Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery. Marion Harland
Eels.
Prepare as for stewing; roll in flour, and fry, in hot lard or dripping, to a light brown.
Chowder (No. 1.) ✠
Take a pound of salt pork, cut into strips, and soak in hot water five minutes. Cover the bottom of a pot with a layer of this. Cut four pounds of cod or sea-bass into pieces two inches square, and lay enough of these on the pork to cover it. Follow with a layer of chopped onions, a little parsley, summer savory, and pepper, either black or cayenne. Then a layer of split Boston, or butter, or whole cream crackers, which have been soaked in warm water until moist through, but not ready to break. Above this lay a stratum of pork, and repeat the order given above—onions, seasoning, (not too much,) crackers, and pork, until your materials are exhausted. Let the topmost layer be buttered crackers, well soaked. Put in enough cold water to cover all barely. Cover the pot, stew gently for an hour, watching that the water does not sink too low. Should it leave the upper layer exposed, replenish constantly from the tea-kettle. When the chowder is thoroughly done, take out with a perforated skimmer and put into a tureen. Thicken the gravy with a tablespoonful of flour and about the same quantity of butter. Boil up and pour over the chowder. Send sliced lemon, pickles, and stewed tomatoes to the table with it, that the guests may add, if they like.
Chowder (No. 2.)
Slice six large onions, and fry them in the gravy of fried salt pork. Cut five pounds of bass or cod into strips three inches long and one thick, and line the bottom of a pot with them. Scatter a few slices of onion upon them, a little salt, half a dozen whole black peppers, a clove or two, a pinch of thyme and one of parsley, a tablespoonful tomato or mushroom catsup, and six oysters; then comes a layer of oyster crackers, well-soaked in milk and buttered thickly. Another layer of fish, onions, seasoning, and crackers, and so on until all are used up. Cover with water, boil slowly for an hour and pour out. Serve with capers and sliced lemon. A cup of oyster liquor added to the chowder while boiling improves it.
SHELL-FISH.
To Boil a Lobster.
Choose a lively one—not too large, lest he should be tough. Put a handful of salt into a pot of boiling water, and having tied the claws together, if your fish merchant has not already skewered them, plunge him into the prepared bath. He will be restive under this vigorous hydropathic treatment; but allay your tortured sympathies by the reflection that he is a cold-blooded animal, destitute of imagination, and that pain, according to some philosophers, exists only in the imagination. However this may be, his suffering will be short-lived. Boil from half an hour to an hour, as his size demands. When done, draw out the scarlet innocent, and lay him, face downward, in a sieve to dry. When cold, split open the body and tail, and crack the claws to extract the meat, throwing away the “lady fingers” and the head. Lobsters are seldom served without dressing, upon private tables, as few persons care to take the trouble of preparing their own salad after taking their seats at the board.
Devilled Lobster.
Extract the meat from a boiled lobster, as for salad, and mince it finely; reserve the coral. Season highly with mustard, cayenne, salt, and some pungent sauce. Toss and stir until it is well mixed, and put into a porcelain saucepan (covered), with just enough hot water to keep it from burning. Rub the coral smooth, moistening with vinegar until it is thin enough to pour easily, then stir into the contents of the saucepan. It is necessary to prepare the dressing, let me say, before the lobster-meat is set on the fire. It ought to boil up but once before the coral and vinegar are put in. Next stir in a heaping tablespoonful of butter, and when it boils again, take the pan from the fire. Too much cooking toughens the meat. This is a famous supper dish for sleighing parties.
Lobster Croquettes. ✠
To the meat of a well-boiled lobster, chopped fine, add pepper, salt, and powdered mace. Mix with this one-quarter as much bread-crumbs, well rubbed, as you have meat; make into ovates, or pointed balls, with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Roll these in beaten egg, then in pulverized cracker, and fry in butter or very nice sweet lard. Serve dry and hot, and garnish with crisped parsley. This is a delicious supper dish or entrée at dinner.
Devilled Crab. ✠
This is prepared according to the receipt for devilled lobster—substituting for the coral in the vinegar some pulverized cracker, moistened first with a tablespoonful of rich cream. You can serve up in the back-shell of the crab if you like. Send in with cream crackers, and stick a sprig of parsley in the top of each heap, ranging the shells upon a large flat dish.
Crab Salad.
Mince the meat and dress as in lobster salad. Send in the back-shell of the crab.
Soft Crabs. ✠
Many will not eat hard-shell crabs, considering them indigestible, and not sufficiently palatable to compensate for the risk they run in eating them. And it must be owned that they are, at their best, but an indifferent substitute for the more aristocratic lobster. But in the morning of life, for him so often renewed, his crabship is a different creature, and greatly affected by epicures.
Do not keep the crabs over night, as the shells harden in twenty-four hours. Pull off the spongy substance from the sides and the sand bags. These are the only portions that are uneatable. Wash well, and wipe dry. Have ready a pan of seething hot lard or butter, and fry them to a fine brown. Put a little salt into the lard. The butter will need none. Send up hot, garnished with parsley.
Water-Turtles, or Terrapins.
Land-terrapins, it is hardly necessary to say, are uneatable, but the large turtle that frequents our mill-ponds and rivers can be converted into a relishable article of food.
Plunge the turtle into a pot of boiling water, and let him lie there five minutes. You can then skin the underpart easily, and pull off the horny parts of the feet. Lay him for ten minutes in cold salt and water; then put into more hot water—salted, but not too much. Boil until tender. The time will depend upon the