ONCE upon a time, one of the resourceless sort of housekeepers said to me that she was never quite so stumped as when she felt the economical burden laid upon her to utilize lamb or mutton “left-overs.” Now, this has been quite the opposite of my experience. In fact, I wouldn’t acknowledge that I found cold lamb a facer, anyway.

Suppose we talk of a leg of lamb roasted in this way: The bone neatly removed, the cavity filled with a mushroom stuffing, then roasted in a hot oven and served with caper sauce and currant jelly. To be sure I know you would as soon have pledged yourself to break one of the commandments, as to serve caper sauce with roasted lamb, if I had not tempted you. But you will do it, now that the suggestion has entered your consciousness of gastronomical beauties.

Or, if, in the first blush, it doesn’t appeal to you, there’s this way of roasting lamb that I dare say is new to you. First, make an onion purÉe, by mincing one quart of onions and boiling them till tender. Drain very dry, put them in a saucepan with two ounces of butter; season with salt and pepper; let them simmer for ten or fifteen minutes, but don’t let them brown. Then add to them half a pint of cream, and press all through a sieve, when serving as sauce.

Can you stand another novelty? It’s this. Put the lamb in the roasting-pan, and just a half hour before you think it is to be done, take it out and cover the bottom of the pan with boiled macaroni. Lay the lamb on this, and prick it all over that the juice may run over the macaroni. Moisten the macaroni with a little stock, too, if it threatens to get too dry or too brown. When the lamb is roasted take it out, heap the macaroni on a dish, pour a little tomato sauce over it, sprinkle with Parmesan and send to table. Have a little tomato, or any other sauce that pleases you, with the lamb, if you feel that you must have a sauce.

Now, for the second day—no, the third day, rather. Skip a day before dishing a reheating of the lamb. Then get some good slices from the joint, even as to size and thickness, and lay them for an hour in a dressing of two tablespoonfuls of oil, one of Tarragon vinegar, with salt and pepper. Take them out of the dressing, dip in bread crumbs, broil over a hot fire, and serve with a tartar sauce, or, if you like, with some of the onion purÉe, if any was left.

If you like chutney, and of course you do, have some neat slices of cold lamb spread with this palate-tickler, roll each slice up, coat with crumbs, and fry in boiling fat till brown. Skewer the rolled slices to keep them in shape. When serving, sprinkle with a few drops of lemon juice. It will be a question with you, probably, which of these two ways of reheating is better. But that’s the sort of recipes with which to load your intelligence, so don’t complain.

Can you digest another warmed-over dish of lamb? This time have the slices thick rather than thin, and put them in a stewpan with enough sherry wine to cover them. Cover closely, and let heat slowly while you are tossing together, in a little butter, some minced boiled onion and button mushrooms. Color slightly, and moisten with a little rich stock. Take up the slices of lamb, arrange in a circle on a dish, fill the centre with the onions and mushrooms, pour the wine over all, and take the trick. It’s yours. In case you don’t like as much wine as is required to cover the lamb, use half wine and half water, and the juice of a lemon.

If you want to try the reheating of the lamb in the chafing dish, have it sliced as neatly as possible, and make ready in the chafing dish a sauce of one wineglass of port wine, half a pint of good stock, thickened, a teaspoonful of walnut ketchup, the same of French mustard, and a pinch of salt. When this is hot put in the lamb, and serve as soon as heated through.

If with any of the foregoing recipes you think you would fancy a border of rice, have it, by all means. But have plenty of butter in the water in which the rice is boiled; or if it is steamed, have it moistened well with butter just the same.

You might fancy this rice border with lamb croquettes. These, you know, are made by having the lamb chopped finely, and added to it half its quantity of chopped mushrooms. Moisten with a little tomato sauce, shape and fry.

Surely you will not take offence if I assume, at this stage of the game, that you are educated up to a point where you can appreciate the delights that centre in a lamb salad. You dice the lamb, having it free of all fat and sinew. Then put a layer of it in the bottom of the salad bowl. Have a dressing of oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt, with a bit of French mustard in it, at hand, and with this sprinkle the lamb. Bestrew it, too, with a chopped anchovy or two, or more, if you are fond of anchovies. Then put in a layer of cold boiled potatoes, diced—more dressing; another stratum of lamb, and so on till the dish is full, having it mound-shaped. Garnish with sliced gherkins and capers, and let it go at that.

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I would that fewer nursery rhymers had taken trips to market for their text when their pens took to turning out jingles; for goodness knows that what with “To market, to market to buy a fat pig,” and “To market, to market, all on a market day,” keeping up a continuous jig-like theme in my mind, to say nothing of the insistent interruptions by the “little pig that went to market” I am well-nigh distracted when I try to get dry-as-dust facts from the marketman anent commonplace eatables. To be sure, if I go in search of frogs’ legs, say, and the story of the frog who went a-wooing recurs to my mind three or four times in a minute, it seems quite appropriate and doesn’t interfere in the least with my driving a pretty sharp bargain with the fish-dealer. But, so far as I know, no poet or writer of assonance has taken it into his head to sing a song of livers, kidneys, and such like edibles of which I am telling you herein, and no wonder, you may say, if I don’t succeed in making my story fairly interesting, as well as appetizing—though from the nature of it if it is one it must be the other.

Everybody knows, I fancy, that when one has cut off the skin of some lambs’ kidneys, and then cut the kidneys into quarter-inch-thick slices, seasoned them with salt and pepper, dipped them in oil, and then threaded them on skewers with alternating slices of bacon a brochette of kidneys is well under way. To complete the operation they are dipped into oil, then into bread-crumbs and broiled over a slow fire. In serving there’s no reason in the world why one should not indulge one’s fancy for any simple sauce that will help the kidneys to tickle one’s palate. Good as this dish is, I must confess I like it better when chickens’ livers are substituted for the kidneys. By the way, do you know that every up-to-date marketman has them all skewered, and all that you have to do is to add the seasoning and see to the broiling?

Another really delightful way of serving lambs’ kidneys is to prepare in a frying-pan a tablespoonful of chopped onions, a small chopped shallot, a clove of garlic and as many fresh mushrooms as you feel like buying, with salt and pepper to taste, and an ounce or so of butter; don’t let the vegetables color at all, and perhaps the best way to avoid this is to add a gill or so of any kind of wine and the same of cream. Let this sauce mull a while on the back of the range, while you broil the number of kidneys desired, after having skinned and split each one in two lengthwise. Dish and pour over them the sauce, removing from it the garlic. If you’ve never heard of this way for preparing kidneys, it seems to me that you should be very grateful to me for calling your attention to it.

And may your gratitude be re-enforced after you have tried cooking veal kidneys in this fashion: Mince three very small ones, after removing all the fat and fibrous parts, and fry them in butter over a hot fire. Don’t let them get wizzled up, but just done to a turn, then take from the frying-pan and add to the butter in which they were fried some tomato sauce highly seasoned, half a can of mushrooms, some lemon juice, and chopped parsley; pour over the kidneys and even if you serve them in just this manner they will prove a great success; but should you wish to make it a dish to linger in one’s memory, then garnish it with macaroni croquettes. Ever make them? Well, boil a pound of macaroni in salted water for fifteen minutes. Then drain and cut it into quarter-inch lengths; put back into the saucepan with a little grated cheese, a little salt, cayenne pepper and a gill of cream. Let it get perfectly cold, then mould into croquettes, either cylinder-shaped or any other form, only have them very small; dip in egg and bread-crumbs and fry a pretty brown. These macaroni croquettes, by the way, make a suitable garnish for any number of dishes; try them with veal cutlets some time, or with thin, dainty slices of ham broiled for luncheon, and you’ll get more than your labor for your pains.

If you are thinking to have liver, then my advice to you is to get if possible only that of a calf. To buy that of an older “beef critter” is so often a waste of time and money that it’s just as well to forego buying it altogether—it is so apt to have too much flavor, so to speak, or be tough or stringy, and wholly unsatisfactory. But get a calf’s liver, and something of a treat is in store for you, whether you fry it with bacon or prepare it in this way: Cut up finely three or four good-sized white onions and fry them in butter till of a golden brown. Drain the butter off and cover the onions with white stock; let cook for half an hour, then moisten with more stock and season with pepper, salt, chopped parsley, and just a suspicion of lemon juice. Fry the slices of liver, which should not be over half an inch in thickness, in enough butter to keep them from hardening; drain off the butter and add the above sauce; let it boil up once, then serve, and garnish with slices of lemon. Perhaps this is a bit heavy for a breakfast dish—to my mind it is decidedly so—while for luncheon, where one is having a salad of watercress, or for an entrÉe at dinner it seems to be quite in its rightful place.

If the liver is to be served for breakfast, then it is a good idea to roll the slices in a little flour, sprinkle melted butter over them and broil over the coals, squeezing just enough lemon juice and sprinkling just enough chopped parsley over them to make them grateful to the taste and eye when served.

But why don’t you try to invent a sauce for calf’s liver? Fry it in plenty of butter, then add to the butter, when the liver is removed, anything that your palate suggests or which your common sense approves. For instance, put in a few tiny slices of gherkin, a handful of mushrooms, a soupÇon of tomato sauce, a few capers, a little lemon juice, chopped chives or chervil, chopped shallot or any herb or condiment that you may have in the house. Of course you don’t want to use all of these articles, but try a combination of any two or three or more of them, with the addition of a little stock and—who knows?—you may invent a sauce that will make you as famous as was BÉchamel, CondÉ or CarÊme. Success be with you!

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“Do be kind enough some of these times when you are scribbling about the good things at market to bear in mind that not every one is hale and hearty and blessed with digestive organs that could stand a diet of shingle nails. Give a thought to the poor unfortunates that are obliged to think twice before gratifying their appetites once.” Thus wailed one of the said “poor unfortunates” once upon a time, and as a result of the complaint I have since been “holding them in thought” to a considerable extent, with a view to making the material aspect of a period of invalidism and convalescence a bit the brighter.

Of course we all know that the list of eatables allowed an invalid or a convalescent is of necessity a rather short one; but there is an infinite number of ways for varying the list, if one will use a little judgment and good taste in preparing the dishes. We have all had experience in seeing a sick person make a wry face at the mention of gruel or porridge, and precious little we blamed him for it, to tell the truth. But the whole condition of affairs may be changed by preparing it in this way: Have a pint of good clear chicken broth, free from fat and not too strong; boil it, and into it shake slowly a cup of oatmeal or wheaten grits; let it cook for half an hour or so, pass it through a wire sieve, and add to it a little more broth if that is necessary to make it fit to be sipped easily from a cup without using a spoon. Take it to the sick-room with the remark, “I have brought you a little purÉe of oatmeal,” and my word for it you will not see a drop left in the cup.

And a purÉe of barley will be quite as acceptable. Soak the barley over night, and the next morning cover it with chicken broth; boil until the barley bursts, adding broth from time to time as it cooks away; when the broth begins to thicken, which will be at the end of about three hours’ time, strain it through a very fine sieve. Serve it in a cup; and if you dare do such a thing, add a tiny bit of butter to it. It makes it a deal more palatable, and I don’t believe it will harm the patient; but it’s quite possible the physician in charge may think otherwise.

There are ways and ways for making beef tea; but the best of all ways, it seems to me, is to have round steak about one inch in thickness, broil it for two minutes on each side over a brisk fire, cut it up into inch squares, cover it with cold water, and let it steep, not boil, for two hours. Serve it in a cup, and salt when serving. You and the ailing one will find, I think, that the broiling of the steak gives the tea a flavor that makes it “hit the spot”—a consummation devoutly to be wished when one is catering for an invalid.

Cream soups make a pleasing change after plain broths or teas. Take any white stock that is rich, free from fat and well seasoned. Put into a saucepan half a pint of the stock and the same quantity of cream. When it comes to a boil add one tablespoonful of flour thoroughly moistened with cold milk, and let it boil at once. Serve with it finger-pieces of thin buttered toast.

A highly nutritious dish is made by putting four egg-yolks into a double boiler, diluting them with half a pint of clear chicken broth, and beating the mixture with a whip or beater until it becomes thick and frothy. When it is done add two teaspoonfuls of sherry to it, and serve in a cup; have it just as hot as possible. And if the person for whom you concoct this appetizing affair insists upon knowing its name, you may say that it is a sabayon of chicken.

And, by the way, what an endless amount of dainty edibles may be made from chicken! Take a chicken custard, for instance; could anything be daintier? Have a cupful of good clear chicken stock, and add to it an equal quantity of cream; cook it for a few minutes, then put it into a double boiler, and add the beaten yolks of three eggs and a little salt. Cook until the mixture thickens a little, and then pour it into custard cups to be served cold. It’s an ungrateful, whimsical, and grumpy sort of an invalid who doesn’t reckon as a red-letter day the time when he first tasted of a chicken custard. But whether or not this is the case, you will have to keep right on shaking up your ideas and producing other dishes.

In all probability you will try your hand at jelly-making; and when you have exhausted your own stock of recipes try making a tapioca jelly. To prepare it, soak one cup of tapioca in three cups of water over night. In the morning put it into a double boiler with a cup of hot water, and let it simmer until perfectly clear, stirring often. Sweeten to taste and flavor with the juice of half a lemon and two tablespoonfuls of wine. Pour into cups, and set away to get perfectly cold. When serving, sprinkle with powdered sugar and heap a little whipped cream on it.

Or it may be that a blanc-mange made with tapioca will seem to you worth the trying. If so, soak a cupful of tapioca in two cups of water over night. In the morning put it into the double boiler, and stir into it two cups of boiling milk, three tablespoonfuls of sugar, and a pinch of salt. Cook it slowly for fifteen minutes, stirring several times. Take it from the fire, and flavor with wine or vanilla. Let it harden in small moulds, and serve with powdered sugar and whipped cream.

And some day when the patient is unusually capricious try surprising him or her with a violet jelly. A woman I know told me not long ago that she had found it more efficacious than a dozen “soft answers.” Have a pint of clear boiling syrup, and into it throw a heaping handful of fresh violets, after removing the stalks; let this simmer, tightly covered, for half an hour. Then strain the liquor, and add to it half an ounce of gelatine dissolved in a very little water, the juice of an orange, and two teaspoonfuls of violet vegetable coloring, which is as harmless as so much cold water. Turn it into a mould, and set on ice to harden.

When boiled or steamed rice is ordered, try preparing it in this way. Wash a cupful of it thoroughly and put into the double boiler with just enough water to cover it. When the rice is nearly done, pour off the water, if any remains, and add one cup of milk and a little salt. Let the rice cook thoroughly till done. Beat an egg well, and the last thing before taking the rice from the fire stir the egg in as lightly as possible, and serve hot with sugar and cream. The egg makes the dish a bit more attractive and considerably more nutritious.

I wonder if you have ever tried cooking a lamb chop or cutlet in this way. Have three cutlets cut, two of them rather thinner than the third, then tie them together, the thick one in the middle. Broil over a hot fire till the outside cutlets are burnt to a crisp, and at that stage you will find the inside one in just the right condition for serving; salt it, and serve piping hot. With it serve a baked potato that has been pressed through a sieve. Sprinkle the potato with salt and moisten it with a little cream. To be sure you may think that a somewhat expensive way of cooking a lamb chop, and so it is from some points of view; but it will set any self-respecting convalescent at least two days ahead on his journey to complete recovery, and when you think of it in that way you see it’s positively cheap. All these things, yea, and a thousand more, must be taken into consideration when one is in attendance upon a sick person.

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To say that every one should have a chafing-dish in these days were to be trite—everyone should have seven chafing-dishes, or as near that number as possible; not one for every day in the week exactly, but rather that, if you are having a little after-the-opera or after-the-theatre jollification and have a dozen or so hungry ones to feed, there may be enough to go round, and also that you may have a variety of dainties.

Not all will want creamed oysters, of course, but you can set a pretty girl to preparing this dish for those who do want it. Give her about half a pint of rich, thick cream, an ounce or so of butter and a teaspoonful of flour which she will braid together in the most approved cooking-school fashion for thickening the cream when it is hot. Then she should put in two dozen or so oysters that have been well drained and freed from any bits of shell. If you can trust her to do so, let her season the dish with a dash of red pepper, and salt, and a shake or two of celery salt. When the edges of the oysters begin to frizzle, have ready for her either little strips of toast or some crackers on hot plates, on which to serve the oysters. If you find that more than three persons will be apt to bid for the creamed oysters, you will want rather more than two dozen, I fancy; still, you will know best about that.

If you have any cold fish in the house, halibut or cod or haddock that has been boiled or baked, not fried, have it flaked up in good-sized pieces and marinated for three or four hours in a tablespoonful each of oil and vinegar, a dash of cayenne, the juice of an onion and salt to taste. When you are to use it have hot in the chafing-dish three teaspoonfuls each of rich tomato sauce, sherry wine and butter, putting the butter in and melting it first. When these are well blended together, lay in the fish and stir it about in the sauce till quite hot. This, let me tell you, will not go a-begging for admirers. It is a particularly savory tidbit, and on a cold night is its own best recommendation.

I wonder if you will say a recipe for lobster À la Newberg is altogether too stale if I undertake to tell it to you. I know its age just as well as you do, and I also know that I could weep bitterly, if it would do any good, at some of the concoctions called by that name that I have had put before me, and which, worse than all, I have been expected to eat. So right here I shall put on record my way of preparing that delicious dish, and if you don’t care to read it, why skip it, of course. Into the chafing dish put two ounces of butter and let it melt; then put in the meat of a two-pound lobster cut into dice-shaped pieces and let them cook till they are really fried a bit. Then turn low the flame of the lamp while you pour in a little less than a pint of cream in which has been beaten three eggs, seasoned with salt and red pepper. Just as this is hot add a scant wineglass of sherry and let it heat once more, regulating the flame all the time so that it cannot boil. For if it does the jig is up, the eggs will be sure to curdle, and you will wish to goodness you hadn’t undertaken it. Have little triangles of toasted bread on which to serve the lobster, and if it turns out the success it should, your reputation among your guests will be for all time established as a hostess who knows her business from A to Z.

If you will get some chicken livers you can prepare a very appetizing dish with very little trouble. Melt an ounce of butter in the chafing dish and in it put, say, eight or ten livers that have been salted well and rolled in a little flour. Let them cook pretty fast for ten minutes, or till you think they are done, then put with them half a pint of hot water and a teaspoonful of any extract of beef, with what salt and pepper your superior judgment deems suitable. When this is hot turn in a gill of sherry, and a dozen olives pitted and quartered. Just a dash of lemon juice and the deed is done, provided you have ready some toast for the serving of the livers.

If you haven’t at the time of night when you will be serving these dishes a fire over which you can toast the bread, you can have one of the guests preparing the bread in a chafing dish. Cut the slices of the size you like and fry them delicately in a very little butter and they will go finely in this way.

Because you may think I don’t know how to make one if I say nothing, I suppose I shall have to offer a word or so about Welsh rabbits. Melt an ounce of butter in the chafing-dish and then stir in and let melt slowly a pound of cheese cut up into very small pieces. Season this as you go along with paprika, a little salt, and mustard as you think you like it. When the cheese is quite melted pour in, very slowly, a little beer or ale, about two gills in all. Then when it is well blended with the cheese stir in a couple of eggs well beaten and serve on crackers. Did you ever try making your rabbits with ginger ale? Really they are good in that way, and it is very palatable to drink when you are eating them. And cider is delicious served with rabbits, also—the champagne cider. Try it some time.

For a golden buck, prepare the cheese as for a rabbit, but on each plate when you are serving it place a poached egg. These must be prepared in another dish while the rabbit is under process of construction. So, you see, I wasn’t so far off in my calculations, rapid as they seemed to you at the time, when I said my little say about seven chafing dishes.

Suppose you have on hand a pint of rich tomato sauce. Heat this in the chafing-dish and poach in it two eggs. Lift them out and lay on a hot dish while you poach two more. Continue in this way till you have half-a-dozen eggs poached. Serve one or two as you like, on a slice of toast or fried bread, pour some of the tomato sauce round, sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese over each and send them around the table on their mission.

If you are fond of curry try some curried eggs. Melt in the chafing-dish two ounces of butter, and fry in it two small onions, sliced; take these out and stir in a dessertspoonful of curry powder and a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce. When these are well mixed add half a dozen well-beaten eggs. Cook quickly and serve.

Perhaps you have a pet recipe for creamed chicken, and I don’t doubt it is all such a recipe should be; but let me suggest that, instead of putting chicken and cream and all the other things into the chafing-dish at the same time, you melt the butter first and then stir in the chicken and let it cook for two or three minutes before you put in the cream, or bÉchamel, or whatever it is you use. The flavor of the dish will be very much richer and more palatable to most persons. For, between ourselves, I think that creamed chicken is apt to be rather a flat and tasteless affair, and will stand quite a little bracing up.

I hope you won’t want to spoil the taste of any of these dishes by having sweets after them, in the way of fancy cakes, etc. If you do, you may choose them for yourselves. I’ll have none of them.