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Stewed Watercress
Trim off the coarse ends of the stems and thoroughly wash the watercress, then put it into a saucepan of boiling water with salt and boil it. When cooked, turn the watercress into a colander and press out as much of the water as possible; put about two ounces of butter in a stewpan to melt, then put in the cress and sprinkle over it a little flour. Stir the cress over the fire for ten minutes, and pour in one-half pint of broth, season it with a small quantity of grated nutmeg, salt and pepper and boil for ten minutes longer, stirring all the time. Turn the watercress onto a hot dish, garnish with croutons of fried bread and halves of hard-boiled eggs, and serve. STOCKS. Fumet of Game Take one carrot and half an onion; peel and cut them into slices and put them with half a sprig of thyme, one bay leaf, a little chopped, raw, lean ham and the carcass of any kind of raw game in a covered saucepan. Let brown, add one wineglassful of Madeira and boil; then moisten with a quart of white broth or consomme and add a pinch of salt and twelve whole peppers. Cook well for forty-five minutes, then pass through a broth napkin and preserve in a jar.
Two entries run together here: watercress cooked and sauced like spinach, and a game stock from the stock chapter. Both are straightforward once the archaic measures are pinned down.
- QuantityThe original gives no amount. Watercress collapses to almost nothing, so reckon on something like 2 to 2 1/2 lb (eight to ten supermarket bunches) for four servings. Two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons; half a pint of broth is 1 cup.
- The boil is the hingeBlanch the trimmed cress in well-salted boiling water for about 2 minutes, until it wilts and the stems soften, then drain and squeeze. A long boil as implied by "boil it" leaves grey, flavourless cress with nothing left to season.
- Squeeze hardPress the cress dry in the colander, then again in a towel. Any water left behind thins the roux and the finished dish will pool on the plate. Chop the pressed mass coarsely before it goes into the butter.
- Ten minutes in butterThat stretch over the fire is there to cook the flour and drive off the last moisture. Keep the heat moderate and stir; the flour should smell nutty, not scorched. The recipe says only "a little flour" -- 1 to 2 tablespoons suits a cup of broth.
- Croutons and eggsFry the bread in butter or oil rather than toasting it, which is what "croutons of fried bread" means, and set the halved hard-boiled eggs around the edge at the last moment so they stay warm without weeping.
- Fumet: wineglassful and whole peppersA wineglassful is usually reckoned in period cookery at about 2 fl oz. "Twelve whole peppers" are black peppercorns. A broth napkin is a square of muslin or a doubled coffee filter set in a sieve.
- Fumet: the gameRaw carcasses of pheasant, guinea fowl, duck or rabbit all work; ask a butcher for backs and necks. Brown the vegetables and bones properly before the Madeira goes in, or the finished fumet will taste thin and steamed.
- Storing the fumet"Preserve in a jar" meant a cold larder. Chill it quickly, keep it refrigerated no more than three or four days, or freeze it in small quantities. It is not a shelf-stable preserve.
Watercress reached the American table mainly as a raw garnish, but the Waldorf kitchen, in the hotel where Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel, treated it as a green vegetable in its own right, blanched, bound with a butter-and-flour roux, moistened with stock and finished with nutmeg exactly as spinach or sorrel would be. It is dressed with fried croutons and halved hard-boiled eggs. Watercress was a commercial crop by the 1890s, which is why a hotel kitchen could count on enough of it to cook down by the pound. The fumet printed alongside belongs to the book's stock chapter: a small, strongly flavoured infusion, here from raw game bones and Madeira, kept on hand to lift sauces.