Common-sense papers on cookery

Unfortunately, this is only a slight exaggeration of what goes on every day in many houses throughout the country. What housekeepers should strive at is to get a nice little savoury dinner, and yet at the same time to be economical. We will now take a simple case to illustrate our point, and suppose that the larder contains the remains of a cold leg of mutton, which leg has been decently cooked, and did not the previous day appear as a ghastly sight after a few cuts, like one of those horrible pictures in the penny journal that disgraces some of our shop-windows. We will suppose the time of year to be early summer. A good many young wives under these circumstances would simply order a cucumber — possibly a shilling each — and think that everything had been done that was necessary ; or some, still worse, would order the cook to hash the remains of the mutton — and a nice hash they make of it, in another sense of the word ; for who has not at times seen that dreadful dish of immense size, covered with often hard slices of mutton, the whole swimming in a quantity of thin broth — we cannot call it gravy — in which slices of onion vie with sodden sippets as to which shall look the least inviting? Now, when such a dish Common-sense Cooker y. appears, probably the husband, accustomed formerly to his club or college dinner, or the mess, says nothing ; but he feels— “ I don’t mean to reproach you, my dear, but this is not comfortable.” Now, as the cookery-books say, suppose we give “ another method.” The cook in the morning early has cut off all the meat from the leg-of-mutton bone, and put it by in the larder. She has then chopped up the bone into small pieces, and put it on the fire to make stock, with the usual etcetera — viz., some onion, carrot, turnip, celery, and parsley. We will also suppose the house to contain some frying-fat, bacon or ham, and eggs. The first dish we would recommend would be some rissoles. Take three or four small slices of the mutton, picking out those containing most fat, and one slice of bacon containing twice the quantity of fat to lean ; chop up finely a small piece of onion rather larger than the top of the thumb down to the first joint, sufficient parsley when chopped fine to fill a teaspoon, about enough thyme to cover a sixpence, or rather less if the thyme be strong ; add a little cayenne pepper and salt. Chop the whole ingredients very fine, or, still better, send them through a sausagemachine. When thoroughly chopped, the whole mass ought to be sufficiently moist to be capable of being rolled up into balls. If this is not the case, it only Cold Leg of Mutton. 47 ’