The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1886-03-17
MUCH FROM LITTLE.
THE JUGGLERY OF COOKING I'M
BIG CITY HOTELS.
How Various Dishes are Made from
Few Materials-Many Soups
from One Kettle-A Cooks
Confession. &

The hotel population OF Detrolt aver.
age 1, 900 persons daily. What do they
eat2 Everything that is good, the answer
is. Oh, no, they don't knew what they
eat, and the hotels, as a rule, don't In
tend that they shall. There is the bill OF
fare, it is true. It presents nine or ten
courses at one of the best hotels. For
dinner-soup, fish, boiled, roast, cold
dishes, entries, vegetables, relishes,
pastry and dessert. The dishes on it
number as high as hundred, and it is
interesting, if not provocation to gusta-
tory delight at the tables where they are
served, to consider them.
First, soup. The basis of soup is the
stock-colored with little sauce it is
consomme; add few shreds Of carrots
and cooked peas taken from the vege-
table department, and there you have
your Julienne; some boiled grains Of
barley and little thlckening and you.
are favored with barley soup. Very
simple2 Yes, very. Is it oxtail? Bless
your heart, essence of beef to strengthen;
and few joints of oxtail, and you are:
served. Mock-turtle2 Mock-turtle re-
spends to similar jugglery, only shifting
it as to method, and using some force,
meat balls and little of calves BRAIN.
Chicken salad for one. No sooner said
than ready-yesterday's roast of veal, its
meat white and tender takes the place OF.
chicken, and dainty cut into cubes, and
fitted with the usual condiments, then
stalks out before you chicken salad, as
irrecognizably such as if the poultry yard
had been drawn upon for it. rs
It was in conversation with the chef
of well-known local hotel, whose OK
perience in hotels of this country has,
been long continued, that complaint
was made to the writer about the conf
dence game played by hotels upon their
guests. ''The bills of fare" said he,
"are as untruthful as Tom Ochiltree, as
unreliable as Goshen butter, and as Curl
Gus as q mule with five ears. Take tho
dinner T had to-day! Tomato soup;i
stock with strained tin tomatoes, brought
to boil, trife of thickening, baked
white fish, la chambord. Well, if any.
guest can tell me what chambord sauce
is, he may know whether he got it or;
not. I know he he did not. Z
first made straight commonplace every
day fsh-sauce and put in shred Of;
parsley, few cubes of mushroom and q
little grated celery. The next dishes you
see are plain enough. Leg of mutton,
caper-sauce. Just ratified few capers
into the fsh-sauce before I added tho
parsley and mushroom, and then.
corned beef, the tongue, chicken,
turkey, beef, mutton and so on are.
honest enough. However, we often
use boiled mutton for roast. ALL
we do, suppose we have run out Of
roast mutton, or it appears on the bill
and does not appear from the oven, we,
slice up some boiled mutton, dip it into
thick, brown gravy, and serve it with
brown gravy. The hotel guest does not
mind, because he does not know. Cold
mutton is often treated the same way
Just heat it a bit, put brown sauce over
it, and serve. t.4
,"There's many tumble in the busi-
ness, T tell you. For instance: bill Of
fare offers both chicken and turkey
roast. Turkey will do all right. A good;
carver takes chicken from turkey as well
as turkey. Did you ever notice that
boiled chicken shows 80 regularly on bills
of fare and roast does not2 Well, you
can boil a chicken tender, but you can't
roast nor quill him so. Speaking about
chickens reminds me that eggs are the
things to handle. A good cook ought
never to waste an egg. He gets bar
rel Of eggs or a box from the best
sources but there will be at least ten per
cent of them stale and one or two per
cent not good. None Of these should be
wasted. Now you have noticed very
often, suppose, that poached eggs are
frequently left off the bill that gives no
end of omelets, jambon, with pastry,
onions, tomatoes, Spanish omelets, ONE
lets au rhum, olives, fine herbs, celestine
and eggs scrambled, shirred, fried, panned
and boiled, but not poached. The reason
is that an egg that is not fresh will not
poach. You break the shell, drop the
egg into hot water, and instead of coagu-
lating nicely as it does if it is fresh Il
goes off in curdling masses, the yolk
breaks and runs and your egg must be-
fshed out and tossed into the onelet
beater. But the other day Yankee inge-
nuity took the last prop from under tho
faith of the believer in poached eggs.
He has invented material, which, put
in the water before the egg is dropped,
will make the stalest egg poach beauti-
tifully. Hewas egg cook at the Murray
Hill hotel in New York. Heis now on
the road selling this stuff, and you cnn
depend upon it there will be poachea
eggs on nearly every bill-of-fare hereaf-
ter. ~ ~
Perhaps the kitchen is the least invit-
ing place about a hotel. There are to be
seen slatternly scullion maids whose in
harmonious voices discordantly follow
ing the catch songs of the day, or qnaver-
ing off into some tuneless ditty, 60 up
with the mingled oders of the range.
Cleanliness and order in well regulated
kitchen are necessary, but the degrees Of
cleanliness are as varied as that of that
godliness to which the old saying gives it
proximity. The cook, stern autocrat OF
the situation, rules with unbending firm
ness, and never unbcnds unless to wink
at some more attractive maid or curse
some dunsy waiter, These little excur-
sions from his native dignity throw him
into his shell once more, which he holds
more closely than ever. The appetite
less rows of food uncooked, cooking, or
cooked, are to be seen strewn in every di-
rection in all the disorder which adds to
its uninviting appearances, and such
picture is shown as to dull the edge of
the keenest appetite, or leave without
eustatorv desire the whims of the least