very shallow round tins not much more than an inch high. The baking powder (like a Seidlitz powder) generates innumerable little bubbles which give lightness to the bread. It is essential therefore to begin the baking in a hot oven, so that the outside of the fiat loaf or cake may be sealed hard, thus im- prisoning the bubbles. [Although it is nothing to do with bakers or baking, I will say in this place that the principle of sealing applies to grilling also, and indeed to many actions in cookery.]", "The foregoing directions are borrowed from Sir Henry Thompson, with one addition. The otherwise admirable Sir Henry does not appear to have been a practical cook, and he therefore wrote : \" Mix with a sufficient quantity of baking powder.\" Such vague expressions as \" a sufficient quantity \" are the despair of the novice. I admit that, in the following chapters, I shall often use vague language myself, but only as regards seasonings, and degrees of richness, or in connection with materials which (unlike our baking powder) are of varying strength.", "In buying flour from the baker it is a good thing to tell him quite candidly what you do and do not want. The much-despised finest white flour still has many", "64 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "uses in the kitchen, despite its low nutritive value ; but for your bread you require such flour as used to be called seconds and is now more generally spoken of under the names of \" standard \" and \" household.\" The finest oatmeal, and other flours not ground from wheat, are important ; but they can only be used confidently after several experiments.", "In our own day and generation bread is too often wasted. Years ago an almost religious reverence surrounded bread. You could waste other things ; but never bread. My own childhood was embittered as the result of my having thrown away in a moment of petulance a horrible slice of bread, with crust burnt almost black and a doughy crumb. My brothers and sisters could throw away apples over the hedge after sampling them with a single bite ; or they could leave half-a-slice of roast sirloin on the plate, with impunity ; but my sin in throwing away that piece of bread was never allowed to die. When an old Welsh nurse called to see me after a few years of absence one of her first questions was directed to this hateful subject, and she did not go away without telling me a blood-chilling narrative about a boy who threw away a piece of bread and perished miserably a few months after- wards, on a raft in the Indian Ocean, without so much as a ship's biscuit. Nevertheless I do not wholly succeed in despising this old sentiment. Bread, quite apart from its high use in the Christian mysteries, has a human sanctity as the stoutest staff of life. To waste it at any time is not good. To waste it in war- time is an unspiritual as well as a selfish action. Frangois Coppee brought out this feeling very beauti- fully in his httle story of the siege of Paris called : ** A", "GOING TO MARKET 65", "Morsel of Bread.\" We do not expect a siege of London, but let us take our bread-pans seriously all the same. It is far better to calculate the bread con- sumption beforehand than to find the bowl littered with fragments which have to be worked off by some of the worst makeshifts of cookery. In many houses the surplus bread is got rid of in the form of bread-and- butter pudding. In denouncing bread-and-butter pudding I know that I shall fall foul of many people, including those who have lately been advertising the currant trade. But bread-and-butter pudding, and soups in which there is a whole sli-ce of soddened bread, present a serious danger. Those who eat them, especially children, are prone to bolt such soft food without proper mastication. Now it is an established fact that starchy substances like bread must be well worked (salivated) in the mouth before they are swallowed. From some points of view it is less dangerous to bolt small lumps of beef or mutton than equal lumps of cake or bread. A bread-and- butter pudding, made with currants that are not too skinny and with good milk, can be a valuable diet to the few who will eat it properly ; but it is generally better to avoid the need for making it by a more jealous watch over the buying of bread. There will be an overplus sometimes ; and then the breadcrumb is best used in a steamed suet pudding where it is lighter than flour. Flavoured with marmalade, or ginger, or chocolate, such puddings are good.", "The dairyman is hedged about with legal enact» ments which ought to keep him straight. The law,", "66 HOME COOKERY IN WAR-TIME", "however, allows him a certain amount of elbow-room as regards the minimum of solids in milk, so as to protect him in the event of his receiving in good faith an unusually poor milk from the farmer. The baser sort of dair37man always waters down the milk to this minimum, while the better sort gives his customers a far purer article, with more cream, at the same price per quart. Milk, like bread, is often bought waste- fuUy. Still, some waste is bound to occur in houses where daily habits are not absolutely regular. As the milkman is early astir with a fast white horse and great brass milk-cans, shining in the early sunshine like burnished helmets, he must be able to depend upon a certain regular round of customers. Thus it would not be fair to thrust one's head