LITMIR.BIZ

I.

       INTRODUCTION.

       Table of Contents

      By choice cookery is meant exactly what the words imply. There will be no attempt to teach family or inexpensive cooking, those branches of domestic economy having been so excellently treated by capable hands already. It may be said en passant, however, that even choice cooking is not necessarily expensive. Many dishes cost little for the materials, but owe their daintiness and expensiveness to the care bestowed in cooking or to a fine sauce. For instance: cod, one of the cheapest of fish, and considered coarse food as usually served, becomes an epicurean dish when served with a fine Hollandaise or oyster sauce, and it will not even then be more expensive than any average-priced boiling fish. Flounder served as sole Normande conjures up memories of the famous Philippe, whose fortune it made, or it may be of luxurious little dinners at other famous restaurants, and is suggestive, in fact, of anything but economy. Yet it is really an inexpensive dish.

      But while it is quite true that fine cooking does not always mean expensive cooking, it is also true that it requires the best materials and sufficient of them; that if satisfactory results are to be obtained there must be no attempt to stint or change proportions from a false idea of economy, although it must never be forgotten that all good cooking is economical, by which I mean that there is no waste, every cent’s worth of material being made to do its full duty.

      In this book the object will be to give the newest and most recherché dishes, and these will naturally be expensive. Yet for those families who depend upon the caterer for everything in the way of fine soups, entrées, or sauces, because the cook can achieve only the plain part of the dinner, it will be found a great economy as well as convenience to be independent of this outside resource, which is always very costly, and invariably destroys the individuality of a repast. Many new recipes will be given, and others little known in private kitchens, or thought to be quite beyond the attainment of any but an accomplished chef. But if strict attention be paid to small matters, and the directions faithfully carried out, there will be no difficulty in a lady becoming her own chef.

      I propose to begin with sauces. This is reversing the usual mode, and yet I think the reader will not regret the innovation. The cooking to be taught in these pages, being emphatically what is popularly known as “Delmonico cooking,” very much depends on the excellence of the sauces served with each dish; and as it is no time to learn to make a fine sauce when the dish it is served with is being cooked, I think the better plan is to give the sauces first. They will be frequently referred to, but no repetition of the recipes will be given.

      Before proceeding further I will say a few words that may save time and patience hereafter. Of course it is not expected that any one will hope to succeed with elaborate dishes without understanding the principles of simple cooking, but many do this without perceiving that in that knowledge they hold the key to very much more, and I would ask readers who are in earnest about the matter to acquire the habit of putting two and two together in cooking as they would in fancy-work. If you know half a dozen embroidery or lace stitches, you see at once that you can produce the elaborate combinations in which those stitches are used. So it is with cooking. The most elaborate dish will only be a combination of two or three simpler processes of cooking, perfectly done—that is a sine qua non—something fried, roasted, boiled, or braised to perfection, and a sauce that no chef could improve upon; but to recognize that this is so—that when you can make a Châteaubriand sauce or a Béarnaise perfectly, and can sauté a steak, the famed filets à la Châteaubriand or à la Béarnaise are no longer a mystery, or that one who can make clear meat jelly and roast a chicken has learned all but the arrangement of a chaudfroid in aspic—will make apparently complicated dishes simple.

      I go into these matters because I hope to cause my readers to think about the recipes they will use, when they will see for themselves that even the finest cooking is not intricate nor in any way difficult. It requires intelligence and great care about details: no half-attention will do, any more than it will in any other thing we attempt, whether it be high art or domestic art.

      In making sauces or reading recipes for them it simplifies matters to remember that in savory sauces—by which I mean those served with meats or fish—there are what the French call the two “mother sauces,” white sauce and brown; all others, with few exceptions, are modifications of these two; that is to say, béchamel is only white sauce made with white stock and cream instead of milk; Allemande is the same, only yolks of eggs replace the cream; and so on through the long list of sauces belonging to the blond variety. The simple brown sauce becomes the famous Châteaubriand by the addition of glaze (or very strong gravy) and a glass of white wine, and is the “mother” of many others equally fine. This being so, it will be seen that it is of the first importance that the making of these two “mother sauces” should

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