Cress
It is ungrateful to say a word against cresses, but it may be as well to remember that in England at least they have come to mean curses. "I don't care a curse" really means, "I don't care a cress. cress." Perhaps we have too much of them. They are (putting asparagus out Croquettes of account, which has a short season and a dear price) the one vegetable eaten by rich and poor in England, for health even more than for food. The Greeks had a proverb -"Eat cress and gain wit." If this were only true, how clever must those good people be who are always eating cresses for breakfast! On the contrary, their lives are a stupid routine. In a stupid routine also live those French cooks who insist upon sending to table a bunch of cresses with roast fowl-even when there is a salad besides.
To those who have a passion for watercresses, the Flemish soup of them will not be unpleasing. It is usually reserved for meagre days. Take a large bunch of cresses, wash them, cut them up, and set them to boil with water, salt, and it may be a thought of vinegar. Add to them a quantity of peeled potatoes of the mealy sort. When these have broken into a mash, the soup is ready, and may be finished with butter.
CROQUETTES are made of chicken, game, sweetbreads, fat livers, oysters, shrimps and generally the lighter kinds of meat. The meat (most commonly chicken) is finely minced; it is mixed with a seasoning of minced truffles, mushrooms, shalots or chives, as also of nutmeg, pepper and salt; it is bound together with a stiff Allemande sauce ; it is turned into shapes of cork or ball; it is dipped into egg and rolled in breadcrumbs; it is fried crisp of a golden hue; it is sprinkled with salt, and served on a napkin with a garnish of fried parsley. It is also served in a dish with a surrounding of tomato sauce. When the croquette is finished differently that is, when, instead of being dipped in egg and rolled in breadcrumb, it is wrapped in a thin puff paste, -it is called a Rissole; and when it is wrapped in a thin sheet of veal udder or of bacon fat, it is called a Kromeski. Milanese Croquettes. - A mince of chicken, tongue, truffles, and macaroni, with a seasoning of grated Parmesan. All the rest as before. Cucumber CROÛTE-AU-POT. - A clear soup which may have nothing but crusts in it, but generally has an assortment of the more homely vegetables. See Brunoise.
CRUET is a better word than the French vinaigrette, to express what the French mean by that term-a vinegar and oil sauce, in which the oil predominates. Cruet is a little cruise-it may be for oil or vinegar or anything else; but to most English ears the word cruise will instantly suggest the widow's cruise of oil which was always fulland that is the sort of cruise most needed for the sauce which the French name Vinaigrette. Mix well in a bowl or saucer three tablespoonfuls of oil, not more than one of vinegar-perhaps less, a pinch of salt, and a little pepper, black or white. We call this the French salad mixture, but it is much better known in connection with the Spanish proverb which says that we ought to be spendthrifts of the oil, misers of the vinegar, counsellors in regard to salt-and which is silent as to pepper. The Italians are so chary of salt in this mixture that they have a proverb-"insalata ben salata." The worth of the sauce turns chiefly on the proportion of oil to vinegar, and this must depend a good deal on the nature of the vinegar selected-whether of malt, of wine or of tarragon.
Judiciously made, the cruet sauce is delicious without any further addition, and goes magnificently with salmon hot or cold, turbot, calf's head, and other viands, as well as with salads. But it is usual to add a garniture. For salads the garniture is a chopped ravigote, or else spring onions and parsley chopped. For calf's head add mustard with a garniture of chopped parsley, capers, and shalots. For fish, chopped parsley.
CUCUMBER-Raw. The cucumber is peeled, sliced, and served in a cruet sauce. But on the Continent it is usual, before the sauce is poured on the slices, to sprinkle them well with salt, and to let them lie in this pickle for two Cullis or three hours. This is supposed to render them more digestible; and one rarely sees abroad the crisp, fresh-cut cucumber common enough in England.
Brown Cucumber Garnish or Entremet. - The French call this the English fashion. The cucumbers are peeled, split into quarters, and freed from their pips; they are next floured, peppered, and fried lightly in butter; some broth or gravy is then added, and they are stewed slowly for twenty minutes. The sauce, thickened with flour and butter, and seasoned with salt, pepper and vinegar or lemon-juice, is to be poured over the pieces of cucumber when they are dished.
White Cucumber Garnish or Entremet. - This is the French fashion-the cucumber being boiled till tender in salt and water, and served in a Béchamel or a plain English sauce.
CULLIS is a word which at root means something smoothly gliding. Thus the sliding scenes of a theatre, that slip along in grooves, are called coulisses; and a liquid which is thick enough and smooth enough to slide is called coulis in French, cullis in English. Spanish sauce is often described as a brown cullis; and Velvet-down as a white one. The French also give the name of coulis to what they call otherwise English cream-that is, a custard. In England a cullis generally means a white cullis; and a white cullis is any rich juice of meat which has been reduced to a certain thickness without being in any way browned. A dissolved jelly is a cullis. Unhappily the word is going out of use now, being replaced very much by the word cream, which has quite enough duty to perform in its own proper sense. We speak of a crême d'orge or barley cream, meaning a cullis of barley.
CURAÇOA, as made at Amsterdam by Wynand Fockink, is certainly a liqueur of the first class. It is so perfect and Currants so valuable that there are many imitations of it; but all are far behind the great original, which is made from the peel of an orange very difficult to obtain. It is a bitter orange which grows in the island of Curaçoa, and falls from the tree before it is ripe. The peel of this is dried, and is known in commerce as the Curaçoa of Holland, to dis tin guish it from other Curaçoas which have not the same property, though they are often sold in place of it. The Dutch distillers naturally keep their process a secret, but the French ones declare the Dutch secret to be simply this-that five kilogrammes of dried peel of the Curaçoa of Holland, and the zests of eighty fresh oranges are submitted to the action of sixty litres of very strong alcohol (85°, French measurement); and that there is no real difference between white curaçoa and brown.
CURRANTS - properly, Corinths. - These are a small stoneless grape, which now come chiefly from Zante, but originally from Corinth, whence the name. There are more of these currants used in England than in all the world besides. It is a question whether the English partiality for them is reasonable, for they are very indigestible, though cheap and in moderation pleasant. The Zantiotes scarcely understand what we do with them-they fancy we must use them for a dye; and they tread them in barrels with their feet so hard, that sometimes the mass of currants can only be broken with a mattock. No doubt the feet of these illustrious Greeks enhance the relish of the fruit, and add an unsuspected joy to our puddings and cakes.
CURRANTS-properly, Currans. - We are now speaking of the berry which botanists call Ribes, and which is known in England in three leading families-the gooseberry, red and green; the red currant with a white variety; and the black currant: the first being large and prickly, the other two small and smooth. They are said to derive their name from their resemblance to the currants of the Levant; but Currants this is a mistake which is the more provoking because it has led to a theory that these currants, having a foreign name, cannot be natives of the British soil. It is quite well known that they are indigenous in these islands; and we must therefore look out for an indigenous name. Now, it is remarkable that most of the old writers, and good ones too, when they speak of currants, write currans. English custom evidently taught them to drop the t when speaking of the familiar currant-bush. We are confirmed in this view when we discover that in our provincial dialects the name for a gooseberry is carberry; we are settled in this view if we remember that belonging to a different family there is the cranberry, and if we know why it is so called. The dictionaries declare that it is called after the crane, "because its slender stalk has been compared to the long legs and neck of a crane." It is really so called because cran means red, and it has nothing whatever to do with the crane, unless that bird is so called from its red eyes. There is a flower called cranesbill, which has just as much to do with the crane, though we are told that it has an appendage to the seed-vessel which resembles the beak of a crane or stork. The word is really a corruption of cranbell-a red bell as distinct from a blue bell. Those who take an interest in the herring fishery may have read of boats catching so many crans of fish. These are baskets of the red osier. We find the root car, red, spreading far away through many European languages-in Greek, in Latin and its later dialects, in Gaelic, in Welsh, in Old German, and in Old English. We have it in the first syllables of carnation (flesh colour), carmine, crimson, cramoisie, carrot—which in Gaelic is curran, cargoose-an old name for the grebe which has a chestnut-red kind of head, a brown-red back and red eyes-carbon, carbuncle, char (the verb-to burn), char, the fish which has a red belly, and I will add cherry, in spite of the etymologists, who go to some long-forgotten place, Kerasos in Asia Curry Minor, for the name of this ruddy fruit. The list might be multiplied-I have said nothing of coral or crocusbut examples enough have been given to enable the reader to return with his eyes open to the spelling of the currant-curran, and to the provincial English name of the gooseberry-the carberry. It ought to be clear that in the olden time the currant and the cranberry were both called by the same name or names, as similar as dialectical varieties permit-the red berry, and that the term red curran is a reduplication-the red red.
All this about words in order to prove that the British currant has a British name, however much it may be twisted about. As for the currant itself there is little to be said. Its praise is in all our mouths. The gooseberry or carberry shall have a paragraph to itself. The black currant has little to do with cookery, except as the faithful attendant of Roly Poly, but its grandest title to fame is trumpeted forth under the name of Cassis. For the red currant let the roast mutton, hare, and venison, prove how much it is in demand.