Meals for the Many of Moderate Means
Reprinted from Good Housekeeping, vol. 5, May 14, 1887 to October 29, 1887, inclusive
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Original in Good Housekeeping
Meals for the Many of Moderate Means
By the author of “The Cooking School Textbook,” “Practical American Cookery, etc., etc.
Given the question, “How to apply experience gained under favorable conditions to those least promising,” and we have, in brief, the problem recently propounded by a reader of Good Housekeeping to its editor. Young married couples living in the plainest way, students working their way through universities, people engaged in occupations filling nearly the entire working day—all handicapped by limited resources of money and materials, with scant working facilities and more, scanty knowledge; how can they secure the comfort of well-cooked daily food when this is a rarity in many prosperous households? No question that such people need the most nutritious fare and sanitary surroundings; for to them we look for the future bone and sinew of our nation. Vigorous health, fine brains, and moral stamina can proceed only from that perfect physical condition that results from right living. So far as the published testimony of investigators shows, the habitual fare of the mass of unskilled workers in every line of manual labor is deficient in variety and quality. Bread and tea for the women and children, varied with beer and an occasional bit of meat for the men, seem to be the prevalent foods; and the bread is usually bought at the bake-shop, and lacks the strengthening properties of good, home-made bread, the general reason given for using baker’s bread being lack of time or knowledge for making bread at home. In the poorest households, where fuel is scant, it is not easy to make good risen or leavened bread, because considerable heat is required to ferment the leaven in cold weather, as well as to bake the bread. Even under such circumstances, it would be better to take advantage of any burning of fuel for heating purposes to bake bread or biscuit made with baking-powder or soda, or to cook the old fashioned bannock or griddle-cake over the fire when the quantity is insufficient to heat the oven. This point will be treated fully later.
When there is no undue scarcity of fuel, the nationality of the household caterer will have much to do with the character of the food. The New Englander is prone to return to the salt pork and Indian meal porridge or hasty-pudding of the forefathers; the Southern or Western economist will naturally revert to bacon and hominy or pone; and new comers from mid-Europe recall their national kitchen-lore with better results. When any such local culinary experience is brought to bear upon the subject of providing cheap and palatable food, the end is not apt to be hopeless. It is from the inexperienced, the careless, the lazy and indifferent women of families that the worst effects proceed. As a matter of fact, much food is wasted by just such women among working people. Suggestions would be thrown away upon the careless class; but where only lack of knowledge is the cause of waste and discomfort, the outlook is more encouraging. When there is not a large family, and the woman has no special work outside that of the household, there is plenty of time to devote to the application of good and sure methods for improving the table. There need be no guess-work in this direction.
It would be strange, indeed, if ten years’ experiments in this work had not developed methods applicable to every possible contingency. While we cannot hope to cover the entire field in this series of articles, the reader will do well to bear in mind the fact that, eventually, all the experience of the writer will be collected and published in book form, thus giving the working people of America a manual of domestic economy worthy of their best attention. The readers of Good Housekeeping, can forward our present purpose greatly if they will lend a hand in any one of the following ways: To enable us to discuss the subject intelligently, the people in whose interest we write will do well to send all possible information concerning the line of food they habitually purchase, the utensils they use in cooking, the cheapest and most abundant of their local supplies, the kind of recipes that would prove most acceptable to them, how long time they have for preparing the different meals, and the time of day when they can give the greatest attention to cookery. One point we shall seek to cover is the preparation of dishes in the space of half or three-quarters of an hour.
Pending the receipt of the desired information, we shall apply to defined conditions experiments which have already proved successful in various localities. If there is only flour and salt to work with, it is of no consequence that, fifty miles away, the markets teem with dainties innumerable. The cookery of the flour and salt, in more than one form, is of more present consequence than the preparation of feasts for the gods.
Since the publication of the author’s “Fifteen and Twenty-five Cent Dinners,” there have been many attempts to throw light upon this side of the domestic question. Much discussion has been called forth by various admirable schemes for economical living, and some writers of acknowledged ability have pronounced some of the best of these schemes impracticable. The greater their emphasis, the more apparent their lack of knowledge upon this vital point; perfectly practicable plans seem futile to them, because they have never attempted to demonstrate them. In all discussions a certain class of minds sum up the entire range of possibilities by asserting that results cannot be attained because they have not reached them individually. All the same, the stubborn fact remains that someone else has done so. When an ambitious novice proclaims aloud that Ten Dollars is not enough, what are we to do with the fact that one of the best authorities on economical living has personally proven that it is abundant provision? What are we to say to the fact that there are thousands of families in the country who live comfortably on half that amount?
If we economists are to be allowed to live in the same world with the egg and cream cooks, we must range ourselves on the side of the greater number of working housekeepers who are daily solving this problem with greater or less satisfaction. Our aim must be to define certain tried methods applicable to the situation, of sufficient general interest to fit all localities where the ordinary necessaries of life are staples. For our present purpose luxuries must go to the wall, and the simplest of palatable fare come to the fore which can be made to sustain the vigor required for hard, daily work. For, in the world we now seek to enter, all are workers,—the men abroad, the women at home, or in shops and factories, save those who alternate between the care of the family and the remunerative labor they can accomplish in the intervals of the necessary housekeeping. The extreme deprivation of poverty lies as far out of our way as the fatness of the land.
With a fair provision of the most plentiful and least expensive articles of food, the point to be attained is that treatment of them which will best serve the needs of hard workers. Such needs made known by our readers, and their individual difficulties defined clearly, will greatly forward this endeavor. Within a certain limit of supply, the effort will be to increase attractiveness in all dishes, and give them fresh variety and zest. If meat can be used only two or three times a week, the alternate days must be provided with savory, hearty dishes, satisfactory to the appetite and strengthening to the body. Many of the hardest workers in Europe eat but little meat. Hardy and vigorous they could not remain were it not for the culinary resources which their women folk bring to bear upon their meagre supplies. If such resources as we may suggest differ from familiar American methods, a fair trial is asked before judgment is pronounced against even the least promising. Let there be no exclamations against either method or material until the dish, made strictly in accordance with the recipe, has been found uneatable.
In this connection the wish constantly arises that we might personally assist at the first cookery of every doubtful edible. If we say that portions of a haslet can be cooked which people have habitually relegated to cats and dogs, there need be no outcry that we are seeking to feed human beings on substances fit only for beasts. In far-away country places, butchers throw away as uneatable the sweetbreads for which city gourmands pay seventy-five cents a pair. So, if we can, by the use of vinegar and other condiments, give tenderness and savor to any substance hitherto considered uneatable, we shall have gone one step towards saving money to spend in another direction. The man who still prefers to buy porter-house steak is perfectly free to do so. He does not need the suggestions we propose to offer here.
After all, the choice of food is purely a question of taste and fancy. The classic gourmand fed his slaves to his lampreys, and thought his feast improved thereby. The siege of Paris gave the greatest resident masters of the culinary art ample scope for the exercise of their marvelous powers of transformation, and the selle du cheval and quartier du chien rôti were certainly less promising at their inception than any portion of our inoffensive haslet; and yet the diner du siège contented the members of the Paris Jockey Club.
The fresh condition of any article of food is of far greater importance than its origin. Unless a sixth sense has been cultivated for the appreciation of such food, none bearing the least taint should be eaten; nor should two foods of unequal freshness be mingled in one dish. This important point will be exemplified later, especially in connection with the use of canned goods.
A Plain Dinner
Those who have the smallest provision in the way of variety in food and utensils call for our immediate attention, and to them our first consideration must be given. Begin with the supposition that one room serves as kitchen and dining-room, and that the heartiest meal consists of one hot dish, with potatoes or one other vegetable, and bread and some simple beverage. We will suppose that there are on hand flour, baking-powder, salt and pepper, vinegar, a little butter or sweet drippings—and much care must be given to augmenting the reserve of the latter—a small supply of meat, with a good provision of potatoes and bread. A hot meal is to be cooked without too large a fire, and without making the room uncomfortable for eating. The most savory, nutritious, and abundant meal which can be made from these materials is composed of a stew with dumplings, boiled or baked potatoes, and hot biscuit. By combining the meat with dumplings in the form of a stew, two advantages are secured. A smaller quantity of meat so cooked will satisfy the appetite as well as double the quantity cooked by baking, broiling, frying, or boiling without a sauce or gravy, and it will be in the condition best suited for immediately satisfying the sense of hunger and assisting the process of digestion. The savory sauce or gravy imparts to the dumplings the flavor and some of the nutritious properties of the meat. The potatoes might be cooked in the stew, if there were no facilities for boiling or baking them; but, then our object of providing variety would be thwarted. For this end the biscuits are suggested. The cost is but a trifle, and they replace the bread which would be eaten in their absence. With the addition of a little cheese, fresh fruit in season, any inexpensive canned fruit or preserve, or, better yet, apple-sauce made from evaporated apples, the meal would be complete.
Meat Stew with Dumplings
As the stew requires the longest cooking, we will devote our first attention to it. The meat, being freed from bits of paper, straw, or bone-dust by carefully wiping it with a damp cloth, should be cut in inch pieces, saving all the fat upon it, and put over the fire in boiling water, with a little salt—about three pints of water to a pound of meat. The saucepan should be placed where its contents can boil gently and continuously until the meat begins to grow tender. If the meat is tough, add a tablespoonful of vinegar to each pint of water used in cooking it, and do not salt it much until it is tender; while an excess of salt has a tendency to harden the fiber of meat, vinegar undoubtedly softens it. When the meat is tender, drain it, saving the broth; roll it in dry flour, seasoned with salt and pepper. If any fat has been cut from the meat, as directed above, put it into the saucepan or pot used in cooking the meat, after first wiping the pot dry; if there is no fat, use two heaping tablespoonfuls of sweet drippings or lard,— butter would increase the cost of the dish. As soon as the fat begins to smoke, put in the meat, thickly covered with flour, and quickly brown it; then return to the saucepan the broth in which the meat was boiled ; if there is not enough to make a good gravy, add boiling water, season the gravy highly with salt and pepper, and place the saucepan where the stew will simmer gently while the dumplings are being prepared. These and the biscuits can be made at the same time.
Baking Powder Biscuits
For a dozen biscuits and the same number of small dumplings, sift together three pints of flour, three heaping teaspoonfuls of any good baking-powder, and one of salt. Test the oven by putting a piece of white paper in it and closing the door; if the paper takes fire, the oven is too hot; open the ventilator or door to cool it, until the white paper becomes only yellow without burning—or apply the same test to flour. If a little dried flour laid on the bottom of the oven burns or smokes, the oven is too hot ; if it remains white or assumes a pale, yellow color, there is not enough heat; the proper temperature will turn the flour golden or yellowish brown. It would be well to make the oven test while the meat is being cooked, that no time be lost in waiting after it is done. When the oven is ready, butter a baking-pan, and flour a pastry-board and biscuit-cutter. Into the prepared flour chop or rub a little shortening—good lard, sweet drippings, or the more expensive butter, a heaping tablespoonful to a pint of flour—and then quickly stir in enough cold water to form a dough, only firm enough to be cut into biscuits and dumplings. First dip a dessert spoon into the sauce of the stew; with it take up a small portion of the dough, and drop it into the stew; repeatedly wet the spoon in the sauce, and form the necessary dumplings; cover the saucepan, and let them cook. After thus shaping the dumplings, as quickly as possible turn the rest of the dough out on the floured pastry-board ; rapidly flatten it about an inch thick, cut it into biscuits, lay them on the buttered pan, brush the tops with a little milk or water, and put them at once into the oven to bake. Their success will depend upon the rapidity with which the dough is cut out and baked after the flour is wet. Remember in using baking-powder that, as soon as it is wet, a gas begins to rise from it, which fills the dough with little bubbles or air-cells, and these are lost as the volatile gas escapes from them. The gas does escape very quickly, and, unless the dough can be fixed in substance by the heat of the oven while the gas is still rising, the biscuit will be thin and heavy. Therefore do not wet the flour until the oven is ready, and then work as fast as possible until the biscuits are in the oven.
Mealy Potatoes
After the meat has been put to cook, carefully wash the potatoes in plenty of cold water with a soft cloth or brush; if they are to be boiled, peel off a small ring of the skin from each, and leave them in fresh, cold water. Half an hour before they are wanted for the table, put them over the fire in plenty of salted, boiling water, and boil them until they can be easily pierced with a fork, but not until they begin to break open; fifteen minutes for small potatoes, twenty to twenty-five for large ones, will be long enough to boil them to this point. When they are tender, drain them; cover them with a clean towel, folded; set the saucepan where the potatoes cannot burn, and keep them hot until they are needed for the table. For baking, carefully wash them, but do not peel them, and allow at least a half hour in a hot oven for medium-size potatoes. Serve them as soon as they are done, as they deteriorate if they stand after they are soft.
—Juliet Corson.