Cornell Xllntversit^ OF THE IRew l^orF? State (EoIIese of Horiculture ,.Lt6r?o iSjTl'.'i.. 584 RETURN TO ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY ITHACA, N. Y. Cornell University Library TX 801.Y3 "3""l924""063"591 942 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924003591942 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK THE GARDENER AND THE COOK BY LUCY H. YATES NEW YORK McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 1913 PRINTED BY HA2ELL, WATSON AND TINEY, LD,, LONDON AND iTF.ESBrriY, KX^LAN"! >. (gO^TEii; CHAPTER I PAGE OURSELVES AND THE GARDEN ... I CHAPTER II CHOICE VEGETABLES, NOT NECESSARILY RARE, WHICH IT IS PROFITABLE TO GROW . 24 CHAPTER III A DIGRESSION AND SOME HINTS . . . 4I V CONTENTS CHAPTER I^■ PAGE THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PLAINLY COOKED AND PLAINLY DRESSED VEGETABLES, WITH THE RAISON d'eTRE OF SAUCES AND DRESSINGS ..... 59 CHAPTER V OF TENDER GREENS .... 78 CHAPTER VI OF GOURDS, MARROWS, AND THEIR KIND 100 CHAPTER VII OF CELERY, OF CELERIAC, AND THE ARTI- CHOKES ; LIKEWISE THE POTATO . .112 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII FiQB OF THE SOLANACE^, OF KITCHEN LILIES, AND OF HEEBS ...... 133 CHAPTER IX TREATMENT OF BEANS AND DRIED VEGE- TABLES ; OF CORN, EICE, AND ITALIAN PASTES ...... 150 CHAPTER X THE MUSHROOM BED, DRIED FRUITS, CHEST- NUTS, AND SOME WEST INDIAN PRODUCE I70 CHAPTER XI FRUIT FOR THE TABLE . . • • ^9 vii CONTENTS CHAPTER XII FAGB IN STOREROOM AND CLOSET : PRESERVES, JELLIES, BOTTLED FRUITS, PICKLES, WINES, AND CORDIALS . . . 2I3 CHAPTER XIII IN THE FRUIT ROOM .... 242 VIU ' ^C5t- of i/yccsTr-aTions A Home nsr the Country Charlemagne ....... In Sussex ........ An Ideal Kitchen-Garden .... When I Introduced Charlemagne to this Domain The Better Half's Garden .... Charlotte ........ A Little Strip for the Hebbiary the Eye of the Mistress The Better Half Under PAGE 2 3 5 7 9 II 15 19 26 IX LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A CHAJiNa-DisH ..... An Old Volume of Receipts Chaelottb Chez Elle .... A Casserole ..... If He Brings a Lettuce that is Gritty Tomatoes ...... "Kitchen Lilies" .... In the Store-Room .... The White Petals of the May-Blossom I Must Bid You Farewell Finis ....... PAOB 50 53 57 63 95 135 141 215 227 259 260 The Gardener & The Cook OURSELVES AND THE GARDEN 'OME considerable portion of the term of existence to which I am entitled has been spent in trying to bring the mind of Charlemagne {alias Charles Mann), the gardener, into agreement with my own, and that of Charlotte, the cook, into unison with both. The following account is witness to the measure of my success. Charles Mann was introduced to me by a worthy friend, who took a lively interest in an experiment of which he frankly prophesied the THE GARDENER AND THE COOK ^^r failure. However, he wished it well, and as proof of his sincerity he transferred Charles Mann from his service to mine. I have since had reason to think that Charles had become a little too much for him — as he has very nearlybeen too much for me. It may have been a certain dominant note in the man's character which made me, all un- known to him, alter the spelling of his name and its accent — or was it the example of Charlotte, whose French tongue beguiled me ? Anyway, Charlemagne he very soon became, and Charlemagne he will remain to the end of time. 2 * ■ 1)11 _ \; /'=5i>' X, "^\ %-' imk^mM OF CELERY, OF CELERIAC, AND THE ARTICHOKES ; LIKEWISE THE POTATO F any man finds fault with me that my gardening is all unorthodox, and any woman declares that our cooking is equally heretical, I will quote them the words of Florian : "J 'observe et je suis la nature, o'est mon secret pour etre heureuse." Perhaps it is because Charlemagne is so obviously overrun with that deadly creeper. Conventionalism, that I feel it incumbent upon me to cut through and break across his cherished ideas. With him 112 OF TIMES AND SEASONS it is always " Now is the accepted time " — and no other. " But think," I say to him, " only think how the seasons have become mixed up of late, especially in England ! Really, you can grow pretty well anything at any time of the year, if you only make up your mind to it." We have a week of cool spring weather at the end of July that rushes a lot of new seeds into life, and we have May days in November that bring out a new enthusiasm for rebudding and blooming. For my part, when I put in a plant or a seed, I make up my mind that if there is any grain of health in that plant or seed it is bound to grow, and it won't be comfortable or happy until it has grown 1 That thing of rigid rules and dates which men call a calendar I abominate. I will not consult it nor follow it. For my plants behave handsomely to me, and, as a rule, they answer the expecta- tions I have formed of them. Charlemagne I 113 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK may think it witchcraft ; but then he does not garden with his soul. There you have it ! (This is not a digression, it has something to do with everything we produce, from the humble potato upwards.) Charlemagne is vexed and jsut out every year because that, with his most assiduous and correct care, he fails to get the fine asparagus which he would like to cut. The asparagus which we take most pleasure in every spring comes to us from a little seaside cottage garden, where lives an old sailor, whose acquaintance I made years ago. He and I made those beds of his on some raised banks, close to the sea, and he -and I now enjoy their fruiting. As the asparagus of our gardens is a cultivated form of what was originally a wild shore plant it is quite possible to over-improve it. It wants salt, and it loves a soil of mixed sand and mud. 114 ANTHONY'S ASPARAGUS-BEDS The best result has come from those banks where no manuring has been done, but only a thorough weeding and clearing every year and a fresh salting. In our own garden we have introduced a good deal of sand and grit into the beds from time to time, with distinct advantage, and although here we get stalks that are plump and white, they never attain the flavour of those which old Anthony sends us from time to time. Our beds, in the autumn, are aglow with berries and thick with fine feathery foliage. It is a bad sign : even Charle- magne knows that. But as there is a whole literature of asparagus — for it forms one of the most fascinating chapters in horticultural science — I venture not to lay down any directions about it. For me it is enough to know that if our own beds yield badly, those by Anthony's cottage are safe to do well, and we are sure of having aspara- gus in plenty, so I will begin about its cooking. 115 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK Of course asparagus must be boiled until it is tender or it is nothing, but it is invariably over- boiled and sodden. Dumas has laid down the law that the stalks should be '' croquantes " and, moreover, that they should be drained of all wateri- ness by being served on a folded cloth. He is right : there should be sufficient crispness to make the stalks easy to hold, yet sufficient tenderness to cause the juice to flow readily. We boil our asparagus in a deep pan, which will take a bundle standing upright, so that the tops are barely covered Mith Avater. This prevents the tender green points from falling off M-hilst waiting for the slower cooking of the thick stalk. However many recipes you may have for the dressing of asj^aragvis you are bound to have it boiled first ; the variations all allude to the finish- ings. For my own taste, when eaten hot it is never better than when served with pure butter 116 ASPARAGUS AND SALSIFY melted and passed round in a tureen, and when served cold we make either a mayonnaise or a simple salad dressing. It always seems a waste to eat asparagus with the gravy of meat and at the same time ; to do so invariably ends in watering the gravy down most disagreeably, and in making the plate detestable. Asparagus is one of those vegetables which must certainly be eaten alone, giving it all the dignity which a solitary setting can convey. What more delicious dish can you set before a guest than that of a dish of cold asparagus, straight from the refrigerator, sprinkled with vinegar and served with Hollandaise or Mousseline sauce ? It is fit for gods and kings. While aspai'agus is never better than when served plainly boiled (with suitable accompani- ment, Men entendu) salsify, or the oyster plant, has only begun to live after being thus prepared. It lends itself willingly to accommodations ; indeed, 117 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK it is nothing without them. All the same, with due trouble taken, it becomes a very delicious vegetable, most useful in winter-time. Our favourite modes of treating it, after boiling, are to fry it in fat after rolling in egg and crumbs, or to crush it to a piirSe, and mix with butter and cream, season well and fill up scallop shells, scattering crumbs on the top, then browning these in the oven and serving the shells on a folded napkin. Stalks that are clumsy in shape we reserve for stews. Seakale, called by Charlotte chou-marin, is cooked something like asparagus, save that a flat- bottomed pan, in which it can lie full-length, is used, and a little vinegar is put into the salted water. It is better to pour off the first water and add fresh whilst cooking, as this vegetable so soon discolours. We prefer to drain it when it has parboiled, and to lay it in a white sauce to 118 COOKED CELERY finish cooliing. The Better Half favours seakale because it has specific soda properties beneficial for his complaint, but to me it is a feeble vegetable, somewhat neutral in character. I will say, how ever, that taken fresh out of the ground, as ours is, or bought from a shop, days old (as yours probably is) it is two different things. From seakale it is but an easy step to celery, the common favourite. Tell me, often as you will, how good is cooked celery, I must reply that it is never so good as when eaten raw. Take our prize roots, perfectly blanched, crisp after their first taste of frost, and pull apart the stalks that break off as you do it, so tender are they. Dip these into salt and eat them with your bread and butter, or strew them in fine shreds over your winter salad. They are superlatively good. Nevertheless, I will own that when boiled tender, and served with a cream sauce, 119 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK compounded from the same liquor, it is far from being a thing to despise. If you must cook celery why not take celeriac instead ? I would humbly ask. Here you have a vegetable that is intended by Providence to be the cooked part of celery. It bears the celery flavour in full proportion, with none of the soft- ness and stringiness that is so apt to be a dis- agreeable adjunct. Some people call it the turnip- rooted celery. Its fault is that it is too little known. Celeriac is not easy to grow. It demands a hard bed, so hard that its dumpy root may fasten itself down and sit upon the soil, instead of being engulfed in it. If you meet its demands it responds by growing and by being ready for you at a time of the year when few other things are available out of doors. We boil it tender (and it takes but a half-hour 120 CELERIAC AND ARTICHOKES in salted water), and serve it with the gravy of meat, or with any sauce we hke, or with butter and grated cheese. Sometimes we cut it in sHces and lay it in the gratin dish, with a cheese sauce and crumbs, and thus it makes a more substantial dish. A few slices of celeriac are a great improve- ment to any stew, and a small root goes admirably with the other ingredients of bouillon or stock. So, I repeat it, if cooked celery be your aim and intent, try celeriac instead. And now let us study artichokes ; the Globe artichoke first, but afterwards the Jerusalem, or, to give it its proper and correct name, the Topi- nambour. The one gives us only enough to eat to make us wish for more, the other satisfies abundantly. In globe artichokes only the base of the leaves and the root are eaten, but these roots are con- sidered a prize among cooks. Charlotte, for 121 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK instance, " accommodates " them in many guileful forms. Personally, I am quite content to eat the artichoke cold, after boiling, and to find it .very nice thus, without taking more trouble over it. To sit lazily dipping these pretty leaves in a tarragon or mousseline sauce, and to wind up with an epicurean consideration of the root itself, is enjoyment enough. But Charlotte, she will take these bottoms and quarter them and return them dressed a la Maitre d'Hotel, or fried, or graiines, or in a dozen other ways. When served a la Barigoule they are indeed a chef-d" centre. Being parboiled and drained, several fair-sized artichoke bottoms have their centres slightly hollowed out; they are then dusted over with salt and pepper and set in a buttered dish, the hollows are filled with a stuffing composed of minced shallots, mushrooms, parsley, bread crumbs, and yolk of egg and spoonful of ketchup 122 WINTER ROOTS sauce, and then are set in the oven with buttered paper to protect them from burning, and are gently baked. When cooked, in about twenty minutes' time, they are served. These fonds d'artichauts accord admirably with a dish of mushrooms, or mix agreeably with cooked celery for a mayonnaise, or make an ex- cellent garnish to a gratin- Sometimes, too, we find them filling those delicate little pastry cases, called bouchdes, masked in cream. Topinambours, to give them their true name, we think a most nourishing vegetable, and they make a purSe that lends itself to many uses. We do not let them remain in the ground after frosts have set in, as we find they go watery when boiled if this is done. Late in the year the tubers are lifted and stored, like potatoes. Often enough with us the Jerusalem artichoke replaces the potato. It is a main ingredient of the winter 123 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK vegetable pie ; it naakes a gratin ; it yields a dainty soup, and in other ways proves itself a valuable servant. In cooking it is necessary to think well abovit preserving the colour — they are apt to go a dirty grey if trifled with — but we boil them in milk and water instead of in water alone, and if serving them with a sauce this same milk is the base for its making. If making them into a puree this same cuisson gives the desired thin- ness, or if the puree becomes a soup, white onions or shallots are cooked in butter without browning, some celery, salt and pepper, and a little -cream are added, and grated cheese is passed round when serving. This section would be incomplete were I to omit mention of such homely things as carrots, parsnips, turnips, and potatoes. You can, in any cookery book, find recipes for serving all of these, and I can add little, if anything, that is new to the 124 MORE WINTER ROOTS number ; yet to pass them unnoticed is to pay no compliment to the gardener who can turn out such dainty, even-sized snowballs as Charlemagne has done, and give to us carrots that eat like those of June in December. Small carrots we have cooked after the Flemish fashion, which is to scrape and throw them for a few minutes into boiling salted water, then to drain and put them into a stewpan with a little butter and a few shallots. A pinch of salt and pepper and a dash of vinegar are added, and the jar is covered and set on the stove to cook for upwards of an hour. They are served either from the jar or are poured into a vegetable dish. Parsnips, which so many people never touch until the correctness of eating salted cod on Good Friday reminds them of their existence, are most delicious when treated as fritters, or au graiin, 125 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK or curried. Take them as fritters : Boil and then crush the pared parsnips down to a smooth paste, and add to that paste just one spoonful of fine flour, then two eggs, some pepper and salt and a very little dissolved butter. Work all this quite smooth and drop it Ijy tablespoonfuls into a shallow pan with hot fat, and fry the fritters on both sides to a fine brown. Let them be small but fairly thick fritters, and serve them hot, with butter or with gravy of meat. Then, au gratin : Boil until tender after paring, but leave the parsnips whole. Cut them across in rather thin slices, lay in the buttered dish, put wafers of stale cheese among them, sprinkle freely with salt and jDcpper, pour in a cupful of vegetable stock, sprinkle a few crumbs over the surface and bake in a quick oven. Or curried : cook until tender and cut into short pieces the thickness of a finger, prepare a 126 THE HOMELY TURNIPS sauce, white or brown, and stir into it a spoonful of good curry powder or paste ; add a teaspoonful of minced onion. Pour this over the parsnips as they lie in a stewpan, and then simmer in the pan for about an hour. Glazed turnips are extremely nice, but better, perhaps, as a garnish to other things. To serve them thus they require trimming down until all are of even shape, and about the size of a small pear. They are boiled until tender, drained, and put into a saute pan with a small amount of butter, and are sprinkled with powdered sugar. When placed over the fire they require frequent stirring to prevent burning, and when they have browned a little, clear stock is added with seasoning of pepper and salt. Very young turnips, boiled whole and served with a white or egg sauce and a garnish of freshly- chopped parsley, make a tempting dish. A puree 127 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK of turnips is much improved by having a Httle cream stirred into it. As to the value of different ways of cooking potatoes I must say, emphatically, that everything depends on the kind of potato. Some potatoes will not boil well, some will not bake well, and it needs a very good potato to fry well. Yet there are very few potatoes that will not be good and give a good result if you will humour their idiosyncrasies. I think that one of the secrets of securing a really nice boiled potato is to take only those which can be cooked thus without dividing, and all as much as possible of the same size. To cut across a potato and then boil it is to let out all its flavour. Of course you retain much more flavour if you boil it with the skin on, but this, again, does not apply to very old potatoes, which are more wholesome to boil after paring. Roasted potatoes must have the 128 AND HOMELIER POTATO skins pricked or they will be indigestible. A boiled potato should steam through after drain- ing, to give it a dry and floury appearance ; but do not, if you value its natural flavour, let it acquire the taste of the wash-tub by placing a folded cloth on the top of the pan. If the potato seems likely to break up before it is cooked through, pour away the boiling water and substitute cold, and bring it slowly to the boil again. For fully-grown and ripe potatoes steaming seems generally prefer- able to boiling, yet again it depends on the potato. New potatoes should first be boiled before they are tossed into the saute pan, or they will be heavy and waxy. Or after boiling they can be served with a cream sauce. Large, well-ripened new potatoes make by far the nicest salad when cold. From boiled or steamed potatoes in winter there are so many excellent dishes one may prepare K 129 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK that it seems difficult to choose out of the number. What dehcious crusts for vegetable or meat pies can be made with mashed potato properly manipu- lated with egg, what delicate rissoles and cro- quettes wherein mashed potato is used in place of bread-crumbs, and what savoury pies wherein every other layer is one of sliced potato ! Then from remainders of mashed or whipped potato we make such elegant trifles as pommes de tare a la Duchesse. The whip of potato has butter and the yolk of an egg added to it, seasoning and some flavouring, preferably a pinch of sifted herbs. The paste is shaped into small round cakes and coated with more egg and crumbs, or with a batter, and fried to a golden colour in boiling fat. Varia- tions are made by making the flavour that of cheese, and sometimes the tiny cakes have a Provengal taste because onion has been added to them and they have been fried in oil. 130 MARCHANDE DE FRITES Like all her countrymen and women, Charlotte is an adept in making pomnie de terre frites, and they are not a bit like our English fried potatoes. The pan she uses is an iron one, and deep, and the fat is that of suet, used over and over again for the same purpose. The potatoes, large ones, are pared and washed and dried in a towel ; then cut with the hand into pieces of even size, the length and thickness of an index-finger, and dried again. When the fat boils they go into it and are stirred occasionally, but they literally boil in it for quite ten minutes. Then they are lifted out with the strainer, drained on a sieve, and dusted over with coarse salt. It always seems to me that Charlotte ought to stand at the street corner when she is doing these, and that I ought to see the urchins bringing their pennies and receiving back the yellow pocket-shaped paper packets in return, and see them gingerly fingering the scalding morsels, en- 131 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK joying them with gusto. The salt should be in a big tin dredger, the paper should be hanging from a nail, and the red charcoal embers should be casting a glow over Charlotte's face ; and, to complete the picture, the night ought to be dark and wet and cold, and she the one cheerful bit of colour in the scene, to which every one is attracted. Sure am I that there is always this as a last resource for Charlotte, should all other means of earning a living fail her ! 132 OF THE SOLANACE/E, OF KITCHEN LILIES, AND OF HERBS. )" HE Latin name of the tomato is Solarium lycopersicum, the edible wolf's peach, or, popularly speak- ing, love apple. Another solanum, of which we also eat the fruit, is the aubergine, called in India the hrinjal. It took some time for us English people to learn to like the tomato and to appreciate it thor- oughly, but now we know that no garden can be considered properly productive unless it rears a few plants, and any one who has a greenhouse or frame at once settles to grow tomatoes thereiu. 133 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK Most people like tomatoes ripe and freshly gathered to eat raw or with a little vinegar, some eat them properly as a dressed salad, but not many attain that true appreciation which gives them their due place in the puree and sauce, and sets this in frequent service on the table. Italians have, perhaps, gone to the extreme, for tomato sauce flavours or disguises almost everything that is savoury in certain parts of Italy, to the amuse- ment of the French, who sneer at their neighbours for having only one sauce. Yet I have found tomato sauce to be quite as common in France as in Italy. There are so many varieties of tomato that for planting it must be a question for the individual gardener to settle, since each one will know best what are the peculiarities of his soil and situation. There is an American variety which grows mag- nificently out of doors, but not nearly so well under 134 COOKING A TOMATO glass. Of some other sorts the very reverse is noted. For my own part I do not favour the very large type ; to have its full flavour a to- mato should be eaten whole, whether you eat it raw or cooked, and the ntiedium- sized fruit, the " drop " or " cherry," varieties, are truly delicious as well as orna- mental. If you cook a tomato cook it well, else it were better to serve it raw, for partially cooked it is an anachronism. As to how you should cook it, have not all culinary pro- phets and sages given their 135 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK advice in such plenty that to say more is super- fluous ? And yet perhaps there is still Charlotte's way to be told ? Tomatoes a la mode de Charlotte. — Some half- dozen ripe tomatoes are plunged into boiling Avater to loosen the skins, and these are peeled oJEf. At the stalk end a small hollow is scooped out and this is filled with a little mixture made as follows : A morsel of butter is dissolved in a sauce- pan, and with it is mixed a teaspoonful of flour ; this is thinned with a small cupful of clear stock ; into it are put three or four minced mushrooms and one shallot, a spoonful of chopped parsley and some salt and pepper ; this is simmered over the fire for some minutes, to cook the mushrooms through. When it has cooled, the hollowed tomatoes are filled and then set in a shallow pan or gratin dish, which has been previously oiled with a few drops of olive oil. Bread-crumbs are 136 CHARLOTTE'S MODE scattered over, and the dish is set in the oven for about ten minutes, and as soon as the tomatoes steam through it is served. When stewing tomatoes, whether for serving as a dish alone or for use as a puree, we always prefer to cook them with oil rather than with butter. A savoury supper or luncheon dish is this : Tomato Rolls. — The skins and cores are removed from six to eight tomatoes, and these are pulped down. With them are put a few spoonfuls of minced ham, onion, a little seasoning, the crumb of a stale roll dipped in milk, a few drops of tarra- gon vinegar, and the yolk of an egg to bind the mixture together. It is then shaped into rolls, dipped in egg, rolled in crumbs and cheese mixed, and fried in fat until crisp and brown. The dish is garnished with fried parsley. To the tomato puree, which forms the foundation of Tomato Soup, we add the crumb of white bread 137 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK cut into dice to give substance, onions shredded fine and fried in butter to give savour, clear vegetables or meat stock to give quantity, and when serving we hand a few fried sippets of bread with it. Creamed Tomato Soup. — The American fashion has milk added to the stock, and after passing through the tamis the whole is enriched with the beaten yolks of eggs and cream. This makes a very different kind of soup, but one that is very nice also. Tomatoes intended for a salad should always be skinned before slicing. As the autumn season advances we get many tomatoes left on the plants which will not ripen before frosts come, and these we cut down and use for a pickle. It is a first- class pickle. Having five or six pounds of tomatoes we slice them up thinly and sprinkle salt between each layer in a stone jar or pan. This is left to 138 A MANUSCRIPT NOTE stand for some twelve hours. The Hquor is then drained off and the shoes are put into the pre- serving-pan with a quart of white vinegar, a pound of very thinly-shredded white onions, a pound of Demerara sugar, a quarter of an ounce each of cloves, bruised ginger, capsicum, and mustard seed, a single clove of garlic. These are set over the fire and stirred with a wooden spoon until the whole is a soft, mellow, rich mass. Perhaps it stays thus for two or three hours, then it is bottled in wide- mouthed glass jars. As a matter of fact, it is really more of a chutney than a pickle. Among my manuscript notes of cookery recipes I have the following savoury dish of tomatoes : Tomatoes and Sardines — a Relish. — In a buttered baking-dish place a layer of sardines from a newly- opened tin. Over them put a layer of minced young onions. Over these sprinkle chopped capers and marjoram leaves both together, add 139 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK pepper and salt and a spoonful of olive oil. Cover the bed with tomatoes thickly sliced, strew crumbs over, add bits of butter, and bake in a quick oven. A dish this is, says the recipe, which once eaten will be constantly repeated. The onions, capers, and marjoram are de rigueur. The aubergine, not often grown in England, is also a plant of the tomato kin, and its fruit, somewhat like a large pear, but of a deep violet colour, has a marrowy softness and something of the marrow flavour. The brinjal is a favourite vegetable in India and in common use. Eaten raw, the aubergine (or brinjal) is simply horrid, plainly boiled it is not at all nice, fried it is passable, and cooked in the following way it is excellent. Remove stalks and sepals and pare lengthwise. Cut down in half and take away the soft inside. Simmer the portions in butter until tender, then set them in a baking-dish and fill the hollows 140 "KITCHEN LILIES'* with a mince of meat and herbs or a vegetable mince flavoured with onion, sprinkle cheese over them, and bake in the oven until a light brown. And now to speak of onions, or, to give them their most worthy title, " kitchen lilies." This is no fancy nickname. The onion belongs to the lily tribe ; it is an Allium, of which we eat the bulb. The eschallot is the Allium ascaloni- cum ; the leek is the Allium porrum ; chives, garlic and rocambole, another variety of garlic, though much milder, are all of the same family. 141 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK All are bulbs, all contain a volatile essential oil, which is most valuable. All of them have power to restore and heal the sick, to cheer the well, to keep disease away (as disinfectants), and to give beauty to the complexion ! Onions are one of the finest nerve tonics known, and onions, in some form or other, we positively must have in cookery, more especially in vegetable cookery. They are the wit that enlivens the whole. To get the best that the onion has to give you must have it young. Young onions can be had all the year round if gardeners can be induced to grow them, and no cook worthy of her name will use a big onion where she can possibly get a small one in its place. A sprightly American writer has said of onions : " I doubt not that all men and women love the onion, but few will confess their love. Affection 142 ONION DAYS for it is concealed. Some people have days on which they eat onions, which you might call ' retreats.' This act is in the nature of a religious ceremony, an Eleusinian mystery — not a breath of it must get abroad. On that day they see no company and deny the kiss of greeting to their dearest friend ; they retire within themselves and hold communion with one of the most pungent and penetrating manifestations of the vegetable world. Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together ! " In this household we are ha^^py. We can and do eat onions together. For those who would have a dish of boiled onions — and how good for a cold is that dish !— some of the essential oil which causes onions to occasionally indigest is removed by boiling them in two waters. After skinning an onion cut out carefully all the base — another needful hint. Before frying or boiling 143 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK onions for a dish, parboil them if you would re- move an excess of pungency. I think I have before stated that we sow a pinch of seed every fortnight during the summer to keep ourselves supplied with tender young " lilies," and in winter an occasional new sowing takes place in a frame. A similar sulphurous oil as that which gives such value to the onion is possessed in a smaller degree by horseradish, while the ordinary radish possesses some of the same in still more minute quantity. Both the horseradish and radish are condiments, however, and never in any way come up to the onion in general usefulness, nor yet in health value. They have their place, however, in every garden, and you will find horseradish growing in ours, which we use for sauces both hot and cold. As to radishes, they are frequently found on the table for breakfast or luncheon, 144 THE HERB-GARDEN AGAIN helping to make bread and butter " lively," as the Better Half would say. And now we consider herbs. Of pride in the herb garden I have spoken before. When Char- lotte comes out in search of something for her bouquet for the pot I am amused to watch the expression on her face when she goes to that plot. Very doubtful is she of finding what she will want. I feel like quoting to her — and often do so — certain lines from " La Petite Corbeille des Fleurs " : Venez choisir dans ma corbeille : De plusieurs les parfums sont doux, de tous la vertu sans pareille. I like to think that not many things requisite for the pot, at least, are missing from this herb garden of mine ! There is lemon balm, that most fragrant of herbs, for cordials and wine-cups and common L 145 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK herb beer. There is sweet basil for soups and salads ; and borage we would grow if only because it attracts the bees. Fennel is wanted for sauce to serve with fish. Marjoram we must have for stuffings and for flavouring the ragouts. Mint is indispensably dear to every English heart. Mus- tard, the small variety called Sinapis alha, is a delicious salad herb. Savory we must have, if for no other reason than the old one which says, " Keep it dry by you all the year, if you love your- self and your ease." It adds much flavour to beans or peas and to rice. Tarragon we cherish with care, as who would not ? so excellent is its addition to salad or sauce. The aroma of thyme is as grateful to bees as it is valuable among the other herbs intended for the pot, and sage, for fritters and for stuffings, and for its most excellent tea when sore throats threaten, is not less prized. Strange that parsley should ever have gained 146 A PARSLEY-BED the reputation of being unlucky ! So lately as 1897 it is mentioned thus in a paper read before the Devon and Exeter Gardeners' Association : " It is one of the seeds to lie longest in the ground before germinating ; it has been said to go to the Devil and back again nine times before it comes up, and many people have still a great objection to planting parsley, saying that if you do there is sure to be a death in the house within twelve months." Even the phlegmatic Charlemagne was not to be tempted into making the parsley-bed in our garden, I had to do it myself ! But so far no ill fortune has followed me, and the parsley flourishes and is used every day. Marigolds and mallows and " nasturtiums " we grow freely, for from their petals and leaves Char- lotte naakes many fine things. The leaves of " nasturtiums," for example, are served up in 147 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK salads and in sandwiches, the flowers decorate her dishes, the seeds make a pickle that is no whit inferior to capers. Mallows give flavour to certain sweet dishes and to waters. Marigolds may very well be added to creamy puree or soup. Partly out of curiosity I have grown — or have, at any rate, planted — other old-fashioned and uncommon herbs, such as angelica, the stalks of which we candy and pnt into preserves ; and saffron, wherewith we impart a pale golden hue to cakes ; coriander for its seeds ; and purslane — perhaps because it is pretty. From old Anthony we yearly receive a basket of samphire when it is in its prime, and this Ave pickle with spiced vinegar. It makes a delicious relish thus, but is too salt to eat, as he doubtless imagines we do, with bread and butter. It is Anthony's favourite relish for tea, and many times in bygone days I shared it with him. Many 148 ROSEMARY AND LAVENDER times, too, have I helped him to rake it in from the rocks where it grows, as he would say, out of reach of the waves but within touch of the spray. Need I mention that in a woman's garden you are certain to find rosemary growing ? It is there for the bees, but it is there for me as well, for the Avashes it makes for hair and skin, for the pot-pourri that scents the drawing-room, and, last but not least, for the reminder it is to friends that their memory is sweet. And side by side with rosemary grows lavender, not, perchance, " for lovers true," but for the linen press ! 149 TREATMENT OF BEANS -TJ AND DRIED VEGETABLES; OF CORN, RICE, AND ITALIAN PASTES. HEN we are busy cleaning bulbs and sorting seeds, shelling beans and peas and storing nuts, we know full well that summer has turned the corner. When all these things are in their place and finished, and when Charle- magne goes into the greenhouse and fastens the door quickly after him (lest in leaving it open he should let in some intruder), we know that winter is upon us. However clever we believe ourselves to be, with all our sowing and planting, 160 THE STOREROOM SHELVES protecting and coaxing, we know that the time has come when old earth will do nothing but rest under her brown blanket. She will sleep until New Year comes in. It is then that we take special pride, Charlotte and I, in going into the storeroom, in re-arranging our shelves, in peeping into bags and baskets, in ordering in new samples of conserves and foreign produce (just as a matter of curiosity, of course, and so that we may know that we are up to date), and in evolving new dishes out of old materials. It is our way of hibernating. What an excellent provision for the winter a fairly good summer season enables you to make ! Who that has a garden need be afraid of the snow for their household ? But to be well provisioned necessitates being industrious at the right time, some looking ahead and some knowledge of how to store and how to preserve. Cela va sans dire. 151 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK We dry peas and beans by hanging them up by the stalks in a dry shed. They are pulled up by the roots as soon as the leaves and pods have turned colour, and are not allowed to linger on the ground, getting tougher day by day. Sus- pending them by the stalk sends all the sap into the bean, and when the pods crack open we begin to shell, spreading them out over papers in the storeroom, leaving them in the sun for a few days, and then pack them in bags. If you are using beans like these in the early autumn they require very little previous soaking, but as the winter advances, and they shrink and harden, you may give them from ten to twelve hours soaking in cold water. When beans and peas have been soaked — pre- ferably, too, in soft water — and washed, put them to cook in boiling water, and only enough to well cover them. The flavour is improved if you put 152 NEW PEAS FOR OLD in one or two small onions and a bunch of herbs. The water in which beans or peas have been cooked should be saved for vegetable stock. If we are intending to make a dish of green peas for eating with meat or to use for garnishing another dish, there is a special method of treating them. After washing and removing all that float or are discoloured, the peas are put into a basin of warm water and left for twelve or fifteen hours ; they are then drained and piled on a dish whilst wet and left on a shelf in the sun. When they show signs of sprouting they are taken and cooked in boiling water exactly as if they were fresh peas newly gathered. They taste very much like new peas. A puree of dried peas blends excellently with one of potato or of rice for the making of rissoles. Very choice, in our opinion, are the delicate green beans called flageolets, especially choice 153 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK when served in plenty of dissolved butter flavoured with the veriest soufc^on of Tarragon vinegar. They are fit for the most critical of epicureans. Red haricots — it was surely from these that Esau's pottage was made ! — make a pleasant dish if served with tomato sauce, but they make a still better soup or puree. This soup can be further improved by adding some scraped and grated carrot to it. It is of the larger white haricot bean, or butter bean, that we grow the greatest quantity and on which we most rely. After soaking them we like to stew these in weak broth in preference to Avater, if possible, or if not a bit of butter is always put into the pan with them. When they have finished cooking there should not be more than enough liquor left in the pan to make the sauce. This is enriched with a little more butter or stock, flavoured with ketchup or curry, made into a 154 APROPOS OF BEANS smooth blend with a spoonful of ficule or with the yolk of an egg and, being well seasoned, is poured over the beans. All these beans are improved, when cooking, by having a small onion and a few herbs, also a few black peppers tied together in a bag cooked with them. Salt should not be added until they have become soft. Do not imagine that you can render a tough bean soft by adding soda to the water in which it is cooked ; only long soaking in cold water will soften it, but if obliged to use hard water for the soaking soften that with a lump of soda. It is quite easy to remove the skins of haricot beans after they have been soaked for some time, and when cooking them for people with delicate digestions it is wise to do this, but they must cook more slowly afterwards as they tend to fall. A very nice garnish for cutlets of meat, or game 155 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK birds that have been stewed, is made by mixing a furee of red and white haricots with some tomato or brown onion sauce until a soft paste has been procured, and then squeezing this through a forcing bag into httle cones (if for garnish) or serving it in httle cocottes or ramequin cases if it is a detached accompaniment. A yurie of beans, white or red, or of green peas, makes the foundation for quite a variety of excel- lent soups, of the thicker sort, and is greatly run upon in winter time. An American author has supplied me with a recipe for what she calls a delightful breakfast dish. Having tried it, and also proved its excel- lence, I offered it to my English friends as a luncheon item, for it is best suited to the dejeuner that is eaten a la fourchette. Pea Fritters. — Soak and cook well a pint of green peas, mash down to a puree with a wooden spoon, 156 AND OF GREEN CORN and season with butter, pepper, and salt. Put away this mixture if not wanting to use it imme- diately ; it will keep some days. When preparing )'our breakfast or luncheon make a light batter with two eggs, a teacupful of milk, one of self- raising flour, and a little salt. Stir the puree of peas into this, and when well mixed fill rings set in a hot frying-pan that has been rubbed with fat or oil, and fry the fritters on both sides thoroughly. Having tried the experiment of growing some Indian corn one summer, and of using it as Ameri- cans do, by taking the cob before it is ripe, and finding it to be both sweet and nourishing, we have never been without a few plants since. If you gather the cob while it is green the grains are full of a milkiness that is most delicious. In cooking it you have to strip off the outer leaves, turn back the innermost covering, and pick off the 157 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK threads of " silk " ; then lay the cobs in boiling salted water, letting it boil from twenty minutes to half an hour. You can then serve it in a vege- table dish to eat with butter, or with cream sauce. A way we much like of using green corn is of making Succotash. For this we take equal quantities of corn picked clean from the cob and of soaked butter beans. Sufficient boiling water to cover them, and no more, is put into the saucepan, and they are stewed until both are quite tender. The water is poured off and a large cupful of milk is substituted for it. The beans and corn stew in this for some time longer, and then we stir in a lump of butter, a teaspoonful of fecule or of cornflour, wet with cold milk, some pepper and salt. This is brought to the boiling point and then the whole is poured into a dish. Green corn makes excellent breakfast cakes, if 158 BUCKWHEAT CAKES parboiled first, and then added to batter, and fried or cooked on a griddle. They should be , eaten with maple syrup. In parenthesis here I should like to mention how good is buckwheat, and also ground Indian corn, for making breakfast cakes. How delicious they are on a cold morning, smoking hot, with butter spread liberally over each, and syrup poured over all ! We think them lighter when made partly of buckwheat, and partly of ordinary white flour, but that is a matter of taste. They must be nourishing, and they certainly make a most welcome change from toast or bread. If I say least about lentils it is not because we do not use them, but because we are not so partial tothena as are some people. Perhaps this is due to the fact that we have so many other things which take the same place. But we do occasionally make use of the red Egyptian lentils, chiefly as a 159 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK foundation for a red soup flavoured strongly with carrots, and for a puree to which other ingredients are added, and from which savoury rolls or cutlets are made. Lentils have this disadvantage, namely, that without doctoring they are rather flat and insipid ; on the other hand they have the advantage of being much more quickly cooked than beans or peas, and a previous soaking is not needful, although it improves them. Like all people who eat but little meat, we depend a good deal upon macaroni, rice, and similar preparations. A risotto we love ; macaroni, a la Milanaise, a la Napolitaine, or au gratin, we delight in. And Charlotte cooks such dishes to perfection. I have heard that some English people are so barbarous^-or so clean !• — that they must wash macaroni in water before they cook it. They say it has been made with hands, it has dust about 160 ABOUT MACARONI it when it is taken from a case, and it cannot be right to use it without washing. All I can say is that any one who has been in a macaroni factory will know better than this, and that if you wash it nothing but a flabby, messy-looking, and sodden dish can result. Macaroni ought never to be wetted with any water that is not boiling. You must throw it into boiling water exactly as you would rice, only rice we must wash well because of the very different manner in which it is sent out, and because it is a grain grown in the open. Macaroni in Italy is invariably served almost crisp, and to our thinking is often not sufficiently boiled ; on their side the Italians say that we English make it doughy and pasty. If possible we want to strike the happy medium. It should be thrown into plenty of boiling water, salted ; like rice it wants room to swell, and therefore the pan chosen should be big enough. M 161 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK As soon as it is tender, which can be told by testing with a fork, stop the boihng by throwing in a httle cold water, and in another minute remove the pan from the fire and drain ; then return it to the dry pan with a little butter. It is then ready to be " dressed." For a la Napolitaine it is necessary to have a fair quantity of grated cheese, preferably Gruyere or Parmesan, and after adding some butter to the macaroni you stir in lightly about half the amount of the cheese, then more butter, and finally the rest of the cheese, with a sprinkling of black pepper. Serve it piled as loosely as possible in the dish, and eat with a fork. For macaroni a la Milanaise you add to the pan of drained macaroni sufficient clear stock or bouillon to barely cover it ; this should be strongly flavoured with onion. Melt a little butter in a separate saucepan and stir into 162 MACARONI MILANAISE it a spoonful of flour, work both together and then add another spoonful of Parmesan, a little made mustard, and some pepper and salt. Strain off into this the bouillon in which the macaroni has been simmering and boil up the sauce, then add to it several spoonfuls of tomato puree. Return all to the other pan and mix well, and when thor- oughly hot turn out into a dish and pass grated cheese round with it. Sometimes we blanch macaroni by giving it five minutes boiling in salt water, then drain and cover it with bean stock or bouillon, and add small onions and herbs to the pan. Cooked thus it is very nice for serving as a garnish to a ragout or stew of meat or vegetables. In serving it thus you would drain the macaroni and make it form a wall in a dish and fill the hollow centre with the ragout, or with cooked mushrooms in a thickened sauce, with a mixture of other vegetables, 163 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK or with a curry, just as occasion dictates. For my own part I prefer to use Spaghetti, a small and finer sort of paste for this purpose ; it shapes better and is more pleasing altogether. It cooks rather more quickly than macaroni, and costs no more. One word as to the purchase of Italian pastes : buy the best. See also that the package bears the label of some good Italian firm, preferably a Naples firm. Do not buy it loose from boxes of cheap stuff sent out by inferior factories — in the East End of London. Rice is a thing which few people cook really well, yet it is simple enough to prepare, and ought to replace potatoes on many occasions. It must be well cooked but not over-cooked. The secret of having rice soft, yet in distinct grains, is to wash it well first in several waters to rid it of all flour, and to plunge it in a quantity 164 RICE AND A RISOTTO of fast boiling and salted water, and to keep it boiling at full gallop until you can, by testing a few grains, feel that they are tender. Never let it go on boiling until it has absorbed much water and becomes sticky. Drain through a colander, and then wash again in cold water by pouring several jugfuls over it. Drain again, and then return the rice to a dry pan and cover it up close to steam through again. A little butter put in will prevent the rice from sticking to the pan. Rice thus plainly boiled is ready for serving up in any way desired, for garnishing, for eating in place of potato or other vegetable, and for mixing with different ingredients. This is rice as it is served with a curry. When lifting it out of the pan do so with a fork and keep it light ; let it fall in separate grains and not be spooned up in lumps. A Risotto is differently prepared. Here is Sir Henry Thompson's recipe for it : 165 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK When making sufficient for three persons put two ounces of butter into a pan with three ounces of onion chopped very fine, fry both together until the onion is a pale brown. Blanch for five minutes in boiling water six ounces of large grained Patna rice, stirring it constantly with a fork. Drain the rice and stir it into the pan containing the onion and butter, let it be stirred well and simmer for two minutes more, then pour in suffi- cient broth to barely cover, draw the pan aside and let it simmer until the rice is soft, stirring occasionally. When nearly finished add an ounce of fresh butter, a pinch of nutmeg, a bit of saffron to colour (turmeric for Indians), and two ounces of grated Parmesan cheese. Pour into a dish. The risotto can be enriched by the addition of cooked mushrooms cut small or good gravy with bits of liver and ham. An Oriental pilao or pilau is rice cooked in 166 SOME EXPERIMENTS broth and highly spiced with nutmegs or cloves, tinted with turmeric or saffron, and made savoury with onions previously browned and fried, and it is tossed up in a dish and garnished with the yolk of hard-boiled egg, as we should serve a kedgeree. A pilao may have fish broken up with it or pieces of giblets, if preferred, or nuts chopped are some- times added. A word as to drying vegetables for winter use. I cannot say that our experiments with this method of preserving have been altogether successful, that is, we cannot bring them up to the perfection attained by the firm of McDoddie, but as we only use dried vegetables on rare occasions, having generally sufficient supply of something fresh available, and as that use is almost always con- fined to soups, our amateur method of drying has answered fairly well. Such vegetables as carrots, turnips, leeks, par- 167 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK snips, and celery are shredded very fine, as if intended for Julienne soup, and are spread out on trays and placed first in the coolest place in the oven, then brought a little nearer to the fire to finish, but never near enough to discolour. They dry quickly and do not lose colour, and an hour's soaking in cold water previous to using restores both flavour and character. If soaked for any length of time we cook them in the same water, as some of the goodness will have been taken up by it. The secret of keeping the colour of herbs, when drying them, is to dry quickly enough. We spread them out on sheets of paper and put them in a warm oven, leaving the door partly open, and subject them to a fair heat. They should dry in less than an hour and be ready to sift and bottle. Parsley dried in this way keeps a beautiful bright green, but it takes a little longer than most other herbs. 168 AND SOME SUCCESSES We prefer to dry sorrel and keep it in packets, rather than to follow the common French method of salting it down and boiling, then storing in crocks. To our thinking it is sweeter and less acid when dried, and soaking soon restores its freshness. 169 CHAPTER X. ' THE MUSHROOM BED, DRIED FRUITS, CHESTNUTS, AND SOME WEST INDIAN PRODUCE !w* HAVE never got back in mushrooms what I have spent in spawn," that charming jl, writer, Mrs. Earle, has said. This is answer to her own query, " Do we reap as we sow ? " She thinks that we all put more into life than we get out of it. Perhaps we do, and into gardens, too. Frankly, though, does it not depend on how we sow ? Before telling you about the mushroom bed which Charlemagne and I have made, and from which we have certainly reaped very fair returns, I will quote Mrs. Earle's experience, because she 170 SOME EXPERIENCES gives a hint that might be serviceable to those who have greenhouses but no other place more suitable. " This winter my gardener has tried, with very marked and satisfactory success, a bed under the greenhouse stage. It is made up in the ordinary way and darkened, and saved from the drip of the plants above by a sheet or two of corrugated iron. . . . We have already had several excellent and useful dishes off it from this first experiment. Our outer cellar here is too cold to grow mush- rooms in winter, though it does well to grow the common chicory for the Barbe de Capucin salad, and also protects from early autumn frosts the broad-leaved Batavian endive. . . . We grow this in large quantities. It makes by far the best late autumn salad, and is excellent stewed." I think I have before mentioned that our own mushroom bed is made up in a shed that covers a north wall, and it is on a slope. It is a dry, well- built shed, and is only used for storage of roots. 171 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK The bed itself is made of horse droppings inter- mixed with loam, and was stirred as per direetions given in a Dictionary of Gardening, and sown as there advised, with spawn procured from a re- liable firm of seed merchants. It is watered with a fine rose and rain water, frequently enough to keep it moist ; for do not the ordinary field mush- rooms come best in a damp season ? They will not flourish in a dry soil, or when they are cold, and it is of no use attempting to make them do so. Moreover, on a frosty night ours are covered with straw mats or loose straw. We get quite enough mushrooms to keep us supplied with them for flavouring material, and often have a savoury dish besides. And when grown with care, in a clean place, you can be sure they are clean mush- rooms — which is more than can be said for the usual field ! The essence or fumet which you gain by stewing 172 MUSHROOM MODES the peelings and stalks of mushrooms (stewing them in butter, not water) we bottle and keep for adding to other stews and sauces. It is most useful. Served independently mushrooms never seem nicer than when cooked in a shallow dish of fire- proof china, with fitting lid. This must be buttered and sprinkled with pepper and salt; just suffi- cient clear bouillon to float them is put in, and sometimes a tiny onion or two, and the dish is covered down and set in the oven to stew gently for half an hour. It is then ready to serve, gar- nished with fried croutons or within a ring of mashed potato. When the mushrooms themselves are the gar- nish to another dish they are invariably browned in butter in the pan over a brisk fire, or the cavities have bits of butter put within them and each is set on the baking tin and baked in the oven. 173 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK Stuffed Mushrooms are a valued entremet at company dinners, and on the rare occasions when we entertain I hke to have them served, for then we seem really to have had some substantial result from our mushroom bed ! They are pre- pared as follows : Fair sized mushrooms are needed, and after paring and removing all the stalk they are set in a buttered baking dish. The peeled stalks are chopped small and with them one or two onions ; these, with a couple of spoonfuls of minced parsley (or one spoonful of dried) and other herbs are fried in butter. A cupful of strong stock is put in, and then a handful of fine breadcrumbs. The centres of the mushrooms are filled and fine raspings sprinkled over the top. They are baked in a quick oven shielded from the fire with buttered paper. Small and broken mushrooms we dry in the oven for storing, 17i SUN-DRIED FRUITS In cooking dried fruits, prunes, figs, apricots, and other varieties, we find it an improvement to pour in a cupful of cold water after they have been boiling awhile. It is long and slow cooking that is needed to draw out their full flavour, and to make them mellow, and almost all dried fruits need plenty of time for previous soaking. Cook them in the same way in which they have been soaked if you would preserve their flavour, but if you have doubts about their cleanliness wash them well before soaking. It is well to wash those prunes which have a shiny skin, as a small amount of sulphuric acid has been used in their preparation to give them a better appearance. Sun-dried fruit loses its water by a natural process of evaporation and little, if any, chemical change takes place. Artificially evaporated fruit has the moisture withdrawn by rapidly moving currents of air and heat. Neither the heat of 175 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK the sun nor that artificially applied is sufficient to cook the fruit at all, because the very effect of evaporation is to cool, and the fruit is left at a temperature far below that of the surrounding atmosphere. Instead of being cooked the albumen is coagulated. The more perfectly fruit is ripened the better will it be when dried ; unripe and immatured fruits cannot fail to be hard and dry when subjected to evaporation, and they are incapable of swelling much even after long soaking. The well-grown, well-ripened fruits of sunny countries dry easily, and quickly return to their original size by cooking. The excellence of French, Bosnian, and Turkish prunes is due partly to the cultivation that is given them on good soil, partly to the kind of plum selected, and partly to the care taken with regard to their drying in the direct rays of the sun. The French also use a primitive form of 176 A STORE OF FRUIT oven in some districts, and they have a plan of constantly interrupting, checking, and altering the drying process, which gives a particular char- acter to the prunes. The largest prunes are not invariably the best, because a good deal depends on district, but plump fruit with a small stone is sure to be better than a dry one with large stone ; it never pays to buy cheap dried fruits. It does pay to buy a small case of prunes, of raisins, or of Normandy pippins from a wholesale dealer, especially if you live at any distance from shops, or even if you do not. To have a supply of these things in stock ensures your frequent use of them, and they are very wholesome. As our orchard yields but a small supply of apples and pears, and that supply is only too soon exhausted, before Christmas we find ourselves depending much upon dried fruits. Sometimes we invest in a barrel of Canadian apples, or of N 177 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK South African pippins, and we do not regret the investment, but if only dried fruits were available it would still mean no lack. Think what an excellent range there is — prunes, Normandy pears and apples, figs, apricots, raisins, currants, dates, not to mention the coiiserves of mixed fruits, ginger, and other things. The practice of packing prunes between bay- leaves, which some French firms adopt, is commend- able, for it gives a dainty fragrance to the fruit that is very acceptable. Good, too, is the care taken to line the boxes with paper for protection against mildew, or to prevent the fruit from acquiring a flavour of wood. Stewed prunes or figs, stewed pippins (mellow to melting), dates sharpened with a little lemon juice, and pears made rich with the addition of sugar and wine, all served deliciously cold and in dishes of clearest crystal, with a pitcher of cream 178 AND FRUITARIAN FANCIES or custard, these are seen almost daily on our table ; we have fruit for luncheon, fruit for dinner as a last course, and fruit — oftenest uncooked and ripe however — for breakfast too. Fruitarians ? No, only sensible, earth-loving people ! When there is such a wealth of " kindly fruits " to be enjoyed " in due time," who that is wise will set them aside as to be done without ? Far better is it to give some attention to the right treatment of natural dried fruits than to have recourse to tinned and bottled things in unwhole- some liquids and syrups. Why will not people who have children bear this in mind ? Currants and raisins we use freely, having several ways of introducing them into sweet dishes, all adopted because we believe in the dietetic value of both. There is no doubt but that they are extremely nourishing, and that the 179 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK nourishment is there in a highly concentrated form, namely that of grape sugar. But currants will be indigestible unless properly masticated, and where mastication is likely to be deficient it should be assisted by using a mincing machine. When making plum-puddings and mixtures for cheese- cakes we use this machine as much for the small fruits as for the coarser ingredients. To do so is to extract to the full all their flavour. Currant bread, made at home, is one of the most delicious foods you can have ; currant bread made at the baker's is one of the most surely indigestible products that you can buy. I say this without even making the reservation that " it all depends upon the baker." A few currants added to ordi- nary dough do not suffice to make currant bread. When a light dough has been prepared for bread it is worth while to add to it a little dis- solved butter and one or two eggs when kneading 180 CURRANT BREAD in the fruit. Moreover, the fruit must have been dried after washing. A cut across the top of the loaf to let out the steam when baking makes the loaf much lighter, and yet the baker will persist in " varnishing " the surface, with the result that his loaf is tough and moist. Our own currant bread partakes more of the nature of the true French brioche, and is really nicer to eat when several days old than when just fresh. For the " sponge " we use fresh barm, not German yeast, and the dough, when it is mixed, is soft enough to beat with a wooden spoon. Butter, fruit, and a little sugar with the beaten eggs, and a little milk and water, are worked in after the sponge has risen, and the whole is left to rise in a warm place for several hours, much longer than is usual for ordinary bread. It is then lightly rolled on a floured board, and is baked in round cakes in the oven. 181 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK Sometimes it pleases Charlotte to take a portion of this light dough and to make it softer still with one or two more eggs and to add a little chopped candied fruit and a glassful of Maderia wine to it, and to beat until she has obtained what is more like a light batter than a paste. This she pours into oiled moulds the size of a cup and bakes rather quickly. The moulds are never more than half filled, but the mixture rises in a crest above the top and does not fall again. These become what French confectioners designate as bahas ; the correct mode of serving is to soak them in a syrup flavoured with sweet wine or liquor. We take great pride in having this uncommon con- fection when friends are to be entertained. A Gateau du Riz, wherein eggs and milk are added to boiled rice with sugar and salt, and grated lemon peel for flavouring, is made handsome by decorating the bottom and sides of the mould 182 PLUMS AND PRUNES (which, by the way, is hned with a caramel, not butter) with spUt and stoned raisins and with shreds of candied fruit. It is baked until firm and turned out when cool. A delicious mixture for the filling of pastry tartlets has grated carrot for its foundation, breadcrumbs, sugar, chopped fruit, both currants and raisins, and beaten eggs for its ingredients, and it is invariably much liked. Large muscatel raisins are delicious when stewed with a little wine and water, but it is better to remove the seeds first. What time prunes have disappointed me from any cause I have found it best to turn them into a prune jelly, and then they are commendable. For this, after their soaking and cooking, they are rubbed through a sieve with all the juice there is, and the pulp is sweetened with sugar and flavoured with a little liquor. It is turned into 183 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK a lined saucepan, and set on the fire, and into it a small quantity of gelatine, already soaked in cold water, is added, and the purSe is brought to a boil, after which it is poured into a mould. If you put it into a circular mould and fill the centre with a whip of cream, after it is turned out, you have an excellent sweet. Many things will be good when they are pulped down and treated in this way which would be poor and unsatisfactory if merely stewed. Chestnuts are a capital addition to winter fare, as many besides ourselves have found out. But for me I hark back to those delicious creams we had in Italy, where a fine pulp of cooked chest- nuts surrounded a whip of thick cream, and both were eaten together with biscuits. The Better Half is exceedingly partial to chest- nut soup, and indeed Charlotte makes it most temptingly. The chestnuts are boiled until they 184 CHESTNUTS THAT KEEP crack open, and are then thrown into cold water and peeled. They are crushed to a powder, or rather paste, for from time to time a little milk is added to make them go more easily through the tamis. This purSe then goes into the marmite, where already is an onion cooking gently in butter. At the same time a little flavouring of spice, a spoonful of sugar, one of salt, and a pinch of pepper are added, and sufficient milk to make up the desired quantity. When it boils, being con- stantly stirred, a spoonful of rice-flour, wet with cold milk, is added, and a few spoonfuls of cream. Chestnuts baked or boiled and peeled make a capital second vegetable to eat with meat, if served up hot in a thin brown sauce. They also make most delicious little afternoon tea-cakes if pounded dry and mixed with an equal quantity of ordinary flour and the usual ingredients of butter, egg, 185 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK and sugar, with milk enough to form a dough. (Use self-raising flour.) Of other nuts — walnuts, coconuts, kola nuts, hazel nuts, filberts, and almonds- — it seems hardly necessary to say much, since they are best eaten in their natural state and for dessert. But we should all be wise to eat freely of them, in cold weather especially, for they supply much oil to the system in a form most easily assimilated. One may live on nuts, as do squirrels, providing you have nothing else to live on, but the ability to do so is here merely pointed to as proof of their body-building and nutritious character. People who consider themselves debarred from eating nuts on account of inefficient masticating tools should buy themselves a nut-mill, and perform the preliminary processes by its help. It is a little thing and costs a trifle, but it helps to keep its owner looking plump and substantial ! 186 OVERSEA DEALINGS Ground nuts are delicious when sprinkled over a fruit salad, or even over an ordinary lettuce salad. They are good enough to sandwich between thin bread and butter, especially if mixed with cream and sugar first, and they are prettily decorative as the garnish of a plain custard or the icing of a cake. Ground coconut we add to a curry, as many Indians do, and also to certain cake and bread mixtures. Salted almonds we prepare for our- selves, when we require them, which is not fre- quently, for although fashionable they are not really very nice. Our patronage of West Indian produce has come about through our dealing with the shippers for pure cane sugar for preserving purposes. These dealings brought to our knowledge many excellent and delicious things which it may be a service to mention here. We are, as a people, 187 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK lamentably ignorant of what our own colonies and dependencies produce, entirely to our own loss. For example, we ourselves, when we can get limes, now never use lemons ; the limes are finer, milder, and more delicate. We use green ginger for cooking and preserving purposes, and crystal- lised or glace ginger for dessert. Guava cheese and guava jelly have their place on our table. Chow-chow we love, also mango chutney and pickle. Chillies and peppers we have learnt to stuff and serve as " appetisers." Banana and plantain meal make delicious cakes, tamarinds are tempters of the invalid's appetite ; " cum- quats " (oranges in syrup) are a delicious sweet. Such things as arrowroot, sago, tapioca, semo- lina, maize, and rice we invariably buy from the same source ; they are much purer and finer than we can buy elsewhere. Here, too, we get the 188 WEST INDIAN IMPORTS maple syrup before mentioned, also the best of curry powders and pastes. As bananas are so much with us all the year round it leaves us small occasion to use the dried bananas which are sent over from the West Indies, yet when these are stewed tender, and a little sherry or juice of limes and sugar added to them, they are extremely nice, and stewed banana added to a fritter batter is every whit as good as slices of the fresh fruit. 189 ^ ? fmt* TER FRUIT FOR THE TABLE JL »-\| HE soil of our garden, which gives us .' vegetables of which we have good s.^ reason to be proud, seems not so well adapted for growing fruit trees, or else it is that our orchard is too old to yield much. However it be we can boast of no special varieties or quantities, yet we have fairly good crops, as a rule, of the more commonplace kinds of bush- 190 BURGLARIOUS BIRDS fruit from the garden, and, in a good season, a moderate supply of ordinary apples and pears from the orchard, and a few choice specimens from the espaliers when the season has been exception- ally fair. Later on, when we came to the point of acquiring a noble fruit house, of which more hereafter, the position of things was, of course, vastly improved. Still, even in the beginning, we had enough, after all, enough for ourselves and for the birds- — and the birds invariably exacted full toll ! When currants were ripening, indeed, we found it expedient to net over the bushes with coarse gauze, and we even thought, Charlemagne and I, of making an enclosure by stretching wire netting between poles placed all round the plot, as it is said that birds will not fly down into an enclosed space. So far, however, it has not been done ; every year we threaten them, and there the matter ends, 191 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK I say it surely would be inconsistent to talk of our enjoyment of the fruits and deny the birds, who, after all, are our fellow-toilers, the right to conjugate the verb with us. To people like Charlotte, who delight in making experiments in the fine art of preserving, good bush-fruit is very valuable, and, moreover, currants and raspberries are so useful for mixing with other and larger fruits. Also we love much in summer- time to have a plate of picked ripe currants set upon the breakfast table. When the bunches are cleansed by dipping in clean water and dried they are beautiful to roll lightly in powdered sugar and eat with bread and butter. We have a few bushes of white currants, a comparatively rare thing to find in an English garden, but one of our nicest dessert fruits. By netting the bush we have managed to keep the currants hanging right on into September, except in a very dry season. 192 FRUIT SALADS One reason why they keep well is perhaps because Charlemagne follows a very old practice and breaks the tops of the branches at the tip, not right off, but leaving them to wither. It sends the sap into the fruit and prevents inordinate growth of leaves. Well-ripened raspberries and red currants mixed with a few tart cherries, what a delicious summer salad do they not make, especially if a suspicion of liquor lurks within the bowl ! The only dressing they need, if you mix them early enough in the day, and set the bowl in a cool place for a few hours, is plenty of sugar and sufficient wine to moisten it, with that goutte of kiimmel or more delicate noyau. A salad of fresh strawberries we dress in Italian fashion — that is, with sugar and the juice of lemons. To our thinking this is nicer and certainly more refreshing than thick cream can be, and it gives more value to the flavour of the fruit. o 193 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK The secret of making a fruit salad tempting is to have it dressed some time beforehand, and to set the bowl on ice if possible. Black currants, of which you can never, in any garden, have too many, the birds are not partial to except in the green stage, and there is no need to protect the bushes. We ourselves are more than partial to them. We should think ourselves wanting in some great essential if our shelves did not show a good store of black-currant jelly and jam, and if there were no bottles of cassis for the making of delicious drinks. All the minute care and patience which the making of cordials and wines demand Charlotte simply delights in giving. It is difficult to make her understand that the eau-de-vie which is so cheap in her country is so dear in ours, or even that we must pay respect to licensing laws. Sometimes I tremble lest the revenue officers should scent our fragrant brews ! 194 AND FRUIT COMPOTES Black currants contain so much iron that they are both food and medicine. While they are dyeing the lips of those who eat them they are enriching the blood. In a lesser degree all the red and black fruits contain much iron, and for this reason alone blackberries would be worth cultivating in gardens just as we cultivate rasp- berries. Compotes of currants, whether red or black, are better if mixed with a few raspberries, or so we think ; they are less rich. A compote of rasp- berries alone is much inferior to one of currants alone. It seems almost a pity to cook fine ripe raspberries. They are as good as strawberries when eaten with sugar and cream, but of course there will be many raspberries to gather which are neither fine nor large, yet for cooking purposes they are every whit as good. The American rasp- berry we do not care for at all. We have a few 195 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK canes of white raspberries, however, of which I am exceedingly choice, and when ripe their amber colour becoiries almost transparent, and so fragrant are they ! The strawberries which we cultivate early, by the help of the greenhouse, are, of course, too precious and too fine to be eaten in any way but au naturel. But when June advances, and July brings a plenty of out-door fruit, we are ready, like everybody else, to try different ways of serving them. Au Bavarois is as nice a mode as any of using berries that are not very fine or perfect. The fruit is crushed down, without cooking, by rubbing it through a sieve, and is mixed with an equal quantity of thick cream or of custard, and liberally sweetened. A little gelatine that has been pre- viously soaked is stirred in, and the pan is set upon the fire to warm through gradually, but not 196 OTHER FRUIT FANCIES to heat more than enough to mix the gelatine thoroughly. When taking it off the fire a few drops of cochineal are added to improve the colour, and a spoonful of maraschino or noyau. It is poured into a mould and left to get firm. If frozen and served with strawberry syrup this is even more delicious. Another mode is to make a puree of fruit, sweeten it, and boil up with some soaked gelatine, and when cold to beat into it lightly the snow of some whipped whites of eggs, and then to freeze. This is served with biscuits. Or we pile strawberries — or raspberries — on to a light foundation pudding, consisting of a nice custard made firm with some breadcrumbs and baked till set. On the top of the fruit, after sprinkling it liberally with sugar, we pile whipped cream and egg froth mixed, and set the dish in the oven for a few minutes to just tinge the colour. 197 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK Or again, a pastry foundation has the berries, just previously stewed, with sugar poured over, and a whip on the top. There are a number of fruit soups, any of which are dehcious in summer-time, making a pleasant change from ordinary bouillon or potage. There is cherry soup for instance. For this stone four large cupfuls of cherries, and put them in a lined saucepan ; cover with a quart of cold water and bring to the boil. Add half a cupful of sugar to them and continue boiling until they are soft, and then rub them carefully through the sieve. Return this puree to the pan and stir in a tablespoonful of arrowroot first mixed with cold water ; when clear take off, add the juice of a lime or half lemon, more sugar if not sweet enough, and a liqueur glass of Morella- cherry brandy. Charlotte's fruit soup : 198 FRUIT SOUPS Mixed fruits — that is, strawberries, currants, raspberries, and any early stone fruits available, — are used for this. All are cooked together in water until quite soft, and passed through a sieve, and the puree is sweetened to taste, slightly thickened with arrowroot, or, better still, a little French tapioca, previously soaked, and after boiling clear is set aside to become cold, served in china cups with morsels of cracked ice floating therein. A soup of apricots and vegetable marrow cooked together and flavoured with the juice of a lemon and spoonful of brandy is very good to serve hot. No egg or cream should be put into it, but a little tapioca cooked with the fruit and rubbed through the strainer at the same time prevents the separa- tion of puree and liquid. A soup of fresh limes, stewing the peel first in water and straining, sweetening and thickening that, then adding to it the juice, and, as it cools, 199 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK the beaten yolks of two eggs, and serving in cups with morsels of preserved ginger floating in them is also very nice. Almost better than fruit soups, however, de- licious though they are, is the practice of serving fresh fruit, such as melons, shaddocks, and grape- fruit, or even oranges, as an introduction to a meal. Melons are served thus in slices, and are eaten with pepper and salt instead of with sugar ; shaddocks require a little sweetening perhaps, as also does the grape-fruit for some palates. The joroper way to serve the latter is to cut them across in half, scoop out the cores and pips, fill up the centre with sugar, and serve with a spoon. In eating them one should take out the juice, leaving nothing but pulp and rind. Large oranges, particularly jaffas and the navel or seedless variety, are admirable when served after this manner. 200 PINES AND BANANAS Quantities of small pineapples are likely to find their way to us from the Cape, when their worth becomes better known. The South African pine makes little show beside the ordinary hot-house pine, it is true, but the cheap little brown things have a delicious flavour, are very juicy and whole- some, and can be brought over here and sold for a few pence each, or even less. The best way of eating these is to cut a morsel off the bottom to make the fruit stand level on the plate, then to take a piece from the stalk end, and to scoop out the centre with a spoon, precisely as one would eat a cooked egg. Bananas for the table are more tempting to the fastidious appetite when offered ready peeled, and cut into finger-lengths or cubes ; they should have a little sugar and the juice of a fresh lemon or lime squeezed over them. This is the true West Indian method of serving this fruit. 201 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK Oranges pared and sliced thinly give sharpness and flavour to any other mixture of fruits in a salad, but unless the salad is of oranges only their presence should not be too obtrusive. The orchard, as I have before said, is an old one, and the apple trees have been left to grow much as they will, and thus we have allowed them to remain, much to the disgust of Charlemagne. He would have liked to clear the ground of these gnarled and knotted trunks, and to have intro- duced new varieties grafted on Paradise stock, and goodness knows what besides. But the Better Half and I stood firm. Our wants were not great, and the old orchard was a pleasant place, and when the season was fair it yielded enough to supply all we needed, while the few sound old English sorts it contained seemed to us better worth having than the finer things of which we were told. It would have been nice, of course, to be able to 202 A USE FOR FA LLINGS count upon a more liberal supply of blenheims and pippins and mellow russets, yet of such as re- mained to be gathered we were thankful. There was one noble tree of early yellow transparcnts, which more than made up for any other lack — such a beautiful " bef ore-breakfast " apple it is. We had a good many fallings to make use of, as commonly happens in an old orchard. Of these the finer ones only were kept for roasting, and the others went to make jelly, and those which were not sound enough for this purpose made us apple butter. You cannot make good jelly out of ill- formed and inferior apples, but for butter it suffices to slice, pare, core, boil down to a pulp and sweeten, and every available apple can be utilised, even crabs. You merely have to go on boiling the brown pulp until a smooth, buttery mass results, and it can be stored away and used in winter time in place of ordinary butter. 203 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK But for roasting in the oven it pays to choose your best fruits, as such a dish, when baked with butter and eaten with sugar, is a thing to thank Providence for. Experience has taught us that it pays to have the proper means of storing both apples and pears. At first we laid them out on straw, on the storeroom shelves and floor. Later on I learnt that straw is the very last thing to keep apples and pears upon. Inquiry revealed to me the fact that a room or cellar partly underground was the best place for keeping fruit, better than the light, airy room above, where many other things found their home. Evenness of temperature, protection from frost, but a cool atmosphere, and shade rather than light were advisable. Further inquiry brought to my knowledge that special trays are now made on to which the apples can be placed, and that these fit one above another 204 APPLES AND PEARS in tiers, allowing the air to pass round the fruit. When kept in this cool place, and after this manner, the ripening does not proceed too fast, and the fruit does not wither or grow soft. Frequent looking over is, of course, necessary, as the first sign of rot is a signal for removing the offending specimen. Rot is so quickly communi- cated, even where the single fruits are set well apart. Some pears will never be worth ripening, and where there is any quantity a good plan is to fill an earthenware crock with them, to pour in enough water to just barely cover, put on the lid, and send the crock to the nearest bakery, to be put in the oven after baking is done. They come back to you mellow and rich, although they probably went away like green bullets. If you would have a fine dish of pears, however, let these be cooked as a compote, namely, pare them 205 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK thinly, remove cores, and slice into elegant sec- tions, lay in a pan with a few lumps of sugar, and pour over sufficient claret to cover. Set the pan on the stove or in the oven and cook gently until the pears are thoroughly tender. This rich red compote contrasts pleasantly, both in appear- ance and flavour, Avith an Apple Compote, which should be white to transparencJ^ For this prepare a syrup first, by boiling lump sugar in sufficient water to cover the quantity you are using, say half a pound, pare, core, and cook carefully till tender, seeing they do not break. If they froth and fall add a little cold water to the syruj). Lift out as they are done, and finally, boil up the syrup until thick and pour round the sections of apple. If liked this syrup can be coloured red with cochineal, and then it contrasts prettily with the white apple. For an Apple Salad you want very ripe fruit, 206 COOKED APPLES not hard, but a little sharp. Pare and slice moderately thin, and arrange in your dish, sprink- ling with finely-ground nuts. Add a spoonful of castor sugar to the ordinary French salad dressing, and use a touch of cayenne instead of ordinary pepper. Or, instead of oil and vinegar, take the juice of limes or lemons, and add some good cream. An apple salad, as an accompaniment to ripe cheese, Stilton or Gloucester, is excellent. Apple Beignets are another joy. The apples are pared and the cores removed without dividing, so that when sliced the rounds are perfect. Dip each ring into the true beignet batter, which is compounded of whites of eggs, a little flour, a little sugar and salt, some olive oil, and sufficient water to dilute into a sort of thick cream. Drop each ring into a depth of absolutely boiling fat. When puffed out, and crisp and brown, drain them on paper, roll in powdered sugar, and serve hot. 207 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK Such fruit as blackberries and bilberries, of which the juice is the best part, we find it better to stew till soft, and then strain through a colan- der, or perhaps to rub through a sieve, obtaining a pulp that is somewhat more fruity than juice. This makes excellent sauces or fruit syrups for puddings when sweetened. Small stone fruit, like damsons and bullaces, are much better to use when rubbed through a coarse sieve or colander after their first stewing. This keeps out the skins and stones, which are so troublesome and so indigestible too. Certain kinds of cherries it pays to treat in the same way, and to make a sauce or quick jellies with the pulp so obtained, but finer cherries it is no waste of time to stone by hand, especially if making a compote therefrom. A word in conclusion as to the real difference between a compote and mere stewed fruit. The 208 COMPOTES AGAIN former, which keeps in the full flavour of the fruit without losing its form or spoiling its appear- ance, is a method to be infinitely preferred. For this you must make your syrup first by boiling together sugar and water — not too much of either ; the fruit to be cooked is wiped and put in, not too much at a time, and cooked until quite tender, but not long enough to break it, and after it is done the syrup is reduced by further boiling and poured over. For a compote of strawberries it suffices to pour boiling syrup over the fruit, repeating the process three or four times, and not to cook the fruit at all. A compote of apricots or peaches should have the blanched and split kernels added to the syrup. Rhubarb is much nicer cooked after this manner than stewed, and plums are vastly better, but gooseberries and raspberries and currants need stewing and are often better for straining too. P 209 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK If I owned to having some conscience-prickings in respect to birds when I began this chapter I must, ere its conclusion, add that I am more than ever incHned to award them their full rights to a partnership, since I have met with some words by Phil Robinson on that score. If any one doubt my assertion that birds are our fellow -toilers, and maintains that they are unprincipled marau- ders and no more, let him read the following lines : " For bull-finches and chaffinches and bud- eating birds it is often said that they injure a tree for its own good, destroying insects which would eventually have done more harm than they. This may be as it may be, but I never heard any one suggest that blackbirds and thrushes have any ulterior beneficence in mind when they visit an orchard. Nor do I think, if frankly asked the question, that those birds would hesitate to give a straightforward answer. There is nothing in their demeanour to lead you to suppose that they affect any more virtuous intention than the satisfaction of their own appetites. . . . 210 ORCHARD THIEVES " Is there no good in them, then ? Are they marauders, nothing more ? Do not think so. Come out into the orchard after a shower, and see the turf dotted with blackbirds and thrushes. Look at them, hard at work among the worms. Was there ever such conscientious work being done before without overseer ? Tempted by the shower the worms and snails are abroad, but the word has gone round, and scores of terrible little eyes are watching, little feet are fidgeting, little beaks are waiting. If you could only chalk the birds' feet you would find that every inch of ground had been traversed, not once but several times. Every bird is busy at once, either watching or catching, and with such single-heartedness of purpose as does you good to look at, and makes you forget the pilfered plums and the brigandage among the cherries. . . . " How desperately hard at work they are, these small fanatics ! Every dead leaf in the shrubbery will be turned over in the twenty-four hours ; all the borders of the beds patrolled, and the whole ground searched for full-fed caterpillars. . . . No, they are not mere marauders, for even in the sunny fruit time, the mellow days of October, they are 211 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK doing good half the day, and by-and-by will come the months of inclement weather, when there are no orchards but those of hedgerow and copse, when all their time is spent in the incessant benefit of man. Nor forget the three months of the year when the little tithe-gatherers make your gardens beautiful with song, and ' for their quiet nests and plenteous food pay with their gentle voice.' " 212 CHAPTER IN STOREROOM AND CLOSET: PRESERVES, JELLIES, BOTTLED FRUITS, PICKLES, WINES, AND CORDIALS. 7H0ULD I entitle this storeroom of ours by that quaint appellation used long ago — " A Gentlewoman's Closet of Rich Rarities " ? I should dearly like to, for in truth it is a goodly place ! It is a room at the top of the house, airy and dry, and not subject to great variations of tempera- ture ; in fact there is a small oil stove kept in it for use in extreme cold weather. There are permanent ventilating panes in the window ; and reed blinds keep out the sun and too much light, as a darkened room is best for keeping purposes. 213 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK It has shelves all round, and deep cupboards where we store superfluous jars and bottles. Down in the larder we keep a sufficient selection of all that is found here for immediate use, as Charlotte and I do not care to mount stairs oftener than we can help, and this storeroom is our bank of reserve. Very proud are we when we carry up hither a fresh trayful of jars or bottles, all neatly labelled and sealed. Should we ever be beseiged we are sure to have something wherewith to keep star- vation away, Charlotte says, with a reminiscent smile. She has vivid recollections of that memor- able siege time of the early seventies, and such experiences, she says, make one frugal. I must frankly own that my own satisfaction in our storeroom arises out of quite another feeling. I value this well-filled place because, as a Scotch- man would bluntly say, " there's money in it." It is a mundane reason, perhaps, but it's a true one. 214 215 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK There is money in a well-stocked storeroom, as many a resourceful woman has found out before now. Some time ago I came across the following sentence and have remembered it : " In many districts the fruit and vegetable resources of some splendid little patch of soil lie dormant because no one in the family has any special knowledge of growing the crops or of con- verting them into marketable form. . . . " Can woman achieve success in such an industry as converting into profitable form the products than can be raised at small cost from little patches of soil or small holdings . . . and what would be the outlay ? A few pounds for tools and fencing, perhaps, for well-selected seeds and casks for water, for a boiler and pans and sugar, for jars and covers, some vinegar, and condiments and labels." Not having any special need at present to work upon the suggestion myself I commend it to others. Just how quickly a few pounds of initial cost would be turned over and made into a profit would 216 THE PROFESSIONAL FINISH depend, of course, upon what efforts were made to secure a market. Suffice it to say tfiat for produce, that is the best of its kind, turned out in workmanlike fashion, a market is never far to seek in England. The fault of so much home- made stuff is its very unprofessional finish and appearance, and its frequent flaws due to little bits of neglect. Where trouble is taken to ensure perfect uniformity of quality, and as much atten- tion is paid to appearance as to flavour, where jars and covers are as neat as they can possibly be, and good packing provides for careful transit, there is very little doubt but that orders will multiply. But apart from the necessity of giving this care to all that is destined for sale, it pays also to give V it where only sufficient is made for home con- ^ sumption. Variability in quality and flaws in finish are the most frequent causes of failure in the small way as in the large. Foreign imports 217 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK have done a good deal to educate the tastes of people, and it is useless to expect to win favour for the home-made article that fails to satisfy critcism in regard to its outward appearance, whatever its inside merits may be. In all these points Charlotte has been my teacher, plus royaliste que le roi in the etiquette of good cookery. Her care for les ■petits soins is truly very great, very commendable. In the first place, for example, there is the sterilisation of all jars and bottles used. They are, of course, always washed and dried before they are put away, but, as Charlotte says, there is the humidity of this terrible English climate to con- sider, and when the climate is dry there is dust ! So the process of sterilising begins by placing two great pans of deep baking tins on the stove, both partially filled with water. In the one as many jars as it will hold are laid on their sides, and turned 218 FRESH FRUIT JELLIES round and about from time to time. The water in this pan boils all the while. As the jars are lifted out for fresh ones to go in they are dried and then made to stand upright, in the second pan, in which the water need not boil, as it is merely to keep them quite hot. When the time comes to fill them they are carried to the table, still in the pan, filled to overflowing with boiling preserve or liquid, the rim and outsides carefully wiped, and the covers fastened down at once. If metal covers are being used, or stoppers for the bottles, these are rinsed in hot water first. The work of filling and sealing the jars is done rapidly, so that air has little time to get in before the cooling process causes contraction. When they are cold an examination is made for any defects or cracks, which rarely occur, and the labels are affixed. As far as the actual method of making jellies with fresh fruit is concerned we follow, as nearly 219 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK as may be, the plan of an American friend, an authority in this branch of the cuHnary art. It consists in putting the fruit, after carefully picking it over and wiping it, into a stone jar of good proportions, and this is set within a pan half-filled with water, and put on the fire to boil for some hours. It is rather a slow process of extracting the juice and flavour of the fruit, but it does extract it eventually, and without addition of water. When the juice seems drawn strain through a bag of coarse flannel, squeezing it gently from time to time, and suspending it some height above the basin into which the juice falls. When all has come away that will come of its own accord a very little water may be passed through the bag and a further squeezing will bring away more goodness. To each pint of juice we allow a pound of sugar. The juice alone is set on to boil in the preserving 220 AND PRESERVES pan, and the sugar is spread out over tins in the oven and made thoroughly hot, in fact it may show signs of melting. The juice must boil for twenty minutes exactly before the sugar is turned into it, and the putting in of hot sugar does not check the boiling. It falls in with a hiss and is dissolved almost while you look at it. Cease stirring when all the sugar is melted, let the liquor come to the point of rapid boiling for one minute only, then take the pan from the fire and immed- iately fill the glasses, which are already standing in scalding water. When the fruit used is at its proper pitch of ripeness, or somewhat under rather than over ripe, and this method is strictly followed I have never known the jelly to fail of setting, even before it was quite cold. In making jam we follow a similar method, that is, boiling the fruit pulp some time before adding 221 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK sugar, heating that to reduce the after boihng as much as possible. By this means we consider the flavour of the fruit is retained, and the sugar never turns to syrup. The principle is that it is the fruit which requires cooking and not the sugar, and it remains the same in all cases except where it is desired to preserve whole fruit in syrup. Acid fruits only will make jelly, but even in some acid fruits the quantity of jelly-making pectin is small, and some other fruit must be added. Strawberries will not make jelly without the help of red currant juice, and the raspberry also needs the same combination. Peaches, insufficiently acid alone, combine well with a yellow plum. Rhu- barb will not make jelly, nor will cherries, but the juice of gooseberries will help to set both. The best fruits for jelly-making are (in the order named) the currant, gooseberry, crab-apple, apple, quince, blackberry, raspberry, plum, and peach. 222 PLUM CONSERVES For plum jelly the fruit should be taken when only half ripe, and be put into a deep stone jar, or lined pan, just covered with water, and cooked until very soft yet not to make a pulpy mass. Strain the juice twice and allow equal weights of sugar. Another method of making an excellent plum preserve, or I should rather say a conserve, is to place the picked and wiped plums into a stone jar, alternating each layer with one of sugar, and leaving the jar in a corner of the stove all night. Pour off all the liquor and boil it, then pour it over the fruit again, and repeat the process each day four or five days consecutively. The last time both fruit and syrup should be boiled to- gether for a few minutes only, then at once put into jars. We think a spoonful of vinegar added an improvement. Date plums, which come late in the season, make a delicious preserve treated 223 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK after the foregoing manner, without the vinegar however. Apricot or egg plums must have very little boiling, as their shape forms one of their most attractive features. It is better, when the syrup boils, to drop them into it separately, and a few crushed kernels with them. Damsons and other small stone fruit need much cooking, and to be rubbed through a sieve to keep back skins and stones before any sugar is added to them. They will bear half an hour's boiling after this. A concentrated form of jelly results. For damson cheese the quantity of sugar used is much less than for jam, and the pulp is boiled down until quite stiff, and small flat glasses are used for its storing in preference to the ordinary jam pots. Peaches should have both stones and skins removed, although the skins may boil in a little water separately and this may be added to the liquor afterwards. The fruit itself is quartered 224 QUINCES AND APPLES and cooked in a boiling syrup, and the kernels are chopped and thrown in. Quinces, like apples, should be quartered and put into the pan with peelings, cores and all, and a pint of water may be added to every five pounds of fruit. When fully cooked, and all the goodness extracted, strain, and treat the liquor as before explained. In the case of apples alone, and when more flavour seems needful, a piece of stick cinnamon and a few cloves should be tied in muslin and boiled with the liquor, but removed before the sugar is added. Highly coloured and tart apples, like the Siberian crab, make the finest jelly. Set the jars in a sunny window for some days if the jelly seems loth to set. It grows firmer in course of time. Wild cherries and currant juice (red) make a delicious preserve, which is good for any weakness of the digestive organs. Q 225 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK As regards bottled fruits the whole success of this method of preserving depends on careful sterilisation, and on keeping the bottles air-tight. A light syrup keeps less well than a heavy or much boiled one. On the other hand, the fruit preserved in light or thin syrup is more fruity in flavour. It s quite possible to have bottled fruit that will keep well without using sugar at all. A rubber ring should fit inside the cover, and this should be soaked and put on whilst wet, so as to contract slowly. Grade all fruit intended for bottling, keeping the sizes as nearly equal as possible. Fill the jars quite full, and pour in the boiling syrup or water, and stand the bottles in a pan of water, also boiling. Bring the contents of the jars up to boiling point and then seal down at once. A few choice Morella cherries we save for flavouring brandy, and also we have besides at 226 V/u2 uikiTe ptfids oj TLz 227 r THE GARDENER AND THE COOK least one bottle of peach branch, or, failing peaches (when from lack of blossom we may presuppose that peaches are likely to fail, that is) we pick the white petals of the May blossom and fill the bottle three parts full, then add brandy. In a few weeks' time the flavour of the petals has all been extracted, and the liqupr should be drawn off into another bottle ; it is but little inferior to real peach brandy. These are liquors for the flavouring of custards and creams, be it known, and are much nicer than bought essences. Like many other people of delicate appetite and fastidious taste, the Better Half favours light wines for drinking, especially home-made fruit wines. Of these we generally manage to have a small store, also of fruit cordials for drinking with soda and seltzer water in summer-time. It may be as well if I here give some particulars about the making of both of these. Orange and ginger 228 MARIGOLD CORDIAL wine we have always in store, and these are made in winter months, but choicer than these are marigold, peach, and elder, and these we make every year if at all possible. In July, when the marigolds down in the wild garden are ablow, Charlotte gathers their petals every day until she has amassed about a peck of them, and when these have been picked into the deep brown pipkin she pours upon them (and with them a pound and a half of stoned raisins) a boiling liquid made with seven pounds of sugar, two pounds of honey, and three gallons of water. Whilst boiling this has been cleared with the whites and shells of three eggs, and is strained before it is poured over the flowers. The vessel is closely covered and left to stand undisturbed for twenty- four hours, and after a brief stirring the next day is again covered and left until the third morning. The whole is then strained off into a cask and with 229 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK the liquor is put the rinds of six oranges pared without whites, and a pound of sugar candy ; four or five tablespoonfuls of good brewer's yeast are then stirred in, and the bung hole covered, and the wine is left to work until it froths out. When all fermentation has ceased we put in a pint of brandy and half an ounce of dissolved isinglass, and stop up the cask, leaving it untouched for some months. Our recipe for peach wine comes from a Canadian source, and is a most delicious beverage, made at really very little expense. In a year when our own peaches (those from the wall trees and not from the standards in the fruit- house. Men entendu !) fail we go begging from other gardens or buy from the London market, for we do not care to begin wine-making with a smaller quantity than twenty pounds. The fruit is sliced up into an earthenware pan, reserving 230 PEACH WINES the stones ; loaf sugar equal to about a quarter of the weight of fruit is strewn among the mass, and this is left for a day. Five gallons of filtered soft water are then boiled with eight pounds of loaf sugar, and the whites of three or four eggs well beaten are stirred in, and the syrup is skimmed clear. The fruit and sugar and all juice are added to this boiling liquid and all heated together, any scum being removed as it rises. It is then poured into a cask, and the crushed kernels taken from the stones are put in also, with five or six spoon- fuls of good yeast. It is left to ferment for two or three days, stirring at long intervals, then it is strained off into a tub and returned to the cask. When all fermentation has ceased a pint of brandy is stirred in and the cask tightly closed. Before closing up, if thought desirable, it can be racked off into a clean cask of somewhat smaller size, as it should be one that is quite filled up. We keep 231 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK it untouched for a year, and generally begin to bottle off the previous year's wine when we are ready to make a second supply. In making elderberry wine we prefer to crush and strain off the juice from the berries rather than to boil and obtain it that way ; we think that the former method gives more natural flavour and makes a more fruity wine. But the berries must be very fully ripe and very juicy. The fruit is stripped from the stalks and put into a tub and covered with water, and a weighty crusher is used to press them with at intervals. When the juice seems to have come away the liquid is strained off into the boiling-pan, and to each gallon of it three pounds of brown sugar is put in at the same time. We boil in this liquor such spices as are to be added to the wine, viz., several pieces of root ginger, a stick of mace and cinnamon, and a few cloves. The liquor boils for rather more 232 ORANGE WINE than an hour, and is then poured into the cleansed tub and left with some yeast added to it to work for four or five days. It is better to put the yeast on to a piece of toast, and it must not be added until the liquor has cooled. At the end of that time the yeast is taken off, the liquor strained and poured into a cask, leaving the vent-peg loose, and when fermentation has ceased the cask is tightly closed up and kept for three months before opening. For orange wine the Seville oranges are necessary, and therefore we make this about the time when marmalade is in progress, in February or March. It is best to pare off the yellow peel very thinly, and to boil this with water and strain, then to add the pulp and juice, when the liquid is put on to boil with sugar ; it is again strained clear before pouring into the cask, where it must ferment for some weeks before corking down. 233 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK Another delicious wine is made from sour red cherries, if you can get several pounds to crush and obtain a fair quantity of juice. Weight pound against quart of sugar and juice and let both be mixed together and kept for three days covered up ; then strain off into a wine cask, add a pint of brandy for every gallon of juice, and an ounce of dissolved isinglass, and secure the cask tightly. It may be racked off at the end of three months into bottles, and kept for some time longer before using. Another light red wine, almost like claret in flavour, and one which Charlotte deceives herself into believing is vm ordinaire, is made with the juice of sloes or damsons and red beetroots. The fruit is bruised and bottled in water long enough to extract all its juice and flavour, and this is strained off into a stone jar. Several pounds of well-washed beets are then boiled tender, pared and sliced into a deep pipkin, and the sloe liquor 234 OTHER CORDIALS is poured over. The next day the rinds of oranges and lemons and the strained juice are added and a good stirring is given. On the third day as many pounds of sugar as will equal a quarter of the weight of the strained juice are put into the preserving pan, and the whole of the liquor is drained off and put with them, and half as much filtered water. It boils for a short time only, and is then strained into the tub and some yeast put in when cool, and is left four or five days. When pouring off into the cask a little brandy is added. It improves with age. This leads me naturally to mention again the cordials to which I have before alluded. Properly speaking these are the juices of ripe fruits extracted by the aid of alcohol or cheap spirit, or, as Char- lotte would say, with eau de vie. But this, which is so inexpensive in her country, is dear in ours, so our cordials have to be made by crushing the fruit 235 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK and straining off its own juice, boiling that with loaf sugar sufficient to make a good syrup, and then adding a third of its amount of French brandy, or of spirits of wine, just before bottling. In this way we make red currant cordial, raspberry, blackberry, and quince, while of green gooseberries and ripe black currants we make a cordial that is less rich, being diluted with a little water and having less sugar, as both these are for common drinking. These cordials are never fermented, but are bottled off as soon as made, and a table- spoonful of any one of them is sufficient for a large tumblerful of drink. For raspberry vinegar the ripe berries are crushed slightly, and steeped in sufficient white wine vinegar to well cover them for twenty-four hours, and then strained off and boiled up with half the equivalent weight of sugar and after- wards boiled. 236 AND SPICED CONDIMENTS We are not great consumers of pickles, and prefer to possess a few choice kinds, such as nastur- tium-seed, walnut, mushroom, cherry, and plum, rather than the commoner mixtures and brands. A favourite tomato pickle or chutney I have mentioned before when speaking of tomatoes in another connection. Of all pickles the walnut is perhaps the one best liked, as it is also the one which gives the most trouble in its preparation ; nevertheless, it seems always well worth its cost. The walnuts must be gathered while soft enough to be easily pierced with a darning needle. They should be freely pricked, and then laid in a strong brine for several days, changing the brine once in the interval. Then drain and wipe each one, lay in fresh cold water for half a day, and afterwards spread them out on trays to set in the sunshine, turning frequently until they have become a deep black all over alike. 237 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK Boil sufficient vinegar to fill the jars required for the walnuts, and to each quart allow a tea- cupful of brown sugar, two dozen each of black and Jamaica peppercorns, half a dozen cloves, some pieces of root ginger, and a little allspice. Boil the spices in the vinegar and then the jars are filled with hot liquid. Nasturtium seeds are gathered whilst green and packed into small glass bottles, boiling vinegar and a little salt being poured over them. A vine- leaf tucked inside the neck of the bottle helps to keep their colour. Plums and cherries, which make sweet pickles, are prepared in the following manner : They are pricked, and when possible stoned, then laid in the preserving-pan with alternate layers of sugar, and when the pan is full sufficient vinegar is poured over to cover all. Some mace, finnamon, and cloves are added. The pan is 238 MARMALADES brought slowly to the boil, and allowed to boil for ten minutes. The fruit is then lifted out with the strainer and set in dishes to cool. The vinegar is boiled again until slightly thick, and when the fruit has been packed into jars it is poured over, and they are covered at once. Small cherry tomatoes put up after this manner are delicious. Large vegetable marrows make a nice marma- lade when flavoured with the thinly peeled rinds of fresh lemons and with bruised ginger root. Three quarters of a pound of sugar to each pound of fruit pulp is quite sufficient, and the mass should boil until it looks clear. If insufficiently boiled it makes a dull and cloudy preserve. For marrow chutney, a very nice preparation, the slices of raw marrow are laid in the preserving pan with sufficient vinegar to cover, alternating each layer of marrow with one of brown sugar. 239 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK When the marrow is quite tender some seeded raisins are put in, with a selection of mixed spices and ginger root, a Httle cayenne and salt. The boiling continues until the whole grows stiff. It should be put up in small brown pots. Let me not forget to mention that cranberry jelly is an item which every storeroom worthy of its name should hold, and that rowan jelly — if you can find it in your heart to devote rowans to such a purpose — is very nearly as good and desirable. For both of these the berries should be well stewed with water and a tiny pinch of root ginger, and the pulp should be well crushed before straining, then boiled with two thirds only of its weight in sugar, for thirty minutes, and put down in small jars. Cranberries destined for sauce, which is eaten with turkey or duck, and sometimes with mutton, when we want it to resemble venison, should not 240 A TRIBUTE TO INDUSTRY be cooked until they mash, but should look like small cherries in their sweet juice. In Norway, and, I believe, in Germany, this sauce accompanies hare and game birds. And so, you will perceive, our storeroom shelves are fairly well filled with dainties, and that we lack not variety. Charlotte is ever kept well occupied, so now we must turn to see how Charlemagne fills out his spare hours. 241 IN THE FRUIT ROOM HO loves a garden loves a green- house too," Cowper has said. And all the time that we have been busy in the kitchen and storeroom I must ask you to believe that Charle- magne has been happy in the garden and the greenhouse of his affections. Rightly speaking there ought to be a smudge of grease and a stain of brown earth on everj- alternate page of this book, for I myself flit indoors and out, as the mood takes me, and I set down the information I gather, or the notions that come into my head, 242 MORE SCOPE FOR CHARLEMAGNE as they occur, but having some regard for doing things decently and in order, I have kept rigidly of late to my dealings with Charlotte, or I should say to Charlotte's dealings with me. But it is now high time to return to Charlemagne. Without a doubt it is in the greenhouse that Charlemagne thrives best, and where his finer virtues flourish. When you know him as well as I do you will wish to meet him always there. But this small greenhouse of ours, the one erected for the winter housing of plants and for raising seeds, did him scant justice, as he very soon made me aware. Seeing what he did with that, however, I was moved to think of what he might achieve with bigger and finer opportunities. I thought much about the subject, read much, and one year, at the Exhibition of the Royal Horticultural Society at Westminster, I saw much. Without telling Charlemagne what it was I saw 243 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK I sent him up to Westminster to see for him- self. The main feature of that particular exhibition had been a show of fruit trees grown under glass : real big fruit trees in pots. When you possess an old orchard whose yield of fruit is doubtful at the best (and has always to be shared with the birds) the bare thought of growing your trees within doors, and of stealing a march on the birds by doing so, is exciting to the brain. I wondered if Charlemagne had been captured by the idea, and began to try him tentatively. " Charlemagne, did you notice those pyramids of Early Rivers Nectarines ? " I asked. " I was about to ask you. Ma'am, if you had noticed the Pitmaston Duchess Pears ? " he in- quired, and there was a suspicious twinkle in his eye. " Or the Emperor Francis Cherry, that fine half -standard ? " I went on. 244 IMPLANTING AN IDEA " Or the Blue Rock Plum, Ma'am ? " he con- tinued. I laughed. " Evidently we are of one mind as far as admiration goes, but what would you say to trying the experiment of growing some ? " I said. " We might try — I wouldn't say we should succeed," he answered cautiously. " Oh," I replied airily, " trying means suc- ceeding ; you know that quite well by this time, Charlemagne ! " " I won't say as it doesn't, ma'am," he rejoined tactfully. But when we came to those dubious questions of detail, about which we invariably differ, no matter what the subject may be, I found that my reading and Charlemagne's information did not exactly tally. To set against my theories he had a store of useful facts gleaned from talking with the 245 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK nurserymen. In sending him to the Exhibition I had bargained better than I knew. Eventually I found that if trying was to mean succeeding I must get first-hand advice myself at the fountain head. Accordingly I wrote to Sawbridgeworth. A lengthy and courteous reply told me that our present greenhouse was quite unsuitable for the purpose we meditated, occupied, as it was, already, and near to trees. With a proper construction, placed in an open space, we might have every chance of success. Given right conditions there was nothing to prevent us producing a supply of excellent fruit, enough to last us the year through. Then, cautiously, I approached the Better Half. " You are going to be disappointed with your dessert apples this year," I announced. " Don't I know it ? " he replied. " Can't be helped ! " 246 AND MAKING A SUGGESTION " And the plums can be counted on my fingers, they are so few," I went on disconsolately. " Well, the bullfinches had the first picking of the crop, so what could you expect ? " " But we must have fruit, else how can we live the simple life ? " " Buy it, then," he said, as if that settled the matter. " It's against my principles to buy anything that I ought to grow," I said firmly. " How can you grow if the season's against you ? Be glad you have the money to buy with." Somewhat nettled, I remarked stiffly that a good grower endeavoured to be independent of the season. " Man," I said, " is Nature's redeemer, as " " Woman is man's — is that it ? " he asked, and then added, " Well, and what does Charle- magne say ? " 247 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK " As I do — we ought to begin to grow fruit under glass." Then I gave him an outUne of what we proposed. He looked thoughtful. " Costs a lot to build a span greenhouse out in the open ? " he queried, with British matter-of- fact regard for price. "About 205. per foot, I believe," I replied, with the same phlegm. " And then the upkeep, etcetera, and the stock ■ — hum! cheaper to buy, I should think." "It is not a question with us of cheapness, surely ? Moreover, we have Charlemagne to consider," I answered with dignity. " Which, being interpreted, means that the conqueror is asking for more munitions of war, I presume ? " " He has his reputation, as, of course, ive have our position to consider." The Better Half is a philosopher. He never 248 PLANS IN DETAIL fights against the inevitable, and seeing the con- clusion was foregone in this case, he gave way. The order went forth for a new glass-house to be erected in the open, and full discretionary powers were granted for its arrangements and stocking. We secured plans of a structure that was to be suitable for its purpose, and not too large for a first experiment. Its height would be about twelve feet from the ground, and its width fourteen, which admits of placing two rows of trees down each side of a middle path. The foundation was brickwork, with two courses of nine inch brick- work above ground, wooded sills and posts and rafters, and panes twelves inches square. It has side ventilators and top ones alternating on each side of the span. The side ventilators were made to open downwards to avoid draught, and there was a partition across the southern end of the house, as it is wiser to shelter off the space allotted 249 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK to peach and more delicate trees, leaving the hardier fruits for the cooler end. Also with such a division it is possible to syringe more freely without harming the bloom of fruit that is more advanced. This partition is of glass, like the panels of the doors at either end. We have wire netting round the ventilators to keep out those marauders, the birds. Observe how our sentiments have degraded ! We must preserve all the rain water possible for syringing purposes, so a trough runs all round this house and empties itself into a tank placed just within one door. When the supply will not suffice for watering as well as for syringing we save it all for the latter purpose, as an open water tank outside is kept filled from the main. A hot-water heating apparatus has been built in, only used, however, when it is necessary to keep frost at bay, as we are not really forcing. The 250 FITTINGS AND FURNISHINGS boiler is of the Invincible type, with pipes for flow and return placed along by the brick work, and another pipe of smaller dimensions passes round the roof at the juncture of span and sides. The boiler will heat with coke, but better still we find the new fuel, Coalite, if intermixed with cinder sittings from the house fires. As the house is low we have no staging, but the pots stand on a deep and well-drained border, and as many of them are half sunk in the earth less watering is necessary. The house was com- pleted during the summer time, and in September we received our first consignment of young trees ready for potting, selected from Messrs. Rivers' catalogue. We had selected medium or second sized trees, for ours would not be required to produce large crops. The peach and nectarine half standards cost us 7*. 6d. each tree, the apricots were 55. per 251 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK tree, and plums and cherries cost us 8s. 6d. each. The choicer apples were dearer, but those of more average type were 35. 6d. per tree. Altogether the stock cost us just £5. The trees were set in a double row at angles, bush fruits at the back, half standards in front, so as to admit as much air and sun to all as possible. The peaches and nectarines were located at the protected end of the house. Later on a choice fig came to take its place in one corner, and a row of orange and lemon trees in tubs stood down the centre aisle. We could have accommodated more trees had we wished, but deemed it best to set them five or six feet apart. When the fruits were ripening, and syringing had to be stopped, we kept a moist atmosphere in the house by watering the ground well. In the growing period syringing checks red spider, and an occasional dose of insec- ticide keeps down aphis ; also the Better Half does 252 POTTING AND PRUNING a shaxe by making the fruit-house his smoking- room, and both he and Charlemagne, the one with Navy Cut, and the other with " shag," are excel- lent fumigators. The great work of potting the trees when they arrived proved a testing time of skill and an occasion for much debate. The right kind of soil came with the trees from the nursery, and proved to be a fibrous loam mixed with a small amount of decayed stable manure and a consider- able proportion of rough chalk — the latter is needed for all stone fruits, it seems. The first pots to be used were those of thirteen inch diameter, but the second year the trees were transferred to pots of seventeen inches, and were not again repotted for at least two years. In between the occasions they received fresh top-dressings of fresh loam, but were not otherwise disturbed. We make a practice of rigorously cutting away 253 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK all the small fibrous roots that annually make their appearance and would, if left to themselves, soon fill up the pots. A great point about growing good fruit on trees in pots is to limit the number which each tree may carrry, although to do so seems to demand a sacrifice. Of peach, nectarine, and fine apples we leave only six or eight to ripen, but are re- warded by seeing every one come to perfection and attain a fine size. The bush trees can carry more, and plums are allowed to ripen a fair number, while cherry trees seem to have their own method of regulating their crop, and may safely be left to do their own thinning out. Of course we could easily have grown more fruits, but it was also a question of growing good trees, and of making them last, as well, and we felt it wise to exercise discretion. But, dear me ! what debates all these points involved. 254 MASTER AND PUPIL When all fruits have been gathered the trees are brought out into the open to ripen the wood. This usually occurs about the end of June, and they remain out until September. Pruning takes place during the month of February, and at that season we give practically all our time, Charlemagne and I, to this delicate operation. He is the surgeon and I am his assistant. From him I have learnt the difference between a triple bud and a single bud, and to distinguish fruit buds from blossom and leaf buds. He is careful to keep the trees a good shape, liking to see them broad at the base, with straight stems, and to this end is sometimes ruth- less in cutting away what seem to me promising shoots. He will have it that they are deceptive rascals, and that they will yield little or no fruit if left on. As a rule I am told that stone fruits produce on wood formed the previous year, hence the value of having them make young wood while 255 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK they are maturing a crop, and the advisabiUty of limiting that crop. Our critical friend and neighbour, mentioned at the beginning of this book as the one to whom I am indebted for the transference of Charlemagne, will have it that we are more careful for our trees than we are for the fruit they produce or should produce. But this is a libellous imputation which both Charlemagne and I resent ! I must confess, however, that these precious trees, and the appear- ance of this beautiful fruit-house of ours, have kindled within me an affection beyond anything I should ever have thought possible, and I am positive that the Better Half, who has travelled, by degrees, from the position of grudging concessionnaire to that of proud proprietor, is every whit as fond ! And as for Charlemagne, this regiment of precise trees is his immaculate body-guard, his crack corps, dear to his heart as delightful to his eyes ! 256 MISTRESS AND MAN There is no item relating to the care of these trees which he overlooks as he reviews them. It is much to his credit, of course, that he should be thus careful, but for my part, and to be quite frank, I must confess to you that I am ever on the watch lest Charlemagne and his regiment should take from me the last remnant of dictator- ship that I strive so hard to hold. Often enough it comes to a crossing of swords between us. For example, there is the matter of picking. . . . Charlemagne claims the right to pick the fruits himself, for there is a precise hour of the day and a precise point when he judges them to be prime, and his face, when he brings in the dish for dessert, is certainly a study worthy of a painter's brush. He beams again. I am a Christian, I trust, with a Christian's spirit of charity and goodwill. I like to see Charle- magne beam and to know he feels happy — ^but s 257 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK also I like to beam myself, and to feel happy too! When a friend appears what more natural than to take him or her down to the fruit-house, to exhibit our treasures, and to cull with pride a luscious specimen for their delectation ? At such a moment I beam broadly, graciously conscious of my benignity. And wherefore not ? (I warn you, reader, lest you also be in danger of being conquered by your Charlemagne !) There is little more to be said. The fruit-house, the greenhouse, the garden plots, the frames, the storeroom, and that busy hive, the kitchen — have they not all spoken for themselves ? I have introduced you, the passer-by, to an intimate view of territories where, most assuredly, trespassers would be prosecuted. You have met there the custodians of our reputation and health. I have 258 259 THE GARDENER AND THE COOK shown you Charlemagne and Charlotte working together usefully, if not always peacefully, and now, at the garden gate, I must bid you farewell, for whatever this Gardener and this Cook of mine may or may not do, they at least assure me that the place for all would-be inheritors of the earth is among the Meek ! "J.n,. Primed iij Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.