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Left - Overs of Meat, Fish, Etc: Creamed
CREAMED HAM WITH POACHED EGGS Put three-fourths a cup of milk in a double boiler with half a stalk of celery and a slice of onion; let cook fifteen minutes, then pick out the celery and onion and stir in a level tablespoonful and a half, each, of butter and flour, creamed together; stir until the mixture thickens, then cover and let cook ten minutes; stir in three-fourths a cup of fine-chopped ham (cold, boiled) and let stand to become very hot. Dip the edges of rounds of toast in boiling salted water. Set them on a hot serving dish, spread lightly with butter and then with the ham mixture. Finish with a carefully poached egg above the ham. HAM-AND-MACARONI TIMBALES 1/2 cup of macaroni 1 egg, well beaten Rapidly boiling water 1/4 teaspoonful of salt Salt 1/4 teaspoonful of paprika 1/2 cup boiled ham, chopped 2/3 cup of milk or tomato puree Cook the macaroni with salt in boiling water till tender, rinse in cold water and drain. Cut part of the macaroni into slices one-fourth an inch thick; take these, one by one, on the point of a skewer, dip in melted butter and use to line well-buttered moulds. As the melted butter cools, it will hold them in place. To the ham add one-fourth a cup of the tiny rings of macaroni, the egg, salt, paprika and liquid, mix thoroughly and use to fill the moulds. There will be about a cup and a half of material. Measure the moulds, then you will know how many to line. Let cook in hot water on folds of paper, either in the oven or covered closely on the top of the range or in a double boiler. Serve with a cup of tomato or white sauce, to which the rest of the macaroni has been added.
Two ways to use up the end of a boiled ham, both built for two servings. Neither is difficult, but both rely on gentle indirect heat that modern cooks tend to rush.
- The double boiler is the pointThe sauce is thickened over water, not direct flame, so it cannot catch or break while it sits waiting for the eggs. If you use a saucepan instead, keep the heat very low and stir more or less constantly.
- "Creamed together" butter and flourThis is beurre manié — 1½ tablespoons each of soft butter and flour mashed to a paste and whisked into the hot milk, rather than a cooked roux. The ten minutes of covered cooking afterwards is what removes the raw-flour taste; do not cut it short.
- Ham quantitiesThree-quarters of a cup of finely chopped cooked ham is roughly 4 oz. Boiled ham is already salty, so season the sauce only at the end.
- Dipping the toast edgesA brief dip of the edges in boiling salted water moistens and softens them; the recipe does not say why it is done. Don't dunk the whole slice, or the toast will go soggy.
- Poached eggsPoach in barely simmering water with a splash of vinegar, 3 minutes for a set white and liquid yolk. Assemble the toast and ham last so the eggs go straight from water to plate.
- Lining the timbale mouldsThe hinge of the second recipe: the macaroni rings must be dipped in melted butter and pressed against a well-buttered cold mould so the butter sets and holds them. Chill the lined moulds for a few minutes before filling if your kitchen is warm.
- "Measure the moulds"The filling makes about 1½ cups, which fills two 6-oz ramekins or four smaller dariole moulds. Fill to within a quarter inch of the rim; there is egg in the mixture and it will rise slightly.
- Cooking in hot waterA bain-marie. The folds of paper keep the moulds off the hot metal of the pan. No temperature is given in the original; a moderate oven, in the region of 325F, for 30-40 minutes, until the centres are set and a knife comes out clean, is a reasonable modern equivalent; on the stovetop, water at a bare simmer, tightly covered, for about the same.
- Unmoulding and servingLet the timbales stand 5 minutes off the heat before turning out, or the macaroni lining tears. Serve with about a cup of tomato or white sauce with the reserved macaroni stirred in.
Cooking for Two belongs to a wave of early twentieth-century American books written for small households -- young couples, boarding-house cooks, women without servants -- at a point when a good many cookbooks still assumed a large family and a standing joint of meat. A boiled ham was a week's worth of meals in such a kitchen, and a chapter of left-overs was less about thrift for its own sake than about the fact that a ham does not shrink to fit two people. The timbale, from the French timbale (a drum, and by extension a drum-shaped mould), was one way of giving small quantities of chopped meat the dignity of a course: the lined mould turns half a cup of scrap ham into something that arrives at the table looking composed. Creamed ham on toast with a poached egg is the same impulse working in the other direction, and is a close cousin of the dish that later American cooks knew, less elegantly, as creamed chipped beef.