THE DINNER YEAR-BOOK

[1]

Familiar Talk with the Reader.

“Do not laugh when I tell you that one of the most serious perplexities of my every-day life is the daily recurring question, ‘What shall we have for dinner?’” writes a correspondent.

I do not smile at the naïve confession. I feel more like sighing as I recollect the years during the summers and winters of which the same query advanced with me into the dignity of a problem. There were several important ends to be compassed in the successful settlement of the question. To accomplish an agreeable variety in the family bill of fare; to accommodate appetites and individual preferences to the season and state of the local market; to avoid incongruous associations of meats, vegetables, sauces, entrées and desserts; to build fragments into a structure about which should linger no flavor of staleness or sameness; so to manage a long succession of meals that yesterday’s repast and the more frugal one of to-day should not suggest the alternation of fat and lean in the Hibernian’s pork, or the dutiful following of penance upon indulgence; to shun, with equal care, the rock of parsimony and the whirlpool of extravagance;—but why extend the list of dilemmas? Are they not written in the mental chronicles of every housewife whose conscience—be her purse shallow or deep—will not excuse her from a continual struggle with the left-overs? Such uncompromising[2] bits of facts do these same “left-overs” appear in the next day’s survey of ways, means, and capabilities, that timid mistresses are the less to blame for often winking at the Alexandrine audacity with which the cook has disposed of the knotty subject by emptying platters and tureens into the swill-pail,—which should stand for the armorial bearings of her tribe wherever found,—or satisfied indolence, and what goes with her for humanity, by tossing crusts, bones, and “cold scraps” into the yawning basket of the beggar at the basement door.

One of these days I mean to write an article, scientific and practical, upon the genus, “basket-beggar.” For the present, take the word of one who has studied the species in all its varieties,—who has suffered long, and certainly not been unkind in the acquisition of experience upon this head,—and prohibit their visits entirely, and at all seasons. “Cold cuts” and the “heels” of loaves belong to you as certainly as do hot joints and unmutilated pies. Issue your declaration of independence to the effect that you choose to dispense charity in your own way, and that, as an intelligent Christian woman, you can better judge by what methods to relieve want and aid the really worthy poor, than can the ignorant, irresponsible creature who lavishes what costs her nothing upon every chance speculator whose lying whine excites her pity. Sympathy which, by the way, would generally lie dormant, were the listener to the piteous tale obliged to satisfy the petitioner from her own purse or wardrobe.

Returning from what is not, although it may seem to be a digression, let us talk together more briefly than is our wont in these familiar conferences, of the considerations that have moved and sustained me in the preparation of this volume, and which will, I hope, make it a welcome and useful counsellor to you. First, then, the[3] suggestion and interrogation of sincere seekers for helpful advice pertaining to that most important of the triad of daily meals—“The Family Dinner,” superadded to my own observation and experience of the difficulties that beset the subject. Secondly, the discovery, that so far as I have been able to push my investigations—and my searching has been keen and extensive—no directory upon this particular branch of culinary endeavor has been published, at least none in the English language. We have had books, some of them admirable helps to skilful, no less than to inexperienced housekeepers, upon dinner-giving, and company dinners, and “little dinner” parties, not to refer to the mighty mountain of manuals upon cookery in general; but, up to the time of the present writing, I have found nothing that, to my appreciation, meets the case stated by the friend whose plaint heads this chapter.

My aim has been to write out, for seven days of four weeks in each month, a menu adapted, in all things, to the average American market; giving meats, fish, vegetables, and fruits in their season, and, so far as I could do so upon paper, rendering a satisfactory account of every pound of meat, etc., brought, by my advice, into the kitchen. I have taken the liberty accorded me by virtue of our long and intimate acquaintanceship, of inspecting not only the contents of your market-basket, but each morning the treasures of larder and refrigerator; of offering counsel concerning crumbs, bones, and such odds-and-ends as are held in contempt by many otherwise thrifty managers—to wit, other cold vegetables than potatoes, and dry crusts of bread and cake, while of gravy and dripping I have made specialties. I have tried, moreover, to inspire such respect for made-over dinners, as we feel for the pretty rugs made of the ravellings of Axminster[4] carpets. We do not attempt to impose them upon ourselves or our friends as “pure Persian.” But neither do we blush for them because Mrs. Million Aire across the way would scorn to give them house-room. Let “Consistency” be stamped upon every appointment of your household, and even the parvenue opposite cannot despise you. Once learn the truth that moderate, or even scanty means do not make meanness or homeliness a necessity, and act upon the lesson, and you can set criticism at defiance. Apropos to this point of consistency, let me say, in explanation, not apology, for the small space devoted to company-dinners, that I have dealt with them upon the principle that ten times one makes ten. Having, in emulation of the Eastern beauty, carried the calf with ease for four weeks, you will hardly appreciate the difference in the weight of the cow you lift upon the fifth. In plainer phrase, give John and the children good dinners, well-cooked, and daintily served, every day, and the entertainment of half-a-dozen friends in addition to the family party will cease to be a stupendous undertaking. They have a saying in the Southern States that aptly expresses the labor and excitement attendant upon such an event in too many families; the straining after Mrs. Million Aire’s diners à la Russe, which presuppose the despotism of a chef in the kitchen, and the solemn pomp of a Chief Butler in the salle à manger. The Southern description of the frantic endeavor is—“Trying to put the big pot into the little one,” and it is invariably used with reference to preparations for company. Be content, my dear sister, to put into your little pot only so much as it will decently hold, and be thankful that you have in it a sure gauge of responsibility.

I have spoken of dinners for four weeks in each month. I have written receipts for this number, not in forgetfulness[5] of the fact that there is but one February per annum, but because the need of adapting the bills of fare to the days of the week, instead of the month, was absolute, and if I wished the Dinner Year-Book to be a perpetual calendar, I must say nothing of the broken week that sometimes ends and sometimes begins the month. The difficulty of disposing satisfactorily of the two or three odd days brought to my mind, while blocking out my work, the summary manner in which one of my baby-girls once dismissed a somewhat analogous difficulty.

“My dear,” I said to her one night as she concluded her prayer at my knee, “you have forgotten to pray for your little cousins. How did that happen? Don’t you want our Heavenly Father to take care of them?”

She made a motion of again bending her knees, yawned sleepily, and tumbled into bed.

“Can’t help it, mamma! Baby is too tired! Horace and Eddie must scuffle for themselves just this one night!”

I have given you twenty-eight—nay, counting your possible company-meal—twenty-nine dinners in succession to little purpose if you cannot collate from previous receipts one or two for yourself, and be the better for the practice. I need hardly say that I do not anticipate or desire slavish adherence to the plan sketched for your day or week. I have sketched—that is all—not worked out a sum in which addition or subtraction would materially affect the sum-total. The framework is, I would fain hope, symmetrical. I expect you to build thereupon as convenience or discretion may dictate.

[6]

Touching Saucepans.

While it is true that the finest tools will not impart skill to the untrained workman, it is equally a matter of fact that the best artisan is he who cares most jealously for the quality and condition of his instruments as well as for the finish of his workmanship.

A visitor once asked permission to witness the operation of cooking a beefsteak in my kitchen, saying that her husband had spoken in terms of commendation of those he had eaten at my table. Like the good wife she was, she desired to “catch the trick,” whatever it might be, of preparing them to his liking. I willingly acceded to her request, and upon her return to the parlor her husband inquired eagerly: “Did you learn the secret?”

“Yes,” was the smiling answer. “You must buy me a gridiron!”

Up to that time, she then explained, fried steaks had been the rule in her house, and gridirons a thing unheard or unthought of.

A fried beefsteak being, as I have elsewhere stated, a culinary solecism, I have, perhaps, selected an extreme case as the test of my discourse upon the necessity of a supply of fitting utensils for the proper prosecution of home-cookery. Mrs. Whitney’s idea of the “art-kitchen,” so charmingly set forth in “We Girls,” may not be so chimerical (with limitations) as most practical housewives—practised in nothing more than in the exercise of patience—are apt to suppose. They tell us the tale—known already too sadly well to each of us—of the impossibility of inducing “girls” who are tractable and respectful in most things, to accept labor-saving machines,[7] and the thousand-and-one ingenious contrivances for making cooking easier and even graceful; of the hard usage to which expensive implements are subjected in rude hands, the motive-power of which is the untilled brain, unrestrained by the conscienceless will; of how innovations are openly flouted, or secretly sneered at, “until,” say they, “we find it easier to let the cook have her own way down-stairs, and reconcile ourselves, as best we may, to obstinate stupidity and unmerciful breakages. As to art-kitchens”—a shrug and a groan,—“we are thankful if our tenderest care can keep the upper stories free from the vandalism that rages below.”

Nevertheless, acknowledging, as I have, personally, reasons for doing—the truth of all these things—I make answer, “Have an art-kitchen for yourself!” First, give your cook, or maid-of-all-work, a fair trial. It is a duty you owe to humanity and to her to prove, conclusively, whether her careless or destructive habits be ingrain and wilful, or merely the result of ignorance and bad training. There are bad mistresses, let us remember,—and more still who are indifferent or incompetent. If “our girl” has a heart or a conscience, let us find it. Make her understand the value and usefulness of the appliances you have furnished for her work, where and how they are to be kept, and set her the example of always looking for and putting them in their proper places. If they are misused, show your regret decidedly, but still kindly. Should all means of civilizing her taste up to your standard fail, make, as I have advised, an art-kitchen for your own use. Appropriate one corner of the room, where cooking is done, for your operations, and arrange there your pet tools. Have your scoop flour-sifter; your patent pie-lifter and oyster-broiler; your star-toaster; your pie-crimper, vegetable and nutmeg graters; gravy-strainer, colander, biscuit-cutter,[8] skimmers, larding needles, wire, and perforated, and slit and fluted spoons; your weights and measures, and the tidy, serviceable tinned and enamelled saucepans, Scotch kettles, frying-pans, etc., that will retain tidiness and serviceable qualities so long in your care, and so soon come to grief in boorish clutches. Set all these, and as many others as you like and can afford to buy—always including the Dover egg-beater and its “Baby” (made for whipping one egg to more purpose than one egg, or anything else as small was ever whipped before)—in array upon walls and shelves,[A] and let the logic of daily events prove how far they will deprive work of the wearing vexations attendant upon long searches for the right article, and its wrong condition when found. Make your helpers—one and all—comprehend that these are your especial property, to be used—and kept clean—by no one else. Let them be looked down upon as the toys of a would-be-busy woman by the superior intellects about you, should they see fit thus to do, and provide such tools as are suited to coarser fingers for them to use. The chances are many to one that your dexterous manipulation of your instruments; the excellence of the products achieved by yourself and them; even the attractive neatness of the display and your corner, will win skeptics, first, to indulgence, then, admiration, then, to imitation. If you can afford the great [9]luxury of a pastry or mixing-room, adjoining the kitchen, so much the better for you and your pious undertaking. But without regard to what may be the effect upon others, have your saucepans, of whatever designs and in whatever quantities you like—taking “saucepan” as a generic term for every description of mute helpers in the task of elevating cookery into a fine art, or, at the least, in redeeming it from the stigma of coarseness and vulgarity.

Have, also, as an indispensable adjunct of saucepans, appliances for cleansing them. There is nothing inherently degrading in dish-washing. Provide plenty of towels and hot water; a mop with a handle and a loop by which to hang it up when it has been squeezed and shaken after use; a soap-shaker—a neat wire cup, enclosing the soap, and furnished with a handle of tinned wire, and a dish-pan, with a partition running across the middle, that the soiled articles may be rinsed from grease in one of the compartments before they are purified thoroughly in the other. Have, also, at hand a can or box of washing soda, and a bottle of ammonia for taking off the grease more effectually; a cake of Indexical silver soap in a cup, with a brush, for restoring lustre to tins, Britannia or plated, or silver ware. Thus armed, the cleansing of your implements will be a matter of brief moment, and your work in the kitchen be, in no sense, a hindrance to the stated duties of the day, while your methods and occasional presence cannot fail to be a refining influence upon all except the very common and spiritually unclean. Ladyhood, if thorough, will assert itself, even behind a scullion’s apron.[10]
[11]

JANUARY.

Beef Soup.

• 3 lbs. of lean beef, with a marrow-bone.
• ½ lb. lean ham (or a ham-bone, if you have it).
• 1 turnip.
• 1 onion.
• 1 carrot.
• ¼ of a cabbage.
• 3 stalks of celery.
• 3 quarts of water—cold, of course.
• Salt and pepper to taste.

Cut the meat very fine, and crack the bones well. Put these on in a pot with a close top; cover with a quart of water, and set where they will come very slowly to a boil. If they do not reach this point in less than an hour, so much the better. When the contents of the pot begin to bubble, add the remaining two quarts of cold water, and let all boil slowly for three hours: for two hours with the top closed, during the last with it slightly lifted. Wash and peel the turnip, carrot, and onion, scrape the celery, and wash with the cabbage. Cut all into dice and lay in cold water, a little salted, for half an hour. Put the carrot on to stew in a small vessel by itself; the others all together, with enough water to cover them. Some[12] think the carrot keeps color and shape better if hot, instead of cold water be used for it. Let it stew until tender, then drain off the water and set it aside to cool. The other vegetables should be boiled to pieces. Half an hour before the soup is to be taken up, strain the water from the cabbage, etc., pressing them to a pulp to extract all the strength. Return this to the saucepan, throw in a little salt, let it boil up once to clear it; skim and add to the soup. Put in pepper, and salt—unless the ham has salted it sufficiently—and boil, covered, twenty minutes. Strain into an earthenware basin; let it get cool enough for the fat to arise to the surface, when take off all that will come away. Return to the pot, which should have been previously rinsed with hot water, boil briskly for one minute, and throw in the carrot. Skim and serve.

This is a good, clear soup. If you like it thicker, dissolve a tablespoonful of gelatine in enough cold water to cover it well—this may be done by an hour’s soaking—and add to the soup after the latter is strained and cleared of the fat.

When practicable, make Sunday’s soup on Saturday, so far as to prepare the “stock,” or meat base. Set it away in an earthenware crock, adding a little salt. This not only lessens Sunday’s work, but the unstrained soup gathers the whole strength of the meat, and the fat can be removed in a solid cake of excellent dripping. Indeed, it is a good rule always to prepare soup stock at least twenty-four hours before it is to be used for the table.

Try, likewise, to make enough soup for Sunday to last over Monday as well. A little forethought on Saturday will lessen the labors and increase the comfort of what has been somewhat profanely named “Job’s birthday,” the anniversary which was to be accursed for evermore.

Chicken smothered with Oysters.

• 1 full-grown, tender chicken.
• 1 pint of oysters.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of cream.
• 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch.
• [13]Yolks of three hard-boiled eggs.
• 1 scant cup bread-crumbs.
• Pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

Prepare the chicken as for roasting. Stuff with a dressing of the oysters chopped pretty fine, and mixed with the bread-crumbs, seasoned to taste with pepper and salt. Tie up the neck securely. (This can be done on Saturday, if the fowl be afterwards kept in a very cold place.)

Put the chicken thus stuffed and trussed, with legs and wings tied close to the body with soft tape, into a tin pail with a tight top. Cover closely and set, with a weight on the top, in a pot of cold water. Bring gradually to a boil, that the fowl may be heated evenly and thoroughly. Stew steadily, never fast, for an hour and a half after the water in the outer kettle begins to boil. Then open the pail and test with a fork to see if the chicken be tender. If not, re-cover at once, and stew for half or three-quarters of an hour longer. When the chicken is tender throughout, take it out and lay upon a hot dish, covering immediately. Turn the juices left in the pail into a saucepan, thicken with the corn-starch, which should first be wet up with a little cold milk, then the chopped parsley, butter, pepper and salt, and the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs chopped fine. Boil up once, stir in the cream, and take from the fire before it can boil again. Pour a few spoonfuls over the chicken, and serve the rest in a sauce-tureen.

Celery Salad.

• 2 bunches of celery.
• 1 tablespoonful of salad oil.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
• 1 small teaspoonful fine sugar.
• Pepper and salt to taste.

Wash and scrape the celery, lay in ice-cold water until dinner-time, when cut into inch-lengths, season, tossing all well up together, and serve in a salad bowl.

Cauliflower au gratin.

• 1 large cauliflower.
• 4 tablespoonfuls grated cheese.
• 1 cup drawn butter.
• Pepper and salt.
• A pinch of nutmeg.

[14]

Boil the cauliflower until tender (about twenty minutes), having first tied it up in a bag of coarse lace or tarlatan. Have ready a cup of good drawn butter, and pour over the cauliflower, when you have drained and dished the latter. Sift the cheese thickly over the top, and brown by holding a red-hot shovel so close to the cheese that it singes and blazes. Blow out the fire on the instant, and send to the table.

Mashed Potatoes.

Pare the potatoes very thin, lay in cold water for an hour, and cover well with boiling water. (“Peach-blows” are better put down in cold water.) Boil quickly, and when done, drain off every drop of water; throw in a little salt; set back on the range for two or three minutes. Mash soft with a potato-beetle, or whip to a cream with a fork, adding a little butter and enough milk to make a soft paste. Heap in a smooth mound upon a vegetable dish.

Stewed Tomatoes.

Open a can of tomatoes an hour before cooking them. Leave out the cores and unripe parts. Cook always in tin or porcelain saucepans. Iron injures color and flavor. Stew gently for half an hour; season to taste with salt, pepper, a little sugar, and a tablespoonful of butter. Cook gently, uncovered, ten minutes longer, and turn into a deep dish.

Blanc Mange.

• 1 liberal quart of milk.
• 1 oz. Cooper’s gelatine.
• ¾ of a cup of white sugar.
• 2 teaspoonfuls vanilla.

Soak the gelatine for two hours in a breakfast-cup of cold water. Heat the milk to boiling in a farina-kettle, or in a tin pail set in a pot of hot water. Add the soaked gelatine and sugar, stir for ten minutes over the fire, and strain through a thin muslin bag into a mould wet with cold water. Flavor and set in a cold place to form. To loosen it, dip the mould for one instant in hot water, detach[15] the surface from the sides by a light pressure of the fingers, and reverse over a glass or china dish. Serve with powdered sugar and cream.

By all means have Sunday desserts prepared upon the preceding day. To this end, I have endeavored to give such receipts for the blessed day as can be easily made ready on Saturday.

Cocoa.

• 6 tablespoonfuls of cocoa to each pint of water.
• As much milk as you have water.
• Sugar to taste.

Rub the cocoa smooth in a little cold water. Have ready on the fire the pint of boiling water. Stir in the grated cocoa-paste. Boil twenty minutes; add the milk and boil five minutes more, stirring often.

Sweeten in the cups to suit different tastes.

There is a preparation of cocoa, already powdered, called “cocoatina,” which needs no boiling. It is very good, and saves the trouble of grating and cooking. I regret that, although I have used it frequently and with great satisfaction, I have forgotten the name of the manufacturer. It is put up in round boxes, like mustard, and is quite as economical for family use as the cakes of cocoa.

Sponge Cake.

• 6 eggs.
• The weight of the eggs in sugar.
• Half their weight in flour.
• 1 lemon, juice and rind.

Beat yolks and whites very light, separately of course, the powdered sugar into the yolks when they are smooth and thick; next, the juice and grated peel of the lemon; then the whites with a few swift strokes; at last, the flour, in great, loose handfuls. Stir in lightly, but thoroughly. Too much beating after the flour goes in makes sponge cake tough. Bake in round tin moulds, buttered. Your oven should be steady. When the cakes begin to color on top, cover with paper to prevent burning.

When cool, wrap in a thick cloth to keep fresh.[16]

Said an irascible householder to a friend from another city, whom he chanced to meet in the street one day, “Come and dine with me! But I give you warning we shall have nothing for dinner but a confounded dressmaker!” Few of the great middle class, who are the strength and glory of our land, would dare take an unexpected guest home on washing-day, although fewer still would dare reveal, as frankly as did our blunt citizen, the cause of their reluctance to unveil the penetralia of what are, upon all days save Black Monday and Blue Tuesday, orderly and brightsome households.

Don’t interrupt me, please, my much-tried and much-trying sister, upon whose brow the plaits of Monday’s tribulations have left enduring traces! I know Bridget is always cross on wash-day, and that Katy wears an aggrieved air from morning until night; that dusting, china-washing, and divers other unaccustomed tasks are appointed unto your already busy self; that John and the boys hate “pick-up dinners;” that the modest bills of fare set down in this book for the second and third days of the week will, at the first glance, seem preposterous and unfeeling. You will survey them with very much the same feeling as moved Pope to exclaim, with tears in his eyes, “From an old friend I had not expected this!” when his host, having allowed him to eat to repletion of less savory viands, had brought on, without a note of preparation, the poet’s favorite dish, a fine hare roasted with truffles. But the fact remains that people cannot swallow enough on Sunday to support Nature through the two days’ journey into the wilderness of making-clean that[17] follows the season of rest and devotion. It is also true that your husband and yourself, with school-children and servants, work harder on Monday than upon any other one day of the seven, and that your food should be nourishing. Should Bridget protest against “hot mate and soup” as unprecedented and “onfaling,” Bridget’s mistress (by courtesy) must bring another unknown commodity to the obstinate Celt, to bear upon the subject—to wit, Brains. As I shall try to show, an hour given by yourself to the lower regions—too often an inferno on that direful day—will put such a repast before unexpectant John as shall have for his eye and taste none of the characteristics of a “pick-up dinner.”

Soup À l’Italienne.

• The stock of Sunday’s soup strained from the carrots.
• Half a cup of grated cheese and a cup of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch wet up with water.
• 2 eggs beaten light.

Put the soup on fifteen minutes before dinner, where it will heat quickly. The moment it boils, draw it to one side, stir in the corn-starch and milk and heat anew, stirring constantly until it begins to thicken. Set it again upon the side of the range, and add the beaten eggs. Cover and leave it where it will keep hot, but not cook, while you scald the tureen and put the grated cheese in the bottom. In five minutes pour the soup upon the cheese, stir all up well, and it is ready for the table.

This is a delicious soup and easily made.

Breaded Mutton Chops—Baked.

Trim the chops neatly and put aside the bones and bits of skin for the sauce for macaroni. Pour a little melted butter over the meat. Do this as early in the day as convenient, cover them and let them stand until an hour before they are to be served. Then, roll each in beaten egg, next, in fine cracker-dust, (you can buy it ready powdered) and lay them in your dripping-pan with a very little water in the bottom—just enough to keep them from burning. Bake quickly—covering the dripping-pan with another—for half an hour. Then remove the upper[18], baste the chops with butter and hot water, and let them brown. When done, lay them upon a hot dish and set in the open oven to keep warm. Add to the gravy in the dripping-pan a little hot water, a teaspoonful of browned flour, a tablespoonful of catsup, a small quantity of minced onion, pepper and salt. Boil up once, strain, and pour over the chops.

Macaroni with Tomato Sauce.

Break the macaroni into short pieces and set over the fire with enough boiling water to cover it well, as it swells to treble its original dimensions. In twenty minutes it should be tender. Drain off the water carefully, not to break the macaroni, and stir lightly into it pepper, salt, and a tablespoonful of butter. Turn it into a deep dish and pour over it a sauce made as follows: To the bones and refuse bits left from trimming the chops, add a pint of cold water, and stew slowly upon the back of the range, (lest Bridget should be inconvenienced thereby,) until you have less than a cupful of good gravy. Strain out the bones, etc., season to taste, and add what was left from the stewed tomatoes of yesterday. Having had the provision for to-day’s dinner in mind, you will have acted wisely in seeing for yourself that it did not go into the swill-pail under the head of “scraps.” Cook tomatoes and gravy together for three minutes after they begin to simmer, and pour, smoking hot, over the macaroni. Let it stand covered a few minutes before serving.

Potato Puff.

To two cupfuls of cold mashed potato (more of yesterday’s leavings), add a tablespoonful of melted butter, and beat to a cream. Put with this two eggs whipped light, and a cupful of milk, salting to taste. Beat all well; pour into a greased baking-dish, and bake quickly to a light brown. Serve in the dish in which it was cooked.

Corn-starch Hasty Pudding.

• 1 quart of fresh milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch wet up with water.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.

[19]

Heat the milk to scalding, and stir into it the corn-starch until it has boiled ten minutes and is thick and smooth throughout. Add salt and butter, let the pudding stand in the farina-kettle in which it has been boiled—the hot water around it—for three minutes before turning it into a deep open dish.

Eat with butter and sugar, or with powdered sugar and cream, with nutmeg grated over it.

Coffee.

A French coffee-pot is a convenience on Monday. If you have one, you know how to use it. If not, put a quart of boiling water into your coffee-pot; wet up a cupful of ground coffee with the white of an egg, adding the egg-shell, and a little cold water. Put this into the boiling hot water, and boil fast ten minutes. Then, add half a cup of cold water, and set it upon the hearth or table to “settle” for five minutes. Pour it off carefully into your metal or china coffee-pot or urn.

Scotch Broth.

• 3 lbs. of veal and bones from neck or knuckle.
• 3 quarts of water.
• 1 onion.
• 1 turnip.
• 3 stalks of celery.
• 1 cupful pearl barley.
• Salt and pepper to taste.

[20]

Crack the bones and mince the meat early in the day, if you dine near midday, and put on with the cold water. Soak the barley in lukewarm water, after washing it well, and when it has lain in the tepid bath for two hours, put it in the same over the fire to cook slowly, keeping it covered fully by adding hot water from the kettle. Wash, scrape and chop the vegetables; cover with cold water, and stew in a saucepan by themselves. When they are very soft, rub them through a colander; add the water in which they were cooked, and keep hot until the meat in the soup-kettle has boiled to rags. For this purpose four hours are better than three. Strain out bones and meat; put soup-stock, barley (with the water in which it has boiled), vegetable broth, pepper, and salt, into one kettle and boil slowly for thirty minutes. A little chopped parsley is an improvement.

Rolled Beefsteaks.

• 2 good sirloin steaks.
• Bread-crumbs.
• A slice of fat salt pork.
• Seasoning, a little minced onion, pepper and salt.

Take out the bones from the steak and throw them into the soup-pot. If your butcher has not already done so, beat the meat flat with the broad side of a hatchet, and cover it with a force-meat made of bread-crumbs, minced pork, and half an onion. Moisten this slightly with water, and season to taste. Roll each steak up, closely enclosing the stuffing; bind with twine into two compact bundles and lay in a dripping-pan. Dash a cupful of boiling water over each, cover with an inverted pan, and bake about three-quarters of an hour, in their own steam. At the end of this time remove the cover, baste with butter and dredge with flour to brown the meat. When they are of a fine color, lay upon a hot dish. Thicken the gravy with a little browned flour, boil up and send to table in a boat. In removing the strings from the rolled beef prior to serving, clip them in several places, that the form of the meat may not be disturbed.[21]

Cabbage Salad.

• 1 small head of cabbage, chopped fine, or cut into shreds.
• 1 cup of boiling milk.
• ¾ of a cup of vinegar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 tablespoonful of white sugar.
• 2 eggs well beaten.
• 1 teaspoonful essence of celery.
• Pepper and salt.

Heat milk and vinegar in separate vessels. To the boiling vinegar add butter, sugar, and seasoning, lastly the chopped cabbage. Heat to scalding, but do not let it boil. Stir the beaten eggs into the hot milk. Cook one minute together after they begin to boil. Turn the hot cabbage into a bowl; pour the custard over it; toss up and about with a wooden or silver fork, until all the ingredients are well mixed. Cover and set in a very cold place for some hours.

This is a very delightful salad, quite repaying the trouble of cooking the dressing.

Browned Potatoes.

Boil large potatoes with their skins on; peel them, and, when you uncover your beef for browning, lay the potatoes in the dripping-pan about the meat. Dredge and baste them as well as the beef. If not quite brown when the meat is ready, leave them in the gravy for awhile, before thickening the latter. Drain in a hot colander, and arrange neatly around the steaks in the dish.

Baked Beans.

Soak dried beans all night in soft water, exchanging this in the morning for lukewarm, and this, two hours later, for still warmer. Let them lie an hour in this, before putting them on to boil in cold water. When they are soft, drain and turn them into a bake-dish. Season with pepper and salt, with a liberal spoonful of butter. Add enough boiling water to prevent them from scorching and bake, covered, until they smoke and bubble. Remove the cover, and brown. Serve in the bake-dish.[22]

Apple and Tapioca Pudding.

• 1 teacupful tapioca, soaked for five hours in 3 teacupfuls of warm (not hot) water.
• 8 juicy pippins, pared and cored.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar and a saltspoonful of salt, with a few whole cloves.

Arrange the apples in a deep dish; add a cup of cold water; cover, and steam in a moderate oven until tender all through, turning them once or twice. Turn off half the liquid and pour the tapioca, which should have been soaked in a warm place, over the apples, when you have filled the hollows left by the cores with sugar and put a clove in each. The tapioca should be slightly salted. Bake one hour, or until the tapioca is clear and crusted on top. Serve in pudding-dish.

Hard Sauce.

To two cups of powdered sugar add half a cup of butter, slightly warmed, so that the two can be worked up together. When they are well mixed, beat in half a teaspoonful of nutmeg and the juice of a lemon. Whip smooth and light, mound neatly upon a butter-plate, and set in the cold to harden.

Split Pea Soup.

• 1 pint of split peas.
• 4 quarts of water.
• 2 lbs. of beef and some bones.
• [23]¼ lb. of lean bacon or ham.
• 3 stalks of celery, the white part only, cut fine.
• Juice of a lemon.
• Stale bread cut into dice and fried.

Soak the peas all night in soft water, changing it in the morning for warm—not hot. Throw this off after an hour and cover the peas with four quarts of cold water. Boil in this—adding the meat, cut small, the bones well cracked and the celery—four hours. Always boil soups slowly. The neglect of this rule leaves in the kettle a mass of toughened meat and an ocean of dish-water.

When you are ready to take up your soup, strain in a colander, picking out and casting aside bits of bones and shreds of meat. Rub the peas and celery through the holes of the strainer until nothing more will pass. Season with pepper and salt; add the juice of a small lemon, and return to the kettle, which must first be rinsed with hot water. Let all boil together two minutes. Should it not seem so thick as you would like, you can put in, while it is boiling, a little corn-starch wet up with cold water. Put a couple of slices of stale bread, cut into dice and fried crisp in dripping, in the heated tureen, and pour the soup upon them.

Halibut Steaks—Fried.

Wash and wipe the steaks. Roll each in flour, and fry upon a buttered griddle, turning carefully with a spatula, or cake-turner, when the lower side is done. They should be of a nice brown, and tender throughout. Remove to a hot dish and garnish with sliced lemon; in carving, see that a bit of the lemon goes to each person, as many prefer it to any other sauce for fish. Send around potatoes with the steak. Worcestershire is a good store-sauce for fish and game. Anchovy is pre-eminently a fish sauce, but many do not like it.

Leg of Mutton—Boiled.

Do not have the mutton too fat or too large. Cut off the shank, which the butcher will have nicked for you, leaving about two inches beyond the ham. Wash and wipe carefully and boil in hot water, with a little salt, until[24] a fork will readily pierce the thickest part. About ten or twelve minutes to the pound is a good rule in boiling fresh meat. Serve with caper sauce. Since you intend to use the liquor in which the meat is boiled for to-morrow’s soup, do not oversalt it. But sprinkle, instead, salt over the leg of mutton after it is dished; rub it all over with butter and set in a hot oven for a single minute.

Caper Sauce.

• 1 cup of the liquor in which the meat has been boiled.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of flour rubbed smooth in a little water. Salt to taste.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• About two dozen capers or green nasturtium-seed.

Heat the liquor to boiling, and skim before stirring in the flour, which must be perfectly free from lumps, and rubbed smooth in cold water. Stir until the sauce thickens evenly. It is best to cook all sauces in a vessel set within a larger one of hot water. When it has boiled about a minute, add the butter gradually, stirring each bit in well before putting in more. Salt, and drop in the capers. Let it just boil, and turn into a sauce-boat.

Spinach.

Pull the spinach from the stalks, leaf by leaf; wash carefully, and leave in cold water one hour. Boil in hot water fifteen minutes. Drain very dry in a colander; chop extremely fine in a wooden bowl, then return to the saucepan with a tablespoonful of butter, a little salt, and a teaspoonful of white sugar. As it heats beat it up with a wooden spoon until it is a soft paste. Let it bubble up once, and dish. Lay a hard-boiled egg or two, cut in thin slices, upon the surface. Few vegetables are more often ruined in the cooking than spinach. The above receipt is simple and good.

Stewed Potatoes.

Pare and cut into large dice some good potatoes. Lay in cold water half an hour. Stew in cold water, a little salted. There should be enough water to cover them[25] well. When they are tender and begin to crumble at the edges, drain off half the water, and pour in as much milk. When they are again scalding hot, stir in a lump of butter the size of an egg (for a large dish) rolled in flour, salt, pepper and chopped parsley to taste. Boil up once and serve in a covered dish.

Cottage Pudding.

• 1 cup of powdered sugar.
• 1 cup of sweet milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 2 eggs, beaten light, yolks and whites separately.
• Saltspoonful of salt.
• About 3 cups of Hecker’s prepared flour, enough for cake-batter.

Rub the butter well into the sugar; add beaten yolks; the milk, salt, then whipped whites and yolks alternately. Bake in a buttered mould. When you can bring out the testing-straw clean from the middle of the loaf, turn it out upon a dish. Cut in slices while hot, as it is wanted.

One who has never tried it can hardly believe that the result of a receipt which may be tried fearlessly by a novice in cookery, could be the really elegant pudding just described.

It is also as economical as toothsome.

Sauce for Cottage Pudding.

• 2 cups of powdered sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 cup of boiling water.
• 1 glass sherry wine.
• Nutmeg or cinnamon to taste.

Rub the butter into the sugar; add hot water gradually; then spice and wine. Cover tightly to keep in the strength of the wine, and set for twenty minutes in a saucepan of boiling water. Stir up and send to table.[26]

Vermicelli Soup.

Take off all the fat from the broth in which your mutton was cooked yesterday, and boil it down slowly to two-thirds of the original quantity. Stew to pieces, in another vessel, a stalk of celery, one small onion, a carrot, and a bunch of sweet herbs—all cut up fine. A ham-bone, if you have it, or a couple of slices of lean ham, will be an improvement to the broth. Strain the soup; rub the vegetables through a fine colander with the water in which they were boiled; return to the fire with a double handful of vermicelli broken into short pieces; boil for ten minutes; add a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour; boil up and serve.

Send around a saucer of grated cheese with vermicelli and macaroni soups. It is a great improvement to the flavor and consistency. Each person may take as much or as little as he likes.

Scalloped Oysters.

• 1 quart of fine oysters.
• 1 coffee-cupful of pounded cracker.
• 2 great spoonfuls of butter.
• ½ cupful of cream or rich milk.
• Pepper and salt to taste.

Butter a baking-dish and cover the bottom pretty thickly with pounded cracker. Wet with oyster liquor and a few spoonfuls of cream. Next, lay oysters, one deep, closely over these. Pepper and salt, and stick a bit of butter upon each. Another layer of crumbs, wet[27] as before; more oysters, and proceed in like order until your dish is full, making the top layer of crumbs with butter dotted over it. Set in the oven, invert a plate or tin pan over the dish, and bake until the juice bubbles up to the top. Uncover; set upon the upper grating of the oven to brown, and send to table in the bake-dish. Pass around sliced lemon with it.

Oysters, like fish, follow immediately after soup, and are a course by themselves.

Mince of Mutton with Potato Frill.

• The remains of yesterday’s mutton, minced, but not very fine.
• 1 cupful of drawn butter.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of cream, or rich milk.
• Pepper, salt, and mace to taste, also chopped parsley.
• 1 button onion.
• 2 eggs, well beaten.

Heat the sauce to a boil, add the seasoning and the onion, chopped very fine; then, the meat. Draw the saucepan to the side of the range, and let it stand, closely covered, in boiling water for ten minutes. Set again over the fire and bring to boiling point. Add the eggs and milk and set back at the side for five minutes, still covered. The mince should never really boil after the meat goes in.

Potato Frill.

Boil and mash some potatoes; working in a little milk and butter, but not so much as to make the paste very soft. Season with salt, and, while still hot, knead in a beaten egg. Shape this paste into a fence, on the inside round of a shallow dish; fluting it regularly with the round handle of a knife. Set for one minute in a hot oven, but not long enough to cause the fence to crack. Glaze quickly with butter, and pour the meat carefully within the wall. The mince should not be so thin as to wash away the “frill.” If well managed this is a pretty and a savory dish.[28]

Baked Tomatoes.

• 1 can of tomatoes.
• Stale bread, crumbed fine.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• Pepper, salt, a little chopped parsley, and white sugar.

Drain off two-thirds of the liquor from the tomatoes; salt it and set aside for another day’s soup. One has no excuse for waste whose “stock-pot” is always near at hand. Little comes amiss to it. Cover the bottom of a bake-dish with crumbs; lay the tomatoes evenly upon this bed; season with pepper, salt, sugar, and parsley, with bits of butter here and there. Strew bread-crumbs over all, a thicker layer than at the bottom; put tiny pieces of butter upon this, and bake, covered, about thirty-five minutes. Take off the cover and brown upon the upper shelf of the oven. Do not let it stay there long enough to get dry.

Celery—Raw.

Wash, trim, and scrape the stalks, selecting those that are white and tender. Crisp by leaving them in very cold water until they are wanted for the table. Arrange neatly in a celery-stand. Pass between the oysters and meat.

Tipsy Trifle.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 3 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 1 stale sponge-cake.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• Flavoring of vanilla.
• 1 cup of sherry wine.
• A few spoonfuls of currant jelly.

Make a custard of the milk, sugar, the yolks of the eggs and the whites of two. Put in the latter ingredients when the milk almost boils, and stir until it begins to thicken. Flavor when cold. Put a layer of sliced cake in the bottom of a glass bowl. Wet with the wine and a few spoonfuls of custard, and when it is quite soaked, put on more cake. Proceed in this manner until the cake and wine are used up, when pour on, a little at a time, the[29] remainder of the custard; holding down the cake with a bread spoon as you do this to keep it from floating. Lay a heavy plate upon it, for the same purpose, while you prepare a méringue by whipping stiff the rest of the whites, and then beating in the currant jelly. Cover the trifle with this just before dinner-time.

Apples and Nuts.

Polish the apples, and crack the nuts, unless you have plenty of nut-crackers. Give a knife to each apple-plate, and teach the children to pare them neatly for themselves, instead of “munching” like rabbits at family dinners, and being awkwardly ill at ease when “company” is present. Silver or ivory knives are better for fruit than steel.

Soupe Maigre.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 3 pints of water.
• 1 onion.
• 1 turnip.
• 3 stalks of celery.
• 1 potato (large).
• Quarter of a small cabbage, sliced.
• ½ cup of bread-crumbs, very dry.
• 2 eggs, beaten light.
• Parsley, pepper, and salt to taste.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of butter.

[30]

Clean, scrape, and mince the vegetables, and put on to cook in cold water, enough to cover them well. When they are scalding hot, drain, and cover them with three pints of boiling water. Stew slowly in this until they are reduced to pulp. Rub through a colander, season, and heat again to boiling. Stir in the bread-crumbs; then the butter, very gradually. Have the milk ready, heated in another vessel, and pour into the soup-kettle at this juncture. Let the soup get very hot, but not boil. Set upon the side of the range, and, dipping out a cupful, add it, a little at a time, to the beaten eggs. When well mixed, return eggs and liquor to the rest of the soup; stir over the fire for an instant, but never to boiling, and serve in a hot tureen.

The eggs should not be allowed to curdle in the liquor; hence the need of carefulness in following the directions above given. A little grated cheese is a pleasant accompaniment to this soup, each person adding it as pleases him.

Boiled Cod.

Lay the fish in cold water, a little salt, for half an hour. Wipe dry, and sew up in a linen cloth, coarse and clean, fitted to the shape of the piece of cod. Have but one fold over each part. Lay in the fish-kettle, cover with boiling water, salted at discretion. Allow nearly an hour for a piece weighing four pounds.

Sauce.

To one gill of boiling water allow as much milk; stir into this, while boiling, two tablespoonfuls of butter, added gradually, a tablespoonful of flour wet up with cold water, and, as it thickens, the chopped yolk of a boiled egg and one raw egg, beaten light. Take directly from the fire, season with pepper, salt, a little chopped parsley and the juice of a lemon, and set, covered, in boiling water, but not over the fire, for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour part of the sauce over the fish when dished; the rest in a boat. Send around mashed potatoes with it.[31]

Roast Duck.

Clean the duck very carefully, rinsing it out with a little soda and water, and afterwards with fresh water. Lay in cold, salted water for an hour. Wipe dry, inside and out, and stuff with a dressing of bread-crumbs, seasoned with pepper and salt, a very little powdered sage and a “suspicion” of minced onion. Sew up; dash a cup of boiling water over them, as they lie in the dripping-pan, and roast, covered, for the first half-hour. Remove the cover, and baste freely—three times with butter and water, four or five times with the gravy from the pan. Stew the giblets in a little salted water, and reserve to piece out to-morrow’s salmi. Dish the ducks upon a hot platter.

Bread Sauce.

Skim the fat well from the gravy left in the dripping-pan; have ready a handful of bread-crumbs (stale), wet up with hot water. Thicken the gravy with these when it has come to a boil; season with pepper, salt, and a pinch of mace. Boil all together once and serve.

Mashed Potatoes.

See receipt for Sunday.

While I would spare you all waste of time and pains in looking up receipts in other parts of this volume, I yet deem it hardly worth while to write out in full the same directions twice for the same week—or month.

Rice Croquettes.

• 1 cup of cold boiled rice.
• 1 teaspoonful of sugar, and half as much salt.
• 1 teaspoonful of melted butter.
• 1 egg, beaten light.
• Enough milk to make the rice into stiff paste.
• Sweet lard for frying.

Work rice, butter, egg, etc., into an adhesive paste, beating each ingredient thoroughly into the mixture. Flour your hands and make the rice into oval balls. Dip each in beaten egg, then in flour, or cracker-dust, and fry[32] in boiling lard, a few at a time, turning each with great care. When the croquettes are of a fine yellow-brown, take out with a wire spoon and lay within a heated colander to drain off every drop of fat. Serve hot, with sprigs of parsley laid about them, in an uncovered dish.

Stewed Celery.

Cut the celery into inch lengths; cover with cold water and stew until tender. Turn off the water and supply its place with enough milk to cover the celery. When this begins to boil stir in a good lump of butter rolled in flour; pepper and salt to taste, and stew gently five minutes.

You will like this vegetable thus prepared. Eat, if you like, with a little lemon-juice or vinegar.

Apple Pie.

• 1 quart of flour, dried and sifted.
• ½ lb. of lard.
• ¼ lb. of butter.
• Ice-water to make stiff paste.

Chop the lard into the dry flour. Wet with ice-water into stiff paste, touching as little as may be with your hands. Roll out very thin, always from you. Stick bits of butter all over the sheet; roll up tightly as you would a sheet of paper. Beat flat with your rolling-pin, roll out again, and again baste with butter. Repeat the operations of rolling up, rolling out, and basting until your butter is used up. Set the roll of pastry in a cold, dry place for at least one hour. All night would not be too long. When it is crisp and firm, roll out and line your buttered pie-plates. The bottom crust should be thinner than the upper. And, as a rule, you would do well to give the roll of pastry intended for the latter a “baste” or two more than that meant for the lower.

Pare, core and slice juicy, tart apples; put a layer upon the inner crust, sprinkle with sugar thickly—scatter a few cloves upon the sugar; then another layer of apples, and so on, until the dish is full. Cover with crust,[33] pressed down firmly at the edges, and bake. Eat warm, or cold, with white sugar sifted over the top.

Apple pie is very good with cream poured over each slice.

Macaroni Soup.

• 4 quarts of cold water.
• 3 lbs. of coarse, lean beef, cut into thin strips.
• 2 or 3 lbs. of bones, broken small.
• 4 onions, sliced.
• 1 bunch of sweet herbs, chopped.
• Tomato juice or catsup.
• ¼ lb. of macaroni.
• A few salt pork bones.

Fry the meat until half done, in a very little dripping. Take it out and fry the onions and bones in the same gravy. Put all into a soup-kettle with the herbs, and cover with 4 quarts of water (cold). Bring to a slow boil, and, at the end of four hours, strain into a great bowl to cool, in order that the fat may rise and be taken off. Meanwhile, make ready your macaroni by breaking it into short bits, covering well with boiling water, a little salted, and stewing slowly twenty minutes, or until tender. Add a lump of butter the size of a walnut; let it stand, covered, for a few minutes, while you season the soup, adding the tomato-juice or catsup. Boil, skim,[34] and thicken with a tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water. When it is again on the boil, turn in the macaroni, taking care not to break it. Heat to scalding, but do not boil; pour out, and serve.

Ham and Eggs.

Cut your slices of ham of a uniform size and shape, cutting off the rind. Fry quickly in their own fat. Remove from the pan with a wire spoon so soon as they are done, and arrange upon a hot dish, setting this within the open oven, or upon a pot of boiling water to keep warm. Drop the eggs, as you break them, into the hot fat left in the frying-pan. Do not put so many in as to crowd one another. Each egg should preserve its individuality. Cook about three minutes, without turning. Take up with a spatula, or cake-turner, and lay one upon each slice of ham. Do not send the gravy to table. Strain, and use for dripping.

Salmi of Duck.

From the cold ducks left after yesterday’s dinner cut all the meat in as neat slices as you can, leaving the joints of legs and wings whole. Take off the skin; break the carcass into pieces, and put these, with the stuffing, into a saucepan with a fried onion, some sweet herbs, pepper, salt, and a pinch of allspice. Cover with cold water and stew gently, after it reaches the boil, for one hour. Cool, that the fat may rise and be taken off. Strain the gravy when you have skimmed it; return to the saucepan, boil and skim again, and stir in two tablespoonfuls of browned flour, wet with cold water; lastly, stir in a great spoonful of butter. Stew five minutes longer, and put in the meat. Draw to one side of the range, and set, closely covered, in a pot of boiling water for ten minutes. The meat must be thoroughly heated and steeped in the gravy, but not boil. Take the meat out with a perforated spoon, pile neatly upon a dish and pour the gravy over it. Garnish with triangles of stale bread fried crisp, and send a piece to each person who is helped to salmi.[35]

Fried Parsnips.

Boil, until tender, in hot water slightly salted; let them get almost cold, scrape off the skin, and cut in thick, long slices. Dredge with flour and fry in hot dripping, turning as they brown. Drain very dry in a hot colander; pepper and salt and serve.

Stewed Salsify.

Scrape the roots, dropping each into cold water as you do this, that they may not change color. Cut in pieces an inch long; cover with hot water and stew until tender. Drain off two-thirds of the water and add enough milk to cover the salsify. Stew ten minutes in this; put in a good lump of butter rolled thickly in flour. Pepper and salt. Boil up for one minute.

Sweet Potatoes—in Jackets.

Parboil in their skins when you have washed them, selecting such as are of like size. Then put in a moderate oven and bake until soft all through. You can ascertain this by pinching the largest. Wipe off and serve in their skins.

Rosie’s Rice Custard.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 3 eggs, well beaten.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 cup boiled rice.
• A little salt.
• Half the grated rind of a lemon.

Boil the rice, drain, and stir, while hot, into the milk. Beat the eggs well; rub butter and sugar to a cream with lemon-peel and a little salt, and stir into the warm milk. Mix well and bake in a buttered dish in a brisk oven. Eat warm or cold. We like it better warm, with a little cream poured over it when served in saucers.[36]

Soupe au Julienne.

• 6 lbs. of lean beef. If possible, get it from the shin and have the accompanying bones cracked to bits.
• 6 quarts of water—cold.

Prepare the stock on Saturday. Put meat and bones into a pot with a close cover, pour on the water, and set it where it will heat very slowly. Boil, also very slowly, six hours, at the back of the range. Should the water sink fast in the pot, replenish from the boiling tea-kettle. At the end of six hours, turn the soup, meat, bones and all, into an earthenware vessel; pepper and salt it and set on the cellar floor, covered, until next day. Take off, then, the cake of excellent dripping from the top; strain the soup and set over the fire, about an hour before dinner, and heat gradually.

The vegetables should be—

• 2 carrots.
• 3 turnips.
• Half a head of cabbage.
• 1 pint Shaker corn, soaked overnight.
• 6 stalks of celery.
• 1 quart of tomatoes.
• 1 large onion.

Clean, scrape, and mince all these, except the corn and tomatoes. Cut the carrot into dice and stew, by itself, in a little cold water. Boil the corn in enough water to cover it, and add more hot water as it swells. Cover[37] the minced vegetables with cold water, and so soon as it boils, turn it off, and replenish with boiling, from the kettle. This will take away the rank taste from cabbage and onion. When they are soft enough to pulp, strain well, but without pressing, into the soup. It is needless to add the vegetables, as the strength is in the liquor. Boil up and skim the soup before putting in the boiled corn and the canned tomatoes, which should be cut up small, and the unripe parts removed. Boil fifteen minutes, add the carrot, season to taste, and serve.[B]

Roast Turkey.

Rinse out the turkey well with soda and water; then with salt, lastly with fair water. Stuff with a dressing made of bread-crumbs, wet up with butter and water and seasoned to your taste. Stuff the craw and tie up the neck. Fill the body and sew up the vent. I need hardly say that these strings are to be clipped and removed after the fowl is roasted. Tie the legs to the lower part of the body that they may not “sprawl,” as the sinews shrink. Put into the dripping-pan, pour a teacupful of boiling water over it, and roast, basting often, allowing about ten minutes’ time for every pound. Be careful not to have your oven too hot—especially during the first half-hour or so. The turkey would, otherwise, be dry and blackened on the outside and raw within. And remember how much of the perfection of roasting meats and poultry depends upon basting faithfully. Boil the giblets tender in a little water. When the turkey is done, set it where it will keep warm; skim the gravy left in the pan; add a little boiling water; thicken slightly with browned flour; boil up once and add the giblets minced fine. Season to taste; give another boil, and send to table in a gravy-boat.

Cranberry Sauce.

Wash and pick over the cranberries; put on to cook in a tin or porcelain vessel, allowing a teacupful of water [38]to each quart. Stew slowly, stirring often until they are as thick as marmalade. Take from the fire in little over an hour, if they have cooked steadily, sweeten plentifully with white sugar, and strain through coarse tarlatan, or mosquito-net, into a mould wet with cold water.

Do this on Saturday. On Sunday, turn out into a glass dish.

Mashed Potatoes—Browned.

Having mashed them in the usual manner, mound them smoothly upon a shallow earthenware dish and set them in a quick oven, glazing them with butter as they color. They should be of a light brown. Slip the mound from a coarser to a finer platter by the help of your cake-turner. It is still better if you have one of the pretty “enamelled” bake-dishes lined with porcelain, with silver stands for the table. They are invaluable for puddings, scallops, etc.

Stewed Corn.

Stew one quart of canned corn in its own liquor, setting the vessel containing it in an outer, of hot water. Should the corn be exceptionally dry, add a little cold water. When tender, pour in enough milk to cover the corn, bring to a boil, and put in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour, and salt to taste. Stew gently, stirring well, three or four minutes, and turn into a deep dish. Keep the vessel containing the corn closely covered while it is cooking. The steam facilitates the process and preserves the color of the corn.

Celery

Is the usual accompaniment of roast turkey. Prepare by selecting the blanched stalks, scraping off the rust, cutting off all but the youngest and tenderest tops, and laying these in cold water to crisp until wanted for the table. Garnish your turkey with alternate light and dark green sprigs of celery.[39]

Tropical Snow.

• 8 sweet oranges.
• 1 grated cocoanut.
• 1 glass of pale sherry.
• 1 cup of powdered sugar.
• 5 red bananas.

Peel and cut the oranges into small pieces by dividing each lobe crosswise into thirds. Extract the seeds and put a layer of the fruit in the bottom of a glass dish. Pour a little wine upon it, and strew with powdered sugar. The cocoanut must have been prepared by removing the rind and throwing it into cold water for some time before grating it. Over the layer of oranges spread one of cocoanut; cut the bananas into very thin, round slices, and lay these, one deep, upon the cocoanut. Repeat the order just given until your dish is full and the oranges and bananas used up. The top layer must be of cocoanut, heaped high, sprinkled with powdered sugar and garnished about the base with slices of banana. Eat soon, as the oranges toughen in the wine.

Supplement this pretty, but not substantial dessert by a salver of lady’s-fingers, and macaroons, and a good cup of coffee.

Next Day’s Soup.

Julienne soup, like most other soups the base of which is meat, is better when warmed over the second day. Set[40] it over the fire where it will heat, not too quickly, almost to a boil. It will not “put back” the business of the day twenty minutes, and be a welcome addition to your dinner.

Turkey Scallop.

Cut the meat from yesterday’s turkey. Crack the carcass to pieces, and put, with bits of skin, fat, and gristle, into a saucepan; cover with cold water, and set on to stew slowly into gravy. Chop the meat very fine; strew the bottom of a greased bake-dish with crumbs, and cover this with a thick stratum of minced turkey, stuffing, and tiny bits of butter. Pepper and salt, and put on more crumbs, then meat, and so on. Stale bread is better for this scallop than cracker-dust. Having used up all your meat and reserved enough crumbs for a thick upper crust, cover the dish and put aside in a cool place until your gravy is ready. It is economy of time, on Monday, to slip in such work as this between the many “must be’s” of the season. Your scallop will be none the worse for waiting some hours before, or after, the gravy is added, provided you keep it covered. When the gravy has drawn all the substance from bones, etc., strain it and return to the saucepan with what was left in yesterday’s gravy-boat, having first skimmed the latter. Boil up, thicken with browned flour wet up with cold water; bring to another boil; pour over the scallop, saving a little to wet the top. Now comes your layer of fine bread-crumbs. Wet these with the gravy in a bowl, season to taste, beat to a soft paste with a couple of eggs and spread evenly over the scallop. Invert a plate over the bake-dish and set in the oven. When, at the end of half an hour or so, the gravy bubbles up at the sides, remove the cover and brown. Serve in the pudding-dish.

Panned Oysters.

A four-course dinner is hardly in order in most households on Monday. You can, if you like, and have an efficient table-waiter, bring on oysters, as usual, between soup and meat. But there will be no violation of the “unities[41] of the drama” of a family dinner, if you send around your oysters, scallop, and vegetables together.

• 1 quart of oysters.
• Some thin slices of toast.
• Butter, salt, and pepper.

Have ready some “patty pans”—the more nearly upright the sides the better. Cut stale bread in rounds to fit the bottoms of these. Toast, and lay a piece in each. Wet with oyster liquor and put into each pan as many oysters as it will conveniently hold. Pepper and salt; put a bit of butter upon each; arrange all in a large dripping-pan; invert another of the same size over it, and bake eight minutes, or until the oysters “ruffle.” Send hot to table in the pans.

You can toast the bread at breakfast-time if you choose. The oysters can go into the oven when the soup is poured out, and be in good season on the table. By this arrangement they will not interfere with the other “baked meats.” Panned oysters are always popular, and there is no more simple manner of cooking this favorite shell-fish.

Roast Potatoes.

Choose large, fair potatoes, wash and wipe, and bake until soft to the grasp. Three-quarters of an hour should suffice. Take out, before the oysters go in; wipe off dust and ashes, and serve in a heated napkin. This will keep them hot a long time, yet prevent them from “sweating.”

Tomato Sauce.

Open a can of tomatoes at least one hour before it is to be used, and empty into an earthenware basin, that no close or metallic taste may linger about them. Cook in tin or porcelain. Stew half an hour, gently; add salt, pepper, a teaspoonful of sugar, and three of butter, a handful of dry bread-crumbs—or, if you have any stewed corn left from yesterday, use that instead of bread. Cook ten minutes longer, and turn out.[42]

Floating Island.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 4 tablespoonfuls (great ones) of sugar.
• 2 teaspoonfuls extract of bitter almond or vanilla. (Colgate’s extracts are the best in market, and do not spoil within a few days after they are uncorked, as the manner of some is.)
• ½ cup of currant jelly.

Heat the milk to scalding, but not boiling. Beat the yolks, stir into them the sugar, and pour upon them, gradually and mixing well, a cupful of the hot milk. Return to the saucepan and boil until it begins to thicken. You can do this while breakfast is cooking, before the Moloch clothes-boiler goes on. When cool, flavor and pour into a glass dish. Heap upon the top a méringue of the whites whipped until you can cut it, into which you have beaten the jelly, a teaspoonful at a time.

Tea.

“A comfortable cup of tea” never comes amiss to a fagged housewife, be it served at breakfast, luncheon, or dinner. The best way to insure its goodness—that is, that it be strong, hot and fresh—is to have your own tea-urn or kettle on the table, with a spirit-lamp burning under it. Scald the tea-pot, put in the tea; cover with boiling water; put a “cosey” or a thick napkin about it, and let it stand five minutes before filling with more boiling water. Wait a minute longer and pour out.[43]

Mutton Soup with Tapioca.

• 3 lbs. perfectly lean mutton. The scrag makes good soup and costs little.
• 2 or 3 lbs. of bones, well pounded.
• 1 onion.
• 2 turnips.
• 2 carrots.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• A few sprigs of parsley. If you have any tomatoes left from yesterday, add them.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of pearl or granulated tapioca (not heaping spoonfuls).
• 4 quarts of water.

Put on the meat, cut in small pieces, with the bones, in two quarts of cold water. Heat very slowly, and when it boils pour in two quarts of hot water from the kettle. Chop the vegetables; cover with cold water. So soon as they begin to simmer, throw off the first water, replenishing with hot, and stew until they are boiled to pieces. The meat should cook steadily, never fast, five hours, keeping the pot-lid on. Strain into a great bowl; let it cool to throw the fat to the surface; skim and return to the fire. Season with pepper and salt, boil up, take off the scum; add the vegetables with their liquor. Heat together ten minutes, strain again, and bring to a slow boil before the tapioca goes in. This should have been soaked one hour in cold water, then cooked in the same within another vessel of boiling water until each grain is clear. It is necessary to stir up often from the[44] bottom while cooking. Stir gradually into the soup until the tapioca is dissolved.

Send around grated cheese with this soup.

Salmon Pudding.

• 1 can preserved salmon.
• 3 eggs.
• 4 tablespoonfuls melted butter.
• ½ cup fine bread-crumbs.
• Pepper, salt, and minced parsley.

Mince the fish, draining off the liquor for the sauce. Rub in the butter until thoroughly incorporated. Work in the crumbs, the seasoning, at last the beaten eggs. Put into a buttered pudding-mould, set in a dripping-pan full of hot water. Cover the mould, and steam in the oven, keeping the water in the pan at a fast boil, filling up as it evaporates, for one hour. Set it in cold water one minute when you have taken it from the oven. This will make it shrink from the sides and turn out easily upon a flat dish.

Sauce for the above.

• 1 cupful of milk heated to a boil and thickened with a tablespoonful of corn-starch, previously wet up with cold water.
• The liquor from the salmon.
• 1 great spoonful of butter.
• 1 raw egg, beaten light.
• Juice of half a lemon.
• Mace and cayenne pepper to taste.

Put the egg into the thickened milk when you have stirred in the butter and liquor; take from the fire, season, and let it stand in hot water three minutes, covered. Lastly, put in the lemon-juice and turn out immediately. Pour it all over and about the pudding. Cut the latter into slices when helping it out.

Beefsteak.

First of all, let me recommend the plan of broiling a steak under, instead of over the grate. I have found so[45] many and manifest advantages in the former method that I have had a gridiron made to fit beneath my range.

Wipe the steak dry, and broil upon a buttered gridiron, turning frequently, whenever it begins to drip. When done, which should be in twelve minutes, if your fire is clear and strong, lay upon a hot dish—a chafing-dish is best—season with pepper and salt (not until then), and butter very liberally. Put over it a hot cover, and wait five minutes before sending to table, to draw the juices to the surface and allow the seasoning to penetrate the steak.

Potatoes à la Lyonnaise.

Parboil a dozen potatoes at breakfast-time, and set aside, when you have peeled them, as they should get perfectly cold. When you are ready to cook them, heat some butter, or good dripping, in a frying-pan; fry in it one small onion, chopped fine, until it begins to change color—say about one minute. Then put in the potatoes, cut into dice, not too thick or broad. Stir well and cook five minutes, taking care the potatoes do not break to pieces. They must not brown. Put in some minced parsley just before taking them up. Drain dry by shaking in a heated colander. Serve very hot.

Macaroni with Cheese.

Cook half a pound of pipe macaroni, broken into inch lengths, in boiling water until tender. Drain this off, and substitute a cupful of cold milk. When the macaroni has again come to a boil, season with pepper and salt and stir in a great spoonful of butter; lastly, two tablespoonfuls of dry, grated cheese. Turn into a deep dish, strew more cheese thickly over it, and it is ready for use.

Susie’s Bread Pudding.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 4 eggs.
• 3 cups very fine, dry bread-crumbs.
• 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
• 1 teacupful white sugar.
• Juice and half the grated peel of a lemon.

[46]

Rub butter and sugar together. Beat the yolks of the four eggs and the white of one very light; mix the butter and sugar with these. Soak the crumbs in the milk, and beat in with the other ingredients, hard and fast. Add the lemon last. Bake in a buttered dish. When nearly done and fully “set,” even in the middle, spread with a méringue made of the reserved whites, beaten stiff with a little sugar. It is good eaten warm—not really hot—or cold, especially if a little cream be poured over each saucerful.

Bean Soup.

Soak a quart of dried beans all night in soft water. Throw this off next morning, and cover the beans for two hours in water a little more than lukewarm. Put over the fire with five quarts of cold water, and one pound of salt pork. A bone of veal or beef may be added, if you have it. Boil slowly for at least four hours; shred into it a small onion, four stalks of celery, pepper—the pork may salt it sufficiently—simmer half an hour longer, rub through a colander until only husks and fibres remain, and send to table. Pass sliced lemon with it.

Fillet of Veal—Stuffed.

Make ready a force-meat of bread-crumbs, chopped thyme and parsley; pepper, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg;[47] a little dripping for shortening; moisten with warm water and bind with a raw egg.

If your butcher has not “put up” the fillet, remove the bone, pin the meat into a round with skewers; then bind firmly with a strip of muslin passed two or three times about it. Fill the cavity left by the bone with dressing, and thrust the same between the folds of the meat, besides making cuts with a sharp knife to receive more. Tuck in a strip of fat pork here and there. Baste three times with salt and water while roasting, afterwards with its own gravy. At last, dredge once with flour and baste with butter. Cut the bands, draw out the skewers carefully, and serve.

Baked Corn.

To one can of corn allow a pint of milk (more if the corn be dry), three eggs, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, one of white sugar, pepper and salt to taste. Beat the eggs very light, rub butter and sugar together and stir in hard; next, the corn and seasoning; finally, the milk. Beat hard, and bake in a buttered dish for half an hour, covered. Then brown by lifting the top. Send up in the bake-dish.

Potato Cakes.

Boil and mash the potatoes, working in salt and butter and an egg or two—beaten light. Let them get cold; make into cakes of size and shape to suit yourself; roll in raw egg, then in flour, or cracker-dust, and fry quickly in hot dripping. Take each up as soon as it is done, and drain with a wire spoon, before laying upon a hot dish.

Canned String-Beans.

Cook in their own liquor half an hour, or until very tender. First, however, cut them into neat lengths. The comeliness of the dish depends upon this. When almost done, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, with salt and pepper. Simmer ten minutes longer, and serve by draining off the liquid and heaping the beans upon a hot dish, with a bit of butter on the top. If the can does not[48] contain liquor enough to cover the beans, add a little cold water in cooking them.

Baked Apple Dumplings.

• 1 quart prepared flour.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter and the same of lard.
• 1 pint of milk.
• 1 saltspoonful of salt.
• Some ripe apples.

Chop the shortening into the flour when you have sifted and salted the latter. Wet up with milk and roll out quickly in a sheet less than half an inch thick. Cut into squares; lay in the centre of each a tart, juicy apple, pared and cored. Bring the corners of the square together and pinch to join them neatly. Lay in a baking-pan, the joined edges downward, and bake to a fine brown. When done, brush over with butter and shut the oven door for a minute more to glaze them. Sift powdered sugar over them, and eat hot.

These are more wholesome and more easily prepared than boiled dumplings. Eat with sweet sauce.

Brandy Sauce.

• 2 cups of powdered sugar.
• ½ cup of butter.
• 1 wineglass of brandy. That from brandied peaches—the liqueur, if you have it.
• 1 teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace.

Warm the butter slightly, work in the sugar until they form a rich cream, when add brandy and spice. Beat hard; shape by putting into a mould made very wet with cold water, and set in a cool place to harden. Should it not turn out readily by shaking gently, dip for a second in hot water.[49]

Veal and Sago Soup.

• 3 lbs. veal.
• ¼ lb. pearl sago.
• 3 quarts of water.
• 4 eggs.
• 1 pint of milk.

Cut the meat into bits; put on with the water and boil very slowly, with the pot-lid laid on loosely, four hours, until the meat is in rags. Strain through coarse net, or a wire soup-strainer (which you ought to possess), season with pepper and salt, and return to the kettle when you have scalded it out.

Meanwhile, the sago should have been washed and soaked in lukewarm water, for an hour. Stir it into the broth and let them simmer, stirring often, half an hour. Heat the milk scalding hot in another vessel, beat the yolks of the eggs light, reserving the whites for your pudding; pour gradually over these a cupful of the hot milk, and stir carefully into the soup with all the milk. Taste, to see if it needs more seasoning; add a little chopped parsley, if you like; let it almost boil and pour into the tureen. It should be about as thick as boiled custard. Should the sago thicken it too much, add boiling water.

A relishful and wholesome soup.

Jugged Rabbit.

• 1 full-grown but tender rabbit or hare.
• ½ lb. corned ham.
• [50]1 cup of good gravy, saved from yesterday’s roast.
• Dripping for frying.
• 1 onion, sliced.
• Juice of 1 lemon.
• 1 tablespoonful currant jelly.
• Parsley, pepper and salt, and browned flour.

Joint the rabbit, and lay for an hour in salted water. Wipe dry and fry in the dripping, with the onion, until brown. Put in the bottom of a tin pail, or farina-kettle, a layer of salt pork cut into strips; upon this one of rabbit. Sprinkle with pepper and a little salt. Scatter fried onion over the rabbit and proceed in this order until your meat is used up. Pour in the gravy; cover the vessel, and set it in another of cold water. Bring gradually to a boil and stew steadily one hour, or until tender. Arrange the meat upon a dish; strain the gravy, thicken with browned flour wet up with cold water; boil up once; stir in the jelly and lemon-juice, heat to boiling, and pour over the rabbit. If you have no gravy, use a little butter and water instead.

Scalloped Potatoes.

• 3 cups mashed potato.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of milk.
• 3 hard-boiled eggs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 handful very dry bread-crumbs.
• Salt.

Work butter, milk, and salt into the hot mashed potatoes. Put a layer in the bottom of a pudding-dish well greased; cover this with thin slices of egg; salt and pepper; another stratum of potato, and so on, until the dish is full. Strew bread-crumbs thickly over the uppermost layer of potatoes. Stick bits of butter over this and bake, covered, until hot throughout; then brown quickly. Send up in the pudding-dish.

A simple and nice side-dish.

Sweet Potatoes—Fried.

Boil, peel, and when cold, slice the potatoes neatly. Fry in good dripping until they are of a light brown. Drain from the fat and eat hot.[51]

Minced Celery with Egg Dressing.

Scrape and wash the celery and cut into half-inch lengths, having first crisped it in cold water. Rub the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs to a paste with a tablespoonful of oil; add salt, pepper, a little powdered sugar, vinegar to make the mixture liquid, and pour over the celery. Serve in a salad-bowl and eat at once, lest the celery should toughen in the vinegar.

Macaroni and Almond Pudding.

• ½ lb. macaroni.
• 3 pints of milk.
• 1 cup of white sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 5 eggs.
• ½ lb. sweet almonds, blanched and chopped.
• Rose-water and bitter almond flavoring.
• A little salt and nutmeg.

Simmer the macaroni half an hour in a pint of the milk. When tender, but not broken, put in butter and salt. Take the saucepan from the fire and turn out the contents to cool while you make a custard of the rest of the milk, the eggs and sugar. Add the latter to the scalding milk, but do not boil the custard. Chop the almonds when you have blanched them, i. e., taken off the skins with boiling water. As you chop, put in a few drops of rose-water from time to time, to prevent oiling. When the macaroni is almost cold, mix it with the custard, breaking it as little as may be. Season, and last of all, stir in the chopped almonds. Bake in a well-buttered pudding-dish. Spread with the méringue made from the whites of the eggs reserved from the soup. Eat warm with powdered sugar and cinnamon.[52]

Fish Chowder.

• 3 lbs. of cod, cut into strips an inch thick and four inches long, and freed from bone so far as is possible without breaking the fish.
• 1 pint of oysters.
• 2 large onions cut into thin slices.
• About ½ lb. Boston crackers, split, and buttered thickly.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 cup of milk.
• Parsley.

Cover the bottom of your soup-kettle with the fish; pepper and salt; strew with sliced onion, and this with the split crackers, buttered sides down. Follow this order until your ingredients are all in the pot, and cover them with cold water. Stew gently for an hour, keeping the water at the original level by replenishing from the tea-kettle. By this time the fish should be thoroughly done, if it has cooked steadily. Take it up with a perforated skimmer, and cover in the tureen to keep hot, while you strain the chowder to get out the bones, returning the crackers with the liquor to the soup-kettle, when you have rinsed it out. Thicken with two teaspoonfuls of corn-starch wet up in a cup of milk, and when this has boiled, add the oysters, cut small, two great spoonfuls of butter, and a little chopped parsley. Stew for three minutes, pour slowly over the fish in the tureen. Send sliced lemon around with it.

This is a most palatable chowder when properly prepared. You can use fewer crackers, if you dislike a thick soup.[53]

Fricasseed Chicken—White.

• One pair of full-grown fowls.
• ½ lb. salt pork cut into strips.
• 2 eggs.
• 1 cupful of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of flour and the same of butter.
• 1 onion.
• Parsley, pepper and salt.

Joint the fowls neatly, and cut the back, neck, and breast apart from each other, the latter into two pieces. Lay them in salt water for half an hour. Put them into a pot with enough cold water to cover them, and the pork cut into thin strips. Cover and heat very slowly. Stew constantly, but never fast, for one hour after it comes to a boil, or until the chickens are tender. The time will depend upon their age. If they are tough, put them on early and cook all the more slowly. Add now the onion, parsley, and pepper, with salt, if needed. Heat again, and stir in the flour wet up in the cup of milk. Beat the eggs and pour upon them a cupful of hot gravy; mix well, and put back into the soup with the butter. Just as the stew begins to simmer again, remove from the fire. Take out and pile the chicken upon a dish; then pour the gravy over all.

Potatoes à l’Italienne.

Instead of mashing the potatoes with a beetle or spoon, whip them up light with a silver fork. When they are fine and mealy, beat in a few spoonfuls of milk, a tablespoonful of butter, the yolks of two eggs, pepper and salt. Whip into a creamy heap before adding, with a few dexterous strokes, the stiffly-frothed whites. Pile roughly up on a buttered pie-dish; brown quickly in the oven, and transfer, with the help of a cake-turner, to a flat dish.

Make a rather too abundant dish, according to this receipt, as the residue will be found useful in to-morrow’s bill of fare.

Tomatoes Stewed with Onion.

Stew in the usual manner, adding a small onion minced fine. When they have cooked half an hour, season with[54] pepper, salt, a little sugar, and a good spoonful of butter. Simmer ten minutes more, uncovered, and turn out.

Cheese Fondu.

• 1 cup of bread-crumbs, dry and fine.
• 2 scant cups of fresh milk.
• ½ lb. dry, rich cheese, grated.
• 3 eggs, whipped light.
• 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
• Pepper and salt.
• A pinch of soda, dissolved in hot water.

Soak the crumbs in the milk; beat in the eggs, the butter, seasoning—lastly, the cheese. Pour into a neat pudding-dish, strew dry bread-crumbs over the top, and bake in a quick oven until delicately browned. Serve in the pudding-dish, and at once, as it falls in cooling.

Very good!

Sponge Gingerbread.

• 5 cups of flour, dried and sifted. Measure after sifting.
• 1 cup of molasses.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 1 rather larger cup of sour, or buttermilk.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of saleratus (not soda), dissolved in hot water.
• 2 teaspoonfuls ginger.
• 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon.

Mix molasses, sugar, butter, and spice together. Warm slightly, and beat hard for five minutes. Add the milk, then the soda, lastly the flour. Beat three minutes, and bake in a broad, shallow pan. Take heed that it does not burn. Eat warm.

Chocolate.

• 6 tablespoonfuls of chocolate to each pint of boiling water.
• As much milk as you have chocolate.
• Sweeten to taste.

Rub the chocolate smooth in a little cold water, and stir into the hot. Boil twenty minutes; put in the milk,[55] and boil five minutes more, stirring often. Sweeten at pleasure, while boiling, or in the cups. Send around with the warm gingerbread and some slices of mild cheese. You will not regret not having prepared a more pretentious dessert.

Clear Gravy Soup.

• 5 lbs. lean beef, the coarser parts, of course.
• Some bones.
• 2 slices of lean corned ham.
• 2 carrots.
• 2 turnips.
• 6 stalks of celery.
• ¼ package Coxe’s gelatine.
• Pepper and salt.
• A bunch of sweet herbs.
• Dripping.
• 5 quarts of cold water.

Cut the meat into dice and slice the onions. Fry the latter brown in some good dripping. Take them out, and fry the meat in the same fat, turning often, until it has a thick brown coat. Put it, drained from the fat, into the soup-kettle, with two quarts of cold water, and set where it will come to a boil in about an hour. The bones should also be fried, and put into the pot with the meat. When these fairly boil, skim, add three quarts of cold water, and stew gently four hours. If you dine early, the soup should go on before breakfast. Put herbs and vegetables, including the fried onions, all chopped up, into a saucepan,[56] with enough cold water to cover them, and boil to pieces. Strain the soup half an hour before dinner; season, return to the pot; boil and skim. Strain the vegetable liquor into it, without squeezing or rubbing. Boil up once more, skim well, and put in the gelatine, which should have soaked one hour in a little cold water. Simmer five minutes and pour out.

The soup should be of a clear, light brown. Should the color not suit you, burn a tablespoonful of sugar in a tin cup, add three or four spoonfuls of boiling water, stir until you get a deep color, and turn off the water into the soup. It will not injure the flavor.

Please never lose sight of the cardinal principle that all the essence, strength, and taste should be extracted from meat, vegetables, etc., in soup-making, and that the soup which boils fast is lost. Take plenty of time, and cast an eye into the kitchen from hour to hour until you have educated your cook up to a glimmering appreciation of this law of enlightened cookery.

Oyster Salad.

• 1 quart of oysters, cut, not chopped, into small pieces.
• 1 bunch of celery, also cut small.
• 1 tablespoonful best oil.
• 1 small spoonful of salt, and the same of pepper, likewise of mustard (made).
• ⅛ cup cider vinegar.
• Saltspoonful of powdered sugar.

Drain the liquor from the oysters and cut them up. Add the minced celery. Prepare the seasoning, putting in the vinegar last, and pour the mixture over the celery and oysters. Toss up well with a silver fork. Do this just before dinner, as the salad will be injured by lying long in the dressing.

Calf’s Liver à la Mode.

• 1 calf’s liver.
• ½ lb. fat salt pork.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, or dripping.
• 2 small onions.
• [57]1 tablespoonful chopped parsley and marjoram.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
• 1 teaspoonful mixed cloves, mace, and allspice.
• 1 tablespoonful Worcestershire sauce.
• Pepper and salt to taste.

Wash the liver thoroughly, and soak half an hour in salted water. Wipe, make incisions about an inch apart, and lard with strips of pork, projecting slightly on each side. Fry the onions and herbs in the dripping. Take them out, put in the liver, and fry both sides to a light brown. Turn all into a saucepan, with the vinegar and water to cover the liver—barely. Cover closely, and stew gently an hour and a half. Lay the liver on a hot dish, strain the gravy, return to the fire, thicken with a tablespoonful of browned flour, put in the sauce and spice; boil up and pour some of it over the liver, the rest into a gravy-boat. What is left from dinner will be nice for luncheon or tea, cut horizontally in thin slices.

Salsify Fritters.

• 1 bunch salsify.
• 2 eggs.
• ½ cup milk.
• Flour for thin batter.
• Lard, or dripping.
• Salt to taste.

Scrape and grate the roots, and stir into a batter made of the beaten eggs, the milk, and flour. Grate the salsify directly into this, that it may not blacken by exposure to the air. Salt, and drop a spoonful into the boiling fat to see if it is of the right consistency. As fast as you fry the fritters, throw into a hot colander to drain. One great spoonful of batter should make a fritter.

Potatoes à la Duchesse.

Cut the remnants of yesterday’s potatoes à l’Italienne into rounds with a cake-cutter, dipped in cold water. Set like biscuits, but not so near as to touch one another, in a greased pan, and bake quickly, brushing top and sides with beaten egg when they begin to brown. Serve upon a heated napkin folded flat, on a platter.[58]

Corn-Meal Fruit Pudding.

• 1 heaping cup white Indian meal.
• 3 pints of milk.
• 1 cup of flour.
• 4 beaten eggs.
• 1 cup of white sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
• ½ lb. of raisins, seeded and cut in two.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt, and same of mixed mace and cinnamon.
• 1 teaspoonful of soda, and two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar, sifted twice with the flour.

Scald a pint of milk and wet up the meal with it, stirring well. While it is cooling, add the flour, wet into batter with a pint of cold milk. Heat the remaining pint, and when scalding, add sugar and eggs. Beat this gradually, hard and long, into the cooled paste. When well mixed, put in butter, spice, and the fruit dredged with flour. Beat fast and deep for two minutes. Bake in a buttered dish, in a tolerably brisk oven. Cover with paper as it browns. It ought to be done in three-quarters of an hour. Eat hot, with butter and sugar.

Tomato Soup.

Stew one can of tomatoes half an hour; strain and rub through a colander into the soup left from yesterday.[59] Heat to a slow boil, and simmer together ten minutes before serving.

Roast Beef, with Yorkshire Pudding.

Have your meat ready for roasting on Saturday, always. Roast upon a grating or several clean sticks (not pine) laid over the dripping-pan. Dash a cup of boiling water over the beef when it goes into the oven; baste often, and see that the fat does not scorch. About three-quarters of an hour before it is done, mix the pudding.

Yorkshire Pudding.

• 1 pint of milk.
• 4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 2 cups of flour—prepared flour is best.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.

Use less flour if the batter grows too stiff. Mix quickly; pour off the fat from the top of the gravy in the dripping-pan, leaving just enough to prevent the pudding from sticking to the bottom. Pour in the batter and continue to roast the beef, letting the dripping fall upon the pudding below. The oven should be brisk by this time. Baste the meat with the gravy you have taken out to make room for the batter.

In serving, cut the pudding into squares and lay about the meat in the dish. It is very delicious.

Macaroni al Napolitano.

• ½ lb. of macaroni.
• 2 nice sweetbreads.
• 1 small onion, minced.
• Parsley, pepper, and salt.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Wash the sweetbreads; lay in salted water fifteen minutes, and stew with the onion, in a pint of cold water, a little salt, until done, as may be seen by cutting into the thickest part. Wash the macaroni when you have broken it into small bits, and cook gently until tender, but not to breaking, in the hot broth from which you have taken the sweetbreads and strained the onion. Stew in a farina-kettle[60] or tin saucepan set in hot water. Chop the sweetbreads; stir the butter into the macaroni, which should have absorbed all the broth; then the minced sweetbreads. Season with parsley, pepper, and salt; cover closely and leave in the hot water, but not over the fire, five minutes before turning into a deep dish.

Potatoes au Naturel

Are, with all their high-sounding name, only the homely vegetables boiled in their skins. Put on in cold water, bring to a slow boil, and increase the heat until a fork will pierce the largest. Throw in salt; turn off every drop of the water; set back on the range, without the cover, for two minutes to dry, peel, and send to table in a napkin.

French Beans, Sauté.

Open a can of French or “string” beans; cut into inch lengths and boil in the can liquor, adding a little cold water, if needed, for twenty minutes. Drain, return to the saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of butter and a little salt and pepper. Toss constantly with a fork until they are hissing hot, but not until they scorch. Serve in a hot vegetable dish.

Apple Sauce.

Pare, core, and slice tart apples, and stew in water enough to cover them until they break to pieces. Beat to a pulp with a good lump of butter and plenty of sugar. Eat cold. Make enough for several meals, as it will keep a week at this season.

Made Mustard.

• 4 tablespoonfuls English mustard.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of salt.
• The same quantity of salad oil and white sugar.
• 1 teaspoonful of pepper.
• Vinegar to make a smooth paste—that from celery, or onion pickle, if you have it.

Rub mustard, oil, sugar, pepper, and salt together; wet,[61] by degrees, with vinegar, beating very hard at the last, when the proper consistency has been gained.

This is far superior to mustard as usually mixed for the table.

Narcissus Blanc-mange.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 1 package of Cooper’s gelatine, soaked in two cups of cold water.
• Yolks of 4 eggs, beaten light.
• 2 cups of white sugar.
• Vanilla and rose-water for flavoring.
• Less than 2 cups of rich cream.

Heat the milk to scalding; stir in gelatine and sugar. When these are dissolved, take out a cupful and pour, by degrees, over the beaten yolks. Return to the saucepan and stir together over the fire for two minutes after the boiling point is reached. Take from the range, flavor with rose-water, and pour into a mould with a cylinder in the centre, previously wet with cold water. Next day, turn out upon a dish with a broad bottom, and fill the hollow in the middle with the cream, whipped light with a little powdered sugar and flavored with vanilla. Pile more whipped cream about the base.

Send your coffee around after the blanc-mange has been eaten. A spoonful of whipped cream, without the vanilla, will give a touch of elegance to the beverage. Let this happy thought come to you while you are preparing the cream, and before the flavoring goes in.[62]

Variety Soup.

Chop a quarter of a small cabbage, a turnip, and some sweet herbs; cover with cold water, and heat to boiling. Throw off the first water, and add a quart more of cold. Put in the roast-beef bones, after you have cut off the meat, with a slice or two, or bone, of ham. Stew all two hours at the back of the range. Half an hour before dinner, warm up what was left from Sunday’s soup. Strain the hot liquor in which your cabbage, etc., have boiled, into this. Pick out bits of bones and meat from the colander, mashing the vegetables as little as possible; put these into the soup, with any macaroni or beans you may have left over; season to your liking; simmer for ten minutes; thicken with a tablespoonful of corn-starch, and pour out.

This will not be a “show-soup,” but it will be savory and nutritious.

Beef Pudding.

• 1 pint of milk.
• 3 eggs.
• A cupful of prepared flour.
• A little salt.
• 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.

Cut the meat from yesterday’s roast into neat pieces; lay them in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish, season well, and pour a few spoonfuls of cold gravy over them, letting it soak into the meat while you prepare a batter according to the above directions, taking care not to get it too stiff. Pour over the meat and bake in a quick oven. Eat hot.[63]

Scored Potatoes.

Mash in the usual way, mixing rather soft; heap and round upon a greased pie-plate; score deeply in triangles with the back of a carving or butcher’s knife; brown in the oven, and slip carefully to another dish.

Canned Peas.

Open a can of peas an hour before cooking them, that there may be no musty, airless taste about them, and turn into a bowl. When ready for them put on in a farina-kettle—or one saucepan within another—of hot water. If dry, add cold water to cover them, and stew about twenty-five minutes. Drain, stir in a generous lump of butter; pepper and salt.

Apple Méringue.

Butter a neat pudding-dish, and nearly fill it with apple sauce. Cover and leave in the oven until it is smoking hot. Draw to the oven door and spread with a méringue made of the whites of three eggs, whipped stiff with a little powdered sugar. (Your pudding will be much nicer, by the way, if you have beaten the yolks into the stewed apple before putting it into the dish.) Shut the oven door long enough to brown the méringue very lightly. Eat nearly or quite cold, with sugar and cream.

Send around crackers and cheese as an accompaniment.

Celery Soup.

• 3 lbs. of veal, and some bones of the same.
• [64]2 onions.
• 2 bunches of celery, using the white parts only.
• 3 quarts of cold water.
• 1 pint of fresh milk.
• 2 dessertspoonfuls of corn-starch.
• Pepper and salt.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Some fried bread.

Cut the veal up small, crack the bones, and put on in cold water. Boil slowly four hours, replenishing with boiling water should the broth sink to less than two-thirds of the original quantity. Strain, pressing all the strength out of the meat. Cut the celery into bits, and stew in the broth, with the minced onions, until so soft that you can rub through a colander. Strain a second time, and return the soup, with the pulped celery, to the fire. Season, and thicken with the corn-starch wet up in the pint of milk. Stir until it boils, and lastly, put in, carefully, the butter, after which take from the range. Have ready a double handful of fried bread in the tureen, and pour the soup upon it.

Veal Cutlets and Ham.

• 2 lbs. of veal cutlets, neatly trimmed, and the same of sliced ham.
• Yolks of 2 eggs.
• Bread- or cracker-crumbs.
• Dripping for frying.

Divide each cutlet into pieces about two inches wide by three inches long, and cut the ham into slices of corresponding size. Dip in the egg, then roll in the bread-crumbs, and fry—the ham first, afterwards the veal, until nicely browned on both sides. Sprinkle salt upon the veal cutlets. Arrange upon the dish in alternate slices of veal and ham, overlapping one another. Anoint the ham with butter mixed with a little mustard; the veal with butter melted up with a spoonful of tart jelly.

Cauliflower with Cream Sauce.

Boil your cauliflower, when you have washed and trimmed it, and tied it up in coarse net or tarletan.[65] Cook in boiling water slightly salted, keeping the stalk end uppermost. Prepare, in another saucepan, the dressing, by adding to a cup of scalding milk a tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water, two tablespoonfuls of butter, pepper and salt at discretion. Drain the cauliflower, remove the net, put into a deep dish, the flower up, and drench with the boiling sauce.

Stewed Potatoes.

Cut into slices, cook until tender, but not to breaking, in hot water. Turn half of this off and replace by as much milk, in which some slices of onion have been boiled and strained out. Add pepper and salt, a good lump of butter rolled in flour, and some chopped parsley. Simmer three minutes, and turn into a vegetable dish.

Mixed Pickles,

Home-made or bought, should be passed with the cutlets.

Jam Pudding.

• 3 cups of milk.
• 4 eggs.
• ¾ of a cup of sugar.
• Bread and butter.
• Sweet jam—berry, peach, or quince.

Spread slices of stale bread with butter, then with jam. Fit them closely into a buttered pudding-dish until it is two-thirds full. Make a custard by adding the beaten eggs and sugar to the scalding milk, but do not let them boil. Lay a heavy saucer upon the bread and butter to prevent floating, and moisten gradually with the hot custard. Let all soak for fifteen minutes before the dish goes into the oven. When it is hot throughout, take off the saucer, that the pudding may brown equally. Eat cold.

Tea, and Albert Biscuits

May follow the pudding.[66]

Sheep’s-head Soup.

Get your butcher to clean a sheep’s head with the skin on, as he would a calf’s head for soup. Let him also split it in half that you may get at the brains. Take them out, with the tongue, and set aside. Break the bone of the head, wash it well in several waters, and soak for half an hour in salted water. Cover it with fresh water, and heat gradually to a boil. Drain off the water, and thus remove any peculiar odor from the wool or other causes, and add four quarts of cold water, with two turnips, two roots of salsify, two carrots, two stalks of celery, and a bunch of sweet herbs, all chopped fine. Boil slowly four hours. Strain the soup into a bowl, pressing all the nourishment out of the meat, and let it stand in a cool place until the fat rises thickly to the surface to be taken off. The vegetables should be soft enough to pass freely through a fine colander, or coarse strainer, when rubbed. While the soup cools, prepare the force-meat balls. The tongue and brains should have been cooked and chopped up, then rubbed to a paste together and mixed with an equal quantity of bread-crumbs, salt, pepper, and parsley, bound with a raw egg, and rolled into small balls, dipped in flour. Set them, not so near as to touch one another, in a tin plate or dripping-pan, and put in a quick oven until a crust is formed upon the top, when they must be allowed to cool. Return the skimmed broth to the fire; season; boil up once; take off the scum, and add a cup of milk in which you have stirred a tablespoonful of corn-starch. Simmer, stirring all the while, for two minutes after it boils. Put the force-meat balls into the[67] tureen and pour the soup gently over them so as not to break them.

This is a good and cheap soup, and deserves to be better known.

Roast Hare.

Have the hare skinned and well cleaned. Cooks are often careless about the latter duty. Stuff, as you would a fowl, with a force-meat of bread-crumbs, chopped fat pork, a little sweet marjoram, onion, pepper, and salt, just moistened with hot water. Sew up the hare with fine cotton; tie the legs close to the body in a kneeling position. The English cook it with the head on, but we take it off as more seemly in our eyes. Lay in the dripping-pan, back uppermost; pour two cups of boiling water over it; cover with another pan and bake, closely covered, except when you baste it with butter and water, for three-quarters of an hour. Uncover, baste freely with the gravy until nicely browned; dredge with flour and anoint with butter until a fine froth appears on the surface. Take up the hare, put on a hot dish, and keep covered while you make the gravy. Strain, and skim that left in the pan; season, thicken with browned flour, stir in a good spoonful of currant-jelly, and some chopped parsley; boil up; pour a few spoonfuls of it over the hare; serve the rest in a gravy-boat. Clip, instead of tearing hard at the cotton threads. Send currant-jelly around with it.

Macaroni and Ham.

Break the macaroni into inch lengths, and stew ten minutes in boiling water. Meanwhile, cut two slices of corned (not smoked) ham into dice, wash well and put on to boil in a cup of cold water. Drain the macaroni, and when the ham has cooked for ten minutes after coming to a boil, pour it, with the liquor, over the macaroni. Season with pepper, simmer in a closed farina-kettle for fifteen minutes; add a little chopped parsley, cover, and let it stand a minute more, and serve in a deep dish. The fatter the ham the better for this dish. Always pass grated cheese with stewed macaroni.[68]

Stuffed Potatoes.

Wash and wipe large, fair potatoes, and bake soft. Cut a round piece from the top of each, and carefully preserve it. Scrape out the inside with a spoon without breaking the skin, and set aside the empty cases with the covers. Mash the potato which you have taken out, smoothly, working into it butter, a raw egg, a little cream, pepper, and salt. When soft, heat in a saucepan set over the fire in boiling water. Stir until smoking hot, fill the skins with the mixture, put on the caps, set in the oven for three minutes, and send to table wrapped in a heated napkin.

Turnips.

Boil, sliced or quartered, until soft all through; drain well and mash in a colander with a wooden spoon or beetle, very quickly, lest they should cool. Cold turnips are detestable. Work in a little salt and a good lump of butter; serve in a hot dish, smoothly rounded on top, with a pat of pepper here and there.

Fig Pudding.

• ½ lb. good dried figs, washed, wiped, and minced.
• 2 cups fine, dry bread-crumbs.
• 3 eggs.
• ½ cup beef suet, powdered.
• 2 scant cups of milk.
• ½ cup of white sugar.
• A little salt.
• A pinch of soda, dissolved in hot water and stirred into the milk.

Soak the crumbs in the milk. Add the eggs, beaten light, with the sugar, salt, suet, and figs. Beat three minutes, put in a buttered mould with a tight top; set in boiling water with a weight on the cover, to prevent the mould from upsetting, and boil three hours.

Eat hot, with hard sauce, or butter and powdered sugar, mixed with nutmeg. It is very good.[69]

Veal and Rice Broth.

• 4 lbs. knuckle of veal, well broken up.
• 1 onion.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• ½ cup of rice, washed and picked over.
• Chopped parsley, pepper, and salt.
• 1 cup of milk.
• 4 qts. of cold water.
• 1 tablespoonful corn-starch.

Put on the veal and bones, with the onion and celery minced, in four quarts of cold water. Boil gently after it begins to bubble, four hours, keeping the pot-lid on. Soak the rice in lukewarm water, enough to cover it well—adding warmer as it swells—for one hour. Cook in the same water, never touching with a spoon, but shaking up from the bottom, now and then. Strain and press the soup into a bowl; cool to throw up the fat for the skimmer, and return to the pot. Salt and pepper; boil up and skim, and stir in the corn-starch wet up in the milk. Simmer three minutes; put in the rice with the water in which it was boiled, and the parsley. Simmer very gently five minutes, and pour out.

Mutton à la Jardinière.

• 5 lbs. of mutton, breast or neck, all in one piece.
• 2 onions, peeled.
• 1 carrot, peeled.
• [70]2 turnips, peeled.
• 1 pint canned tomatoes.
• A few sprigs of cauliflower.
• 2 stalks of blanched celery.
• Pepper and salt.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch.
• Dripping for frying.

Fry the mutton (whole) in a large frying-pan, until it is lightly browned on both sides. Put into a deep, broad saucepan with all the vegetables (also whole) except the tomatoes; cover with cold water, and stew, closely covered, for an hour after they begin to boil. Take out the vegetables, and set aside; add boiling water to the meat, if it is not covered, and simmer steadily, never fast, two hours longer. The meat should be tender throughout, even the fibres. Turn off all the gravy, except about half a cupful, fit the pot-lid on very tightly, and leave the meat where it will keep just below the cooking-point. Strain the gravy you have poured off; leave it to cool until the fat rises. Skim, and return to the pot with the tomatoes. Season, and boil fast, skimming two or three times, until it is reduced to one-half the original quantity, or just enough to half cover the meat. Thicken with corn-starch, and put in the meat, with its juices from the bottom of the pot. Simmer, closely covered, half an hour. Cut the now cooled vegetables into neat dice; put the butter into a saucepan, and when it is hot, the vegetables. Shake all together until smoking hot, season, add a little gravy from the meat, and leave them to keep hot in it while you dish the mutton. Put it in the middle of a flat dish, and put the vegetables around it in separate mounds, with sprigs of parsley or celery between. Pour gravy over the mutton.

Try this dish. It is not difficult of preparation, diffuse as I have made the directions. It is, if well managed and discreetly seasoned, a family dinner of itself, and a very cheap one.

Potato Puff.

Mash the potatoes as usual; beat in more milk than is your custom, and a couple of eggs, whipping all to a cream,[71] and seasoning well. Pour into a buttered pudding-dish, and bake quickly to a good brown.

Pork and Beans.

Soak a quart of dried beans overnight in soft water. Change this for more and warmer in the morning, and, two hours later, put them on to boil in cold. When they are soft, drain well, put into a deep dish; and sink in the middle a pound of salt pork (the “middling” is best), leaving only the top visible. The pork should have been previously parboiled. Bake to a fine brown. It is well to score the pork in long furrows to mark the slices, before baking.

Minced Pudding.

• 4 large juicy pippins, pared, cored, and chopped.
• ¼ lb. of raisins, seeded and chopped.
• 2 tablespoonfuls beef suet, freed from strings and rubbed to powder.
• 12 almonds, blanched and minced.
• ½ cup of sugar for pudding, and three tablespoonfuls for custard.
• 1 pint of milk.
• Stale bread.
• Butter to spread it.
• 2 eggs.
• Nutmeg.

Cut the crust from the bread and slice evenly. Butter a shallow pudding-dish, and line it with the slices, fitted neatly together, and well buttered. Spread thickly with a mixture of the ingredients just enumerated, to wit: apples, raisins, suet, and almonds, sweetened with sugar, and spiced with nutmeg. They should form a paste and adhere to the bread. Make a custard by scalding and sweetening the milk, then pouring gradually over the eggs. Soak the bread, etc., with this by pouring it on, a few spoonfuls at a time, until the dish is full. Bake in a moderate oven, for a time covered, lest it should dry out. Eat cold, with powdered sugar sifted over the top.

Apples, Nuts, and Raisins

Should be served on clean plates after the pudding.[72]

Purée of Peas.

• 1 pint of split peas, soaked overnight in soft water.
• 3 onions—small.
• 3 stalks of celery.
• 2 carrots—small.
• 1 bunch of sweet herbs.
• 1 pint of tomatoes.
• Season to taste.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in flour.
• 3 quarts of water.

Put all on to cook together, except the tomatoes and butter. The vegetables must be chopped fine. Stew steadily and gently three hours. Rub to a purée through a sieve, and put in the tomatoes, freed of bits of skin and cores, and cut into bits. Season, and return to the fire to stew for twenty minutes longer, closely covered. Stir in the butter—divided into teaspoonfuls, each rolled in flour. Boil up and serve. Dice of fried bread should be put into the tureen.

Fried Bass.

Clean, wipe dry, inside and out, dredge with flour, and season with salt. Fry in hot butter, beef-dripping, or sweet lard. Half butter, half lard is a good mixture for frying fish. The moment the fish are done to a good brown, take them from the fat and drain in a hot colander. Garnish with parsley.[73]

Mashed Potatoes

Must accompany the fish.

Roast Chicken.

Wash well in three waters, adding a little soda to the second. Stuff with a mixture of bread-crumbs, butter, pepper, and salt. Fill the crops and bodies of the fowls; sew them up with strong, not coarse thread, and tie up the necks. Pour a cupful of boiling water over the pair, and roast an hour—or more, if they are large. Baste three times with butter and water, four or five times with their own gravy.

Stew the giblets, necks, and feet in water, enough to cover them well. When you take up the fowls, add this liquor to the gravy left in the dripping-pan, boil up once, thicken with browned flour; add the giblets chopped fine; boil again, and send up in a gravy-boat.

Should there be more gravy than you need, set it away carefully. Each day brings forth a need for such.

Crab-apple Jelly

Is a pleasing sauce for roast fowls.

Stewed Celery.

Select the best blanched stalks, and lay aside in cold water. Stew three or four stalks of the coarser parts, minced, with a small onion, a few sprigs of parsley, also chopped, and a bone of ham, or other meat. Stew for an hour in enough water to cover them; strain, pressing hard. Cut the choicer celery into pieces two inches long; pour over them the “stock” from the strainer, season with pepper, and, if needed, salt. Stew until very tender. Stir in a good tablespoonful of butter, and a little corn-starch, wet up in cold water. Simmer gently three minutes, and dish.

Fried Salsify.

Scrape and lay in cold water ten minutes. Boil tender, drain, and when cold, mash with a wooden spoon, picking out the fibrous parts. Wet to a paste with milk, work in a little butter, and an egg and a half for each cupful of[74] salsify. Beat the eggs very light. Season to taste, make into round, flat cakes, dredge with flour, and fry to a light brown. Drain off the fat, and serve hot.

Margherita Lemon Custard.

• 5 eggs.
• 1 quart of milk.
• Half the grated peel of a lemon.
• 5 tablespoonfuls of white sugar.

Beat the whites of two eggs and the yolks of five very light; add the sugar and pour over these the milk, scalding hot. Lastly, put in the grated peel, pour into a buttered pudding-dish, and set in a pan of hot water. Put both into the oven, and bake the custard until it is well “set.” Then spread with a méringue made of the reserved whites beaten stiff with a little powdered sugar. Shut the oven door, and cook the méringue until slightly tinged with yellow-brown. Eat cold.

English Soup.

• 6 lbs. brisket of beef, cut into thin strips.
• 2 onions, sliced and fried in dripping.
• The bones of yesterday’s chickens.
• 2 carrots.
• 3 turnips.
• 4 stalks of celery.
• [75]1 bunch of sweet herbs.
• ¼ lb. of vermicelli.
• Pepper and salt at discretion.
• 6 quarts of cold water.

Put the beef, cut into strips, the “carcasses” of the chickens broken to pieces, and three quarts of cold water, into a large soup-pot, and heat gradually. When it boils, skim well, and add the fried onion and other vegetables, cut fine, and three quarts more of cold water. Stew, with the pot-lid on, five hours, after it again boils, giving it no attention save to see that it never boils fast, and that the liquid has not diminished to less than three-quarters of the original quantity. Strain at the end of this time, first taking out the meat that has not boiled to shreds, and the bones. Rub the vegetables through the colander; afterwards strain the soup again through your wire strainer or sieve, into the kettle when you have washed it out. Season, and simmer ten minutes after the boil recommences, skimming often. Break the vermicelli into short lengths, put into the soup when you have taken out two quarts for Sunday’s “stock.” Cook gently twelve minutes after the vermicelli goes in.

At first glance, the quantity of meat prescribed for this soup may seem extravagant; but, apart from the fact that the coarser and cheaper quality is used, you must note that you have now the foundation of three days’ soups, and that you have saved time, no less than money, by making this as I have directed. It is by the long, intelligent look ahead that the mistress proves her right to the title.

Mutton Chops—Broiled.

Next to beef, good mutton, properly cooked, deserves the most prominent place among the meats upon your weekly bill of fare. It is digestible, nutritious, and, as a rule, popular. I therefore offer no apology for the regular and frequent appearance of these two standard articles of diet upon these pages. They may well be named the two staves of healthful existence—for civilized humanity, at least.

Trim your mutton chops, if your butcher has neglected to do it, leaving a naked end of bone as a “handle” upon[76] each. Lay them for fifteen minutes in a little melted butter, turning them several times. Then hold each up for a moment, to let all the butter drip off that will, and broil over a clear fire, watching constantly and turning them often when the falling fat threatens a blaze from below. If your gridiron is beneath the grate, they can be cooked far more satisfactorily, and with one-tenth of the trouble. Pepper and salt when they are laid upon a hot dish, and put a bit of butter upon each.

Sweet Pickles

“Go” well with broiled chops. For receipts for these and other pickles, with preserves and fruit jellies, the reader is respectfully referred to “Common Sense in the Household, No. 1, General Receipts.”

Browned Potato.

Mash your potatoes with milk, butter, and salt; heap as irregularly as possible in a vegetable dish, and hold a red-hot shovel close to them. They will brown more quickly if you glaze them with butter so soon as a crust is formed by the hot shovel, then heat it again and repeat the browning.

Stewed Tomatoes.

To one can of tomatoes allow a saltspoonful of salt, half as much pepper, a teaspoonful of sugar, and a great tablespoonful of butter. Drain off half the liquor, season thus, and stew fast for twenty minutes, in a vessel set within another filled with water on the hard boil. This receipt was given to me by a notable housewife. It is worth trying for her sake—and variety’s.

Orange Fritters.

• 3 cups of milk.
• 2 cups of prepared flour.
• 4 eggs.
• A little salt.
• Lard for frying.
• 6 or 8 sweet oranges.
• A little powdered sugar.

[77]

Take the peel and thick white skin from the oranges. Slice, and take out the seeds. Make a batter of the ingredients given above, taking care not to get it too thin. Dip each slice in this dexterously and fry in boiling lard. Drain in a hot colander, and eat with the sauce given below.

Beehive Sauce.

• ½ cup of butter.
• 2 cups of sugar.
• Juice and peel of a lemon.
• ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
• ¼ cup of currant jelly, or cranberry syrup.

Make hard sauce in the usual way by creaming the butter and sugar. Before beating in the lemon-juice and nutmeg, set aside three tablespoonfuls to be colored. Having added lemon and spice to the larger quantity, color the less by whipping in currant jelly or cranberry syrup, until it is of a rich pink. Shape the white sauce into a conical mound. Roll a sheet of note paper into a long, narrow funnel, tie a string about it to keep it in shape, and fill with colored sauce. Squeeze it gently through the aperture at the small end, beginning at the base, and winding round the cone to the top, guiding it so that the white will show prettily between the pink ridges.

The effect is pleasing and costs little trouble to produce.

Coffee

Is believed by some to aid digestion, and, since fritters are not generally classed among very wholesome dainties, it may be as well to give John and John’s wife—not the children—a cup of the fragrant elixir as a possible preventive against an attack of dyspepsia. It always lends grace even to a homely dinner.[78]

German Sago Soup.

Soak half a cup of German sago in enough water to cover it entirely for two hours. Heat yesterday’s soup to boiling, with a little of the reserved “stock,” should the supply be too small; stir in the sago with a little salt, until dissolved, and serve.

Boiled Turkey and Oyster Sauce.

• 15 oysters.
• A little milk, bread-crumbs, butter and seasoning.
• Wheat flour.

Chop about fifteen oysters and work up with them bread-crumbs, a spoonful of butter, with pepper and salt. Stuff the turkey as for roasting; sew it up, neatly, in a thin cloth fitted to every part, having dredged the cloth well inside with flour. Boil slowly, especially at first, allowing fifteen minutes to a pound. The water should be lukewarm when the turkey goes in. Salt and save the liquor in which the fowl was boiled.

Oyster Sauce.

• 12 oysters, cut into thirds.
• 1 cupful of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 2 teaspoonfuls rice, or wheat flour.
• Flavoring to taste.
• Chopped parsley.

[79]

Drain the liquor from the oysters before you cut them up. Boil the liquor two minutes, and add the milk. When this is scalding hot, strain and return to the saucepan. Wet the flour with cold water and stir into the sauce. As it thickens, put in the butter, then pepper and salt, with a very little parsley. The juice of a half a lemon is a pleasant flavoring. Stir it in after taking the sauce from the fire. Before this, and so soon as the flour is well incorporated with the other ingredients, add the oysters, each cut into three pieces. Simmer five minutes and pour into a gravy-tureen. Some also pour a little over the turkey on the dish. Garnish with slices of boiled egg and celery tops.

Savory Rice Pudding.

• 1 teacupful of rice.
• Giblets of the turkey.
• A slice of fat salt pork, chopped very fine.
• Half a small onion, also minced.
• 1 small cup of milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• Pepper and salt.

Wash the rice thoroughly; clean the giblets; soak them an hour in salted water, cut each into several pieces, and put on to stew with the pork and rice in nearly a quart of cold water. Cook slowly until the giblets are tender and the rice soft. The grains should be kept as whole as possible, so do not use a spoon in stirring, but shake up the saucepan, which should be set in another of boiling water. The rice should, by this time, be nearly dry. Take out the giblets and chop fine. Pour on the rice the milk, previously heated with the minced onions, and then strained. When this is again scalding, stir in the giblets, then the butter and seasoning. Cover and simmer for ten minutes. Wet a round or oval pan with cold water; press the rice firmly into it, so that it may take the shape, and turn out carefully upon a flat dish. Set in the oven for two minutes before sending to table. It should be stiff enough to take the mould, yet not dry.[80]

Potatoes au Maître d’Hôtel.

Slice cold boiled potatoes a quarter of an inch thick, and put into a saucepan containing enough milk, already heated, to cover them—barely. When all are smoking hot, add a tablespoonful or more of butter, pepper, salt, and minced parsley. Add a teaspoonful of flour wet in cold water; heat quickly to a boil; put in the juice of half a lemon; pour into a deep dish without further cooking.

Celery and Grape Jelly

Should flank the castor, or épergne, or whatever may be your centre-piece.

Mince Pie.

A receipt for mince-meat will be found in the proper order in the menu for next December. I take it for granted that, like the wise woman you are, you have laid up in the store-room enough from your Christmas supply to last for some weeks to come. If not, let me advise you to get a box of “Atmore’s Celebrated Mince-Meat,” and fill your pastry-crusts, instead of repeating so soon the tedious operation so lately performed. It comes in neat, wooden cans, and is really good. If you like, you can add more sugar and brandy. N. B.—My John has a sweet tooth. Has yours?

Make the paste by rubbing into a quart of your best flour one-third of a pound of sweet lard. Chop it in with a broad knife, if you have plenty of time. Wet up with ice-water, roll out very thin, and cover with “dabs” of butter, also of the best. Fold into a tight roll, flatten with a few strokes of the rolling-pin, and roll out into a sheet as thin as the first; baste again with the butter; roll up and out into a third sheet hardly thicker than drawing-paper; a third time dot with butter, and fold up closely. Having used as much butter for this purpose as you have lard, set aside your last roll for an hour in a very cold place. Then roll out, line your pie-plates with the paste, fill with mince-meat; put strips, cut with a jagging-iron, across them in squares or triangles, and bake in a steady, never a dull, heat.[81]

These pies, like all others, must be made on Saturday, and warmed up for Sabbath—unless you prefer to line your plates on Saturday, and set them aside until next day, then fill the raw, crisp paste with the mince-meat, and bake. The paste will be the better, instead of worse, for standing overnight, and the trouble of baking scarcely exceed that of warming over.

Bananas and Oranges

May solace the disappointment of the dyspeptic or very juvenile members of the family party, who “dare not touch mince pie.”

Combination Soup.

Put the remains of yesterday’s soup and of the stock reserved on Saturday together, and heat almost to boiling. Split and toast crisp half a dozen Boston crackers; butter while hot, set in the oven until the butter has soaked in, when put on more. Lay in the bottom of your soup-tureen, wet with a little boiling milk, and when they have soaked this up, pour on the soup.

Mince of Fowl.

Set what was left of yesterday’s oyster-sauce over the fire to heat, thinning, if necessary, with a little milk. Or, if you have no sauce, substitute a cupful of drawn butter, made from the liquor in which the turkey was boiled on[82] Sunday, reserving the rest for another day’s soup. Cut the meat closely from the bones of the turkey (saving these, also). Set aside the white flesh for a nice little dish of salad. Cut the rest, freed from skin and gristle, into pieces of nearly uniform length, not more than an inch long. When your sauce boils, put in the meat, simmer until smoking hot, then take off the saucepan, and pour gradually over two beaten eggs. Cover the bottom of a pudding-dish with bread-crumbs, when you have greased it well; season the mince to taste; fill up the dish with it; put another layer of bread-crumbs, on top, and stick bits of butter over these. Bake covered, until bubbling hot, then brown lightly. This will be found very delightful.

Turkey Salad.

The white meat of the turkey cut up in small pieces. An equal quantity of blanched celery, also cut into lengths. Salt slightly, and when dinner is nearly ready pour over them a dressing made of the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs rubbed to a powder with a teaspoonful of sugar, half as much salt, pepper and made mustard, when worked into a paste with two tablespoonfuls of oil, and six of vinegar. Toss up the salad well with a silver fork, and garnish with white of egg cut into rings.

Sweet Potatoes—Baked.

Select those which are nearly of a size, and not too large, or so small as to shrivel into dry husks. Wash, wipe, and bake in a moderate oven until, by pinching, you find that they are soft at heart.

Brussels Sprouts.

Wash carefully, cut off the lower part of the stems, and lay in cold water, slightly salted, for half an hour. Cook quickly, in boiling water, with a very little salt, for fifteen minutes, or until tender. Drain thoroughly, heap neatly upon a dish, and put a few spoonfuls of melted butter, peppered to taste, upon them. Eat hot.[83]

Sweet Macaroni.

• ½ lb. of macaroni.
• 1 pint of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of cream.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Nutmeg and vanilla.
• A little salt.

Break the macaroni into short pieces, put into a farina-kettle, cover with the milk, put on the lid of the kettle, and cook with boiling water in the outer vessel, until the milk is soaked up and the macaroni looks clear, but has not begun to break. Add the butter, sugar, and flavoring, and, if you have it, a few spoonfuls of cream. If you have not, thicken a little milk slightly with corn-starch, and use instead. Cover, and set in the boiling water for ten minutes longer. Serve in a deep dish, and send around canned or brandied peaches with it.

Chocolate.

To one pint of boiling water allow six tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate wet up to a paste in cold water. Boil twenty minutes, put in one pint of milk and boil ten minutes more. Stir often. It saves time, if you know the tastes of those who are to drink it, if you sweeten it in the saucepan.

Mother’s Soup.

• Bones of yesterday’s turkey, with the stuffing.
• [84]A slice of lean ham.
• The bone from your steak, and half a can of sweet corn.
• 1 onion, small.
• 1 stalk of celery.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• Pepper and salt.
• 3 quarts of water.

Put on bones, ham (chopped), and the vegetables, cut up with the sweet herbs, but not the corn, in a soup-kettle; cover well with the liquor in which the turkey was cooked, and boil slowly, untouched, two hours. Take out the bones, and strain the soup, rubbing the vegetables through the strainer, into a bowl. Return this to the fire and with it the corn and turkey dressing. Bring to a gentle boil and keep it steady, for fully half an hour. Season, and simmer a quarter of an hour longer. The corn and dressing will thicken it sufficiently.

Beefsteak with Onions.

While your steak is broiling, watched by some one else, fry three or four sliced onions in a pan with some beef dripping or butter. Stir and shake them until they begin to brown. Dish your steak, salt and pepper, and lay the onions on top. Cover, and let all stand where they will keep hot, for five minutes. Do not help onions to any one unless you are sure that he likes them.

There is no dish so good for keeping a steak hot, yet juicy, as a hot-water chafing-dish. No household can afford to be without one, if no more.

Mixed Pickles

Give the needed piquancy to steak. Home-made ones are best.

Sweet and Irish Potatoes—Chopped.

Chop cold boiled Irish potatoes and mix with them the cold sweet ones left from Monday—in equal parts, if convenient—or, if you have but two or three, make them do. There is philosophy, and religion, too, sometimes, in “making things do.” Heating a little butter in a saucepan, stir in the potatoes when it begins to “fizzle.”[85] Shake and toss them up with a wooden fork until they are very hot; season with pepper and salt, and dish.

Corn and Tomatoes Stewed.

To a can of tomatoes add the half can of corn left from your soup. Stew together half an hour, with a little minced onion; then pepper and salt to taste, and stir in a great spoonful of butter with a very little sugar. Simmer ten minutes before turning out.

Crème du Thé, Café et Chocolat.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 1 package of Cooper’s gelatine.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls grated chocolate.
• 1 cup strong tea.
• 1 cup of strong coffee.

Soak the gelatine for an hour in a cup of cold water. Heat the milk to boiling and add the gelatine. So soon as this is dissolved, put in the sugar, stir until melted, and take the saucepan from the fire. Strain through thin muslin and divide into three parts. Into the largest stir the chocolate, rubbed smooth in cold water; into another the tea, and into a third equal to the second, the coffee. Return that containing the chocolate to the farina-kettle, and heat scalding hot, stirring all the while. Rinse out the kettle well with boiling water, and put in, successively, those portions flavored with the tea and the coffee, scalding the vessel between each. Wet several small cups or glasses with cold water. Pour the chocolate into some, the tea into others, and the coffee blanc-mange into the rest. When cold, turn out upon a flat dish, and eat with sugar and sweet cream. It will “form” in about six hours. This is a dessert by no means tedious or difficult of preparation, and is worth trying, being both dainty and wholesome.[86]

Lexington Soup.

• 2 lbs. of veal.
• 1 lb. of mutton, with some bones.
• 1 onion.
• 1 carrot.
• ½ cup of rice.
• 1 cup of split peas.
• 4 quarts of water.
• Sweet herbs, pepper and salt.

Mince the meat and vegetables and crack the bones. The peas should have been soaked overnight in soft water, the rice washed and picked over. Put all together in your soup-kettle, pour in the water and stew gently, covered, five hours. Should the water waste too much, put in more from the tea-kettle. At the end of this time, strain, rubbing the vegetables through a colander. Return to the fire, season, and boil slowly ten minutes, skimming carefully. Put sliced lemon, from which the yellow rind has been pared, into the tureen, and pour the soup upon it. Serve a slice in each plateful.

Boiled Chickens and Macaroni.

Clean, wash, and stuff your chickens as for roasting; sew each up in a piece of new tarlatan, fitted snugly to the shape. Boil, putting them down in pretty hot, but not scalding water, allowing twelve minutes to the number of pounds in one of the pair, and that the larger. About half an hour before they are to be served take out[87] a large cupful of the liquor from the pot and put into a saucepan. Season it, and boil for five minutes with a small chopped onion. Strain, and when again hot, drop in a double handful of macaroni, broken into short lengths. Cook until tender, by which time the liquor should be absorbed by the macaroni. The saucepan should be set in another, holding boiling water, that there may be no danger of scorching while stewing. Make a flattened mound of the macaroni upon a hot dish; lay the chickens upon it, and anoint them well with melted butter, made more salt than usual. Serve them out together, and have grated cheese for such as wish it.

Chow-Chow,

Or “picklette,” in American store-rooms—is a keen appetizer and especially harmonious with boiled fowls. For receipt for making in winter or summer, see “General Receipts, No. 1, Common Sense Series,” page 491.

Parsnip Cakes.

Scrape, wash, boil, and mash the parsnips. When cold, season with salt and pepper, and, flouring your hands, make them into small, flat cakes. Roll in flour and fry in boiling dripping. Drain dry and send up on a hot dish.

Whipped Potatoes.

Instead of mashing the potatoes in the ordinary way, whip with a fork until light and dry. Then whip in a little melted butter and some milk with salt to taste, beating up fast until you have a creamy compound, almost like a méringue. Pile as lightly and irregularly as you can upon a hot dish.

Jam Roley-Poley.

• 1 quart of prepared flour.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter and the same of lard.
• 2 cups of milk, or enough to make soft dough.
• 1 large cup of fruit or berry jam.

Rub lard and butter into the flour, with a little salt, and[88] wet with cold milk into a soft paste. Roll out into a pretty thick crust—say about a quarter of an inch—and trim into an oblong sheet. Spread this generously with jam, leaving a margin at each end. Roll up closely, the fruit inside. Pinch the open ends together, and baste neatly in a floured bag fitted to the roll, but not so tightly as to interfere with the swelling of the pudding. Boil an hour and a half in hot water that, from first to last, is not once off the boil. Dip the cloth into cold water before attempting to turn the roley-poley out—but for one hasty second only.

Wine Sauce.

• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 2 cupfuls of powdered sugar.
• ½ cup of wine.
• Grated peel of half a lemon.
• ½ cupful of boiling water.
• 1 teaspoonful of corn-starch.
• Nutmeg.

Cream the butter and sugar, adding the boiling water, a little at a time, until you have used the half cupful. Put on in a saucepan, and stir in the corn-starch wet up with cold milk. When it has thickened, put in the lemon-peel and nutmeg. Simmer one minute, add the wine, put on the lid of the saucepan and set in hot water to keep warm until wanted.

Apples and Nuts,

Being cheap and abundant at this season, should form the sequel of many dinners.[89]

White Soup.

• Skeletons of yesterday’s chickens.
• 3 or 4 lbs. of veal bones, cracked to pieces.
• 1 lb. of lean veal, cut small.
• 1 pint of milk.
• 1 egg.
• 1 small cup of boiled farina.
• Salt, pepper, minced onion and parsley for seasoning.
• 1 quart of water, and liquor in which chickens were boiled.

Cover the broken chicken and veal bones, the minced veal, parsley, and onion with the cold water and chicken liquor and simmer three hours, until the three quarts are reduced to two. Strain the liquor; put back into the pot; salt and pepper; boil gently and skim for ten minutes before adding the milk and boiled farina. Simmer another ten minutes; take out a cupful and pour over the beaten egg. Mix well, and put with the soup; let all stand covered, off the fire, two minutes, and serve.

Langue de Bœuf, or Beef’s Tongue.

Get your butcher to save you a fresh, large beef’s tongue, the finest he can get. Soak, in cold water, a little salt, six hours—overnight, if you choose—changing the water before you go to bed. Wipe it, trim and scrape it, and plunging into boiling water, keep it at a slow boil for an hour and a half. Take it up, pepper and salt; brush[90] over with beaten egg and coat thickly with bread-crumbs; lay in your dripping-pan and bake, basting often with butter melted in a little water. Half an hour in a good oven should suffice. Put on a hot dish and cover while you prepare the sauce.

Sauce Piquante.

• 1 cupful of the liquor in which the tongue was boiled.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 teaspoonful of made mustard.
• A little salt and pepper.
• 1 heaping tablespoonful of browned flour.
• 1 teaspoonful mixed parsley and sweet marjoram.
• 1 tablespoonful of onion vinegar.

Brown the butter by shaking it over a clear fire in a saucepan. Heat the cupful of liquor to a boil, skim and season it with salt and pepper. Skim again before stirring in the flour wet up with cold water. As it thickens, put in the butter, herbs, mustard, and vinegar. Boil up, pour half over the tongue, the rest into a sauce-boat.

Fried Brains and Green Peas.

Open a can of green peas an hour before cooking them, and turn into a bowl. If there is not liquor in the can to cover them, add a little water, slightly salted, and cook over twenty minutes after they boil. Drain, pepper and salt; stir in a lump of butter nearly as large as an egg, and put into a vegetable dish, the fried brains arranged along the base of the mound.

Wash a calf’s brains in several waters; scald in boiling, then lay in ice-cold water, for half an hour. Wipe, and beat them into a paste; season, work in a little butter, a beaten egg, and enough flour to hold the paste together. Fry upon a griddle in small cakes. Drain off every drop of fat. Eat hot.

A nice and savory garnish.

Hominy Croquettes.

• 2 cups fine hominy, boiled and cold.
• [91]2 beaten eggs.
• 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
• Salt to taste.
• 1 teaspoonful of sugar.

Work the butter into the hominy until the latter is smooth; then the eggs, salt and sugar. Beat hard with a wooden spoon to get out lumps and mix well. Make into oval balls with floured hands. Roll each in flour, and fry in sweet dripping or lard, putting in a few at a time and turning over with care as they brown. Drain in a hot colander.

Cold Slaw.

Chop or shred a small white cabbage. Prepare a dressing in the proportion of one tablespoonful of oil to four of vinegar, a teaspoonful of made mustard, the same quantity of salt and sugar, and half as much pepper. Pour over the salad, adding, if you choose, three tablespoonfuls of minced celery; toss up well and put into a glass bowl.

Brown Betty.

• 2 cups chopped apples, tart ones.
• ½ cup of sugar.
• 1 cup of bread-crumbs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg.

Put a layer of chopped apple in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Sprinkle well with sugar, stick bits of butter here and there and add a pinch or two of nutmeg. Cover with bread-crumbs, then more apple. In this order of alternation fill the dish, spreading the surface with bread-crumbs. Cover, steam nearly an hour in a moderate oven; then brown quickly.

For sauce, mix a teaspoonful of cinnamon with a cup of powdered sugar. Butter the hot “Betty” as you fill each saucer, and strew with this mixture. Or it is excellent, eaten warm, not hot, with cream and sugar.[92]

Potato Soup.

• 1 dozen mealy potatoes.
• 1 can of tomatoes.
• 2 onions.
• 3 stalks of celery.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour.
• 1 bunch of sweet herbs.
• 1 lump of white sugar.
• Salt and pepper to taste.
• 3 quarts of water.
• Fried bread.

Parboil the potatoes; then slice and put them into the soup-pot with the tomatoes, the onions, minced, and the celery and herbs chopped small. Pour on three quarts of water, and stew for one hour, or until the vegetables can be rubbed easily through the colander. Strain, return to the pot, drop in the sugar, pepper and salt judiciously, boil up and skim. Stir in the butter, and simmer, covered, for ten minutes. Have dice of fried bread in the tureen, upon which pour the soup.

Fried Oysters.

Select for this the finest oysters. Drain, and wipe them by spreading them upon a cloth, laying another over them, and pressing lightly. Roll each in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs with which have been mixed a little salt and less pepper, and fry in a mixture of equal parts of lard and butter.[93]

Drain each in a wire spoon, and eat them hot, with bread and butter.

Roast Mutton.

Wash the meat well and wipe with a clean cloth. Put into the dripping-pan, pour a cup of boiling water over it, and roast, basting often, for a while, with salt and water, afterwards with its own gravy. Allow twelve minutes to each pound of meat, and keep the fire at a steady, moderate heat. Should it brown too fast, cover with a sheet of paper. Take up the meat, put it on a hot dish; thicken the gravy with browned flour, having first taken off all the fat you can—season with pepper and salt, boil up, skim and serve. Pass currant jelly with it.

Spinach à la Crème.

Pick over and wash the spinach, and cut the leaves from the stalks. Boil in hot water, a little salted, about twenty minutes. Drain, put into a wooden tray, or upon a board; chop very fine, and rub through a colander. Put into a saucepan; stir until it begins to smoke throughout. Add then two tablespoonfuls of butter for a good-sized dish, a teaspoonful of white sugar, three tablespoonfuls of milk, salt and pepper to liking. Beat, as it heats, with a silver fork or wire spoon. Some put in a little nutmeg, and most people like it. Cook thus until it begins to bubble up as you beat it. Pour into a deep dish, surround with sliced egg, and serve.

Potatoes Stewed Whole.

Pare the potatoes and boil in water which was cold when they went in. When they are done, as is proved by piercing the largest with a fork, turn off the water, and cover them barely with milk already heated. Stew in this five minutes; take the potatoes out, and put into a covered deep dish. Add to the milk in the saucepan a good lump of butter, rolled in flour, some chopped parsley, pepper and salt. Boil up once. Crack each potato as it lies in the dish, by pressing with the back of a spoon; pour the hot milk over them; let them stand three minutes in it, and send to table.[94]

French Tapioca Custard.

• 5 dessertspoonfuls of tapioca.
• 1 quart of milk.
• 1 pint of cold water.
• 3 eggs.
• 1 teaspoonful of vanilla.
• 1 heaping cup of sugar.
• A pinch of salt.

Soak the tapioca in the water five hours. Heat the milk to scalding; add the tapioca, the water in which it was soaked, and the salt. Stir to boiling, and pour gradually upon the yolks and sugar, which should have been beaten together. Boil again, stirring constantly, about five minutes, or until it begins to thicken well. Turn into a bowl and stir gently into the custard the frothed whites and the flavoring. Eat cold.

Old Hare Soup.

• 1 hare, or rabbit, full grown.
• The bones from yesterday’s mutton broken up well.
• A slice of corned ham, or some bones of salt pork.
• 1 onion.
• Chopped parsley.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 tablespoonful of mushroom or walnut catsup.
• 3 quarts of water.

[95]

Clean the hare carefully and cut to pieces, cracking all the bones. Put into the soup-kettle with the mutton bones, the bacon, onion, and parsley. Pour on three quarts of cold water; put on the lid tightly, and stew four hours very slowly. By this time the meat should be in shreds. Strain it, return to the fire, season it, stew and skim five minutes. Slice three boiled eggs and put into the tureen and pour the soup over them.

Hot Pot.

Put into a deep bake-dish a layer of cold mutton left from your roast, freed from fat and skin and cut into strips two inches long by one wide. Overlay these with slices of parboiled potatoes, a little minced onion, an oyster or two chopped, some tiny bits of butter, with salt and pepper. Repeat this process until your meat is used up. The top layer should be potatoes. Add a cupful of gravy from Friday’s dinner (or elsewhere), cover very closely and bake one hour before lifting the lid. Peep in to see if the contents are done—they will be if your fire is tolerably strong. Turn out into a deep dish.

Cucumber Pickles

Are a better condiment for this dish than any others.

Turnips with White Sauce.

Peel and quarter your turnips. Leave in cold water half an hour. Put on in hot water, and boil until tender. Drain and cover with a sauce prepared by heating a cup of milk, thickening it with a heaping teaspoonful of corn-starch, and stirring in a great spoonful of butter with pepper and salt to season it well. Put this, when you have added the turnips, into a vessel set within another of boiling water, and let them stand covered, without cooking, ten minutes before serving.

Boiled Rice au Genève.

Pick over and wash the rice, and boil in a farina-kettle, with enough cold water, a little salted, to cover it an inch deep. Shake now and then as the rice swells. Take from[96] your hare soup, when you have strained it, a cupful of the liquor and about half as much of the boiled shreds of meat. Chop these extremely fine, season with salt and pepper. Heat the cup of liquor to a boil, stir into it a scant tablespoonful of browned flour, then the chopped meat and a tablespoonful of butter, and stew gently five minutes. Pile the boiled rice, which should be almost dry, in a dish, and pour the gravy over it. It is very savory, and makes a pleasant variety in the list of winter vegetables.

Cabinet Pudding.

• ½ lb. of prepared flour.
• ¼ lb. of butter.
• 5 eggs.
• ½ lb. of sugar.
• ¼ lb. of raisins seeded and cut into three pieces each.
• ¼ lb. of currants, washed and dried.
• ½ cup of milk.
• ½ lemon, grated peel and juice.

Cream the butter and sugar; add the beaten yolks; the milk and the flour alternately with the whites. Lastly, stir in the fruit, well dredged with flour; beat up thoroughly, pour into a buttered mould; put into a pot of boiling water and do not let it relax its boil for two hours and a half. Dip the mould into cold water for one moment before turning it out.

Cabinet Pudding Sauce.

• Yolks of 2 eggs, whipped very light.
• 1 lemon, juice and half the grated peel.
• 1 glass of wine.
• 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.

Rub the butter into the sugar; add the yolks, lemon, and spice. Beat five minutes and put in the wine, stirring hard. Set within a saucepan of boiling water, and stir until it is scalding hot. Do not let it boil. Pour over the pudding.

[97]

FEBRUARY.

Clear Vermicelli Soup.

• 6 lbs. of veal—the knuckle is best.
• 1 lb. of lean ham, cut fine.
• 1 bunch of sweet herbs.
• ¼ lb. of vermicelli.
• 5 quarts of water.
• Pepper and salt with half a teaspoonful ground mace.

Cut the meat from the bones in thin shreds, and crack the bones to splinters. Mince the ham and herbs. Put into a soup-kettle, add the water, cover very tightly with a weight upon the lid, and stand where it will slowly boil, for five hours. Then turn into a jar, salt and pepper, and shut up while hot. Leave the jar all Saturday night upon the side of the range, where it will keep warm until morning. Pour into a bowl before breakfast and let it get cold. Take off the cake of fat two hours before dinner, turn the soup-jelly, bones and all, into the soup-pot, and when it is melted strain through your wire sieve. Put in the mace, boil for an hour and a half, and skim. Put the vermicelli, already broken into short bits and boiled tender, into the tureen (but not the water in which it was boiled) and strain the soup over it through double tarlatan. Let it stand ten minutes before serving. This is a showy soup, and easily made, really requiring little attention.[98]

Stewed Ducks.

On Saturday, draw, wash, and stuff your ducks, adding a touch of onion and sage to the dressing. On Saturday, also, make a gravy of the giblets, cut small, an onion, sliced, with a pint of water. Stew, closely covered, for two hours; take off, season, and set away with the giblets in it still. Next day—on Sunday—lay the ducks in the dripping-pan, put in the gravy, adding water if there is not enough to half cover the fowls, at least. Invert another pan of the same size over them, and let them stew, at a moderate heat, for two hours. Or, you can put them into a large saucepan, pour in the gravy, fit on the lid, and cook upon the range for the same time. In either case they will take care of themselves, as will the soup, if Bridget be reasonably obedient to orders, while you go to church. When the ducks are done, lay them upon a hot dish, thicken the gravy with browned flour, add a glass of brown sherry and the juice of a lemon. Lay three-cornered bits of fried bread around the inside of the dish, and pour the gravy over all.

Fried Apples and Bacon.

Pare, core, and slice round, some well-flavored pippins, or greenings. Cut into thin slices some streaked middling of excellent bacon, and fry in their own fat almost to crispness. Take out the meat and arrange it upon a hot chafing-dish, while you fry the apples in the fat left in the pan from the bacon. Drain and lay upon the slices of meat.

This is a Southern dish, and not so homely as it would seem from the mere reading.

Potatoes à la Reine.

Mash as usual, beating up light with butter and milk, but not so soft as not to take any shape you like to give them. Make a rounded hillock, or a four-sided pyramid of them upon a flat dish. Brush this all over with beaten yolk of egg, set in the oven a few minutes to harden the coating, and send to table.[99]

Mashed Carrots.

Scrape, wash, lay in cold water half an hour; then cook tender in boiling water. Drain well, mash with a wooden spoon, or beetle, work in a good piece of butter, and season with pepper and salt. Heap up in a vegetable dish, and serve very hot.

Potato Pie.

• 1 lb. mashed potato, rubbed through a colander.
• ¼ lb. of butter, creamed with the sugar.
• 6 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 1 lemon, squeezed into the potato while hot.
• 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg and the same of mace.
• 2 cups of white sugar.

Cream the butter and sugar; add the yolks, the spice, and beat in the potato gradually until it is very light. At last, whip in the whites. Bake in open shells of paste. Eat cold.

When making these pies on Saturday—forecasting Monday’s needs and superabundance of cares—prepare more pastry than you need for the two large pies which the above quantity of potato mixture will fill, and set aside a trim roll of raw crust to be rolled out in due time—we shall see to what end. I take it for granted (once more) that all of Sunday’s receipts will be diligently conned on the day when the old distich tells us, even “lazy people work the best.”

This potato pie will be pronounced delicious.

Oranges and Bananas.

These will make a pretty finish to what I flatter myself with the hope that you will find a good, and not inelegant repast.[100]

Blanche’s Soup.

Strain out the vermicelli left in yesterday’s “stock.” Heat very hot, and add two cups of milk in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of rice-flour, or, if you cannot get that, corn-starch. Stir until it thickens; take out a cupful and pour it over two beaten eggs. Return to the soup, taste, and supply what seasoning is needed; lift from the fire and leave covered five minutes before pouring into the tureen.

Duck Paté.

Cut the meat from the bones of yesterday’s ducks, in season to make gravy. Do this by breaking the skeletons to pieces, and putting them, with the stuffing, into a saucepan, pouring in a quart of cold water, and letting it in two hours boil down to half as much, or even one-third. Boil slowly, with the lid slightly lifted after the boiling begins. Let this get cold; skim and season. In the bottom of a pudding-dish put some neat slices of duck; on this a layer of boiled egg sliced thin; then, a few slices of corned tongue. (That of a calf will do as well as beef, and be cheaper. It should be boiled and cold.) Sprinkle each layer with pepper and a little salt, with a tiny pinch of mace upon the tongue. When your materials are used up, pour in the gravy, and, just before it goes into the oven, cover with a crust of pastry kept over from Saturday. Bake about three-quarters of an hour for a large dish—half an hour for one of medium size. There[101] must be a slit in the centre of the crust to let out the steam.

By proper foresight, the manufacture of this very palatable pie will consume but little of a busy woman’s time on Monday. Do not forget that with gravies and soups, after you have placed them over the fire in a well-chosen location, they will need nothing more than a hasty glance for, perhaps, several hours, during which much work in other parts of the household can be done.

Sweet Potatoes, Boiled.

It is poor economy, in buying sweet or Irish potatoes, to get either very large or very small ones. So, in cooking, select those of uniform size. Put on in hot water; boil until a fork will go easily into the largest. Peel quickly and set in the oven for a few minutes to dry. Eat hot, with butter.

Succotash.

• 1 can of sweet corn.
• 1 can of string beans.
• 1 great spoonful of butter.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 cup of milk.
• A little flour.

Cut the beans into inch lengths; put them into a saucepan with the corn, and cover with cold water. Stew half an hour, after they begin to cook, turn off most of the water and put in the milk—cold. When it is hot, stir in the butter, rolled in flour. Season, simmer for five minutes, and pour into a deep dish.

This will make a large quantity of succotash for a small family, but what is not eaten will be nice warmed over for breakfast.

Cup Custards—Boiled.

• 1 quart of milk.
• Yolks of 5 eggs and whites of 3 (reserving 2 for the méringue).
• 6 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Vanilla flavoring, 1 teaspoonful to the pint.

[102]

Heat the milk almost to boiling. Take out a cupful and add, slowly, to the beaten yolks and sugar, whipped up with three of the whites. Return to the fire and stir until it begins to thicken, but not until it curdles. Pour into a bowl and, when cold, flavor. Fill glass, or china cups with it. Whip the reserved whites to a méringue with a little powdered sugar, and heap a spoonful upon the top of each cup.

Watch your opportunity for boiling the custard. I have often slipped into the kitchen and made it while the coffee was boiling for breakfast. This once off the fire, no more cooking is needed.

Cut, or Fancy Cake,

Of which every housewife keeps a supply in her pantry, for luncheon and tea, makes, with these custards, a nice dessert, to which you need never be ashamed to seat John and his friends.

Family Soup.

• 2 lbs. fresh beef bones, broken small.
• 1 lb. calf’s liver, sliced.
• 1 slice of ham, minced.
• 1 lb. of coarse mutton, also minced.
• 1 turnip.
• 3 stalks of celery.
• [103]1 onion.
• Bunch sweet herbs.
• ¼ cup of raw rice.
• Pepper and salt.
• 4 quarts of cold water.

Put the cracked bones, the meat, and the chopped vegetables into the soup-pot, and cover with the water. The liver should lie in salted water one hour before it is sliced. Stew very slowly five hours. Then strain, rubbing hard; cool enough to bring the fat to the top. Take it off, season the soup, put over the fire, and when it boils stir in the rice, previously cooked soft in a little salted water. Simmer together half an hour, and pour out.

Rolled Beef.

Get a fillet of beef—that is, the tenderloin of several steaks cut in one piece. It will not be cheap, but there will be no waste. Therefore, as one weighing four or five pounds will make a roast for one day, your dinner will not be really expensive. Roll it up round; pin tightly with skewers not to be removed, except by the carver, and roast with care, basting often that it may not dry up. Carve horizontally.

Browned Potatoes—Whole.

Peel and parboil some fine potatoes, and half an hour before your beef is taken up, lay them in the dripping-pan. Baste with the meat and turn several times. Drain off the grease when they are done to a fine brown, and lay about the meat in the dish when it goes to table.

Baked Tomatoes.

Open a can of tomatoes, and turn into a bowl. After an hour, season them with a teaspoonful of sugar, half as much salt, a little pepper and a tablespoonful of butter cut into bits, each bit rolled in flour and all distributed evenly throughout the tomatoes. Cover with very dry bread-crumbs. Bake in a pudding-dish, covered, about thirty minutes, then brown on the upper grating of the oven.[104]

Apple Sauce.

Make this on Saturday, by stewing sliced tart apples in a little water until soft, draining and mashing them, adding a bit of butter while doing this. Sweeten abundantly and season with nutmeg.

Unity Pudding.

• 1 cup of milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 egg.
• 1 generous pint of prepared flour.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Rub butter and sugar together; beat in the egg, and whip up very light. Then, milk and salt, finally the flour. Bake in a buttered mould, until a straw thrust into the thickest part comes out clean. Turn out upon a plate. Cut in slices and eat hot.

If for this and other receipts which prescribe prepared flour, you cannot conveniently procure it, add one teaspoonful of soda and two of cream of tartar to each quart of flour. Sift all several times through a sieve. You can keep this for a week or two in a dry place.

Cream Sauce.

• 2 cups rich milk—half cream, if you can get it.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Whites of 2 eggs whipped stiff.
• 1 teaspoonful extract of bitter almonds.
• ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
• 1 even tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water.

Heat the milk to scalding; add the sugar, stir in the corn-starch. When it thickens beat in the stiffened whites, then the seasoning. Take from the fire, and set in boiling water to keep warm—but not cook—until wanted.[105]

Split Pea Soup.

• 1 quart of split peas, soaked in soft water all night.
• 1 lb. streaked salt pork, cut into thin strips.
• 2 lbs. of beef bones, cracked well.
• 3 stalks of celery, and 1 onion, chopped.
• Salt and pepper to taste.
• 4 quarts of cold water.
• A sliced lemon.

Put soaked peas, pork, bones and vegetables over the fire, with the water, and boil slowly for three hours, until the liquid is reduced nearly one half. Strain through a colander, rubbing the peas into a tolerably thick purée into the vessel below. Season, simmer ten minutes over the fire, and pour over the lemon, sliced and pared and laid in the tureen.

Fricasseed Chicken—Brown.

• 1 pair of chickens.
• ½ lb. salt pork, minced.
• 1 small onion.
• Tablespoonful of chopped parsley.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Browned flour.
• Pepper, and a little salt.

Joint the chickens, cutting them with a sharp knife. Put, with the pork, into a pot with a quart of water, and stew until tender. Do not boil fast, especially at first[106]. Strain off the liquor and cover the chickens while you prepare the gravy. Put it into a large frying-pan. There will not be too much after the chickens are taken out of it. Add to it the parsley and chopped onion, with seasoning. Boil up, thicken with browned flour; stir in the butter and cook rapidly, stirring often, ten minutes. Arrange the chickens upon a hot dish and pour the gravy over it. Let all stand for five minutes before sending to the table.

Ladies’ Cabbage.

• 1 firm white cabbage, boiled and left to get cold.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of rich milk.
• Pepper and salt.

Boil the cabbage in two waters. When it is cold, chop fine, and mix with it the beaten eggs, butter, milk, pepper and salt to your liking. Beat up well and bake in a buttered pudding-dish until brown. Serve in the dish in which it was cooked, and eat hot.

Baked Potatoes.

Select large, fair potatoes of equal size, wash, wipe and put into the oven to bake until soft all through. Send to table wrapped in a napkin.

Stewed Salsify.

Scrape and drop into cold water as fast as you clean them. Cut into inch lengths; cover with hot water and stew tender. Turn off the water; put in a cupful of cold milk. Stew in this ten minutes after the boil begins; add a lump of butter rolled thickly in flour; pepper and salt as you fancy. Boil up once and pour into a deep dish.

Soft Gingerbread.

• 1 cup of butter.
• 1 cup of molasses.
• [107]1 cup of sugar.
• 1 cup of sour or butter milk.
• ½ lb. of raisins, seeded and cut in half.
• 1 teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in boiling water.
• 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon.
• 2 eggs.
• Nearly 5 cups of sifted flour, enough for tolerably thick batter.

Cream butter, sugar, molasses, and spice; set the mixture on the range until lukewarm. Add the milk, then the beaten eggs, the soda, and at last the flour. Beat hard five minutes; put in the fruit dredged with flour; beat three minutes, and bake in small round tins.

Eat warm all that is needed for dessert. The rest will keep well. This gingerbread is uncommonly fine.

Café au Lait.

• 2 cups strong made coffee—fresh and hot.
• 2 cups of boiling milk.

Strain the coffee from the boiler into the table coffee-pot, through thin muslin. Add the boiling milk and set in a vessel of hot water, a “cozey,” or a thick cloth wrapped about it, for five minutes. Then it is ready for use. Pass with the gingerbread.

Dundee Broth.

• 3 lbs. of mutton cut into strips.
• [108]2 lbs. of bones cracked.
• 1 carrot.
• 2 turnips.
• 2 onions.
• Bunch of herbs.
• Handful of chopped cabbage.
• Pepper and salt.
• ¼ lb. of barley.
• 4 quarts of cold water.

Put on the meat, bones, and sweet herbs, to stew in four quarts of water. Do not disturb for four hours. Meanwhile, pare and cut the vegetables into dice, and boil until tender in just enough water to cover them. Drain this off and throw it away. Cover the vegetables with cold water, a little salt, and let them stand until you have strained the soup. This should be allowed to cool to throw up the fat. Skim it with care; put back over the fire. Salt and pepper, boil up, and skim again before putting in the vegetables, without the water in which they have been standing. The barley should, all this time, be soaking in warm water, just deep enough to cover it. Turn it now, with the water in which it has lain, into the soup. Let all simmer together one hour, and serve the vegetables in the soup.

Baked Calf’s Head.

Take out the brains and set aside. Wash the head carefully. It should, of course, be cleaned with the skin on. Soak it in cold, salted water, one hour, then in hot water ten minutes. Boil in three quarts of cold water for about an hour after the water begins to bubble. Take it out, saving the liquor when you have salted it, as stock for to-morrow’s soup. Plunge the head into cold water for five minutes. Wipe carefully, put into your dripping-pan, brush it over with beaten egg, sprinkle with bread-crumbs, and bake until nicely browned, basting three times with butter. Make a gravy of a cupful of the liquor, seasoned and thickened. Fry strips of ham, about an inch wide by four inches long, almost crisp in their own fat, and having laid the head upon a flat dish, dispose these about it. Serve a piece with each plate of the head.[109]

French Beans and Fried Brains.

Open a can of string-beans one hour at least before they are to be cooked. Cut into short pieces, cover with hot water, and stew thirty minutes, but not until they break. Drain well; stir into them two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, in which have been mixed salt, pepper, and a tablespoonful of lemon-juice. Heap within a deep dish, and garnish with the brains.

Wash the brains and lay in cold salt and water for an hour, then boil ten minutes. Leave in very cold water until firm—say a quarter of an hour. Wipe, and chop fine, add a little parsley, pepper and salt; make into small cakes by flouring your hands; dip in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry in hot dripping. Drain thoroughly.

Stewed Tomatoes.

Season a can of tomatoes with salt, pepper, sugar, and a little chopped onion. Stew for twenty-five minutes and stir in a large tablespoonful of butter. Simmer ten minutes, and serve.

Potatoes in Cases.

Roast large potatoes. Cut off a piece from the top of each, and lay it aside. Empty the insides carefully by the help of a small spoon—not tearing the skins. To this potato, when mashed, add butter, grated cheese, pepper and salt, as suits your taste. Bind the mixture with a beaten egg; heat in a saucepan, stirring to prevent scorching; refill the cases, fit on the top of each, and set in a hot oven three minutes before sending to table in a warm napkin.

Snowballs.

• ¼ lb. raw rice.
• 1 quart fresh milk.
• 5 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• A little nutmeg.

Wash the rice in several waters, and boil in the milk (always in a farina-kettle), adding a little salt and five[110] tablespoonfuls of sugar, with a pinch of nutmeg. Stew gently until the rice is soft and has soaked up the milk. Fill small cups with the rice, pressing it down firmly, and let it get cold. At dinner-time, turn it out upon a large flat dish, or pile within a glass bowl. Eat with sweetened cream.

Sweet Cream.

• 2 cups of cream.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of rose-water.

Stir the sugar into the cream until it is dissolved; then the rose-water.

Calf’s Feet Soup.

• 4 calf’s feet.
• 1 onion.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• 4 cloves.
• 2 eggs.
• 1 cup of milk.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 quart of cold water, and the liquor in which the calf’s head was boiled, yesterday.

[111]

In bespeaking your calf’s head from your butcher, ask also for four nice feet, already cleaned. (You can secure your sweetbreads at the same time.) Put on the feet in a quart of cold water. Cover closely and heat gradually to a very gentle boil. Keep this up until the feet begin to shrink from the bones—about two hours. Should the water fall perceptibly, fill up from the tea-kettle. Have ready the vegetables, herbs, and spice, the former cut up small. Put them into the liquor left from yesterday’s head, and when you have heated this to a boil, add the feet with the water in which they are cooking. Boil for another hour, still slowly. Strain the soup, cool to make the grease rise. Skim, season, and return to the fire. When again boiling, stir in the milk, and the meat from the feet, cut into dice. Take out a cupful of the soup and pour, by degrees, over the beaten eggs. Return to the pot, stir two minutes, and serve.

A very nice soup, and nutritious. If you cannot get calf’s feet, use those of a pig instead, cooking exactly in the same way.

Salt Mackerel, with Cream Sauce.

Soak overnight in lukewarm water, changing this in the morning for ice-cold. Rub all the salt off, and wipe dry. Grease your gridiron with butter, and rub the fish on both sides with the same, melted. Then broil quickly over a clear fire, turning with a cake-turner so as not to break it. Lay upon a hot-water dish, and cover until the sauce is ready.

Heat a small cup of milk to scalding. Stir into it a teaspoonful of corn-starch, wet up with a little water. When this thickens, add two tablespoonfuls of butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Beat an egg light, pour the sauce gradually over it, put the mixture again over the fire, and stir one minute, not more. Pour upon the fish, and let all stand, covered, over the hot water in the chafing-dish. Put fresh boiling water under the dish before sending to table.[112]

Mashed Potatoes,

Beaten light with milk and butter, and smoothed into a mound, should be served with the fish. If you have a pretty butter-print, wet it, and stamp the top of the mound.

Remember that everything tastes better for looking well.

Larded Sweetbreads, Stewed.

• 3 or 4 fine sweetbreads.
• ¼ lb. fat salt pork, cut into “lardoons,” or long narrow strips.
• 1 cup of gravy (saved from the roast calf’s head of yesterday).
• 1 tablespoonful of tomato or other catsup.
• Juice of half a lemon.
• Season with pepper.

Parboil the sweetbreads for five minutes. The water should boil when they are dropped in. Take out and lay at once in ice-cold water. This makes them firm. Leave in this five minutes, wipe dry, and set aside to get cold. Then lard with the strips of pork, passing them quite through, so as to project on both sides. If you have no larding-needle, use a long-bladed penknife. Put them into a saucepan; cover with the gravy. If there is not enough, put in a few spoonfuls from the boiling soup. The gravy should be cold, however, when poured over the sweetbreads. Stew about twenty-five minutes after the boil begins. Take out the sweetbreads; thicken the gravy with browned flour, add catsup, lemon, and pepper, the lardoons having salted it sufficiently. Lay the sweetbreads upon a hot dish, pour the gravy over them, and serve; in carving, cut perpendicularly.

Stewed Celery.

• 2 bunches of celery, the white stalks only, scraped and cut into short pieces.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• [113]1 cup of milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour.
• Pepper, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg.

Stew the celery in a little salted hot water until quite tender. Drain off the water and put in the milk, cold. So soon as it boils, stir in the butter, rolled in flour, pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Add a few spoonfuls of the hot milk to the beaten eggs that they may not curdle in the saucepan; put with the celery and sauce over the fire; boil up once, and dish.

Omelette Soufflé.

• 8 eggs.
• 5 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• Vanilla or rose-water flavoring.

Whip the whites to a very stiff froth, thick enough to be cut with a knife. Beat the yolks smooth and long; add to these the sugar, whip up well, and flavor. Grease a neat pudding-dish abundantly with the tablespoonful of butter. The last thing before you take your seat at the table, do all this; stir whites and yolks together, and put into a steady, not too hot, oven. If you have a teachable cook, let her learn how to put the prepared ingredients together after dinner has gone in. The oven-door should be opened as seldom as possible, certainly not under fifteen minutes. By this time the omelette should have risen high, and be of a golden brown. Partly close the oven-door, to keep it hot, and let it be served as soon as possible in the bake-dish.

Never attempt this or any other nerve-trying dish, for the first time, for others than a family party. Yet it is easy enough when you have once learned for yourself how long to cook it, and how soon it will fall.

Tea and Toasted Crackers.

Split Boston crackers, toast, butter; put where they will keep hot, and pass with an after-dinner cup of tea.[114]

Gravy and Sago Soup.

• 4 lbs. coarse beef, cut into strips.
• 3 lbs. of bones.
• 1 slice of lean corned ham.
• 4 onions.
• 4 cloves.
• 1 bunch of sweet herbs.
• ¼ lb. of German sago.
• Pepper and salt.
• 5 quarts of water.
• 2 stalks of celery, cut small.

Cut the beef into narrow strips, the onions into slices. Fry the latter brown in dripping, strain them out, and set aside. Return the dripping to the pan, and fry the meat until it is nicely browned, but not crisp. Lastly, fry the bones in the same fat. They should be broken up small. Put meat, bones, celery, spice, and onions into a pot with a quart of cold water; cover closely, and put where it will not boil under an hour, but will heat all the time. This is to draw out color and open the pores (so to speak) of the meat. So soon as it boils add four quarts more of cold water. Set where it will boil steadily, but never fast, for five hours. Strain, and cool sufficiently to make the fat rise. Take it off, put back over the fire, season, boil up and skim; put in the sago, which should have been soaked two hours in a little water, simmer fifteen minutes and serve.

Save all that is left from dinner, for Monday.[115]

Boiled Corned Beef.

Wash well, and put over the fire in hot water—plenty of it—and boil twenty minutes for each pound of meat. Turn three times while cooking. Drain dry, and serve with drawn butter in a boat. “Draw” the butter in liquor taken from the pot. Keep the rest of the liquor for the base of Sunday’s soup.

Mashed Turnips.

Pare, quarter, and lay in cold water half an hour. Put on in boiling water, and cook until tender. Drain, mash, and press to get out the water, work in pepper, salt, and a generous lump of butter. Do all this quickly not to cool the turnips, and pile smoothly in a hot, deep dish.

Cauliflower, with Sauce.

Pick off the leaves and cut the stem close. Do not cut the cauliflower unless very large. Lay in cold water for thirty minutes, tie in coarse bobbinet lace or mosquito net, and cook in boiling water, slightly salted, until tender. Lay the cauliflower, flower upward, within a hot dish, and pour the sauce over it.

Sauce for the above.

Stir into a cup of boiling water a tablespoonful of flour, wet up with cold. When it has boiled two minutes, add two tablespoonfuls of butter, the white of an egg whipped stiff, pepper and salt, and the juice of a lemon. Boil one minute, and pour over the cauliflower.

Baked Macaroni.

Break half a pound of macaroni into pieces an inch long, and cook in boiling water, slightly salted, twenty minutes. Drain, and put a layer in the bottom of a greased bake-dish, upon this some grated cheese—Parmesan, if you can get it—and tiny bits of butter. Then more macaroni, and so on, filling the dish, with grated cheese on top.[116] Wet with a little milk, and salt lightly. Bake, covered half an hour, then brown. Serve in the bake-dish.

Jelly Tartlets.

• 1 lb. of flour.
• ½ lb. of butter.
• ¼ lb. of lard.
• Yolk of an egg.
• Ice-water.

Wash the butter in three waters, working it over well to get out the salt. Melt it in a tin cup set in boiling water, take the scum from the top, and let it get almost cold, when beat, little by little, into the whipped egg. Work these into the flour, adding just enough ice-water to make the paste soft enough to roll out. When you have rolled it into a thin sheet, spread all over with the lard, put on with a knife. Sprinkle lightly with flour, roll up, and flatten with three or four strokes of the rolling-pin. Roll again into a yet thinner sheet; again lubricate with the lard and sprinkle with flour, and, once more, make into a tight roll. Set for an hour in a cold place. Cut in two. Set aside enough for your Monday’s dessert; line small “patty-pans” with the rest, pricking the paste on the bottom to keep it from puffing too high. Bake in a quick oven, and when cold put a tablespoonful of sweet jelly or jam in each.

Apples and Nuts,

Especially the former, are better for very young stomachs than pastry.[117]

Mock Turtle Bean Soup.

• 1 quart of mock turtle soup beans.
• 2 onions, chopped.
• 4 stalks of celery, cut small.
• Liquor in which the corned beef of yesterday was boiled.
• Pepper.
• Dice of fried bread.
• 1 quart of cold water.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour.

Soak the beans overnight. In the morning, pour on a quart of cold water, and set them where they will heat for an hour, without burning. Stir up often from the bottom. At the end of this time add the beef liquor (after taking off the fat), the onions, and celery. Cook gently three hours, until the beans are boiled to pieces. Strain, season, put back into the kettle, boil up, season with pepper, stir in the butter rolled in flour. Simmer five minutes, and pour upon the fried bread in the tureen.

If you cannot get the purple “mock turtle soup beans,” use the common white ones.

Haunch of Venison.

Wash all over with lukewarm vinegar and water; then rub well with butter or lard to soften the skin. Cover the top and sides with foolscap paper, well greased, and coat it with a paste of flour and water, half an inch thick. Lay over this a large sheet of thin wrapping-paper, and[118] over this another of stout foolscap. Tie all down in place by greased pack-thread. The papers should also be thoroughly greased.

Thus much on Saturday—and set the venison in a very cold place. Next day, about three hours before it will be needed, put into the dripping-pan, with two cups of boiling water in the bottom. Invert another pan over it to keep in the steam; be sure that the fire is good, and leave it to itself for an hour. Then see that the paper is not scorching; wet it all over with hot water and a ladleful of gravy; cover and let it alone for an hour and a half more. Remove the papers and paste, and test with a skewer in the thickest part. If it goes in readily, close the oven, and let it brown for half an hour. Baste freely four times with claret and butter; at last dredge with flour and rub over with butter to make a froth. Take it up, put upon a hot dish. Skim the gravy left in the dripping pan, strain it, thicken with browned flour; add two teaspoonfuls of currant-jelly, a glass of claret, pepper and salt. Boil up for an instant, and serve in a gravy-boat. Allow a quarter of an hour to the pound in roasting venison. The neck can be roasted in the same way as the haunch.

Mashed Potatoes—Moulded.

Having mashed and seasoned them as usual, grease well the inside of a fluted pudding or cake mould, put in the potato, cover, and set for half an hour in a dripping-pan half full of boiling water, within a moderate oven. Then remove the lid, dip, for a moment, the mould in cold water, and turn the potato out upon a flat dish.

Lima Beans.

You can get them canned, but they are nearly, if not quite as good dried. In this case soak them overnight in soft water. Change this in the morning for fresh, and put them on to boil in hot water, a little salted. Cook slowly until soft. Do not boil so fast as to break the skins. Drain well, stir in a good piece of butter, a little pepper and salt, and eat very hot.[119]

Sweet Potatoes—Browned.

Boil in their skins, peel while hot, and set them in a quick oven. Glaze presently with butter, repeating the process, several times, as they brown.

Wine Jelly with Whipped Cream.

• 1 package of Coxe’s gelatine, soaked for two hours in a large cup of cold water.
• 2 cups of white wine, or pale sherry.
• 1 lemon, all the juice and half the grated peel.
• 1 teaspoonful of bitter almond extract.
• 2 cups of white sugar.
• 2 cups of boiling water.

Put soaked gelatine, lemon, sugar, and flavoring extract together, and cover closely for half an hour. Pour on boiling water, stir and strain. Add the wine, strain again through a flannel bag, without squeezing, and leave in a mould wet with cold water, until just before the Sunday dinner.

Whip a cup of rich cream to a thick froth in a syllabub-churn. The jelly should have been formed in an open mould—one with cylinder in the middle. Fill the hollow left by this with the whipped cream; or, if your jelly be a solid mass, heap the cream about the base.

Coffee and Macaroons

Should be the final course. I make no apology for hot and good Sunday dinners. There is a vast deal of straining out infinitesimal gnats and swallowing gigantic camels upon this, as upon most other questions of conscience. We have neither time nor space for their discussion. I have simply tried to deal with the fact that most husbands, brothers, and fathers expect a better dinner on Sabbath, and enjoy it more, than upon other days, by showing, to the best of my ability, how they can be gratified without imposing heavy duties upon mistress and servants at a season when both mind and body need comparative rest.[120]

“Second Thoughts” Soup.

Heat Saturday’s soup to a boil; add two cups of milk, and when this heats, pour a little of it upon two beaten eggs. Return these to the soup, add whatever seasoning is necessary; simmer all together for one minute, and pour upon three or four tablespoonfuls of grated cheese placed in the bottom of the tureen. Stir up well, and it is ready.

Larded Venison.

Trim the remains of the roast haunch into a neat shape, and lard with strips of fat pork, making incisions to receive it with a thin, sharp-edged knife. Pour what gravy you have over it, or should there be none, use butter and water instead. Put into a dripping-pan, turn another over it and roast—or steam—for one hour. Meantime, make a gravy of the trimmings, bits of bone, etc., by covering them well with cold water, and adding half an onion, sliced. Stew until the gravy is reduced one-half. Strain, season with pepper; a tablespoonful of currant-jelly, one of catsup and two of claret. Thicken slightly with browned flour, boil up to mix well, and pour gradually over the meat. Baste abundantly with this for half an hour if the piece of meat be large. Less time may suffice for a small roast. Never let it dry for an instant. When done, it should seem to have been stewed rather than roasted. Serve the gravy in a sauce-boat.

Like some other “second thoughts,” this dish will be even better than at its first appearance.[121]

Scalloped Tomatoes.

Turn nearly all the juice off from a can of tomatoes. Salt and pepper this, by the way, and put aside in a cool place for some other day’s soup. Put a layer of bread-crumbs in the bottom of a buttered pie-dish; on them one of tomatoes; sprinkle with salt, pepper, and some bits of butter, also a little sugar. Another layer of crumbs, another of tomatoes—seasoned—then a top layer of very fine, dry crumbs. Bake covered until bubbling hot, and brown quickly.

Fried Sweet Potatoes.

Slice cold ones left from yesterday, or boiled this fore-noon; roll in flour and fry in dripping. Drain well.

Raspberry and Currant Jelly Tart.

Roll out the raw paste reserved for to-day from Saturday, and line two pie-dishes. Fill them nearly full of canned raspberries, sweetened to your liking. Spread a coating of currant jelly over the top, and cover with a lattice-work of pastry, cut with a jagging-iron. Watch your chance of putting them into the oven, as they are better when not hot.

You will like them, I think.

Clam Soup.

• 50 clams, ready opened.
• [122]1 quart of milk.
• 1 pint of water.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 12 whole peppers.
• A few bits of red pepper pods.
• 6 blades of mace.
• Salt to taste.
• 1 stalk of celery, cut small.
• 1 tablespoonful rice-flour or corn-starch.

Drain off the liquor from the clams and put it over the fire in a large farina-kettle, with a pint of water, the peppers, mace, celery, and salt. When it has boiled ten minutes, strain and put back into the kettle with the clams. Shut the lid down closely, and boil, fast, thirty minutes. Heat the milk in another vessel, stir into it the rice-flour, wet up with cold water, and the butter. Pour into the kettle with the clams, take at once from the fire, pour into the tureen, in the bottom of which you have laid four or five Boston crackers, split. Cover, and wait five minutes before serving.

Ragoût of Veal.

• 5 lbs. of knuckle of veal.
• 1 onion.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• Juice of tomatoes set aside yesterday.
• Juice of half a lemon.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of browned flour.
• ¼ lb. of streaked fat pork.
• Pepper and salt.

Crack the bones, when you have taken the meat off, and put them into a saucepan with the minced onion, celery, and herbs, with a quart of water. Stew slowly until the liquor has boiled down to a pint. Meanwhile, cut the veal into neat slices, and fry until they begin to brown, in some good dripping. Strain the gravy made from the bones and vegetables over this, and put all on to stew, adding the tomato-juice, pepper, and pork, the last cut up fine. Simmer, with the lid on, for two hours.[123] Then add the browned flour, wet up in cold water, salt, if needed, the butter and lemon-juice. Boil up once, and dish.

Rice and Cheese.

Boil a cup of rice in a quart of water, slightly salted, and when half-done add two tablespoonfuls of butter. By the time the rice is soft, the water should have been soaked up entirely, and each grain stand out whole in the mass. Never stir boiling rice, but shake up the saucepan instead. Stir into the rice, at this point, three tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, salt and pepper to taste. Toss up with a fork until the cheese is dissolved, and pour into a deep dish.

Potato Puff.

Mash the potatoes while hot. Beat in butter, milk, and two whipped eggs, with salt to your liking, until you have a light, soft paste. Bake in a buttered pudding-dish in a quick oven.

Celery Salad.

Cut up blanched stalks of celery into short pieces. Mix a dressing of one tablespoonful of oil to one teaspoonful of sugar, one of salt, half as much pepper, and four tablespoonfuls of vinegar with half a teaspoonful of made mustard. Heat the vinegar to scalding, and pour over a beaten egg, a little at a time, and beating it in well. To this add the oil and other ingredients, whipping up the mixture with an egg-beater. When cold, pour over the salad, toss up with a silver fork, and put into a glass bowl.

A Mere Trifle.

• 1 quart of fresh milk.
• 5 eggs.
• 6 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Vanilla, or other essence, 2 teaspoonfuls.

Heat the milk to boiling, and pour, gradually, upon the beaten yolks and sugar. Put again over the fire, stir[124] steadily for about ten minutes, or until it begins to thicken. Take it off, and while still very hot, stir in with a few light strokes half of the frothed whites. Let it get cold before flavoring it. Pour into a glass bowl. Whip the remaining whites to a méringue with a little powdered sugar. Heap upon the custard. Put bits of bright jelly, or preserved strawberries, here and there upon the snowy mass.

Hotch-Potch.

• 2 lbs. of lean beef, without bones, and cut into mince-meat.
• 2 onions.
• 2 carrots.
• 2 turnips.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• ½ small cabbage, cut fine.
• 2 potatoes.
• 1 cup of corn.
• Half a can of tomatoes.
• Bunch of sweet herbs, chopped.
• Pepper and salt.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Wash, scrape, and slice the vegetables, and put all except the tomatoes into a pot; cover with hot water and boil gently ten minutes. Drain off the water, put a handful of the mixed vegetables, including now the tomatoes, in the bottom of a stone jar. Pepper and salt, strew[125] thickly with the minced raw beef, repeat the order until your materials are all in the jar. Fit a top or a small plate over the mouth; tie down with stout greased paper, set it within the oven, and let it alone for five or six hours, except that you must look, now and then, to see that the paper does not take fire. Prevent this by greasing it abundantly. At the end of this time, turn out the hotch-potch; stir in the butter, and, if needed, additional seasoning through it, and serve in a tureen.

Stewed Pigeons.

Pick, clean, and wash the pigeons, and put into a pot with a cupful of water to keep them from burning, and a tablespoonful of butter for each one. Shut the lid down tightly, and subject to a slow heat until they are of a nice brown—about nut-color. Once in a great while turn them, and see that each is well wet with the liquor. Take them out and cover in a warm place—a colander set over a pot of hot water is best—while you make the gravy. Chop the giblets of the pigeon “exceeding small” with a little onion and parsley. Put into the gravy, pepper and salt, boil up and thicken with browned flour. Return the pigeons to the pot, cover again tightly, and cook slowly until tender. If there should not be liquor enough in the pot to make the gravy, add boiling water before the giblets go in.

This is an admirable receipt.

Potatoes à la Lyonnaise.

Cut parboiled potatoes into dice. Chop an onion and fry it, with a little minced parsley, in good dripping or butter, for one minute. Then put in the potatoes. Stir briskly until they have fried slowly for five minutes. They must never stick to the bottom, nor brown. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, drain free of fat by shaking them in a heated colander, and send up hot.

Kidney Beans.

Soak over night in soft water; next morning cover with lukewarm, and cook slowly for one hour. Salt slightly[126] and boil until tender, but not to actual breaking. Drain very well, stir in a liberal spoonful of butter, pepper, and serve.

English Tapioca Pudding.

• 1 cup of tapioca.
• 5 eggs.
• 3 pints of milk.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• ½ lb. of raisins.
• Half the grated peel of a lemon.
• A little salt.

Soak the tapioca for one hour in a pint of the milk; pour into a farina-kettle, surround with warm water, salt very slightly, and bring to a boil. When soft throughout, turn out to cool, while you make the custard. Heat a quart of milk to scalding; pour over the beaten eggs and sugar, this last having been rubbed to a cream with the butter. Mix with the tapioca—lemon-peel and raisins last. Dredge the fruit lightly with flour, and beat all up hard. Bake in a buttered dish one hour—at first covered.

Eat warm, with powdered sugar. It is better for not being too hot.

Celery Soup.

• 2 lbs. of veal.
• 1 slice of corned ham, or a ham-bone.
• 2 bunches of celery.
• [127]2 cups of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch wet up in water.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 teaspoonful of sugar.
• 1 onion.
• Dice of fried bread.
• Pepper and salt.
• 3 quarts of water.

Chop the meat, onion, and herbs; cover with the water and put on to stew early in the day. When the meat has boiled to rags and the liquid reduced one-half, strain, and put in the celery, cut into small pieces. Use the best parts only. Stew soft; rub through a colander and return with the broth to the saucepan. Season, add the sugar, boil up and skim, and put in the milk. Heat, and add corn starch. When it again boils, you stirring all the while, put in the butter.

Take off so soon as this has melted, and pour over the fried bread in the tureen.

Mutton Cutlets—Fried.

Beat them flat with the broad side of a hatchet; season with pepper and salt, dip first in beaten egg, then in bread-crumbs, and fry in lard or dripping. Drain perfectly free from the fat, and arrange them, standing on end and touching one another, around a mound of mashed potatoes.

Mashed Potatoes.

Prepare as usual, and shape with a knife into a smooth mound, with a hedge of cutlets about the base.

Stewed Corn and Tomatoes.

Take a half-can of tomatoes and the same of corn, the rest of that which was opened for your “hotch-potch” yesterday, and, after mixing them up well, season with pepper, salt, and a little sugar. Set on where they will cook slowly. At the end of twenty-five minutes, stir in a great spoonful of butter. Put on the lid and stew very gently ten minutes more. Serve in a deep dish.[128]

Brussels Sprouts.

Pick over, trim, and lay in cold water for half an hour cook quickly in boiling water, a little salt, for fifteen minutes. Drain carefully, put upon a flat dish, and pour drawn butter over them.

Apple Méringue Pie.

• 1 quart of flour.
• ½ lb. of butter.
• ¼ lb. of lard.
• Ice-water.

Chop the lard in flour, wet up with ice-water to a stiff paste. Roll thin, and baste with one-third of the butter, sprinkle lightly with flour, and roll up. Again roll out, even thinner than before, baste again with half the remaining butter, sprinkle with flour, and make a second roll. Repeat this process yet a third time, and set in a cold place for one hour.

Cut the roll of paste into two pieces, reserving one for to-morrow’s oyster-pie. With the other, line two pie-dishes and fill with good apple-sauce, well sweetened, and seasoned with nutmeg. Bake until just done. Draw to the oven door, and spread with a méringue made by whipping stiff the whites of three eggs for each pie, sweetening with a tablespoonful of sugar for each egg. Flavor with a little rose-water or lemon-essence, beat until you can make a clean cut in it, and spread three-quarters of an inch thick upon each pie. Shut the oven door until the méringue is well set. Do not let it scorch. Eat cold.[129]

Friars’ Soup.

• 4 onions.
• 3 stalks of celery.
• ¼ of a small cabbage.
• 2 turnips.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• ½ cup raw rice.
• 2 eggs.
• Pepper and salt to taste.
• 1 tablespoonful of chopped parsley.
• 3 quarts of water.

Boil the vegetables, all chopped fine (reserving the parsley for seasoning), in three quarts of water until they can be pulped through a colander. Return them, with the water in which they were cooked, to the fire. Boil the rice, meantime, in a little water until it swells and absorbs it all. Stir into the vegetable porridge, season, and simmer for fifteen minutes. Add the butter, simmer ten minutes, dip out a cupful and beat into the eggs. Stir this into the broth, and before it begins to boil, take from the fire and pour out, lest the eggs should curdle.

Oyster Pie.

Roll out the raw paste made yesterday into a pretty thick sheet. Fill a pudding-dish with crusts of stale bread, or light crackers. Butter the edges of the dish that the crust may be easily removed. Cover the mockpie with[130] the pastry; lay a strip cut in scallops or points, around the edge, to keep it in place, and bake.

To each pint of oyster-liquor allow a cup of milk, but heat them in separate vessels. So soon as the liquor boils, put in the oysters and cook five minutes more. Stir a tablespoonful of corn-starch into the pint of hot milk, having, of course, first wet it up with cold water, and, when it thickens, pour over the oysters and liquor. Season with pepper and salt, and add two tablespoonfuls of butter, if there be a quart of oysters. Lift the hot crust from the pudding-dish with great care. Remove the stale bread, wipe out the inside; pour in the stewed oysters with enough of the soup to cover them well; replace the pastry and set in the oven for two or three minutes.

Calf’s Liver à l’Anglaise.

• 2 lbs. of fresh liver.
• ½ lb. fat salt pork.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• ½ of a small onion.
• 1 teaspoonful of chopped parsley.
• Pepper.
• The pork should salt it sufficiently.

Put the butter into a warm—not hot saucepan. Cut the liver into slices half an inch thick, and lay upon the butter. Mince the pork and cover the liver. Sprinkle the parsley and onion, with pepper, on top. Cover the saucepan closely and set in a kettle of hot water. Keep this water below the boiling-point for an hour. Then let it boil another hour. The liver should by this time be very tender and juicy, if the heat has been properly managed. Take it out, and put it upon a chafing-dish to keep warm. Boil up, and thicken the gravy with browned flour; pour over the liver and serve. The inner saucepan should be made of tin.

Potatoes au Gratin.

Mash your potatoes soft with butter and milk; mould in a round pan or tin jelly-mould, made very wet with[131] cold water. Turn out upon a flat plate—a sheet of tin is better—well-greased, strew with fine, dry bread-crumbs; set upon the upper grating of the oven to brown quickly. Slip dexterously from the plate to a hot dish.

Stewed Parsnips.

Boil tender and cut in long slices. Heat in a saucepan a cup of milk, thicken it with a tablespoonful of butter cut into bits and rolled in flour, season with pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg. Put in the parsnips, boil up once gently, take from the fire, and leave covered in the saucepan for five minutes before you serve.

Picklette and Apple Sauce.

Pass the first with the oyster pie, which is a course of itself; the apple sauce with the meat.

Chocolate Custard.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 5 eggs.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 4 heaping tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate.
• 2 teaspoonfuls vanilla extract.

Scald the milk, rub the chocolate to a smooth paste in a little cold milk. Stir into the milk and cook two minutes in it. Beat up the yolks of the five eggs with the whites of two, and the sugar. Pour the hot mixture, gradually, upon them, stirring deeply. Turn into a buttered pudding-dish, and set in a dripping-pan of boiling water. Bake until firm. When “set” in the middle, spread quickly, without taking from the oven, with a méringue made by whipping the reserved whites stiff with a very little sugar. Bake until this is done. Eat cold.[132]

Macaroni Soup.

• 3 lbs. knuckle of veal.
• 2 lbs. of lean beef.
• 1 lb. lean ham.
• 2 onions.
• 1 carrot.
• 2 turnips.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• ¼ lb. of macaroni cut into fancy shapes, usually known as “Italian Paste.”
• 6 cloves.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 6 quarts of water.
• 3 stalks of celery.

Mince the meat, crack the bones, and slice the vegetables. Mix all together. Put the butter in the bottom of a soup-pot, next the meat, then the vegetables and herbs; fit on a tight lid, and set the pot where it will warm very slowly. At the end of an hour, open it, pour off the gravy; increase the heat until the meat begins to brown on the sides of the pot. Return the gravy to the rest of the ingredients; cover with six quarts of cold water, and boil until the liquor has fallen to four quarts. This should be in four hours. Strain the soup; pressing out all the nourishment, and rubbing the vegetables through the sieve. Add the paste, or, if you cannot obtain it, the same quantity of pipe macaroni, boiled a few minutes in hot water, and left to get cool. Then, with a sharp knife or scissors, clip it into very short bits, and put into the soup. Season, boil up, skim well, and[133] let all cook gently together for ten minutes. Half of the above quantity of stock will be enough for Saturday’s dinner. Therefore, before adding the macaroni, take out about two quarts, season well, and set aside for Sunday’s soup.

Baked Ham.

Soak overnight in warm water. In the morning, scrub it hard; trim away the rusty part of the under side and edges; wipe dry; cover the bottom with a stiff paste of flour and water, and lay, upside down, in the dripping-pan, with enough water to keep it from burning. Allow, in baking, twenty-five minutes to the pound. Baste a few times, to prevent the skin from cracking, and keep hot water in the pan. When a skewer will pierce the thickest part, take it up, plunge for one minute into cold water; skin carefully, brush all over with beaten egg, then strew very thickly with cracker-crumbs, and set in a hot oven to brown. Eat hot or cold, garnished with sprigs of celery or parsley.

Cheese Fondu.

• 1 pint of boiling milk.
• 1 cup very dry bread-crumbs. (Crush the crusts baked in yesterday’s oyster pie.)
• ½ lb. dry cheese, grated.
• 3 eggs.
• Pepper and salt.

Soak the crumbs in the hot milk; beat in the cheese; then the yolks of the eggs, pepper and salt. Have a buttered pudding-dish ready, and just before the fondu goes into the oven whip in the whites of the eggs, already frothed. Pour into the dish, bake in a brisk oven, and send at once to table, as it soon falls. This is a delightful accompaniment to ham.

Spinach with Eggs.

Pick the leaves from the stems, wash well, and boil in hot water, a little salted, for twenty minutes. Chop and drain. Return to the saucepan with a tablespoonful of[134] butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, a little pepper and salt. Have ready the yolks of three eggs, rubbed to powder, then wet up with a little cream or milk. Stir all together in the saucepan, beating with a wire spoon, until they are smooth and thick. Turn into a deep dish and garnish with the whites of the eggs cut into rings.

Stewed Potatoes.

Pare the potatoes; cut into quarters, and these into long, even strips. Lay in cold water half an hour, and cook in boiling water until tender, with half a minced onion. Drain off nearly all the water; pepper and salt, and add a cup of cold milk with a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. When it thickens, stir in a little chopped parsley. Simmer five minutes and serve. The potatoes should not be allowed to break so much as to lose their shape.

Seymour Pudding.

• ½ cup of molasses.
• 1 scant cup of milk.
• ½ cup of raisins, seeded and cut in half.
• ½ cup of currants.
• ½ cup of suet, powdered.
• ½ teaspoonful of soda dissolved in hot water.
• 1 egg.
• 1 teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace.
• A little salt.
• 1½ cups of Graham flour.

Stir molasses, suet, and milk together, add the egg, spice, flour, fruit, well dredged with flour—at last, the soda. Beat hard five minutes before putting it into a buttered pudding-mould. Boil two hours and a half. Eat with butter and sugar.[135]

Beef and Barley Soup.

Use the two quarts of stock set aside yesterday. Soak five or six tablespoonfuls of barley in cold water two hours. Boil half an hour or until tender, in a little salted water. When you have taken the cake of cold fat from the top of the soup, put in the barley and simmer all together half an hour. Then stir in two tablespoonfuls of shred gelatine previously soaked one hour in cold water. When this has dissolved, the soup is ready for use.

Steamed Turkey.

Prepare the turkey as for roasting, and, if you have no steamer, put a gridiron upon the top of a pot of boiling water; lay the fowl upon it, invert a deep pan, as nearly as possible the size of the mouth of the pot, over it, stuff wet cloths into whatever space may be left between the pot and the pan, and keep the water at a hard boil, allowing twenty minutes for each pound of turkey. Two or three times, replenish the water by pulling away one of the cloths so as to leave an aperture large enough to admit the nose of the boiling tea-kettle. When the turkey is half done, lift the pan and turn it; replace the cloths and steam again. When it is done, lay upon a hot dish and baste with a mixture of melted butter and chopped parsley, anointing all parts of it well. Serve drawn butter in a boat, with a couple of boiled eggs chopped fine, stirred up in it. Save the giblets of the turkey for Monday’s soup.

Cranberry Sauce

In a mould, as strained jelly, or the plainer dish of stewed cranberries, well-sweetened, must accompany this dish.[136]

Naples Rice Pudding.

Take a few tablespoonfuls of the meat boiled in yesterday’s soup, mince fine, add half a chopped onion, a tablespoonful of dripping from the top of the soup, and put on to warm with a very little hot water. Simmer, but do not boil, fifteen minutes. Boil one cup of rice in enough water, slightly salt, to cover it well. Shake up from time to time, but do not stir. When the rice is soft and has soaked up the water, add a cup of cold milk in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of corn-starch, one raw egg, and a tablespoonful of butter. Take from the fire before you do this and turn into a bowl. Stir in now the minced meat and gravy (there should be very little of the latter), season to taste, mix all up well, and put into a buttered cake-mould. Set this in a dripping-pan of hot water and bake one hour, closely covered. Turn out upon a hot dish. It is a very good entrée, and easily made.

Boiled Sweet Potatoes.

Boil in their skins until soft to the touch; pare quickly, lay upon a flat dish, butter each, and serve hot.

Pumpkin Pie.

• 1 quart of stewed pumpkin, rubbed through a fine colander.
• 6 eggs.
• 2 quarts of milk.
• 1 teaspoonful of mace.
• 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon and the same of nutmeg.
• 1½ cups of sugar.

Beat the eggs light and whip in the sugar, then the pumpkin and spice. At last, mix in the milk, stirring up well from the bottom.

Bake in open shells of paste made according to the receipt given last Thursday. Eat cold, and send around a plate of cheese with it.[137]

Giblet Soup.

Cut the giblets of your turkey into six pieces each, and stew, closely covered, in a pint of water until tender. Strain out the barley from the remains of yesterday’s soup and if you have any of Saturday’s in the pantry, strain out the vermicelli and add that. Warm this to a boil with the liquor in which the giblets were cooked. Boil up sharply and skim; add the giblets, and while they simmer together, put two tablespoonfuls of butter cut into bits, and rolled in browned flour, into a frying-pan. Stir until it is hissing hot. Add to the soup with a handful of chopped parsley, and a tablespoonful of walnut or mushroom catsup. Boil up once and serve.

Turkey and Ham.

Cover the uncarved side of your steamed turkey with rather thick and fat slices of cooked ham. Three or four large ones will suffice. Bind them to the body with greased packthread. Lay the turkey, cut side downward, and the ham up, in the dripping-pan with a little boiling water in the bottom. Bake about three-quarters of an hour, basting the ham, when it begins to drip, with its own grease. Ten minutes before taking it up, clip the strings, and remove the ham to a hot dish. Dredge the upper side of the turkey with flour, and baste with butter to make a brown froth. Dish, with the ham laid around it.

Corn Puddings.

• Add to a can of sweet corn,
• 1 cup of milk.
• [138]3 eggs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 of sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of flour.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.

Beat up the eggs, add the sugar and butter, the milk, corn, and, lastly, the flour. Bake in earthenware cups well buttered, or in neat patty-pans. Turn out upon a dish, or eat from the cups. They are very nice when hot.

Baked Potatoes.

Wash, wipe, and bake in a moderate oven. When done, cut a round piece of skin almost entirely from the top of each, leaving a “hinge” at one side. With a small knife make an incision in the mealy part of the potato, i. e., the heart, put in a pinch of salt, and a bit of butter, replace the flap of skin, and send hot to table.

Farina Custard.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of farina.
• 3 eggs well beaten.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• Vanilla essence—2 teaspoonfuls.
• 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Heat the milk to scalding; stir in the farina, which should have been previously soaked in a little cold water for an hour. Cook in a farina-kettle fifteen minutes, stirring often. Take out a cupful and beat into the eggs already whipped up with the sugar. Put into the kettle, stir in salt and flavoring, boil two minutes, and pour into a deep dish. Eat warm, putting a teaspoonful of sweet fruit jelly upon the top of each saucerful in serving.[139]

Plain Calf’s Head Soup.

Wash a calf’s head (cleaned with the skin on), in three waters, and soak one hour in salted water. Then put on to boil in five quarts of cold water. Cook until the meat slips easily from the bones. Take out the head, remove the bones, and throw back into the soup. Set aside three-quarters of the meat—the best portions—for to-morrow’s dinner. Chop the ears and other refuse parts fine; season with salt, pepper, onion, sweet marjoram, a teaspoonful of ground cloves, and as much allspice—even spoonfuls. Mix all up well, return to the soup and boil down to three quarts. Mash the brains and make into force-meat balls with raw egg, seasoning and enough flour to hold them together; roll in flour and set in a cool place until wanted. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of browned flour wet up with cold water, and stir together five minutes. Strain the soup, put back two quarts over the fire, stir in the thickening of flour and butter, boil up and put in the force-meat balls. Simmer ten minutes, add the juice of a lemon, and a glass of brown sherry, and pour out. The reserved quart of “stock” is for another day’s soup. Do not put the calf’s tongue into the soup. It is indispensable in to-morrow’s ragoût.

Boiled Mutton.

The best part for boiling is the leg. Put on in boiling water and cook, allowing fifteen minutes to the pound. Make a sauce by taking out a cupful of liquor when it is nearly done, cooling it until you can take off the fat, then heating again in a saucepan and stirring into it one[140] tablespoonful of butter, two teaspoonfuls of flour, wet up with cold water. Stir for five minutes, putting in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and after another boil, take from the fire before you put in the juice of a lemon.

In this, as in other cases where the liquor in which meat is boiled is to be used for broth, salt slightly while cooking, sprinkling all over lightly with salt the moment you take it from the fire. Serve the sauce in a boat.

Minced Cabbage.

Boil a firm head of cabbage, quartered, in two waters, throwing the first away after ten minutes’ cooking and putting in more as hot, and a little salted. When it is tender all through, drain and chop quite fine, seasoning with salt, pepper, and a liberal portion of butter. Serve hot in a vegetable dish.

String Beans.

Open a can of string beans an hour before they are to be used. Cut them into short pieces when you are ready to cook them; turn off the liquor and cover them with cold water. Put into a pot with a bit of salt pork a little more than an inch square. Boil slowly until tender, strain, season with pepper, and serve hot, with the pork on top of the pile of beans.

Beet-root Salad.

Boil the beets until tender; scrape clean; drop into cold water for three minutes. Slice, and pour over them a dressing of vinegar, salt, sugar, made mustard, pepper, and one tablespoonful of oil to four of vinegar. Cover, and let all stand together for two hours. This salad will keep for a couple of days.

Corn-meal Puffs.

• 1 quart of boiling milk.
• 2 scant cups of white “corn-flour.”
• ½ cup of wheat-flour.
• 1 scant cup of powdered sugar.
• [141]A little salt.
• 4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• ½ teaspoonful of soda.
• 1 teaspoonful of cream tartar.
• ½ teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and nutmeg.

Sift soda and cream tartar twice through the flour. Then, mix flour and meal together, and sift a third time. Boil the milk and stir into it the meal, flour, and salt. Boil ten minutes, stirring well up from the bottom. Take it off, put into a bowl, add the butter and beat hard for three minutes. Let it cool while you whip the eggs light, then the yolks and sugar and spice together. Beat these into the cold mush, and lastly the frothed whites. Whip all together faithfully, and bake in greased cups or small “corn-bread moulds,” set within a steady oven. When done, turn out and eat hot, breaking—not cutting—them open, and after buttering sprinkling with white sugar.

Marie’s Soup.

• 2 sweetbreads.
• 1 quart of soup jelly, left from yesterday’s stock.
• 1 quart of cold water.
• 1 onion.
• Bunch of parsley.
• [142]2 blades of mace.
• A dozen mushrooms.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up in cold water.

Wash and scald the sweetbreads, and put on to stew in the cold water. When they have boiled slowly half an hour, salt, boil up and skim. Take all the fat from the top of the cold soup-stock, and stir into the liquor already on the fire. Add the onion and parsley minced, and the mace; season to taste, cover and stew gently for one hour. Take out the sweetbreads and lay them where they will cool quickly. Strain the soup, return to the fire; put in a dozen mushrooms (you can buy the French champignons in cans), stew fifteen minutes; cut the sweetbreads into small squares, drop into the soup; thicken with the corn-starch wet with cold water; boil up once and serve.

This soup is very fine.

Ragoût of Calf’s Head and Mushrooms.

• 1 cold boiled calf’s head, cut into slices with the tongue.
• 1 can French mushrooms, minus those used for the soup.
• 1 sliced onion.
• Pepper, salt, and sweet herbs.
• ½ teaspoonful mixed mace and allspice.
• Juice of a lemon.
• Butter or dripping for frying.

Cut three-quarters of the calf’s head—the best parts—into neat slices, also the tongue. Chop the rest, season with the onion, pepper and salt, cover with three cups of cold water, and stew gently down to one cup of gravy. Meanwhile fry the slices of meat in good dripping. Take them out with a wire spoon and put into the bottom of a tin vessel set within another of warm—not boiling—water. Cover and set over the fire. Drain, slice and fry the mushrooms in the fat left in the frying-pan. Drain and lay these upon the meat in the inner vessel. Time the cooking of the gravy so as to have it ready, spiced, and seasoned, to be strained, hot over the meat and mushrooms. Put on a tight lid and simmer fifteen minutes, never boiling once. Strain off the gravy into a saucepan.[143] Thicken, and let it boil up once. Add the lemon-juice, put the meat and mushrooms into a deep dish, and pour the hot gravy over all.

Mashed Turnips.

Boil soft, drain and mash, pressing the water out well, return to the saucepan, with a generous lump of butter; pepper and salt; stir constantly until the butter is dissolved, and all smoking hot, and serve in a covered dish.

Creamed Potatoes.

In mashing them, add more milk than usual, whipping up hard with a silver fork. While still very hot, beat in the white of an egg, already frothed stiffly; pile in a deep dish and set, uncovered, within the oven, until a light crust begins to form on the top, but not long enough to injure the dish. Brush over with butter to glaze it, and serve.

Tomato Soy

Is an excellent “stock” pickle. For directions for making it, please refer to page 488, “General Receipts, No. 1, of Common-Sense Series.”

Sponge-cake Pudding.

• 1 stale sponge-cake.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• 4 eggs, beaten light.
• 2 cups of milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch, wet up with cold milk.
• Juice of one lemon and half the grated peel.

Slice the cake and lay some of it in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Make a custard by scalding the milk, stirring into it the corn-starch, then pouring it, by degrees, upon the beaten eggs and sugar. Add the lemon; pour over the cake, put another layer of slices; more custard, and so on, until the mould is full. Put a small, heavy plate on top, and let all stand until the custard is soaked up. Cover and bake, half an hour, or until done throughout. Turn out upon a flat dish, sprinkle thickly with white sugar, and eat warm or cold.[144]

Nuts and Raisins.

Crack the nuts, and select for table use fair bunches of plump, fresh raisins.

Potage au Riz,

In plainer English, rice-broth, can be achieved for to-day, with little trouble, by the help of the liquor in which your mutton was boiled on Tuesday. Wash and soak a cup of rice in cold water. At the end of half an hour, add it, with the water in which it has soaked, to the mutton-broth, from which you must first take the fat. Boil very slowly two hours, and should the water sink below the original level more than an inch, replenish with boiling. In another saucepan heat a cup of milk, thickened with a tablespoonful of rice-flour. Season the mutton-broth with pepper and parsley—it will hardly need salt. (Boil up and skim, before the parsley goes in.) Pour the hot milk over two beaten eggs, stir in well; add to the soup in the kettle, and take instantly from the fire.

English Pork Pie.

• 3 lbs. of lean fresh pork, cut into strips as long as your finger.
• 6 large juicy apples.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Pepper, salt, and mace to taste.
• 1 cup of sweet cider.
• [145]2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Good pie-paste for an upper crust, made according to receipt given for Thursday of second week in this month.

Put a layer of pork within a pudding-dish; season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, or mace. Next a layer of sliced apples, strewed with sugar and bits of butter. Go on in this order until you are ready for the crust, having the last layer of apples. Pour in the cider, cover with a thick crust of good pastry, ornamented around the edge; make a slit in the middle, and bake in a moderate oven one hour and a half. Should the crust threaten to brown too fast, cover with paper. When nicely browned, brush over with butter and close the oven door for a moment; then wash well with white of egg. Eat hot. You will find it very good, odd as the receipt may seem.

Mock Stewed Oysters.

Scrape and drop into cold water a bunch of salsify, or oyster-plant. Cut into short pieces and stew tender in boiling water, a little salted. Drain off nearly all the water, and pour into the saucepan a cup of cold milk. When again hot, add a heaping tablespoonful of butter and a handful of fine cracker-dust, with pepper and salt. Stir very slowly for five minutes, and pour out. It should be about as thick as oyster soup.

Potato Balls.

Mash potatoes with a little butter and salt, and let them get cold. Then work in a beaten egg. Make into balls about twice the size of a walnut, with floured hands, roll them well in flour, and fry yellow-brown in good dripping or lard. Drain in a colander, and pile upon a flat dish.

Lemon Jelly and Light Cake.

• 5 lemons—juice of all and grated peel of two.
• 2 large cups of sugar.
• 1 package of Coxe’s gelatine, soaked in two cups of cold water.
• 2 glasses pale sherry.
• 1 pint of boiling water.

[146]

Stir sugar, lemon-juice, peel, and soaked gelatine together, and leave, covered, for an hour. Then pour over them the boiling water; stir until the gelatine is dissolved; strain through a flannel bag, without pressing. Add the wine, and let all drip, untouched, through double flannel. Pour into a wet mould. In cold weather, or if set on ice, it will be ready for use in six hours. Pass a basket of light cake with it.

Lobster Bisque.

• 1 can of lobster.
• 1 quart of milk.
• 1 quart of cold water.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• ½ cup of pounded cracker.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.
• A little cayenne pepper.

Free the lobster from all bits of shell, and cut up small, tearing as little as may be. Put the water into a saucepan, with the salt and pepper. When boiling, stir in the lobster and stew half an hour. Heat the milk in another vessel, and, when scalding, stir in the cracker and set in hot water for ten minutes. The lobster having cooked for thirty minutes, add the butter, and simmer five minutes longer. Then pour in the milk; mix all up well; set for five minutes in hot water, and serve in a tureen. Pass sliced lemon with it.

This bisque is delicious.[147]

Stewed Chicken.

Prepare a fine young fowl as for roasting, with the exception of the dressing, which should be left out. Early in the day (if you have no gravy already made) put on the feet and giblets to stew in two cups of cold water, with a little minced onion. When the giblets are very tender, and the liquid has boiled down to one cupful, strain it and set aside the giblets to cool. Chop a quarter of a pound of pork, put it in the bottom of a pot, lay the chicken upon it; pour the gravy over it; cover tightly and set where it will heat steadily, but not reach the boil under an hour. Increase the heat, not allowing the steam to escape, for an hour longer, but it should not stew fast at any time. By this time the fowl should be thoroughly done. Remove carefully to a hot dish; season the gravy, adding a little hot water if needful, and strain out the pork. Add the giblets, chopped fine, stew fast for one minute, pour over the chicken, and it is ready for the table.

Rice Croquettes.

• 2 cups of cold boiled rice.
• 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
• 2 eggs, well beaten.
• 1 tablespoonful sugar.
• A little flour.
• Salt to taste.

Work butter and sugar to a cream, and these into the rice. Salt, and stir up with the eggs to a smooth paste. Make into oval balls or rolls, with well-floured hands. Roll in flour, and fry, a few at a time, in sweet lard. Drain well and eat hot.

Winter Squash.

Pare, take out the seeds, cut into strips, and lay in cold water, one hour. Cook in boiling water, a little salt, until very soft. Drain off every drop of water, and mash with a potato beetle, stirring in a large spoonful of butter, and seasoning with pepper and salt. Mound up in a vegetable dish and serve hot.[148]

Apple Snow.

• 6 fine pippins (raw).
• 2 cups of milk.
• 4 eggs.
• 1 cup of powdered sugar.

Make a custard by stirring into the hot milk half the sugar, the yolks of all the eggs, and the white of one, and cooking, stirring constantly until it thickens. Let this cool while you whip the whites to a stiff méringue with the rest of the sugar. Peel the apples, and grate directly into the méringue, stirring in at once that the coating of egg may prevent them from changing color. Put the cold custard in the bottom of a glass dish, and heap the snow upon it. Eat soon after making it.

Tea and Macaroons.

Pass after dinner in the dining-room, or send into the parlor.

Ayrshire Soup.

• 4 lbs. of lean beef.
• 2 lbs. of marrow-bones well cracked.
• 2 onions.
• 2 turnips.
• 3 stalks of celery.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• 6 large potatoes.
• [149]½ cup of oatmeal.
• Pepper and salt.
• 6 quarts of cold water.

Chop the vegetables and herbs; cut the meat fine, and break up the bones. Put the oatmeal to soak in a pint of water. Slice the potatoes, and parboil them in hot water for ten minutes. Add them then to the other vegetables, and put them all, with the meat and bones, into a soup-pot, with the water. Stew for four hours, until the liquor in the pot has fallen one-third. Strain through a colander, set aside two quarts of the stock until to-morrow, after seasoning it all, and return the rest to the fire. Boil up and skim; add the oatmeal, and stew, covered, forty minutes, stirring often, lest it should burn.

Mutton Chops and Tomato Purée.

Broil the chops, after trimming them neatly; rub, as soon as they leave the gridiron, with butter on both sides; pepper and salt, and cover, for a few minutes, in a hot water dish, that they may take up the seasoning.

Make the purée by stewing a can of tomatoes until almost dry, then seasoning, and stirring in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Simmer three minutes, arrange the chops on their sides, overlapping each other, inside of the curve of a flat dish, and pour the purée within their enclosure.

Potato Strips.

Pare and cut the potatoes in long strips, the length of the potato, and not more than the sixteenth of an inch thick. Lay in ice-water for one hour; dry by laying on one clean towel and pressing another upon it, and fry, not too many at once, in hot lard, a little salt. Take out so soon as they are browned lightly, toss in a hot colander, and serve in a deep dish lined with a napkin.

Boiled Beans.

Soak all night, and in the morning change the cold water for lukewarm. Leave in this two hours; drain it off and put them on to boil in cold water, with a piece of fat salt[150] pork two inches square. Cook slowly until soft. Take out the pork, drain the beans well, season with pepper, and dish.

Macaroni Pudding.

• ½ lb. of macaroni broken into inch lengths.
• 2 cups of boiling water.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 large cup of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Grated peel of half a lemon.
• A little cinnamon and salt.

Boil the macaroni in the water until it is tender, and has soaked up the liquid. It must be cooked in a farina-kettle. Add the butter and salt. Cover for five minutes without cooking. Put in the rest of the ingredients. Simmer, after the boil begins, ten minutes longer, before serving in a deep dish. Be careful, in stirring, not to break the macaroni. Eat with butter and powdered sugar, or cream and sugar.

Potato Soup.

• 3 pints of good stock.
• 1 quart of cold water.
• 12 mealy potatoes.
• 1 onion.
• [151]½ cup of rice.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Seasoning to taste.

Slice the potatoes, cover with boiling water, and cook ten minutes. Throw away this water, and add the quart of cold, slightly salted, and the onion, to the potatoes. Boil to pieces, and pass, with the water in which they were boiled, through a colander into the stock. Heat all together, and cook gently half an hour, before adding the rice, which should have been boiled soft in a very little water. When the rice is nearly dry, stir in the butter, put into the soup, and simmer five minutes.

Roast Beef.

A rib-roast is best for family use. Make your butcher saw off about half of the bone, after cutting the ends of the ribs clear of the meat; then fold the flap neatly around to the thick part, and secure with skewers. The “trimmings” are yours—a fact housekeepers often fail to insist upon. The meat is weighed before you buy it. Take all that you pay for—and you will seldom be at a loss for a “base” for soup or gravy. Between butchers and cooks, there is enough wasted in American kitchens to supply a National Soup-house that might feed all the poor in the land.

Put your beef in the dripping-pan; pour a cup of boiling water over it, and roast ten minutes for every pound. Bake as soon as the juices begin to flow—the oftener in reason the better. If your meat has much fat on top, cover it—the fat—with a paste of flour and water. When nearly done, remove this, dredge the beef with flour, baste well with gravy, strew salt over the top, and serve. Pour the fat off from the gravy; return to the fire, thicken with browned gravy, season, and boil up once.

Sweet Potatoes—Baked.

Parboil, take off the skins, and, half an hour before you take up your beef, lay the potatoes in the dripping-pan to brown, basting them with the meat. They should be of a fine brown. Drain off the grease, and lay about the beef when dished.[152]

Baked Hominy.

• 1 cupful of cold boiled hominy (small grained).
• 2 cups of milk.
• 1 large teaspoonful of butter.
• The same of sugar.
• A little salt.
• 2 eggs.

Work the melted butter well into the hominy, mashing all lumps. Then come the beaten yolks; next, sugar and salt; then, gradually, the milk; lastly the whites. Beat until perfectly smooth, and bake in a greased pudding-dish until delicately browned. Serve in the bake-dish.

Cabbage Salad.

Chop a firm white cabbage with a sharp knife. A dull one bruises it. Make a dressing of two tablespoonfuls of oil; six of vinegar; a teaspoonful each of salt and sugar; half as much each of made mustard and pepper. Work all in well, the vinegar going in last, and then beat in a raw egg, whipped light. Pour over the salad, toss up with a fork, and serve in a glass dish.

Arrow-root Pudding—(Cold).

• 3 even tablespoonfuls of arrow-root. Get the Bermuda if you can, or you may require more.
• 3 cups of fresh milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• ¼ lb. of crystallized peaches, chopped fine.

Heat the milk to scalding, and stir in the arrow-root wet up with cold milk. Stir ten minutes, and add sugar and butter. Stir five minutes more, and pour out. When nearly cold, beat in the fruit. Pour into a wet mould. Make on Saturday, and on Sunday, turn out upon a dish, and eat with sugar and cream. It is very good without the fruit, but needs more sugar in making.

Coffee

Should be served last of all.[153]

Bread Soup.

A few raw beef-bones and trimmings, spoken of yesterday. Bones, bits of skin, gristle, etc., left from Sunday’s roast when you have cut off the meat for the cannelon.

• 1 pint of stock.
• 1 onion.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• 4 quarts of cold water.
• 1 lb. stale bread-crusts, the drier the better, provided they are not mouldy or sour.
• Salt and pepper.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Crack the bones, chop meat and vegetables; put on in the water, and boil slowly down to two quarts. Strain the liquor; let it cool; take off all the fat, season, and return to the pot with the stock. Boil up and skim; put in the crusts; stew, covered, half an hour. Take it from the range and beat in the butter, taking out indissoluble bits. Then simmer, in a vessel set within another of boiling water, half an hour.

As you will see, by a careful perusal of these directions, the preparation of this soup requires little actual expenditure of time. I beg, therefore, that you will “gather up the fragments” from larder and bread-box, and give your family a hot, nourishing, “comforting” dish of porridge, if it is wash-day.

Cannelon of Beef.

Cut the meat from your cold roast, and chop it fine. Season well, and beat into it the yolks of three eggs and the white of one. Add one-third as much cold mashed[154] potato as you have meat, wet up with gravy, and make, with floured hands, into a long roll—three times as long as it is broad. It should be just soft enough to handle. Dredge thickly with flour, and lay in a greased baking-pan. Invert another one over it, and bake until it is hissing hot on top and sides, when uncover, and brown quickly. Brush over the outside with white of egg; dredge again with flour, shut the oven-door to brown this, glaze again with egg, and shut up the oven for one minute. Carefully, with the aid of a cake-turner, slip the cannelon to a hot dish and serve.

Chow-chow

Should go around with the cannelon.

Potato Stew.

Pare and cut the potatoes into dice. Stew in hot water, with a slice of fat salt pork, cut very small, half a minced onion and a little chopped parsley, until the pork is dissolved and the potatoes very tender. Pepper, and if necessary, salt, and pour into a hot, deep dish. The “stew” should not be too liquid, nor yet stiff.

Pork and Beans.

This is a good, nourishing dish for Monday, and easily managed, if you have boiled the beans on Saturday. Fill a bake-dish nearly full of them, and put in the middle a piece of fat salt pork, about three inches wide, which you have parboiled in your soup. It will improve the taste of the “stock” and be itself the better for the temporary association. Pour in a little hot water to keep the beans from burning. Pepper and bake, covered, for half an hour. Remove the cover and brown.

Peach Batter Pudding.

Open a can of peaches—whole ones, if you have them—and pour into the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish before you make your batter. There should be just syrup enough to half cover the fruit.

For batter, take 1 quart of milk.

• [155]10 tablespoonfuls of prepared flour.
• 5 eggs, beaten light.
• 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
• 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Beat the yolks light, add the milk and salt, and pour slowly into a hole made in the middle of the flour. Finally, stir in the whites lightly, but not until you have beaten the batter smooth. Pour over the peaches and bake quickly. You can put it in the oven after the beans are done, setting the latter aside to keep warm. If you have not time to make sauce, eat with butter and sugar. Do not let the pudding stand after drawing from the oven, or it will fall.

Cream Soup.

• 3 lbs. lean veal.
• 3 beaten eggs.
• 2 blades of mace.
• 1 onion.
• 2 quarts of water.
• 2 cups of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of rice flour (or corn-starch).
• Pepper and salt.

Chop the meat and onion fine, cover with the water, and stew slowly three hours. Strain, cool and skim. Season and set back on the fire. Boil up and skim carefully; add the milk, and when hot, the corn-starch wet with cold water. As it thickens, take out a cupful, pour upon the eggs; stir into the soup, and take at once from the fire.[156]

Roast Breast of Veal.

Make incisions between the ribs and the meat, and stuff with a force-meat of dry bread-crumbs, chopped pork or ham, pepper, sweet marjoram, and one beaten egg. Save a little to thicken the gravy. Roast slowly, basting often and copiously. Dredge at the last with flour, and baste well, when this has colored, with butter.

Stewed Tomatoes.

Stew a can of tomatoes twenty-five minutes; season with pepper, salt, a little sugar, and a tablespoonful of butter. Cook five minutes and serve.

Plain Boiled Potatoes.

Pare very thin, and put on (after having lain half an hour in cold water) in boiling water. Cook fast until a fork will go easily into the largest; drain off every drop of water, and throw in salt. Set back, uncovered, on the side of the range, or where they will dry quickly, yet not scorch. Serve in an uncovered dish.

Celery.

Wash, scrape, trim off the green tops, and throw aside for seasoning soups, vinegar, etc., the rank green stalks. Lay the better parts in cold water until wanted for the table. Put into a tall glass or celery-stand.

Essex Pudding.

• 2 cups of fine bread-crumbs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sago, soaked three hours in a little water.
• ¾ of a cup of powdered suet.
• 5 eggs, beaten light.
• 1 cup of milk.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful flour, wet in cold milk.
• ½ lb. of whole raisins, “plumped” by laying them in boiling water for two minutes.
• A little salt.

Cook the sago in enough water to cover it until tender and nearly dry. Heat the milk and pour upon the beaten[157] eggs and sugar, add the crumbs, beating into a good batter in a bowl; then suet, flour, sago, and salt. Butter a mould thickly and lay the raisins, dredged with flour, in the bottom and sides, in whatever designs you fancy. Fill the mould with the batter—well beaten up at the last—putting it in by cautious spoonfuls not to dislodge the raisins, which should be imbedded in the butter. Put on the lid of the pudding mould, and boil one hour, never relaxing the heat. Dip in cold water and turn out upon a flat dish. Eat with jelly sauce.

Jelly Sauce.

• ½ cup of currant jelly.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
• 1 lemon—juice and half the grated peel.
• ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
• 1 tablespoonful of powdered sugar.
• 1 glass of wine.
• 1 cup of boiling water.
• 1 teaspoonful flour.

Beat the hot water gradually into the jelly, and add the butter, lemon, and nutmeg. Warm almost to a boil, put in the sugar, then the flour wet up with cold water. Boil up once sharply; add the wine, and take from the fire. Set, closely covered, in a vessel of hot water until wanted. Stir well before pouring it out.

Julienne Soup.

• [158]2 lbs. of mutton, and a like quantity of veal, with some beef-bones.
• 2 carrots.
• 2 turnips.
• Half a cabbage.
• 3 onions.
• 3 stalks of blanched celery.
• ½ can of tomatoes.
• 5 quarts of cold water.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• Pepper and salt.

Cut the meat small, crack the bones, and put on to cook in five quarts of water with the herbs. While it simmers, prepare the vegetables, with the exception of the cabbage and tomatoes, by cleaning, paring, and cutting them into narrow strips about two inches long, and as nearly as possible of uniform size. Lay them in cold water for one hour. Drain very dry, and put them into a frying-pan in which you have melted, but not cooked, the butter, and dissolved the sugar. Toss them over a hot fire until they are coated with the butter, but do not let them scorch. Set aside in a clean vessel set within one of hot water. When the meat has boiled to rags, and the liquid is reduced one-third, strain it and set by until the fat rises and can be taken off. Return the soup to the fire, season, boil up and skim; add the glazed vegetables, with the chopped cabbage—which should have been parboiled, then drained—and the tomatoes, cut up small. Stew gently for one hour. Serve with the vegetables in it.

This will make enough soup for two days, unless your family be large.

Halibut Steaks—Broiled.

Wash and wipe the steaks dry. Broil upon a buttered gridiron, turning when the lower side is done. Remove carefully to a chafing-dish, and anoint with a mixture of butter, salt, pepper, and a little lemon-juice.

Always serve fish upon hot plates. Pass potatoes, and no other vegetable, with it.[159]

Scalloped Potatoes.

• 3 cups of mashed potatoes.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Yolks of four hard-boiled eggs. (Cut the whites in rings to garnish your fish.)
• Handful of dry bread-crumbs.
• Salt and pepper.

Beat butter, milk, and seasoning into the potatoes while hot. Put a layer in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish; cover this with thin slices of yolk; pepper and salt them; spread another layer of potato over these, and proceed in this order until the dish is full, having the top layer of potato. Strew thickly with bread-crumbs. Bake covered until hot through, then brown quickly. Serve in the bake-dish.

Veal and Ham Pie.

Cut the meat from the cold roast of yesterday. Put the bones, well-cracked, the refuse bits of meat and skin into a saucepan with an onion, a few spoonfuls of tomatoes, and three cups of cold water, and cook slowly until there remains but one cup of gravy. Strain and season, thickening with a tablespoonful of browned flour. Cut the veal into small, even slices. If you have no cold boiled ham, cook half a pound on purpose by boiling in your gravy stock. Slice this also, and lay upon the veal, with now and then a slice of hard-boiled egg. Fill the dish with alternate layers of veal and ham; pour in the gravy, and cover with a thick crust of good pastry, such as you made last Thursday for your pork-pie. Bake one hour.

Stewed Cauliflower.

When your soup is about half done, and before you strain it, take out a cupful, strain through a thin cloth, and put into a saucepan, with a little salt and a tablespoonful of butter. Cut a cauliflower into small bunches, when you have washed and trimmed it, and lay these in the cooled broth. Stew slowly, covered, twenty-five minutes, turning the bunches now and then. When they are tender, take them out, lay in a covered dish to keep warm, stir into the[160] broth a tablespoonful of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour, with nearly half a cup of milk. Pepper, boil up once, and pour over the cauliflower.

Pancakes with Preserves.

• 1 pint of prepared flour.
• About a quart of milk.
• 6 eggs.
• A little salt.

Beat the yolks light, add the salt and two cups of milk, then the flour and beaten whites alternately, and thin with more milk until the batter is of the right consistency. It should be quite thin. Have ready in a small frying-pan a tablespoonful of butter or sweet lard, hissing hot, but not discolored by too long heating. Pour in enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan, and fry quickly, pouring off the fat so soon as the cakes set. Turn it with a lift of your spatula and a skilful toss of the pan at the same time. As fast as the pancakes are done—the same lard will do for several—let an assistant spread each upon a hot plate and cover with sweet jam or jelly, rolling up neatly so soon as this is done. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, and set in a warm oven until you are ready for dessert.

Chicken Broth.

Draw, stuff, and truss a pair of chickens, as for roasting; tie soft pack-thread around their legs and wings, binding them close to their bodies, and put on to boil in four quarts of cold water, a little salted. They will require at[161] least one hour’s boiling, if they are of fair size. Do not cook fast, especially at first. Try with a fork if they are tender, and if it pierces the breast easily, take them up, butter well, and set in a warm place, covered. Take out a cupful of liquor when they are three-quarters done, in which to cook your rice. Strain the broth after taking out the fowls, season with pepper and chopped parsley and put again over the fire. Take off the scum, as it rises, and boil hard fifteen minutes. Then add a half cupful of rice, previously stewed soft in a very little water. Simmer a quarter of an hour; pour in a cup of milk in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of rice-flour; bring to a slow boil, and pour a few spoonfuls upon two beaten eggs. Return these to the soup, stir them in and take from the fire. Have ready the giblets and one hard-boiled egg chopped fine in the bottom of the tureen, and turn in the broth upon them.

Chickens and Rice.

Parboil a cup of rice in a little water. When it has taken it up, and is about half done, add the cupful of broth taken from the soup, seasoned well. Cook the rice slowly in it until done. (Always cook rice in a farina-kettle, and shake, instead of stirring.) It should absorb all the gravy. At the last, stir in a beaten egg, mixed with a tablespoonful of melted butter. It is best to do this with a fork, and not a spoon. Make a low, flattened mound of the rice upon a hot dish; remove the pack-threads from the chickens and lay them on the top. Pass grated cheese with it.

Potato Croquettes.

To each cupful of mashed potato, add half a raw egg, beaten light, a little salt and pepper, and half a teaspoonful of butter. Beat well. Make into oblong balls, or rolls, flour well and fry, a few at a time, in boiling lard, or dripping. Drain off the fat and serve hot.

Boiled Sweet Potatoes.

Select those of uniform size, wash, wipe, and boil until a fork will penetrate them easily. Skin, set in the oven a moment to dry, and send to table.[162]

Cold Slaw—Cream Dressing.

• 1 small head of white cabbage, shred fine.
• 1 cup of milk, scalding hot.
• ¾ of a cup of vinegar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 egg, beaten light.
• 1 tablespoonful of sugar.
• 1 even tablespoonful of corn-starch.
• 1 teaspoonful essence of celery.
• Pepper and salt to taste.

Rub butter and sugar together and pour over them the hot milk. Beat into these the frothed egg. Put into a vessel set within another of hot water, add the corn-starch wet up with cold water, boil slowly until it thickens, and set aside. In another saucepan scald the vinegar; put in the pepper and salt with essence of celery, and pour hot over the cabbage. Mix up well; put back into the saucepan, and stir briskly over the fire until it is smoking all through, but not until it boils. Turn it into a bowl, stir into it the custard with a silver fork, until well mixed; cover, to keep in the strength of the vinegar, and set it where it will cool suddenly. It is very fine.

Poor Man’s Plum Pudding.

• 3 eggs.
• 1 quart of milk.
• Small loaf of stale bread.
• 1 tablespoonful of sugar.
• ½ lb. seeded raisins, cut in two.
• Cinnamon to taste.
• A pinch of salt.
• Butter.

Slice the bread and cut off all the crust. Butter thinly and lay in order in a well-greased pudding-dish, strewing each layer with raisins. Heat the milk, put in sugar and salt, and pour over the beaten eggs. Lay a heavy saucer upon the top of the bread and soak with the custard. Let all stand half an hour, then set in a dripping-pan of boiling water, cover closely, and cook one hour, keeping the pan full of water at a hard boil. Turn out and eat with liquid sauce.[163]

Wednesday’s Soup.

The Julienne soup which, as I stated in the receipt for making it, was sufficient for two days, will have kept perfectly well in the refrigerator, or in any cold closet. You have now only to warm it over—not quite to the boil, and it will be even better than upon the first day. It is wise, sometimes, to skip a day with a réchauffé, for fear of wearying those for whose comfort your bills-of-fare are made up.

Boiled Cod.

Sew up the piece of fish in a thin cloth, fitted neatly to the shape, and boil in salted water (boiling from the first), allowing about fifteen minutes per pound. Unwrap carefully and pour over it a sauce made thus:

Heat half a cup of milk and as much water together; stir in a tablespoonful of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour, and when it has thickened, pour by degrees upon two beaten eggs. Put back into the saucepan and stir for one minute; add salt, chopped parsley, and a dozen capers or nasturtium seeds. Take at once from the fire.

Chicken Patés.

Line your paté-pans with a good paste, made according to either of the receipts already given this month, and bake in a brisk oven.

Mince the chicken left from yesterday. Put the bones and stuffing into a saucepan with two cups of cold water, and stew down to one cup of gravy. Season this well, add[164] three tablespoonfuls of milk when you have strained out the bones, a tablespoonful of butter, and a very little parsley. The stuffing should thicken it sufficiently. Stir in the chicken, warm until hot, but do not let it boil, or it will be spoiled. Fill the paste-shells, having taken them from the tins; arrange upon a hot dish and set within an open oven until they are sent to table.

Cheese Fingers.

Cut good pastry, left from your patés, into strips three inches long and two inches wide. Strew with grated cheese, season with pepper and salt; double the paste upon this lengthwise, and bake in a quick oven. Brush over with beaten egg just before taking them up, and sift a little powdered cheese upon them.

Pile, log-cabin-wise, upon a folded napkin laid within a flat dish, and eat without delay, as they are not good cold.

Mashed Potatoes and Mashed Turnips.

The receipts for these standard dishes having been already given this month, it is scarcely necessary to repeat them here. Bear in mind, always, that they must be served hot, and the turnips be well drained.

Sweet Potato Pudding.

• 1 lb. parboiled sweet potatoes.
• ½ cup of butter.
• ¾ cup of white sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of cinnamon.
• 4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg.
• 1 lemon, juice and grated rind.
• 1 glass of brandy.

Let the potatoes get entirely cold, and grate them. Cream the butter and sugar; add the yolks, spice and lemon. Beat the potato in by degrees, to a light paste; then the brandy, lastly the whites. Bake in a buttered dish, and eat cold.[165]

Bean and Celery Soup.

• 1 quart of dried beans, soaked all night.
• 1 bunch of celery—the blanched stalks only.
• 1 lb. of salt pork, cut into strips.
• 1 lb. of beef—lean, also cut up.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Pepper.
• 5 quarts of water—cold.
• 1 onion, minced.

Cover beans, meat, onions, and half the celery cut into bits, with the water, and boil to pieces, and until the liquid is reduced one-third. Rub the beans and celery through a fine colander into the soup. Return to the fire, season with pepper, put in the rest of the celery, cut into inch-lengths, and simmer half an hour, stirring often, that it may not “catch” on the bottom. Set aside a quart of it, if you can spare as much, for Monday’s soup.

Jugged Pigeons.

Clean and wash well, and stuff with a dressing made of the giblets boiled and chopped, a slice of fat pork also minced fine; the yolks of two hard eggs rubbed to powder, some bread-crumbs, pepper and salt, bound with a beaten raw egg. Tie the legs and wings close to their bodies, and pack the pigeons in a tin pail with a tight top. Plunge this into a pot of boiling water; put a weight on top to keep it steady, and cook two hours and a half. The water should not boil over the top. Drain off the gravy into a saucepan, thicken with a tablespoonful[166] of butter rolled in flour. Season, boil up, pour over the pigeons. Cover again, and leave in the hot water ten minutes before serving.

Shred Macaroni.

Break half a pound of pipe macaroni into pieces two inches long, and cook in boiling water, a little salted, ten minutes. Drain off the water, and spread the macaroni out to cool upon a dish. When cold, take a sharp knife or a pair of scissors, and split each piece in half, lengthwise. Put on in a farina-kettle with a cup of hot milk and a tablespoonful of butter, seasoning with pepper and salt. Cover and stew tender, but not to breaking. Ten minutes after the boil should do this. Then stir in three tablespoonfuls of grated cheese. Serve in a deep dish.

Brussels-Sprouts.

Wash and pick over very carefully. Put on in plenty of boiling water with a little salt, and cook fifteen minutes after the water begins to boil anew. Drain well and pile upon a dish, with drawn butter poured over them.

Sponge-Cake Fritters.

• 8 penny sponge-cakes—very stale.
• 1 cup of boiling milk, with a pinch of soda stirred in.
• 4 eggs whipped light.
• 1 tablespoonful of flour wet up in cold milk.
• ¼ lb. currants, washed and dried.

Roll the cakes into fine crumbs; pour over them the hot milk, with the soda and flour stirred into it. Cover for fifteen minutes, then beat until cold. Add the whipped eggs—the yolks first, then the whites; finally, the currants dredged with flour. Beat all well. Drop in great spoonfuls in boiling lard, trying one first to be sure that the batter is of the right consistency; drain quickly in a hot colander; sprinkle with powdered sugar mixed with nutmeg, and serve hot.

[167]

MARCH.

Mushroom Soup.

• 3 lbs. of knuckle of veal, well cracked.
• 1 onion.
• Bunch of parsley.
• A slice of ham, or some ham or salt-pork bones.
• 1 can of French mushrooms.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of flour.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 cup of milk.
• 4 quarts of cold water.

Crack the bones and mince the meat, onion, and parsley. Cover with the water, and boil gently three hours, or until the stock has diminished one-half. Strain, season, boil up and skim. Add the mushrooms, drained from the can liquor, and sliced. Stew twenty minutes; put in the milk, the flour, wet up in cold water, and when it thickens, beat a cupful into the whipped eggs. Stir into this the butter, return to the soup, let it almost boil, and pour out.

To the lovers of mushrooms this is a delicious soup.

Roast Ducks.

Draw, clean and wash a pair of ducks. Stuff one only with a dressing made of bread-crumbs, the hard-boiled[168] yolk of an egg, a little minced sage and onion. Rub the inside of the other with melted butter, pepper and salt. Many do not like the taste of onion and sage, while others do not enjoy roast duck without the flavor of these condiments. Put the fowls into the dripping-pan, pour a cup of boiling water over them, and roast about an hour, basting frequently. At the last, dredge with flour, and baste with butter; then brown. Chop the giblets fine, pour the fat from the top of the gravy in the dripping-pan, thicken with browned flour that which is left, and stir in the giblets.

Green Peas

Have, from time immemorial, been the adjunct of roast ducks. As the best substitute to be had at this season, open a can of preserved green peas—the French cans are best; let them stand an hour to get rid of the airless taste that is apt to cling to canned vegetables; pour off the liquor; cook twenty minutes in boiling water, a little salt; drain dry, and stir up in them a teaspoonful of butter, with pepper to your liking.

Savory Scotch Pudding.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 1 cup of best oatmeal, soaked all night in cold water.
• 1 cup of gravy.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of bread-crumbs.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 3 eggs.
• Pepper and salt.

When your soup is ready to strain, dip out a cupful and set by to cool. Take off the fat and stir into the soaked oatmeal. Mix up well; put in a farina-kettle with boiling water around it, and add by degrees, as it thickens, the milk heated to scalding. When all is in, salt and pepper to taste and cook fast, stirring often, ten minutes. Take from the fire, and let it cool.

N.B. If you have the gravy, all this can be done on Saturday.

When cold, beat in the butter, melted, working out all the lumps and taking the skin from the top. Beat in the[169] whipped eggs, working up fast and hard. Pour into a buttered pudding-dish; bake, covered, one hour, then brown. Serve in the bake-dish.

Spinach in a Mould.

Pick over carefully, clip off the stems and put on the leaves in boiling water, with salt stirred in. Boil hard fifteen minutes. When done, drain, pressing out all the water. Chop fine; put back into the saucepan with a piece of butter—a large spoonful for a good dish—a little powdered sugar, salt and pepper to taste. Stir and toss until very hot; press hard into a mould wet with hot water, and turn out with care upon a heated dish. Lay round slices of hard-boiled eggs on the top.

Turret Cream.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 1 package Coxe’s gelatine.
• 1 heaping cup of white sugar.
• 3 eggs beaten light, whites and yolks separately.
• ½ lb. crystallized fruit.
• Vanilla flavoring.
• Juice of a lemon in which half the grated peel has been soaked, then strained out.

Soak the gelatine three hours in a large cup of cold water. Scald the milk, stir in the sugar, and when this has melted, the gelatine. Stir over the fire five minutes; pour out half of the mixture into a bowl, and add the whipped yolks to that left in the saucepan. Stir one minute, and take from the fire. Flavor the yellow gelatine with lemon—the white with vanilla. As soon as the yellow begins to congeal, whip one-half of the stiffened whites into it, a little at a time, with a Dover egg-beater. Add the rest to the white gelatine, in the same manner, whipping each in until it stiffens before adding more, and not ceasing until both are heaps of “sponge.” Wet the inside of a tall fluted mould with water, and arrange in the bottom, close to the outside of the mould, a row of crystallized cherries. Then, put in a layer of the white mixture; on this, close to the outside, strips of apricots or peaches; then a layer of yellow mixture, another border[170] of cherries, and so on, until the materials are used up. Do this on Saturday. Next day, dip for one instant in hot water, and invert upon a flat dish.

Eat with brandied fruit. It will be a beautiful dessert.

Coffee.

Pass with light cakes or sweet biscuits.

Tomato and Bean Soup.

Open a can of tomatoes; take out the hard and unripe portions, cut up the rest in small pieces, and heat to a boil before adding the bean soup set aside from Saturday. Simmer all together half an hour, season to taste, and pour over the dice of fried bread you have put in the bottom of the tureen.

Ham and Eggs.

Pour a little hot water in a frying-pan, if you use smoked raw ham for this dish, and cook the slices in it ten minutes. Let them get perfectly cold. Fry in their own fat until tender throughout and crisp at the edges. Drain the fat from them and arrange them upon a hot dish. Strain the fat, return to the pan, and fry the eggs without turning. Cut the ham in neat slices, lay an egg upon each, and serve.

Fricassee of Duck.

Cut the meat from the bones of yesterday’s ducks, dividing the joints neatly, and slicing the breast, etc. Crack the skeleton to pieces, and put it, with the skin,[171] stuffing, and gristly bits, into a saucepan. Cover with cold water, and stew until a cupful of good gravy is extracted. Strain and season this; put in the sliced duck. Set within a pot of hot water and bring the contents of the inner saucepan almost to a boil. Add a couple of beaten eggs; stir up well and set aside in the hot water, covered, for five minutes. The meat must not actually boil once.

Stewed Corn.

Open a can of corn, an hour before cooking it. Put it into a saucepan when you are ready for it; cover with boiling water, and let it stand without cooking, for ten minutes. Drain off the water; cover the corn with hot milk, a little salted; set within a vessel of hot water, and cook for half an hour, or until tender. Stir in a tablespoonful of butter, cut into thirds, each rolled in flour; simmer ten minutes, pepper, and turn into a deep covered dish.

Glazed Potatoes.

Parboil them in their skins; peel quickly and lay in the dripping-pan within a hot oven. As soon as they begin to “crust” over, baste with good dripping or butter. Repeat this three times until they are of a glossy brown. Eat hot.

Queen’s Pudding.

• 10 fine pippins, pared and cored.
• ½ lb. macaroons, pounded fine.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• ½ teaspoonful cinnamon.
• ½ cup crab-apple or quince jelly.
• 1 tablespoonful of brandy.
• 1 pint of milk.
• 1 tablespoonful corn-starch.
• Whites of 3 eggs.
• A little salt.

Put the apples into a buttered pudding-dish. Fill this half full of cold water; cover closely and bake until a straw will pierce them. Let them stand, covered, until cold. (Do this on Saturday.) Drain off the water the day you mean to use them. Put a spoonful of jelly and[172] a few drops of brandy into each apple. Strew with cinnamon and sugar. Cover and let them stand while you scald the milk, and stir in the macaroons, the salt and the corn-starch wet up in cold milk. Boil for one minute. Take from the fire, beat up well, and let it cool before whipping in the frothed whites. Pour this mixture over the apples and bake half an hour in a brisk oven. Eat warm with a sauce made of the water in which the apples were stewed, well sweetened and spiced, a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour and the beaten yolk of an egg. Heat the liquor, sweeten and season; thicken with butter and flour; boil up; pour gradually over the egg, and set in hot water until it is needed.

German Sago Soup.

• 3 lbs. knuckle of veal, well cracked.
• 1 onion.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• Some pork bones, if you have them.
• Bunch of sweet herbs, minced.
• 4 quarts of cold water.
• Pepper and salt.
• ¾ of a cup of German sago, soaked two hours in cold water.

Chop the meat, celery, herbs, and onion, and crack the bones. Cover with the water, and cook slowly three hours, or until the meat is boiled to shreds. Strain, season,[173] boil up and skim well, put in the soaked sago and cook slowly half an hour. The sago should be entirely dissolved.

Beefsteak and Onions.

Broil your steak as usual. Fry in a little butter one onion, sliced, until brown. Strain it out, and when your steak is done, and laid upon a hot dish, pour the butter in which the onion was fried over it. Add pepper and salt, and the faintest suspicion of made mustard, turn over it a hot cover and let it stand five minutes before serving.

French Beans Garnis with Sausages.

Open a can of “string” beans, cut in short pieces, cover with boiling water, slightly salted, and cook tender. Drain well, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, a little pepper and salt, and heap upon a hot dish. Surround with sausages, in cakes or in cases, fried in their own fat, and drained from the grease. Serve hot.

Hot Slaw.

• 1 small, firm head of cabbage, shred fine.
• 1 cup of vinegar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 tablespoonful of sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sour cream.
• ½ teaspoonful of made mustard.
• 1 saltspoonful of pepper and the same of salt.

Put the vinegar, and all the other ingredients for the dressing, except the cream, in a saucepan, and heat to a boil. Pour scalding hot over the cabbage; return to the saucepan, and stir and toss until all is smoking again. Take from the fire, stir in the cream, turn into a covered dish and set in hot water ten minutes before you send to the table.

Hasty Farina Pudding.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 4 tablespoonfuls (heaping) of farina, previously soaked in a little cold water for one hour.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.
• 2 eggs, beaten.

[174]

Scald the milk; stir in the salt, then the soaked farina, and cook steadily (always in a farina-kettle) three quarters of an hour. Add the butter; take a cupful of the boiling mixture, and beat into the whipped eggs. Put back into the saucepan, stir for two minutes and pour into a deep, open dish. Eat with milk, or cream, and sugar.

Baked Soup.

• 2 lbs. of lean beef, cut into dice.
• 3 stalks of blanched celery.
• 2 turnips.
• Handful of chopped cabbage.
• 1 onion.
• 1 carrot.
• 2 roots of salsify, cut small.
• Chopped parsley.
• ½ cup of rice, previously boiled for fifteen minutes.
• ½ can of tomatoes, cut up.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 quart cold water.

Prepare beef and vegetables early in the day; mix all up well, and put into a strong earthenware jar, with a good cover of the same material. Coat this top thickly with a stiff paste of flour and water to exclude the air, and set in the oven for six hours. Once in a while, grease the paste to prevent it from scorching or cracking. It is also well to set the jar in a dripping or bake pan of boiling water. Serve without straining.

Devilled Lobster.

• 1 can of preserved lobster.
• [175]3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
• ½ teaspoonful of made mustard.
• A good pinch of cayenne pepper.
• Boiled eggs for garnishing.
• Salt.

Open the lobster-can and empty it into a bowl an hour before using it. Mince evenly. Put vinegar, butter and seasoning into a saucepan, and when it simmers, add the lobster. Cook slowly, covered, half an hour, stirring occasionally. Turn into a deep dish, and garnish with slices of egg. Eat hot with buttered Boston crackers.

Calf’s Liver à la Mode.

• 1 fine, fresh liver.
• ½ lb. salt pork, cut into lardoons.
• 3 tablespoonfuls good dripping.
• 2 sliced onions, small ones.
• 1 tablespoonful Harvey’s Sauce.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
• 1 teaspoonful mixed spices.
• 1 tablespoonful sweet herbs, chopped.
• Pepper.

Wash the liver, and soak half an hour in cold, salted water. Wipe dry and lard with the fat pork, allowing it to project on both sides. Heat dripping, onion, herbs, and spice in a frying-pan. Put in the liver and fry both sides to a light brown. Turn all into a saucepan, add the vinegar, and water enough to cover it; put on a close lid and stew gently one hour and a half. Lay the liver on a hot dish, add the sauce to the gravy, strain it, thicken with browned flour, boil up; pour half over the liver, and send the rest up in a sauce-boat.

Baked Celery.

Cut two bunches of celery, the best stalks only, into inch-lengths, and stew in boiling water, a little salt, for ten minutes. Drain off the water, and add a cup of milk, a tablespoonful of butter, rolled thickly in flour, a little pepper and salt. Simmer three minutes after heating, and pour into a shallow bowl to cool. Butter a bake-dish, strew the bottom with fine bread-crumbs. When the[176] celery is almost or quite cold, beat into it two eggs, and pour into the dish. Strew bread-crumbs thickly over the top, turn a tin plate over all, and bake twenty minutes. Remove the cover and brown.

Potatoes au Gratin, with Vermicelli.

Mash the potatoes as usual, with butter, milk, and salt. Smooth into a hillock upon a pie-plate, and strew with a handful of vermicelli broken small, cooked soft in boiling water, a little salt, then drained perfectly dry and spread out to cool. Brown all in a quick oven, glaze with butter, slip to a hot dish, and it is ready.

Lemon Pudding.

• 6 butter crackers, soaked in water, and beaten smooth.
• Juice of three lemons and half the grated peel.
• 1 cup of molasses.
• A pinch of salt.
• 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
• Pie-paste for shells.

Chop the pulp of the lemons, leaving out the thick white peel, very fine; stir into the crushed crackers, with the butter and salt. Beat the molasses into this, gradually, with the grated peel. Line two pie-dishes with good paste, fill with the mixture and bake, without upper crusts. Eat warm, or cold. They are best fresh.

Beef Soup with Barley.

• 3 lbs. of beef from the shin.
• [177]2 lbs. of bones.
• 1 onion stuck with cloves.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• The half can of tomatoes left from yesterday’s soup.
• 2 turnips.
• Nearly a cup of pearl barley.
• 4 quarts of water.
• Pepper and salt.

Cut up the meat and crack the bones. Cut up celery, turnips, and tomatoes. Put all these, with the onion, into the soup-pot, with the gallon of cold water, and boil gently three hours. The liquor should be reduced one-third. Wash the barley and boil fifteen minutes in a very little water. Strain the soup, pressing hard. Season; let it boil up once, and skim before adding the barley and the water in which it has boiled. Simmer half an hour, and serve.

Stuffed Loin of Veal.

Prepare a dressing of bread-crumbs, a little chopped corned ham, parsley, pepper and salt, moistened with milk. Have the bones taken out of the meat, and fill the holes thus left with the stuffing. Secure the meat into a good shape with skewers, and cover the top and sides with thick foolscap paper, binding it with strings. Grease paper and strings, put the veal into your dripping-pan with a cup of hot water, and bake, basting the paper now and then with dripping, to prevent scorching. At the end of an hour, take out the meat and remove the paper. Pour off the gravy, carefully setting it by; return the meat to the oven with a cupful of milk in the pan instead of the gravy. Baste with butter, lavishly, once,—afterwards, and often with the milk as it heats. Roast, not too fast, nearly an hour more, or until your meat is tender. Should the milk evaporate too rapidly, add a little hot water. Indeed, this is a wise precaution against scorching. Take up the veal, thicken the gravy left in the oven, with a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour, salt, and pepper, heat carefully that the milk may not “catch,” and pour some over the meat, serving the rest in a boat. Veal cooked in this way is very nice, but requires much attention at the last.[178]

Baked Tomatoes.

Strew the bottom of a pie-dish with fine crumbs, having greased it first. Drain off much of the liquor from a can of tomatoes, add it to the soup, pour the tomatoes upon the crumbs, season with pepper, salt, and butter; strew more crumbs thickly over the top. Bake, covered, twenty minutes; then brown.

Kidney Beans with Sauce.

Soak the beans overnight. The next day boil them until soft in salted water. Drain this off. Strain the first gravy taken from the roast veal—before the milk is substituted—into a saucepan; add a tablespoonful of butter, and half a small onion, minced. Boil five minutes, strain through a soup-sieve, pressing the onion hard; season with pepper, salt, and a little chopped parsley; pour over the beans, simmer fifteen minutes, closely covered, drain off half of the liquor, and serve in a covered dish.

Plain Boiled Pudding.

• 3 cups—full ones—of good flour.
• 2 cups of “loppered” milk or buttermilk; sour cream is best of all.
• 1 full teaspoonful of soda dissolved in hot water.
• A little salt.
• ½ cup finely-powdered suet.

Stir the milk and soda gradually into the flour, working it smooth. Put suet and salt in, and beat all thoroughly. Boil in a buttered mould an hour and a half.

Hard Sauce.

• 1 cup of sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• ½ glass of wine.
• Juice of a lemon and half of the grated peel.

Warm the butter, and rub into the sugar, working into a light cream. Add lemon and wine. Mould as you like, and set aside to cool.[179]

Oyster Soup.

Drain the liquor from the oysters through a colander. Put the liquor over the fire with half as much water, salt, pepper, and a large tablespoonful of butter for each quart of soup. Let it boil up well, and put in the oysters. Heat slowly, and as soon as they “ruffle,” which should be about five minutes after they reach the boil, strain off the soup. Have in another vessel as much boiling milk as there was oyster liquor. Pour the oysters into a hot tureen, put a large spoonful of butter upon them; when it melts entirely, turn in the milk. Stir in well, add the hot soup, cover, and serve with sliced lemon and crackers.

Brown Fricassee of Chicken.

Joint the chicken neatly, and lay in salted cold water half an hour. Cut a quarter of a pound of salt pork into strips, and fry in good dripping. Strain it out, skin the chicken as far as possible, and fry in the same fat, with a sliced onion. Chop the pork fine and put into a saucepan; next, the onion; at last, the fowl. Sprinkle a teaspoonful of mixed allspice and cloves over all, pour on cold water to cover them well, put on a tight lid, and stew gently for an hour or more, until the meat is tender. Arrange the fowl upon a hot dish; strain the gravy; season to taste with pepper, salt, and parsley; thicken with browned flour; boil up once; pour over the chicken; cover, and let all stand for five minutes before serving.

Ladies’ Cabbage.

Boil a firm cabbage in two waters. Drain, then set aside to get cold. Chop fine; add two beaten eggs, a tablespoonful of butter, pepper, salt, and three tablespoonfuls[180] of milk. Stir all well, and bake brown in a buttered pudding-dish. Eat very hot.

Potatoes au Naturel.

Choose those of uniform size; put on in their skins, in boiling water. When about half done, check the boil suddenly by a cupful of cold water. This is said to make old potatoes mealy. Boil again until a fork will pierce them. Drain off the water; sprinkle with salt to make the skins crack, and dry out in the uncovered pot, on the range, for a few minutes before peeling.

Sliced Apple Pie.

• 1 lb. of prepared flour.
• ¾ lb. of butter.
• Ice-water to make stiff dough.

Chop half of the butter into the flour. Work up with ice-water. Roll out thin; baste all over with butter, and sprinkle lightly with flour; fold closely into a long roll; flatten, and re-roll as thin as at first; then baste again. Repeat this three times. Set the last roll in a cold place for at least an hour. Roll out, and line two buttered pie-plates, reserving enough for upper crusts.

Pare, core and slice juicy pippins; put a layer within the crust; sprinkle sugar liberally over it, strew half a dozen whole cloves upon this; then more apples, etc., until the dish is full. Cover with crust and bake.

Eat barely warm, with sugar and cream.

A Plain Soup.

• 5 lbs. shin of beef.
• [181]2 stalks of celery.
• 2 carrots.
• 2 onions.
• 2 turnips.
• 5 quarts of water.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of tomato catsup.
• ½ cup coarse corn-meal.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 cup of boiling milk.

Slice the meat and crack the bones. Cut the vegetables into strips and fry the onions in good dripping. Then put all, with meat and bones, into a soup-pot with the water. Cover and cook gently five hours. Strain the liquor from the shreds of meat and rub the vegetables through the colander. Season and set aside half the stock for to-morrow. Put that meant for to-day into a soup-kettle; season and boil up for a minute, that you may skim it; then add the corn-meal, previously scalded with a cup of boiling milk. Stir in well, and simmer half an hour before adding the catsup and pouring into the tureen.

Breaded Mutton Chops.

Trim the chops from fat and skin, leaving a bit of bone clean at the end of each. Beat up a raw egg; dip the chops in this—having peppered and salted them; roll in cracker-dust, and fry brown in good dripping or sweet lard. Drain, and arrange in rows upon a hot dish, the large end of each overlapping the small end of the next. Garnish with parsley.

Milanaise Potatoes.

• 12 boiled potatoes.
• ¾ cupful of gravy left from yesterday’s fricassee.
• Juice of half a lemon.
• Yolks of 2 raw eggs.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of dry grated cheese.
• ½ cup stale bread-crumbs.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• Pepper and salt.

Heat and strain your gravy. Put into a saucepan with the seasoning, butter, and lemon, bring to a boil, and stir it into the beaten egg. Slice the potatoes; lay a[182] row within the outer round of a neat pie-plate. (I hope you have one with a silver stand for the table.) Pour a few teaspoonfuls of sauce upon these; lay another and smaller row inside of the first; more sauce, and so on, until you have a low cone of sliced potato; pour sauce over all, coat with the bread-crumbs and cheese, mixed together; pepper and salt, and bake twenty minutes in a quick oven.

Green Peas.

Open a can of green peas; turn off the liquor and cover with boiling water, a little salt. Boil fast until tender; drain well; stir in a tablespoonful of butter; pepper and salt, and serve in a deep dish.

Cocoanut Sponge Pudding.

• 2 cups of stale sponge-cake crumbs.
• 2 cups of milk.
• 1 cup of grated cocoanut.
• Yolks of two eggs and whites of four.
• 1 cup of white sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful rose-water.
• A little nutmeg.

Scald the milk and beat into this the cake-crumbs. When nearly cold add the eggs, sugar, rose-water, and lastly the cocoanut. Bake three-quarters of an hour in a buttered pudding-dish. Should it brown too fast, cover with white paper. Eat cold, with white sugar sifted over it.

Tapioca Soup.

Take the fat from the stock reserved for to-day. Bring the soup to a boil and stir in half a teacupful of “grained”[183] tapioca, which has been soaked three hours in a little cold water. Add also seasoning, if needed; simmer half an hour and pour out. Send around grated cheese with it.

Roast Beef and Potato Balls.

When your beef is about three-quarters done, pour nearly all of the gravy from the dripping-pan. Have ready some mashed potato worked smooth with a beaten egg, pepper and salt, then made into balls and rolled in flour. Place them in the pan around the meat and baste until well browned. Serve in the same dish with the beef.

Sliced Sweet Potatoes.

Boil in their skins until a fork will go easily into them. Pare and slice with a sharp knife lengthwise; fry lightly and quickly in good dripping, or butter; drain off the grease, and serve hot.

Cauliflower au Gratin.

Wash the cauliflower, cut off green leaves and stalks, and divide into neat bunches. Boil in hot water, salted, until tender. Drain well; dip each piece in melted butter, and strew thickly with fine, dry crumbs, mixed with pepper and salt. Arrange flower end uppermost, in a pudding-dish, and brown the crumbs upon the upper grating of an oven. Serve in a vegetable dish, and pass a boat of drawn butter with them.

Southern Rice Pudding—Méringued.

• 1 qt. of fresh milk.
• 1 cup of raw rice.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 4 eggs beaten light.
• 1 teaspoonful grated lemon-peel.
• A pinch of cinnamon, and the same of mace.

Soak the rice two hours in the milk. Simmer in a farina-kettle until tender. Rub butter and sugar to a cream. Beat up the eggs, and whip the mixture into them while the rice is cooling. Stir all together; flavor, and bake three-quarters of an hour in a buttered dish[184]. If baked too long, the custard will break. So soon as it is well set in the middle of the dish, draw to the oven-door, and spread with a méringue made of the whites of three eggs whisked stiff with one tablespoonful of powdered sugar and juice of half a lemon. Close the oven-door, and brown delicately. Eat cold. Make it on Saturday.

Hasty Soup.

The trimmings of your roast beef, and any other cold meat you may have—about two and a half pounds in all, chopped very fine.

• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of browned flour.
• 2 quarts of water.
• 2 handfuls of fried bread.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 tablespoonful of walnut catsup.

Put meat, butter, salt and pepper into a saucepan; add two quarts of cold water, and bring slowly to a boil. Cook half an hour after the boil fairly begins. Strain hard through a thin cloth; thicken with browned flour; add the catsup; boil up once, and pour over the fried bread in the tureen.

Larded Beef.

Trim yesterday’s roast on top, bottom, and sides, saving all the fragments for your soup. Then make incisions quite through the meat, and thrust in numerous lardoons of fat salt pork, projecting above and below. Rub[185] the meat all over with vinegar, and then with melted butter, rubbing both in well. Put in a dripping-pan. Take the fat from the top of yesterday’s gravy; thin it with a little hot water; strain this into the dripping-pan, and baste the meat plentifully with it, keeping another pan inverted over it between times. If your oven be moderately good, the beef should be ready for table in forty-five minutes. Pour a few spoonfuls of gravy over it when dished. Put the rest into a sauce-boat.

Stewed Parsnips.

Scrape, slice lengthwise, and lay in cold water half an hour. Cook tender in boiling water, a little salt. Drain off half the water, and stir in a tablespoonful of butter rolled thickly in flour. Pepper and salt to your taste, and stew gently five minutes before pouring into a deep, covered dish.

Browned Potatoes.

Mash soft with butter, milk, and salt. Heap as irregularly as possible upon a pie-dish, and set in a quick oven. Mem.: The dish should be well greased. As the potato browns, glaze it with butter. Slip carefully to a hot dish.

“Brown Betty.”

• 1 cup bread-crumbs.
• 2 cups chopped tart apples.
• ½ cup of sugar.
• 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Put a layer of chopped apple in a buttered pudding-dish; strew with sugar, butter, and cinnamon. Cover with bread-crumbs; then more apple. When your dish is full, cover with crumbs. Invert a tin plate over it, and “steam” forty-five minutes in a good oven. Then, uncover and brown. Eat warm, with sugar and butter, or cream.

Tea and Albert Biscuit.

Pass these after the pudding. Tea-drinking is restful as well as refreshing on a busy day. Weary housekeepers can have no more innocent nervine.[186]

White Soup.

• Knuckle of veal—weight 5 or 6 pounds.
• ¼ lb. lean ham—raw or cooked.
• 2 onions.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• 4 blades of mace.
• 2 cups of milk.
• 2 eggs.
• ½ cup raw rice.
• 5 qts. of cold water.
• ¼ lb. almonds, blanched and pounded.

Crack the veal-bones, and cut off the meat in small pieces. Put into the soup-pot with the chopped ham; the onion sliced, the herbs and spice. Pour on the water, and boil very slowly five hours. The water should be reduced to three quarts. Strain off the liquor. Season three pints, and pour back upon the bones, etc. Cover tightly in a stone crock, and put away for to-morrow’s stock. To the remainder add the rice and the pint of water in which it has been soaking for two hours. Season, and cook gently, taking care it does not burn, while you blanch the almonds by scalding off their skins, and pound them in a Wedgewood mortar. When the rice is soft, put in these, and cook slowly ten minutes. Scald the milk, pour it upon the beaten eggs by degrees, add to the soup; stir one minute, but not to the boil, and pour into the tureen.

Boiled Shoulder of Mutton with Oysters.

Take the main bones out of a shoulder of mutton; fill the cavity with oysters, and bind the meat firmly over the[187] incision. Sew the shoulder into a neat shape in a piece of stout tarlatan; put on in boiling water, slightly salted, allowing eighteen minutes to each pound in cooking. When done, unbind carefully upon the dish in which you are to serve it. Pour over it a sauce made of equal parts of oyster liquor and the broth from the boiling meat, seasoned, then thickened with a generous lump of butter, cut into bits, and rolled in flour, and some chopped parsley. Boil up once well, and put half upon the meat, the rest in a sauce-boat.

Creamed Potatoes.

Mash in the usual way, whipping very light with a fork, adding a cupful of rich milk and two tablespoonfuls of softened butter, beating in gradually. Return to the saucepan; stir constantly for three minutes; turn into a bowl and whip with an egg-beater, hard, one minute. Pile in a hot deep dish, and set in the open oven until you are ready to send it to table.

Baked Beans.

Soak overnight. Next day, put on in cold water—salted—and cook soft. Drain dry, turn into a greased bake-dish, stir in a great spoonful of butter, and when this has melted, enough milk to fill the dish one quarter full. Season with pepper and salt; cover and bake forty minutes. Remove the top, and brown.

Cottage Puffs.

• 2 cups of rich milk—half cream if you can get it.
• 4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 1 good tablespoonful of butter, chopped into the flour.
• A pinch of salt.
• Enough prepared flour for thick batter. Try two cups, and add, by degrees, as you need more.

Mix the beaten yolks with the milk; then the salt and whites; at last, the flour. Bake in greased iron pans, such as are used for “gems” and corn-bread. The oven should be quick. Turn out and eat with sweet sauce.[188]

Giblet Soup.

Clean and cut the giblets of your fowls into three pieces each. Stew tender in a pint of water. Take the cake of fat from the broth set by yesterday. Put a half cupful aside for your macaroni sauce. Warm the rest and strain out the bones, etc. Return to the fire, boil up and skim, chop the giblets fine and put them in with the water in which they were boiled. Simmer a quarter of an hour; stir in half a cupful of fine, dry bread-crumbs. Season, if necessary; boil ten minutes longer, stirring often, and pour out.

Smothered Chickens.

Prepare the chickens as for broiling, splitting each down the back. Lay flat in a dripping-pan, pour a cupful of boiling water upon them; set in the oven and invert another pan over them, so as to cover them tightly. Roast half an hour, lift the cover and baste freely with butter. In ten minutes more, baste with gravy from the dripping-pan. In five more, with melted butter—abundantly—going all over the fowls. Keeping the chickens covered except while basting them, increase the heat, until you ascertain, by testing with a fork, that they are done. They should be coffee-colored all over, rather than brown. Dish, salt and pepper them; cover while you thicken the gravy with browned flour, adding a little hot water, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Boil up; put a few spoonfuls over the chickens—the rest in a gravy tureen.

They are extremely nice, if faithfully basted.[189]

Macaroni with Tomato Sauce.

Break half a pound of macaroni into inch lengths. Cover with salted boiling water, and cook twenty minutes, or until tender. Have ready a sauce prepared as follows: open a can of tomatoes; take out half the contents and cut up very small. Add, with pepper and salt, and a little minced onion, to the half cup of broth reserved for this purpose, and stew together twenty minutes. Put the macaroni into a deep dish, stir well into it a large tablespoonful of butter. Add to the sauce two great spoonfuls grated cheese; boil once and strain over the macaroni, loosening the latter with a fork that the sauce may penetrate. Serve hot.

Potato Chips.

Peel and slice, round, some fine potatoes. Lay in cold water for one hour. Dry by laying them upon a dry towel and pressing with another. Fry in salted lard, quickly, to a delicate brown. Take out as soon as they are done; shake briskly in a hot colander to free them from fat, and send to table in a deep dish—uncovered—lined with a napkin.

Apple Cake.

• 2 cups of powdered sugar.
• 3 even cups of prepared flour.
• ½ cup of corn-starch, wet up with a little milk.
• ½ cup of butter, rubbed to a cream with the sugar.
• ½ cup of sweet milk.
• The whites of 6 eggs whipped stiff.

Add the milk to the creamed butter and sugar; then the corn-starch, lastly the flour and whites alternately. Bake in greased jelly-cake tins.

Filling.

• 3 tart pippins, grated.
• 1 beaten egg.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• Juice and grated peel of one lemon.

Beat sugar, egg, and lemon together. Grate the apples[190] into this mixture. Put into a farina-kettle and stir until it boils. Cool before putting between the cakes.

Coffee

May to-day be passed with the cake.

Chicken Broth.

Cut an old fowl into quarters. Lay in salt and water an hour; put on in a soup-kettle with an onion, and four quarts of water. Bring very slowly to a gentle boil, and keep this up until the liquid has diminished one-third, and the meat shrinks from the bones. Take out the chicken, salt it, and set aside with a cupful of the broth, in a bowl (covered), until to-morrow. Season the rest of the broth and put back over the fire. Boil up and skim, and add nearly a teacupful of rice, previously soaked for two hours in a cup of water. Cook slowly until the rice is tender. Stir a cup of hot milk into two beaten eggs, and then into the soup. Let all come to the boil—barely—when you have added a handful of finely-minced parsley, pour out into the tureen.

Rolled Beefsteak.

Beat a large sirloin steak flat with the broad side of a hatchet. Fry a sliced onion in a little butter. Take it out with a skimmer, and put the meat into the pan. Fry quickly on both sides, soaking up all the butter and leaving a brown glaze upon the steak. Spread it upon a dish. Chop the onion, mix with bread-crumbs, minced herbs and a few chopped mushrooms, and lay this force-meat[191] upon the steak. Roll the meat up tightly upon the dressing. Fasten with soft packthread and skewers. Put into a saucepan with a cupful of cold water. Set where it will heat very slowly, keeping on a close lid. Simmer thus two hours, turning now and then. Transfer the meat to a hot dish. Strain the gravy, add a little hot water, if needed; thicken with browned flour; stir in some minced mushrooms, a tablespoonful of catsup and another of butter. Boil about three minutes, pour over the steak, when you have removed the threads. The skewers are to be withdrawn by the carver.

Salsify Fritters.

Scrape, wash, and grate the roots into a mixture made of a beaten egg, one cup of milk, and enough flour for a very thin batter. Thicken with the grated salsify; salt and pepper, and drop, in large spoonfuls, into boiling lard or dripping. Drain in a hot colander. Eat while fresh.

Scalloped Tomatoes.

Drain off the liquor from a can of tomatoes; salt it, and put aside for another day’s soup. Strew the bottom of a bake-dish with fine crumbs; cover with tomatoes, sliced thin. Scatter over these a little minced onion and some bits of butter, with pepper, salt, and sugar. Proceed thus until the tomatoes are used up. Cover thickly with crumbs, fit a plate or tin lid over the scallop, and bake half an hour. Brown quickly upon the upper grating of the oven.

Fig Custard Pudding.

• 1 lb. best Naples figs.
• 1 quart of milk.
• Yolks of five eggs and whites of two.
• ½ package of gelatine soaked in half cup of water.
• 1 cup sweet fruit jelly, slightly warmed.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Flavor to taste.

Soak the figs in warm water until quite soft. Split them; dip each piece in jelly, and line a buttered mould with them. Heat the milk, stir into the beaten eggs and sugar,[192] return to the farina-kettle, and cook until it thickens well. Set by to cool. Beat the whites of two eggs to a stiff froth. Melt the soaked gelatine by adding two tablespoonfuls of boiling water, and setting it within a vessel of hot water. Stir until melted, and let it cool. When it begins to congeal, whip with the Dover egg-beater, gradually, into the whisked whites, until all is white and thick. Beat into the cold custard rapidly and thoroughly, and fill the fig-lined mould. Set on ice, or in a cold place, until firm. Dip the mould in hot water to loosen the pudding when you are ready for it. It is delicious.

Split Pea Soup, without Meat.

• 1 pint of split peas.
• 2 onions.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• 1 carrot.
• 1 turnip.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour.
• Tomato juice, saved from yesterday.
• Pepper, salt, and fried bread.
• 3 quarts of water.

Soak the peas all night. In the morning, put them on, with the vegetables and herbs cut small, and the tomato juice; cover with the water, and cook slowly three hours, or until you can rub all to a pulp through a colander. Season; simmer fifteen minutes, stir in the butter, cook[193] five minutes longer, and pour upon the fried bread in the tureen.

Baked Halibut.

Lay a cut of halibut, weighing five pounds, in salt and water for two hours. Wipe dry, and score on top. Bake an hour, basting often with butter and water melted together. Test with a fork to see if it be done, and transfer to a hot dish. Strain the gravy from the dripping-pan to a saucepan. Stir in a tablespoonful of walnut catsup, the juice of a lemon, and a tablespoonful of butter, cut up in three tablespoonfuls of browned flour. Boil, and pour into a sauce-boat.

Chicken and Ham Pudding.

• The meat from yesterday’s chickens, minced fine.
• Half as much cooked ham, also minced.
• ½ lb. pipe macaroni, broken into inch lengths.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 cup of gravy.
• Pepper and salt.

Add a little hot water to the chicken broth reserved yesterday; strain, heat, and cook the macaroni tender in it. Drain the latter; mix well with the ham and chicken, beaten eggs, butter, and seasoning. Pour into a greased pudding-mould with a tight top, and boil for two hours. Dip the mould into cold water for half a minute; invert a hot dish, and strike gently upon top and upon sides to turn it out.

Mashed Potatoes.

Pare and boil until a fork will pierce the largest. Drain off the water, leaving the potatoes in the pot. Set back on the range, strew with salt, and dry for three minutes. Whip up with a stout, four-tined fork until they are a mass of meal. Add, then, a great spoonful of butter, a cup of milk, salt, if necessary, whipping all in lightly. Form into a smoothed mound in a vegetable-dish. Pass with the fish.

Mixed Pickles

Should go around with both fish and meat, to-day.[194]

Cottage Pudding.

• 1 cup of sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 2 eggs.
• 1 cup of sweet milk.
• 3 cups of prepared flour.
• 1 teaspoonful of butter.

Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the yolks, then the milk, salt, and the beaten whites alternately with the flour. Bake in a buttered mould until a straw will come out clean from the middle; turn out upon a plate. Eat hot with wine sauce.

Wine Sauce.

• ½ cup of butter.
• 2½ cups of powdered sugar.
• 2 glasses of pale sherry.
• ½ cup of boiling water.
• 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg.

Cream butter and sugar, whipping up, by degrees, with the hot water. Beat five minutes before adding, gradually, the wine and sugar. Heat in a tin vessel set in boiling water, stirring often, but not to a boil. Leave in warm water until you are ready for it. Stir up from the bottom as you serve.

Bone Soup.

• 6 or seven lbs. of uncooked bones, beef, mutton, veal, and salt pork, bought in market for a trifle, and pounded to pieces.
• [195]2 minced carrots.
• 2 turnips.
• 2 onions.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• Salt and pepper.
• ½ cup tapioca, soaked two hours in one cup of cold water.
• 5 quarts of water.

Put on the bones and vegetables early in the day. Purchase soup meat a day beforehand, whenever you can. Cover with half the water. When the scum arises after the boil is reached, remove it, and pour in another quart of cold water. This will bring up more scum. Skim, after boiling again, and pour in the rest of the water. When no more scum comes up, cover the pot, and cook gently four hours, if you can give it so much time. Divide the liquor into two parts. Set away half in a stone jar, with the bones in the bottom, fit on the lid, having salted the liquor. This is Sunday’s “stock.” Strain the rest through a fine soup-sieve, without pressing the residuum in the bottom, season it, and having skimmed it carefully after the boil, stir in the soaked tapioca. Simmer twenty minutes, and it is ready.

Pigeon Pie.

Clean, wash, and cut the pigeons into quarters. Wipe dry and fry lightly in butter or dripping. Sprinkle well with salt and pepper. Have ready a greased pudding-dish and a good paste, made according to the receipt given on Friday of last week. Lay some pieces of pigeon in the bottom of the dish, and cover with a mixture of chopped eggs, and the giblets, boiled tender in a little water, then minced. More pigeons, and another layer of the force-meat. Stir two tablespoonfuls of butter, rolled in flour, into the hot water in which the giblets were boiled; season, and pour enough into the pie to half cover the birds. Cover with a thick crust with a slit in the middle, and bake an hour if the pie be of fair size. Glaze with beaten egg, just before you take it from the oven.

Roast Sweet Potatoes.

Parboil them, and lay in a moderate oven until soft to the touch. Wipe, and serve with the skins on.[196]

Baked Hominy.

• 1 cupful cold boiled hominy (the small grained).
• 2 cups of milk.
• 1 large spoonful melted butter.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar.
• 3 eggs.
• A little salt.

Rub the butter into the hominy until there are no lumps left. Work up very thoroughly. Scald the milk; pour upon the beaten yolks and sugar, add the salt, and beat, by degrees, into the hominy. At the last, whip in the frothed whites, and pour into a buttered bake-dish. Put at once into the oven and bake until lightly browned.

Willie’s Favorite Pudding.

• 1 loaf stale baker’s bread.
• ½ cup of powdered suet.
• ¼ lb. of citron, chopped fine.
• ½ lb. sweet almonds, blanched and cut in thin strips.
• 5 pippins, also chopped.
• 2 cups of milk.
• 1 cup of powdered sugar.
• A little salt, stirred into the milk.

Cut the bread into thick slices, and pare off the crust. Cover the bottom of a greased mould (with plain sides) with these, fitted in nicely. Soak with milk, spread with the suet and fruit mixed together. Sprinkle this with sugar, and strew almond shavings over it. Fit on another stratum of bread, soaking it likewise with milk, more of the suet and fruit mixture, sugar and almonds, and so on to the topmost layer which must be bread, and very moist with milk. Cover the mould, set in a dripping-pan, which you must keep full of boiling water, and cook in the oven one hour and a half. Pass a knife carefully between the pudding and the sides of the mould; turn it out; sift white sugar thickly over it and eat with sweet sauce. You may have enough left from yesterday.[197]

Macaroni Soup.

• ¼ lb. macaroni, broken into short pieces.
• The stock set aside yesterday.
• A heaping tablespoonful of corn-starch, wet up with cold water.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 onion sliced.
• A little salt.

Boil the onion five minutes in a pint of salted water. Strain it out, and when the water again boils, put in the macaroni with the butter. Boil very gently until quite tender. Drain off the water, and spread the macaroni out to cool somewhat. Meanwhile, take the fat from the top of your cold soup; thin the latter with a cup of boiling water, and strain into the soup pot. Heat to a boil, skim, season, stir in the corn-starch, and when this has thickened it, put in the macaroni. Simmer ten minutes, and it can be put into the tureen.

Roast Mutton.

The breast, fore leg, and saddle are best for this purpose. A nice way of cooking the breast is to sew it up in stout tarlatan and boil it eight minutes for each pound. Then take it out (saving the liquor), wipe as clean as possible, and put it into a dripping-pan; score the skin with a sharp knife, rub in pepper and salt; wash with beaten egg, strew thickly with bread-crumbs, and bake half an hour in a good oven. Baste twice with melted butter. Make a gravy of a cupful of the broth, thickened with a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour. When it has boiled,[198] stir into it a little chopped parsley; a teaspoonful of minced onion, and three times as much chopped pickled cucumber, with the pounded yolks of two hard-boiled eggs. Stew three minutes; pour part of it over the mutton; the rest into a gravy-boat.

N. B.—Test your mutton with a skewer before taking it from the oven. If not done, leave it in a while longer.

Potato Rissoles.

Work into cold mashed potato, a beaten egg, a little butter, pepper and salt. Make into egg-shaped balls; roll in beaten egg, then in pounded cracker, and fry in hot lard, or dripping, to a light brown. Drain well in a colander, and serve in a hot napkin-lined dish.

Lettuce Salad.

One-third as much oil as you have vinegar; pepper and salt at discretion. Cut up the young lettuces with a sharp knife; pile in a salad-bowl; sprinkle with powdered sugar, and pour the rest of the ingredients mixed together over the salad. Toss up with a silver fork, to mix all well.

Spinach à la Reine.

Boil the spinach in salted water twenty minutes. Drain very thoroughly. Chop fine; return to the saucepan with a teaspoonful of sugar, two tablespoonfuls of butter, three tablespoonfuls of cream, a little nutmeg, pepper and salt. Stir constantly until almost dry. Have ready an egg-cup dipped in boiling water. Fill it with spinach, press hard and turn out upon a hot dish. Do this until all is moulded. Put a slice of egg upon the top of each.

Transparent Puddings.

• ½ lb. butter.
• 1 lb. of sugar.
• 6 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• Juice of 1 lemon and grated rind of two.
• ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
• ½ glass of brandy.

Cream butter and sugar, beat in all the yolks and the whites of three eggs, the lemon, spice and brandy. Bake[199] in open shells of good paste. (Add another “baste” of butter to the crust made for your pigeon pie; roll out and line paté-pans with it.) When nearly done, spread each with a méringue made of the reserved whites, whipped up with a little powdered sugar. Color very lightly.

As they are to be eaten cold make them on Saturday.

Coffee,

Hot and strong, should be handed at the close of dinner particularly if you attend afternoon service!

Savory Porridge.

Cut the meat from yesterday’s roast, and take the least desirable portions, with any remains of other meat you may have—veal, pork, or poultry. Chop extremely fine; and rub them through a coarse sieve or colander. Skim the fat from the liquor in which your mutton was boiled; add a chopped onion, a bunch of sweet herbs and a stalk of celery, chopped. Boil down to three pints; strain, season, and when it boils up again, skim and stir in your chopped meat, with half a cupful of dry bread-crumbs. Cook, covered, twenty minutes; put in a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour, and a little minced parsley. Stew five minutes before serving.

Minced Mutton and Eggs.

Mince the cold mutton. Have ready warmed a cupful of gravy, left from yesterday, or made from the bones of the roast. Season the meat well and stir into this, but[200] do not cook it as yet. Strew the bottom of a buttered bake-dish thickly with dry crumbs; pour the mince upon it; cover with crumbs, and set in the oven, covered, until bubbling hot. Then break enough eggs over the top to cover the mince well; stick bits of butter here and there, pepper and salt, and bake quickly until well “set.” Serve in the bake-dish.

Potatoes au Maître d’Hôtel.

Slice cold boiled potatoes a quarter of an inch thick, and put into a saucepan with four or five tablespoonfuls of milk, two or three of butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Heat quickly, stirring all the time until ready to boil, when stir in a tablespoonful of flour, and two minutes later, the juice of a lemon. Take instantly from the fire so soon as this last ingredient goes in.

String-Beans—Sauté.

Open a can of string-beans and drain off the water. Cut them into inch lengths; cook twenty minutes in salted boiling water. Drain them, put them back into the saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of butter, a pinch of salt and a little pepper. Toss them over a clear fire for three minutes, until they are very hot; then turn out into a deep dish.

Jaune Mange.

• 1 package Coxe’s gelatine, soaked in a cup of cold water.
• 2 cups of boiling water.
• Yolks of 4 eggs, beaten light.
• 1 orange—juice and one-half the grated rind.
• Juice of one lemon and one-third of the grated peel.
• 1 cup sherry wine.
• 1 cup of powdered sugar.
• A good pinch of cinnamon.

Put gelatine (soaked), sugar, juice, peels, and spice into a bowl and pour the boiling water over them. Stir until dissolved; put over the fire in a saucepan, and heat almost to boiling. Pour, very gradually, upon the beaten yolks. Return to the fire—in a farina-kettle—and stir[201] one minute. It must not boil. Take it off, add the wine, and strain through double tarlatan.

If you have ice, or if the weather be cold, set the mould containing this in the refrigerator, or in a very cool closet from Saturday to Monday. By making it on the former day, you can add to the excellence of your méringue on the transparent puddings by using the whites of the four eggs required for the receipt. Pass light cakes with the jaune mange.

Quick Lobster Soup.

Three lbs. of fish—the less choice parts of halibut or cod will do—those which are too bony for table use. Cover with three quarts of cold water and boil down to less than two or until the fish is in rags. Strain through a fine sieve and put on to boil. Season with salt and pepper. When you have skimmed it well, stir in a cup of milk in which has been mixed two tablespoonfuls of corn-starch. Boil up well; then add two tablespoonfuls of butter. Stir it in, take out a cupful of soup and beat it into two eggs. Return to the soup and leaving the saucepan on the range, but not over the fire, stir in a can of preserved lobster, freed from bones and cut up small. Cover and stand in a pot of hot water ten minutes before pouring out.

Roast Tenderloin of Beef.

As I have before stated, this is the best, and not the least economical cut for the table, there being no waste[202] and scarcely any bone. Put in the dripping-pan, pour a cup of boiling water over it, and roast carefully, basting often with its own gravy. When nearly done, dredge with flour and baste once with butter. Do not let it once get dry while cooking. Allow about ten minutes per pound if you like it rare and juicy—that is, if your oven be of moderate heat. Pour the fat from the gravy, thicken what is left with browned flour, pepper, and salt, boil up, and put into a gravy-boat. Pass made mustard with it.

Mashed Potatoes.

Please see receipt given last Friday.

Canned Succotash.

Open the can an hour before it is to be cooked, and turn into a bowl. Drain off the liquor, put the succotash into a saucepan, cover with boiling water, and stew half an hour. Throw off half the water, and add as much cold milk. When it boils, put in a tablespoonful of butter, cut into quarters and rolled in flour; pepper and salt; simmer five minutes and serve in a vegetable-dish.

Apple Trifle.

• 2 heaping cupfuls of good apple sauce, well sweetened and flavored with grated lemon peel.
• 4 eggs.
• 2 cups of milk.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.

Heat the milk, and pour over the beaten yolks and sugar. Put back in a farina-kettle, and stir until it begins to thicken, say about eight minutes. Set by in a shallow vessel to cool. Beat the whites very stiff, then whip gradually into the apple. When all is in, and well beaten, pile up in a glass dish, and pour the cold custard about the base.

Lady’s-Fingers,

Or small, fresh sponge-cakes, should be passed with the trifle.[203]

Mock-Turtle Soup.

• 1 calf’s head, well-cleaned, with the skin on.
• 2 onions.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• 5 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 5 tablespoonfuls of browned flour.
• 1 tablespoonful of allspice.
• ½ teaspoonful of mace.
• 1 teaspoonful of pepper.
• 2 teaspoonfuls, at least, of salt.
• 2 raw eggs.
• A little flour.
• 2 glasses of brown sherry.
• 1 tablespoonful mushroom, or walnut catsup.
• 5 quarts of water, cold, of course.
• 1 sliced lemon.

Soak the calf’s head an hour in cold water, and boil in the five quarts of water until the bones will slip easily from the flesh. Take out the head, leaving the bones and broth in the pot. Take out the tongue and brains, and put them in separate plates. Set aside, also, the cheeks and the fleshy parts of the scalp to cool. Chop the rest, including the ears, very fine. Reserve four spoonfuls of this for force-meat balls. Season the rest with pepper, salt, onion, allspice, herbs, and mace, and put back into the pot. Cover closely, and cook four hours. Should the liquor sink to less than four quarts, replenish with boiling water. Just before straining the soup, take out half a cupful; put into a frying-pan; heat, and stir in the browned flour, wet up in cold water, also the butter. Simmer these together ten minutes, stirring almost constantly. Strain the soup; scald the pot and return the[204] broth to the fire. Have ready the tongue and fleshy parts of the head cut, after cooling, into small squares; also, about fifteen balls made of the chopped meat, highly seasoned, worked into the proper consistency with a little flour and bound with the raw eggs, beaten into the paste. They should be as soft as can be handled. Grease a pie-plate, flour the balls and set in a quick oven until a crust forms upon them, then cool. Now, thicken the strained broth with the mixture in the frying-pan, stirred in well. Should there not be enough to make it almost like custard, add more flour. Then drop in the dice of tongue and fat meat. Cook slowly five minutes. Put the force-meat balls and thin slices of a peeled lemon into the tureen. Pour the soup upon them, add catsup and wine; cover five minutes and serve.

This king of soups having, of right, received such a long and minute notice, I shall not repeat the receipt in full in this work, but take the liberty of referring you, from time to time, to that just given.

Veal Cutlets and Brains.

Flatten the cutlets with the broad side of a hatchet; dip in beaten egg, then in cracker-dust, and fry rather slowly in ham-dripping, if you have it; if not, in salted lard. Drain off the fat; put into a hot-water dish, pepper, and cover while you fry, in the same fat, after straining it, the brains from the head of which your soup was made. They should first have been boiled for ten minutes, drained, and cooled; then beaten to a paste with egg, seasoned with pepper and salt, and dropped by the spoonful into the scalding fat. Drain, and lay about the cutlets as a garnish.

Potatoes au Gratin.

Mash as usual; put into a shallow pie-plate well greased; strew thickly with dry crumbs, and brown upon the upper grating of the oven. Glaze with butter, when the gratin begins to brown well. Slip dexterously to a flat dish.

Stewed Tomatoes and Onion.

To one can of tomatoes add a small onion, minced fine. Season with pepper, salt, a little sugar, and stew[205] twenty-five minutes. Stir in a tablespoonful of butter; cook two minutes, and serve.

Lettuce.

Treat as directed on last Sunday.

Steamed Bread Pudding.

• 2 cups of milk.
• 2 cups fine bread-crumbs.
  ½ lb. suet, powdered.
  ½ lb. Sultana raisins, picked, washed, dried, and dredged with flour.
  3 eggs.
  1 even tablespoonful of corn-starch.
  1 tablespoonful of sugar.
• A little salt.

Heat the milk; pour over the eggs and sugar, beaten together. Stir in the corn-starch; cook one minute, and pour upon the bread-crumbs, beating all to a batter. Put a layer of this in the bottom of a buttered pudding-mould. Cover this with suet; then with raisins; sprinkle with sugar; then more butter, and proceed in the foregoing order until the mould is nearly full. Fit on the top, put into the steamer over a pot of boiling water, and steam at least two hours. If you have no steamer, boil one hour and a half. When done, dip the mould into cold water for half a minute, and turn out, with care, upon a hot, flat dish. Eat hot with wine sauce.

Curry Soup.

You can, if you dislike the taste of curry, warm up what was left from your mock-turtle soup, just as it is.[206] But you can vary it, agreeably to most palates, by stirring into it, when melted, and almost on the boil, a tablespoonful of curry powder, if there be more than three pints of soup—half as much, should there be but a quart. Wet the powder up in cold water, add to the soup, and cook three minutes.

Stewed Beef.

• 3 lbs. of beef—not too lean—coarse steak or brisket.
• 1 chopped onion.
• Bunch of thyme, sweet marjoram, and summer savory.
• Pepper, salt, parsley.
• ½ teaspoonful of allspice.
• 1 tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce.
• 1 tablespoonful of browned flour.
• 1 pint of cold water.
• ½ glass of wine.

Cut the meat into strips about an inch long. Cover with a pint of water, and stew gently two hours. The meat should be ready to fall to pieces. Add the onion and herbs cut up fine, the spice, salt and pepper, and stew half an hour, closely covered. Then stir in the browned flour, and when it has thickened, the sauce and wine. Cover the bottom of a deep dish with strips of fried bread, and pour the stew over it. If cooked long and slowly enough, it will be a rich brown mixture, with no hard lumps of meat in it. Save half a cupful of gravy for to-morrow.

Bermuda Potatoes—au Naturel.

Wash and boil in hot salted water, until a fork will easily pierce them. Drain off the water, throw salt over them, and “dry off” upon the range for a few minutes. Peel, and serve whole.

Baked Macaroni.

Break half a pound of macaroni into short pieces; cook in boiling water, salted, twenty minutes. Drain, put a layer into a greased bake-dish; strew thickly with grated cheese, and stick bits of butter over it. Go on in this order until the dish is full, strewing cheese and butter on top. Pour in a cup of milk; bake, covered, thirty minutes; then brown nicely. Serve in the pudding-dish.[207]

White Puffs.

• 2 cups of rich milk.
• Whites of 4 eggs whipped stiff.
• 2 cups prepared flour.
• 1 scant cup of powdered sugar.
• Grated peel of half a lemon.
• A little salt.

Whisk eggs, lemon, and sugar to a méringue, and add alternately with the flour to the milk. The salt should be sifted with the flour. Beat very light, and bake in small, well-buttered tins, or cups. Turn out, sift powdered sugar over them, and eat with custard sauce.

Custard Sauce.

• 2 beaten eggs.
• 1 large cup of sugar.
• 1 scant cup of scalding milk.
• ½ teaspoonful of arrowroot, wet with cold milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.

Rub the butter into the sugar, add the eggs, and beat light. Put in corn-starch and spice; finally, pour upon this mixture, by degrees, the boiling milk. Set within a saucepan of boiling water five minutes, stirring all the while, but do not let it really boil.

Clam Chowder.

Fry five or six slices of fat salt pork crisp, and chop fine. Sprinkle a layer in the bottom of a pot; cover[208] with clams; sprinkle with pepper, salt, and bits of butter, then with minced onion. Next, have a stratum of small crackers, split and soaked in warm milk. When the pot has been filled in this order, cover all with cold water, and cook slowly (after the water is heated) three-quarters of an hour. Strain the chowder, without pressing or shaking; put clams, etc., into a covered tureen; return the liquor to the pot. Thicken with rolled crackers; add a glass of wine, a tablespoonful of catsup; boil up, and pour over the chowder. Pass sliced lemon with it.

Fried Weak Fish.

Clean, wash, and dry the fish. Lay in a broad pan or dish; salt, and dredge with flour. Fry in hot lard or very nice dripping to a light brown. In serving, lay the fish side by side, the head of each to the tail of the one next him. Garnish with parsley.

Braised Duck.

Clean and wash the duck. Stuff with a dressing of bread-crumbs seasoned with pepper and salt, a little onion and sage. Sew up the vent, and tie the neck to keep in the flavor. Fry the duck in a great spoonful of butter until lightly browned, turning it often. Add the butter used for frying to the gravy saved from yesterday; thin with boiling water, and, having put the duck into a saucepan, strain this gravy over it. It should half cover the fowl. Stew slowly forty-five minutes, or until tender, keeping the lid on all the while. Take up the duck, cover to keep it warm, strain the gravy, and if very oily, take off the top. Boil sharply ten minutes in an open saucepan; thicken with browned flour; put back the duck into it, and set the saucepan, again covered, in boiling water for a quarter of an hour. Serve the gravy in a boat.

Purée of Green Peas.

Open a can of peas, drain off the liquor, and cook twenty minutes in boiling water slightly salted. Strain off the water through a colander; mash the peas with the[209] back of a wooden spoon, and rub through the colander into a bowl below. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan, with pepper, salt, and a little sugar, and, if you fancy it, three mint leaves finely chopped. Heat, but not to boiling, stir in the pulped peas, and toss about with a silver fork or spoon until they are a smoking mass. Pile in a hot dish, with triangles of fried bread laid up around the base.

Cauliflower à la Crème.

Boil a fine cauliflower, tied up snugly in coarse tarlatan, in hot water, a little salt. Drain and lay in a deep dish, flower uppermost. Heat a cup of milk; thicken with two tablespoonfuls of butter, cut into bits, and rolled in flour. Add pepper, salt, the beaten white of an egg, and boil up one minute, stirring well. Take from the fire, squeeze the juice of a lemon through a hair sieve into the sauce, and pour half into a boat, the rest over the cauliflower.

Corn-Meal Pudding without Eggs.

• 2 cups Indian meal.
• 1 cup of flour.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of molasses.
• 3 cups of sour milk—“loppered,” or “bonny-clabber,” if you can get it.
• 1 great spoonful of melted butter.
• 1 full teaspoonful of soda.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.
• ½ teaspoonful of cinnamon.

Sift the salt with the flour, and mix up well with the meal. Make a hole in the middle, and pour in the milk, stirring the meal and flour down into it. Beat smooth. Mix molasses, spice, butter, and the soda—this last dissolved in hot water—all together, and beat into the batter—well and hard. Butter a tin mould with a cover; pour in the pudding, and boil steadily an hour and a half. Eat hot with butter and sugar.[210]

Chicken Broth.

Clean, wash, and truss, but do not stuff, a full-grown fowl. Set aside the giblets for another use. Bind the legs and wings of the fowl closely to its sides. Put into a pot with four quarts of water (cold), and cook gently until the liquor has fallen one-third. Then add a full cup of rice, soaked for one hour in a very little water, and boil half an hour more, or until the chicken is tender and the rice soft, but not broken to pieces. Take out the chicken. Wipe off the adhering grains of rice, wash over with butter, salt and pepper, and set, covered, upon a pot of boiling water to keep hot. Season the soup with pepper and salt, and simmer ten minutes more. Then strain out the rice, and cover it to keep hot. Return the soup to the pot, stir in a cup of hot milk, a tablespoonful of corn-starch wet with cold water, and a handful of very finely minced parsley. Boil up, take from the fire, and pour by degrees upon two beaten eggs. Cover for three minutes; then pour into the tureen.

Paté of Salt Cod.

• 1 cup of cold salt cod, soaked all night in soft water, boiled in the morning, left to cool, then “picked” into boneless flakes.
• 1 cup of oyster-liquor.
• 2 even tablespoonfuls of rice flour, or corn starch.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Chopped parsley and pepper.
• [211]3 hard-boiled eggs, minced.
• Some rich paste. (See “French Puff Paste,” page 352, No. 1, Common Sense Series—General Receipts.)

Boil the oyster-liquor, stir in the corn-starch wet up with cold milk. When it thickens, add the butter and pepper; next the parsley and fish. Heat almost to boiling, and stir in the chopped egg. Take from the fire, and cover, over a pot of boiling water, ten minutes.

Make the shell by lining a profusely buttered cake-mould, or round pan with nearly straight sides, with a thick sheet of puff-paste, pricking it at the bottom to prevent too much puffing. Cut a round piece exactly the size of the top, for a cover, and bake separately. Bake both in a quick oven. Let them get almost cool, turn out the shell with the utmost care; fill slowly with the prepared fish, that the sides may not give way; fit on the top; hold an inverted hot plate firmly upon it and reverse the paté skilfully, leaving the closed side uppermost. It is easily done, if one is only fearless yet dexterous. Eat hot.

Boiled Chicken and Rice.

Boil the giblets tender in a little salted water; chop fine, and when the rice is strained from the soup, mix them well through it. Pile the rice, when you are ready to serve it, upon a meat dish; lay the chicken upon the top; pour a few spoonfuls of egg sauce over it, and send to table.

Egg Sauce.

One cup of the broth in which the chicken was boiled, heated; thickened with a tablespoonful of butter rolled thickly in flour; poured over two beaten eggs; boiled one minute, with a tablespoonful of parsley stirred in; then seasoned and poured upon the pounded yolks of two boiled eggs placed in the bottom of a bowl. Stir up well, and it is ready.

Mashed Turnips.

Boil in salted water, until tender; mash and drain in a hot colander, working in butter, salt, and pepper. Mound up in a hot, deep dish, covered.[212]

Ambrosia.

• 8 fine oranges, peeled and sliced.
• ½ grated cocoanut.
• ½ cup of powdered sugar.

Arrange slices of orange in a glass dish; scatter grated cocoanut thickly over them; sprinkle this lightly with sugar, and cover with another layer of orange. Fill the dish in this order, having a double quantity of cocoanut and sugar at top. Serve soon after it is prepared.

Café au Lait and Sponge-Cake.

To one pint strong made coffee, add the same quantity of boiling milk. The coffee should be first strained through muslin into the table-urn, then the milk poured in with it. Wrap the urn in a woollen cloth, if you have no “cozy,” for five minutes before serving. Send around sponge-cake, home-made or bought, with it.

A Good Stock Soup.

• 5 lbs. brisket of beef.
• 2 lbs. mutton-bones.
• 2 onions, sliced and fried.
• 2 carrots.
• 2 turnips.
• 4 stalks of celery.
• Bones of chicken or duck, if you have them.
• [213]6 cloves.
• ½ cup of sago or barley.
• 6 quarts of cold water.
• Sweet herbs.
• Pepper and salt.

Slice the meat, crack the bones, chop the vegetables, and put all on over the fire with the water. Boil slowly five or six hours; strain; pick out the meat as well as you can, and set aside. Then, rub the vegetables through a colander, prior to straining all through your soup-sieve. Set aside half the stock for Monday. Do this much on Saturday. Or, if you choose, do not strain the soup at all until Sunday morning. It will be the richer for cooling with meat, etc., in it. In either case, season before setting it away, or it may sour. Put Sunday’s stock back into the pot; boil up and skim, before adding the half cup of pearl sago, previously soaked for two hours in a very little cold water. Simmer twenty minutes and pour out.

Beef à la Mode de Rome.

Cut a quarter of a pound of streaked salt pork, and the same quantity of lean beef into strips, and fry, with a sliced onion, in good dripping. Put them in the bottom of a pot and lay a rib roast of beef, rolled round, upon them. Add a pint of boiling water, cover, and cook ten minutes to the pound, turning the beef three times meanwhile. Transfer the meat to a dripping-pan, dredge the top with flour, then baste with its own gravy, once. Keep hot, without cooking, while you strain the gravy left in the pot, thicken it with browned flour (always after taking the fat from the top), season with pepper, and stir in a teaspoonful of sugar, a handful of Sultana raisins, picked and washed, and the same quantity of blanched almonds, cut into tiny strips. Boil gently three minutes, dish the beef, and pour the sauce over it.

Odd as this receipt may seem to an American housewife, the result is extremely palatable, and a good change of fare at this season.

Potato Puff.

Mash the potatoes soft with milk and butter, season and beat very light with two raw eggs. Smooth and bake to[214] a light brown in a greased pudding-dish, in which, also, serve it.

Hominy Croquettes.

• 2 cups of fine-grained hominy, boiled and cold.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
• Salt to taste.
• ¾ cup of finely chopped beef, left over from your soup, after straining the latter.
• Pepper.

Work hominy, butter, and salt to a smooth paste; beat in the eggs, finally the chopped meat, after peppering and salting it. Stir up in a farina-kettle until hot, and pour out to cool. When cold, make into long rolls with floured hands, flour each well by rolling upon a dish, and fry to a yellow-brown in sweet lard. Drain off the fat and pile upon a hot dish.

Spinach.

Boil in hot, salted water, twenty minutes, drain and press hard; chop fine, and return to the saucepan with a large spoonful of butter, pepper, salt, a little sugar and a pinch of mace. Stir, and beat until very hot; then pour into a deep dish.

Snow Custard.

• ½ package of Coxe’s gelatine.
• 3 eggs.
• 1 pint of milk.
• 2 cups of sugar.
• Juice of one lemon.
• 1 large cup boiling water.

Soak the gelatine one hour in a teacupful of cold water, then stir in two-thirds of the sugar, the lemon-juice and the boiling water. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and when the strained gelatine is quite cold, whip it into the whites, a spoonful at a time for half an hour, if you use the Dover egg-beater (at least one hour with any other). When all is white and stiff, pour into a wet mould, and set in a cold place. Make this on Saturday, and on Sunday dip the mould into hot water, and turn out into a glass dish. Make a custard of the milk, eggs, and the rest[215] of the sugar, flavoring with vanilla; boil until it begins to thicken. When the méringue is turned into the dish, pour this custard, cold, about the base.

Nuts and Raisins

Serve as another and a last course.

Vermicelli Soup.

Boil a quarter of a pound of vermicelli in a little salted water fifteen minutes. Heat the stock set aside for to-day, when you have taken the fat from the top, and when scalding, add the vermicelli.

N. B.—Always break vermicelli and macaroni small before cooking. Add a little chopped parsley; simmer fifteen minutes and pour out.

Browned Mince of Beef.

Cut all the meat from the bones of yesterday’s roast, setting away the bones for another day’s soup. Mince the beef fine; mix with it one-fourth as much mashed potato, season highly with pepper, salt, a little mustard and catsup; work soft with the remains of yesterday’s gravy; heat in a saucepan, then heap upon a stone china dish, cover the mound with fine crumbs, and brown upon the upper grating of your oven. Put bits of butter thickly over the top as it begins to brown.[216]

Stewed Potatoes—Creamed.

Chop cold boiled potatoes coarse; put on in a saucepan with a cup of milk, and heat in an outer vessel of hot water. When scalding, pepper and salt; stir in a tablespoonful of butter, cut up and rolled in flour, and when this has melted, a beaten egg, stirred in while the potatoes are not boiling. Simmer one minute, and turn out.

Broccoli.

Wash, and let stand in salt and water one hour. Cook in boiling salted water fifteen minutes. When tender, drain dry, and serve with melted butter (peppered) poured over it.

Canned Peaches and Cream.

Open the can at least an hour before using, and turn into a glass dish; sprinkle with sugar. Serve in saucers, sending around powdered sugar and cream to each person.

Myrtle’s Cake,

Or any other good cup cake, made last week, may be sliced and passed with the fruit and cream. If you desire a receipt for this particular cake please consult “Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea,”—No. 2, Common Sense Series, page 334.

Barley Broth.

• 2 lbs. knuckle of veal. Beef bones from yesterday.
• 1 onion.
• 1 turnip.
• 1 stalk of celery.
• [217]Chopped parsley.
• 1 cup Scotch barley.
• 3 quarts of water.

Break the bones to splinters and chop the meat. Mince the vegetables, and put all into a soup-kettle, with the water. Boil slowly three hours, until the liquor has fallen one-third. Meanwhile wash the barley and boil half an hour in a little salted water. Strain your soup; cool to let the fat arise, and take this off. Season with pepper and salt and boil up. Skim, put in the barley, and cook gently half an hour longer.

Boiled Leg of Mutton.

The mutton will be cleaner and in better shape if boiled tied up in coarse net or tarlatan. Put on in boiling water, plenty of it, slightly salt, and cook steadily fifteen minutes to the pound. Save the broth for soup. Undo the net from the meat, rub the latter over with butter, lay on a hot dish, and send the oyster sauce in a boat. Garnish the mutton with sliced cucumber pickles.

Oyster Sauce.

• 1 pint of oysters.
• Half a lemon.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, rolled well in flour.
• 1 teacupful of milk.
• Cayenne and nutmeg to taste.

Heat the oyster liquor, and when it boils, skim, and put in the oysters. So soon as they boil, stir in the butter, cut up and well floured, the spice and lemon-juice. Boil five minutes, take from the fire and put with the milk which has been heated in another vessel. Stir up well, and pour out.

Kidney Beans.

Soak all night. In the morning put on in warm—not hot—water slightly salted, and cook tender. Drain dry, stir in a great lump of butter, a little salt and pepper, and turn into a deep dish.

Bermuda Potatoes—Baked.

Select those of uniform size; wash, and bake in a moderate oven until soft to the pinching fingers. Wipe clean, and serve in their skins, wrapped in a napkin.[218]

Cocoanut Pudding.

• 1 heaping cup fine bread-crumbs.
• 1 cocoanut, pared and grated.
• 1 tablespoonful corn-starch, wet in cold water.
• ½ cup of butter.
• 1 cup of powdered sugar.
• 2 cups of milk.
• 5 eggs.
• Nutmeg and rose-water to taste.

Soak the crumbs in the milk. Rub butter and sugar to a cream, and whip in the beaten yolks. Beat this into the soaked crumbs; stir in the corn-starch, then the whisked whites—finally, the grated cocoanut. Beat very hard, pour into a neat pudding-dish, well buttered, and bake in a moderate oven forty-five minutes. Eat cold, with powdered sugar on top.

Tomato Soup.

Open a can of tomatoes, and cut them up small. Take the fat from the top of the liquor in which your mutton was cooked yesterday; put over the fire with the tomatoes and half a cup of raw rice, and cook slowly one hour. Season to taste, adding a lump of loaf sugar and a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour; simmer five minutes, and pour into the tureen.

Salmon Pudding.

• 1 can preserved salmon.
• 4 eggs, beaten light.
• [219]4 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
• ½ cup fine bread-crumbs.
• Pepper, salt, and minced parsley.

Chop the fish fine, rub to a paste with the butter. Beat the bread-crumbs up with the eggs and seasoning; work all together; put into a buttered mould, with a tight top, and boil one hour. Dip in cold water; turn it out upon a hot dish. Have ready a cupful of drawn butter with a raw egg beaten into it, and pour over the pudding.

Swiss Turnovers.

Mince the cold mutton left from yesterday. Put half a cupful of hot water into a saucepan; stir in a great spoonful of butter, cut up in flour; season with pepper, salt, and tomato catsup. Pour over a beaten egg, mix well, and, returning to the saucepan, add the mince, well seasoned with pepper, salt, a little grated lemon-peel and nutmeg. Stir up until very hot, but not boiling. Set by to keep hot while you make a batter of one pint of flour, four eggs, a little salt, and a quarter spoonful of soda, dissolved in vinegar, and about four cups of milk—enough for thin batter. Beat very light. Put a spoonful of lard (a small one) into a hot frying-pan, run it over the bottom, turn in a half cupful of batter, and fry quickly. Invert the pan upon a hot plate, and this, in turn, upon another, to have the browned side of the pancake downward; cover the lighter side with the mince; fold up neatly and lay upon a hot dish in the open oven to keep warm, while you fry and spread the rest.

They are very nice.

Mashed Potatoes.

Prepare as usual, and pass with both fish and meat.

Lettuce Salad with Cream Dressing.

• ½ cupful of new milk, if you have no cream.
• 1 teaspoonful of corn-starch.
• Whites of 2 eggs, beaten stiff.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls best salad oil.
• 2 teaspoonfuls powdered sugar.
• [220]1 teaspoonful of salt.
• ½ teaspoonful of pepper.
• 1 teaspoonful of made mustard.

Heat the milk (or cream) almost to boiling; stir in the corn-starch wet up with cold milk. Boil up, add the sugar, and take from the fire. Cool, beat in the frothed whites, oil, pepper, mustard and salt, and, when the lettuce is shred fine, add the vinegar to the dressing, and pour over it. Toss up with a silver fork. Eat very soon.

Wayne Pudding.

• 2 full cups of prepared flour.
• ½ cup of butter.
• 1 cup of powdered sugar.
• 1 lemon, the juice and half the grated peel.
• ½ lb. of citron, cut into very thin strips.
• 5 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.

Cream butter and sugar; add the beaten yolks; whip up light with the lemon, then add the whites, alternately with the flour. Butter a mould abundantly, line it with the strips of citron; put in the batter, a few spoonfuls at a time; cover and set in a pan of boiling water, in a good oven. Keep plenty of boiling water in the pan, and cook steadily one hour and a half. Dip into cold water and turn out upon a hot plate. Eat warm with wine or brandy sauce. Leave room in the mould for the pudding to swell. Never heat a pudding or cake mould before greasing it or the batter will stick.

Ox-tail Soup.

• 1 ox-tail.
• 2 lbs. of lean beef.
• [221]4 carrots.
• 3 onions.
• Thyme and parsley.
• Pepper and salt.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of browned flour.
• 4 quarts of cold water.

Cut the tail into joints and fry brown in good dripping. Slice the onions and two carrots, and fry in the same, when you have taken out the pieces of tail. When done, tie them, with thyme and parsley, in a lace bag, and drop into the soup-pot. Put in the tail, then the beef, cut into strips. Grate over them the two whole carrots, pour over all the water, and boil slowly four hours. Strain and season; thicken with brown flour wet with cold water; boil fifteen minutes longer, and pour out.

Irish Stew.

• 3 lbs. of lean beef—a sirloin steak is best.
• 8 parboiled potatoes.
• 2 onions, or one, if it be large, also parboiled.
• Browned flour for thickening.
• Thyme and sweet marjoram.
• Pepper and salt.
• A little pie-paste—not rich—for dumplings.

Cut the meat into pieces an inch wide by two long. Slice the parboiled potatoes and onions. Put a layer of meat in a pot; then one of potatoes, next one of onions. Pepper and salt each sparingly; scatter the herbs upon the onions; put in more meat, and so on. When all are in, cover—barely—with cold water, and stew slowly two hours. Strain out the meat, and put into a covered dish—a chafing-dish, if you have one. Return the gravy to the saucepan; thicken with browned flour; cut your paste into narrow strips two inches long, and drop, one by one, into the boiling gravy. Stew about eight minutes, and pour over meat, potatoes, etc., which await it in the dish.

Corn Pudding.

• To one can of corn add
• 3 beaten eggs.
• 1 cupful of milk.
• [222]2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 tablespoonful of sugar.
• A little salt.

Rub butter and sugar together; beat in the eggs; salt the milk, and put in next; lastly, the corn, drained of can liquor. Beat up well; pour into a greased bake-dish, and set, covered, in the oven. At the end of half an hour, take off the lid, and brown.

Potatoes à la Lyonnaise.

Parboil double the quantity of potatoes required for your Irish stew, and lay aside eight for this dish. Cut, when cold, into dice; fry a small chopped onion in a heaping spoonful of butter, for one minute, then put in the potatoes. Stir briskly to keep them from browning; cook until very hot; add a tablespoonful of chopped parsley; stir a minute longer; turn all into a heated colander; shake hard to get rid of the grease, and serve hot in a vegetable-dish.

Queen’s Toast.

Cut slices of stale baker’s bread round with a cake-cutter, taking off all the crust. Fry in sweet lard to a light brown. Dip each round quickly into boiling water to remove the fat. Sprinkle thickly on both sides with a mixture of powdered sugar and nutmeg, and pile upon a hot plate. You may dispense with sauce if you will heat a glass of wine, and put a teaspoonful, or less, upon each piece, after dipping it into the water, and before sugaring it. Serve hot.

Réchauffé Soup.

An excellent a soup as ox-tail deserves repetition, and the probability is that, since Friday is a fast day from[223] meat with Roman Catholic servants, you have enough soup left over for your family proper. Warm it up, making very hot, but not to boiling. If you like, you can put some dice of crisp fried bread in the tureen.

Lobster Croquettes.

To a can of preserved lobster, chopped fine, add pepper, salt, and powdered mace. Mix with this one-fourth as much bread-crumbs as you have meat, work in two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, and make into egg-shaped rolls. Roll these in raw egg, then in cracker-dust, and fry in butter or very sweet lard. Serve dry and hot with cresses or parsley laid around them.

Chickens with Mushroom Sauce.

Split a pair of chickens down the back as for broiling, and lay in a dripping-pan, with two cups of boiling water, a little salt, poured over them. Cover very securely with another pan of the same size—inverted—and cook an hour and a half if the fowls are of fair size. Baste at least six times; twice with butter in which has been mixed a little pepper; three times, copiously, with their own gravy, and, just before they are done, again with butter. Boil half a can of mushrooms ten minutes in clear, hot water. Drain and mince them very fine. Take up the chickens and keep hot in a covered dish. Put the gravy into a saucepan; add a little chopped onion; boil three minutes, thicken with browned flour; and stir in the chopped mushrooms. Simmer, covered, five minutes, and pour half over the chickens, the rest into a sauce-boat. Save all the gravy left after dinner.

Cabbage Sprouts.

Wash, trim, and boil in hot, salted water, with a bit of streaked salt pork, an inch square. When tender, drain, season, and chop fine. Stir in a tablespoonful of melted butter and the juice of half a lemon. Eat very hot.

Boiled Macaroni.

Break half a pound of pipe macaroni into short lengths. Cover well with boiling water, salted, and boil—not too[224] fast—about twenty minutes, or until tender and clear at the edges. Drain well; pour a little into a hot, deep dish, and butter it, then strew with grated cheese. Do this three times in filling the dish, with cheese scattered over the top.

Nursery Plum Pudding.

• 1 scant cup of raw rice.
• 3 pints of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• ½ lb. raisins, seeded, and cut in half.
• 3 well-beaten eggs.

Soak the rice two hours in a farina-kettle, just covered with warm water. When all the water is soaked up, shake the rice hard, to reach that at the bottom, and add a pint of milk. Simmer gently, still in the inner kettle, until the rice is again dry, and quite tender. Shake up anew, and add another pint of milk. When this is hot, put in the raisins, dredged with flour; cover the saucepan and cook twenty minutes. Turn into a bowl; put with it the butter, rice-flour, the remaining pint of milk, heated and mixed with the beaten eggs and sugar, and stir all up thoroughly. Bake in a buttered pudding-dish, about forty minutes. Eat warm with butter and sugar, or sugar and cream.

Dresden Soup.

• 2 lbs. of lean beef, cut into strips.
• [225]4 pig’s feet, cleaned well.
• 4 lbs. of mutton and beef bones, cracked.
• 2 onions.
• 1 bunch of sweet herbs.
• 2 carrots.
• 2 blades of mace.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of butter, and the same of rice-flour.
• Juice of a lemon.
• 1 tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce.
• 1 raw egg for force-meat.
• Salt and pepper.
• 6 quarts of cold water.
• 1 glass of claret.

Early in the day, put on the meat, pig’s feet and bones, and cook slowly five hours in six quarts of water. Skim then, carefully, add the onions, mace, and herbs, cut small, and the carrots, grated. Stew half an hour; take out the meat and the feet, leaving the bones, etc., on the fire. Cut the flesh from the feet, and return the bones to the pot. Set aside half this flesh, with a few pieces of beef, to get cold. Chop the rest fine, and make up with pepper, salt, and a raw egg, into small force-meat balls. Roll them in flour, lay upon a greased plate, and set within the oven to “crust.” When quite firm, take out and cool. Cut the reserved meat into small, square bits. When the soup has cooked half an hour after the meat was taken out, strain and season it. Divide into two portions. Into that designed for Sunday drop the dice of meat, from the pig’s feet as well as the beef, and set away, covered, in an earthenware vessel. Return the rest to the fire; thicken with the butter, melted and worked up into the rice-flour; add the sauce, lemon-juice, and a glass of claret. Put the force-meat balls into the heated tureen; pour on the soup, cover five minutes, and serve.

Boiled Blue Fish.

Sew up the fish neatly in a thin cloth, put on in scalding water with a little salt, half a small cup of vinegar, a quarter of an onion, six whole black peppers, and a blade of mace. Let it stand, just below boiling heat, half an hour; then increase the heat and boil thirty minutes more.[226] Take out, unwrap, lay upon a hot dish and pour over it a cupful of drawn butter, with a little lemon-juice stirred in it.

Baked Calf’s Head.

Put on, having removed the brains, in four quarts of cold water, and boil gently one hour. Take out the head; salt and pepper the liquor and set by as the foundation of Monday’s soup, keeping out a cupful for gravy. Put the calf’s head in a dripping-pan, rub over with butter, pour the gravy into the pan, and bake, covered—basting four times—for half an hour. Uncover, wash over with a mixture of melted butter, pepper, and salt, and a teaspoonful of catsup. Dredge with browned flour, baste again, and when the surface is of a fine froth, dish the head. Strain and thicken the gravy, and serve in a boat. The brains should be washed well, boiled quickly, then cooled; mashed to a smooth paste with pepper, salt, a dust of flour, and a raw egg, and fried, by the spoonful, in hot lard. Drain, and lay about the head.

Canned Succotash.

Drain from the liquor; cut the beans—if French or string beans—into short pieces; cook half an hour in salted boiling water; drain this off; add a cup of hot milk, thicken with a great spoonful of butter, cut up in flour, pepper, and salt, and simmer ten minutes more.

Casserole of Rice with Tomato Sauce.

Boil one cup of rice tender in hot water, a little salt, shaking up from time to time, but never stirring. Drain dry, add a very little milk in which has been stirred a beaten egg, a teaspoonful of butter, a little pepper and salt. Simmer for five minutes, and if the rice has not absorbed all the milk, drain it again. Pile it around the inner edge of a flat dish; smooth it neatly, rounding the top, into a sort of fence; wash over carefully with the beaten yolks of two eggs, and set it in the oven until firm.

Drain more than half the juice from a can of tomatoes; season with a little chopped onion, pepper, salt, and sugar. Stew twenty minutes; stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and two tablespoonfuls of fine bread-crumbs; stew[227] three or four minutes to thicken it well, and pour within the hedge of rice.

Belle’s Dumplings.

• 1 quart prepared flour.
• 2½ tablespoonfuls of mixed lard and butter.
• 2 cups of milk, or enough for soft dough.

Roll out a quarter of an inch thick, cut into oblong pieces, rounded at the corners. Put a great spoonful of damson, cherry, or other tart preserve, in the middle, and roll into a dumpling. Bake about forty minutes, brush over with beaten egg, while hot, and shut up in the oven three minutes to glaze. Eat hot with brandy sauce. (For receipt for sauce see Wednesday, 2d Week in January.)

APRIL.

Clear Soup.

Take the grease from the soup-jelly you will find in the crock into which the stock was poured yesterday. Take it up by the ladleful, leaving the meat and sediment at the bottom, and put on to heat in a soup-kettle. When it boils, stir in the beaten white of an egg; take off the scum as fast as it rises, and when quite clear add two teaspoonfuls of Coxe’s gelatine, previously soaked in cold water. Add, meanwhile, a little boiling water to the sediment and meat dice in the pot; strain off the liquid; pick out the bits of meat, and see that they are clean. Drop into the soup at[228] the same time that you add four tablespoonfuls of colored water, made by burning a tablespoonful or two of sugar in a tin cup, pouring a little boiling water upon it, and stirring until you get a clear brown liquor. After these go in, do not let your soup really boil, but simmer a few minutes to throw up and remove any remaining scum. Pass sliced lemon with the soup.

Fricasseed Chickens—White.

Clean, wash, and joint the fowls. Lay in cold salt and water for one hour. Put them into a pot, with half a pound of salt pork cut into strips, and cold water enough to cover them. Cover closely, and heat very slowly to a gentle boil. The excellence of the fricassee depends mainly upon care in this respect. If the fowls are full-grown and reasonably tender, stew more than one hour after they begin to boil. When done add half a chopped onion, parsley and pepper. Cover again for ten minutes. Stir up two tablespoonfuls of flour in cold water, then into a cup of hot milk, and this, in turn, into two beaten eggs. Then put in a great spoonful of butter, and pour all into the saucepan; mix well, boil fairly, and, having arranged the chickens upon a hot dish, pour the gravy over them.

Buttered Parsnips.

Boil tender and scrape. Slice lengthwise. Put three tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan with pepper, salt and a little chopped parsley. When it heats, put in the parsnips, and shake and turn until the mixture boils. Lay the parsnips in order upon a hot dish, and pour the butter over them.

Savory Potatoes.

Pare and cut into squares some raw potatoes. Lay in cold water half an hour, put into a saucepan, cover with boiling water, slightly salted, and stew half an hour, not so fast as to break them. Then throw off the water and add a cupful of sauce made from the gravy of Friday’s chickens, thinned with a little hot water, and strained; seasoned to taste, and again thickened with a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Simmer all for ten minutes, and turn into a deep dish.[229]

Lettuce Salad—Plain.

Wash the lettuce; pull leaf from leaf, and pile over a lump of ice in a salad-bowl. Pass the oil and vinegar, salt, pepper, and powdered sugar to each person, with the lettuce, that he may season for himself.

Pie-Plant (April) Fool.

• 1 pint of stewed pie plant, rubbed through a colander.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• Yolks of four eggs.
• Méringue of the whites.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Juice of half a lemon.

Put the strained pie-plant into a saucepan; set it in boiling water, and, when hot, beat in the butter, sugar, and beaten yolks. Stir two minutes, and turn out to cool. This can be done on Saturday. On Sunday, a few minutes’ whirl of your egg-beater will give you the méringue. Beat in the powdered sugar with a few more, and when you have poured the stewed fruit (or vegetable) into a glass bowl, pile the méringue (the “fool”?) on the top.

Coffee and Cake

Can be handed with, or after the sweets.

Milk and Bread Soup.

Boil down the liquor in which Saturday’s calf’s head was cooked, to less than two quarts. Add a pint of milk previously[230] heated, and mixed with three beaten eggs. Thicken with two tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in flour, and take at once from the fire. Salt and pepper, if needed. Have ready in a tureen a cupful of fine, dry crumbs. Pour on the soup, stir up for a moment, cover and send to table with a plate of grated cheese.

Larded Mutton Chops.

Trim off superfluous fat and skin; beat flat with the broad side of a hatchet, and lard each with four strips of fat, salt pork, drawn quite through, so as to project on both sides. Put into a saucepan, sprinkle with minced onion, pepper, and parsley, and barely cover with weak broth. The gravy from yesterday’s chickens will do, or any other you may chance to have. Put on the saucepan lid, set it where it will not boil under an hour, and think no more about it until the time is up. Then increase the heat and simmer half an hour, or until tender. Take up the chops and keep hot. Thicken the gravy with browned flour; add the juice of a lemon, a great spoonful of mushroom catsup, a glass of sherry, and boil one minute. Put back the chops; cover, and heat just to a feeble boil. Lay the chops in order upon a dish and pour the gravy over them.

Green Peas.

Open a can of peas; turn out into a bowl, and let alone for an hour. Then, strain off the liquor, put the peas into a saucepan, and cover with salted, boiling water. Cook twenty minutes; drain, pepper, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and dish.

Mashed Potatoes.

Prepare as usual, and heap in a covered dish. Wet a pretty butter-print and press firmly upon the top.

Corn-Meal Hasty Pudding.

• 1 heaping cup of Indian meal.
• ½ cup of flour.
• 1 quart of boiling milk.
• 2 cups of boiling water.
• [231]2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 tablespoonful of brown sugar.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.
• ½ teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace.

Wet up meal and flour with the water and stir into the boiling milk. Mem.—Cook all sorts of milk-puddings (boiled) in a farina-kettle. Boil steadily half an hour, stirring very often from the bottom. Put in salt, sugar, butter, and spice, and cook ten minutes more. Pour into a bowl, or other uncovered dish. Eat hot with sugar and butter.

Bean and Corn Soup.

• 1 quart of dried beans, soaked overnight in soft water.
• 1 lb. of streaked salt pork, cut into shreds.
• 1 lb. of lean beef also cut up.
• 2 stalks of celery, minced.
• 1 bunch of chopped parsley.
• 1 small onion, sliced.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 can of corn.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in two of flour.
• 5 quarts of water.

Put on the beans, pork, beef, and all the vegetables except the corn, with the water, and boil slowly until the beans are thoroughly broken, and the meat in rags. Meanwhile, cook the corn tender in just enough boiling water to cover it. When done, stir in half the butter and flour, salt and pepper, and cover to keep hot while you[232] strain the soup, rubbing the beans, onion, and celery to a pulp through a colander. Set aside half for to-morrow. Return the rest to the fire; pepper to taste; add the corn with the water in which it was cooked. Simmer fifteen minutes; stir in the rest of the butter and flour; boil up well, and serve.

Beefsteak Pudding.

• 1 quart of prepared flour.
• ¼ lb. powdered suet.
• 1 cup of ice-water.
• 2 lbs. good steak without bone.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 tablespoonful of tomato catsup.

Rub the suet into the flour, salt slightly, and make, with the water, into a paste just soft enough to roll out. Roll into a sheet nearly half an inch thick. Butter well a round-bottomed pudding mould; line with the paste, and leave in a cold place while you cut the steak into small squares, seasoning with pepper, salt, and catsup. Fill the paste-lined mould (or bowl) with this. Cut a piece of paste for the top. Cover with this, pinching the two sheets of paste tightly together at the edges. Let an assistant hold up the bowl while you cover with a stout pudding-cloth and tie tightly under the bottom, not straining the cloth so strongly over the top as to hinder the paste from swelling. (Flour the cloth before tying it over the bowl.) Plunge into a gallon of boiling water, and keep it at a fast boil for two hours, filling up from the tea-kettle when the water sinks. Turn the bowl bottom upward and dip in cold water; untie the cloth, invert a hot dish upon the mould, and turn over carefully, to get the pudding out without breaking. This is a favorite English dish.

Stewed Potatoes.

Old potatoes, by this time, need a little management to make them acceptable at a season when appetites crave fresh vegetables. This is a good way to cook them. Pare very thin, and leave in cold water one hour. Put on to cook in cold water, bringing it soon to a boil.[233] When a fork will run easily into the largest, strain off the water, throw in a handful of salt, and dry, for a minute, on the stove. Then take out the potatoes; crack each one by pressing with a wooden spoon; put into a deep dish, and pour over them a cup of hot milk thickened with two tablespoonfuls of butter, cut up in flour; cooked for a minute, then seasoned with pepper, salt, and a tablespoonful very finely-minced parsley. Cover the dish; set in boiling water ten minutes, and serve.

Mashed Turnips.

Boil tender; press all the water out in a colander, as you mash them; return to the fire with a good lump of butter, pepper, and salt, and stir until smoking hot.

Cold Slaw.

Shred the heart of a white cabbage, and pour over it a dressing of two tablespoonfuls of oil, four of vinegar, one teaspoonful each of salt and sugar, and half as much pepper and mustard, beaten up well with the whipped yolks of two eggs. The mixture should be quite thick. Use an egg-beater in mixing.

Baked Chocolate Custards.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 6 eggs.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 4 great spoonfuls grated chocolate.
• Vanilla flavoring.

Scald the milk; wet up the chocolate and stir in. Boil two minutes. Beat the yolks into the sugar, and pour the hot mixture slowly upon them, stirring constantly. Season and fill small cups, which should be set ready in a dripping-pan of boiling water. See that there is no danger of their boiling over the tops. Cook twenty minutes, or until the custards are firm. While they cool whip the whites to a stiff méringue with a little powdered sugar. When the custards are cold, heap this upon the tops.[234]

Fancy Cakes,

Macaroons, lady’s-fingers, or jumbles, should go around with the custards.

“Red Pottage.”

To the bean-stock set by on yesterday add a can of red tomatoes, cut small, and two lumps of sugar, and simmer, set in boiling water for fear of burning, until they are one mass of pulp. Strain through a colander, add seasoning, and stir in a generous glass of claret which was poured, two hours before, upon a sliced, deep-colored beet, warm from the boil. Strain the juice from the beet by squeezing in a cloth. Put a double-handful of fried bread into a tureen, and pour the soup upon it.

This, if not “that same red pottage” for which poor hungry Esau—who certainly came honestly, by hereditary right, by his love of “good eating”—bartered his birthright, is yet very pretty and savory.

Boiled Cod with Caper Sauce.

Sew the fish up neatly in a thin cloth and cook in boiling water, fifteen minutes to the pound. Unwrap, lay upon a hot dish, and pour over it the following sauce:

Put a cupful of boiling water into a saucepan, and stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter, cut up in a heaping teaspoonful of flour. Beat in, when thick, the whipped yolk of an egg, the juice of a lemon, and twenty-four capers. Stir up well, cook half a minute, and take from the fire.[235]

Scalloped Chicken.

Clean, wash, and cut an old fowl to pieces. Put into a pot with four quarts of cold water and cook very slowly until tender. Take it out, salt and pepper the broth, and put by for to-morrow’s soup, reserving one cupful for your gravy.

Let the chicken cool, and cut—cleanly—into pieces an inch long by one fourth that width. Put the gravy, well-seasoned, over the fire, thicken with a tablespoonful of butter, cut up and rolled in flour; stir in the chicken, and just before it boils, take from the fire, and beat in two whisked eggs, with a little finely minced parsley. Strew the bottom of a bake-dish with crumbs; pour in the chicken; cover with a deeper coating of bread-crumbs; stick bits of butter over this, and bake, covered, until bubbling hot; then brown delicately.

Mashed Potatoes—Browned.

Mash soft with milk and butter, season, and round into a heap upon a greased pie-dish. Brown in a quick oven; glaze with butter; slip carefully to a hot dish.

Split Pea Pancakes.

Soak a pint of split peas all night. Put on, in the morning, in cold water and cook soft. Rub through a fine colander. While hot, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and season with pepper and salt. When quite cold, beat in two eggs, a cupful of milk, and half a cupful of flour in which has been sifted—twice—a quarter teaspoonful of soda and twice as much cream-of-tartar. Beat hard and long, and fry as you would griddle-cakes.

Queen of Puddings.

• 1½ cups of sugar.
• 5 eggs.
• 2 cups of dry bread-crumbs.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 2 teaspoonfuls vanilla, or other extract—Colgate’s, if you can get it.
• 1 quart of fresh milk.
• ½ cup sweet fruit-jelly, or jam.

[236]Cream butter and sugar and whip in the yolks. Soak the crumbs in the milk and add next—then flavor. Pour into a buttered pudding-dish, filling it two-thirds of the way to the top, and bake until well “set” in the middle. Draw to the oven door, spread quickly with the jelly, and this with a méringue of the whites and half a cup of sugar. Shut the oven and bake quickly until the méringue begins to color. Eat cold with cream.

Chicken Soup.

Take the fat from the top of the liquor in which your chicken was boiled yesterday, and put on the soup to heat. Meanwhile, boil half a cupful of rice tender in a pint of salted milk, and when the rice is soft, stir in a tablespoonful of butter worked up in flour to prevent oiling. When the soup boils up clear, skim and add the rice and milk, with two tablespoonfuls of minced parsley. Pepper and salt to taste; simmer ten minutes. Chop up three hard-boiled eggs fine; put into the tureen and pour the soup upon them.

Mayonnaise of Fish.

• Yolks of 3 boiled eggs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of best oil.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar.
• 6 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
• [237]1 teaspoonful of salt, and half as much each of pepper and made mustard.
• White of 1 raw egg.
• 2 cupfuls of cold boiled fish (yesterday’s cod).
• 2 heads of lettuce.

Rub the yolks smooth with the oil, add sugar, salt, pepper, and mustard, and, when all are mixed, the vinegar, a little at a time. Set by, covered, while you cut—not chop—the fish into strips an inch long, and shred the lettuce. Mix these in a bowl. Whip the frothed white of egg into the dressing, and pour upon the salad. Stir up with a silver fork and put into a glass dish. Garnish with rings of the whites of boiled eggs.

Veal Chops with Tomato Sauce.

Trim and flatten the chops. Dip in raw egg, then in cracker dust, and fry, rather slowly, in lard or dripping. Open a can of tomatoes, and drain off the liquor. Salt the rest of the tomatoes and reserve for Friday’s soup. Put the liquor into a saucepan with a sliced onion, and stew ten minutes. Strain out the onion, return the juice to the fire; thicken with a great spoonful of butter, worked up in a teaspoonful of corn-starch; pepper and salt. Boil up sharply, and when you have laid the chops upon a dish, pour the sauce over them.

Macaroni with Eggs.

Break half a pound of macaroni into short bits; cook tender in boiling, salted water. Drain well; put into a deep dish and pour over it a cupful of drawn butter in which have been stirred two beaten eggs, and two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, with salt and pepper. Loosen the macaroni to allow the sauce to penetrate the mass. Pass more grated cheese with it.

Potato Strips.

Pare, cut in long, even strips; lay in cold water for one hour; dry by spreading them upon a towel and pressing another upon them. Fry to a light brown in salted lard. Shake off the fat in a hot colander. Line a deep dish with a napkin and put in the strips. They should not be crowded in frying, but each should be distinct and free from the rest.[238]

Jelly-Cake Fritters.

Cut stale sponge or very plain cup cake into rounds with a cake-cutter. Fry to a nice brown in sweet lard. Dip each round in boiling milk, to soften it and get rid of the grease. Lay upon a hot dish and spread with sweet jelly or jam. Pile neatly one upon another. Send around hot, sweetened cream to pour over them.

Graham Soup.

• 2 onions.
• 2 carrots.
• 4 turnips.
• ½ cabbage.
• A little celery-seed tied in a thin muslin bag.
• The tomatoes set by yesterday.
• ½ cup raw rice.
• ½ cup of cream (with a pinch of soda added to prevent curdling).
• 2 lumps of white sugar.
• Pepper, salt, and parsley.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter cut up in flour.
• 3 quarts of cold water.

Chop the cabbage and slice the onions; pare and grate the other vegetables, and put over the fire with the rice, the bag of celery-seed, and the water. Stew one hour; add the tomatoes and stew twenty minutes more. Rub all to a pulp through a colander; return to the soup-pot, season, and when it boils, stir in the butter. Heat the cream to scalding in a separate vessel, and pour[239] into the tureen. Stir the soup into it by degrees, and serve. Pass Boston crackers—split and buttered—with it.

Scalloped Oysters.

Butter a pudding-dish, and strew the bottom with rolled cracker. Wet this with oyster-liquor and milk, slightly warmed. Then lay on oysters, set closely together. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, and bits of butter, with a few drops of lemon-juice. Another stratum of moistened crumbs, and so on, until the dish is full. Let the top layer be of crumbs, with butter dots here and there. Bake, covered, half an hour, then brown quickly.

Stewed Sweetbreads—Brown.

• 4 sweetbreads.
• 1 cup of gravy (yesterday’s broth will do).
• 1 onion.
• ½ cup butter.
• ½ pint of mushrooms.
• Pepper and salt.

Boil the sweetbreads quickly—ten minutes are enough—blanch by throwing them into cold water, then leaving them to cool. Slice them lengthwise. Slice, also, the onion and mushrooms, and fry brown in half the butter. Strain them out, return the fat to the pan, with the rest of the butter. Heat, and fry the sweetbreads. When the latter are done, put all into a tin pail, with a tight top; add the gravy; set, covered, in boiling water, and stew gently, at the side of the range, half an hour. Arrange the sweetbreads upon a hot dish; thicken the gravy with browned flour, and pour over them. Garnish with triangles of fried bread.

Moulded Potato.

Mash soft with butter and hot milk in which has been stirred a beaten egg. Salt and put into a buttered cake or pudding mould. Set in a pan of hot water, put on the lid of the mould, and keep the water at a hard boil half an hour. Dip the mould in cold water, and turn out the potatoes upon a flat dish.[240]

Lettuce.

Treat as directed upon last Sunday.

Quaking Custard.

• 3 cups of milk.
• Yolks of 4 eggs, reserving the whites for the méringue.
• ½ package Cooper’s gelatine.
• 6 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Vanilla flavoring.
• Juice of 1 lemon for méringue.

Soak the gelatine two hours in a cup of the cold milk. Then add to the rest of the milk, which must be boiling hot, and stir until dissolved. Let it stand a few minutes, and strain through muslin over the beaten yolks and sugar. Put over the fire and stir five minutes, or until you can feel it thickening. Stir up well when nearly cold, flavor, and let it alone until it congeals around the edges of the bowl into which you have poured it; then stir again, and put into a wet mould. Set upon ice, or in cold water until firm. Turn it, when you are ready for it, into a glass bowl. Have ready a méringue made by whipping the whites stiff with three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar, and the lemon-juice. Heap irregularly about the base.

Vermicelli Soup.

• 4 lbs. knuckle of veal.
• 2 lbs. of coarse, lean beef.
• [241]2 slices of corned ham, or some bones of salt pork.
• 2 onions.
• Thyme and parsley.
• ¼ lb. vermicelli.
• Pepper and salt.
• 6 quarts of water.

Crack the bones into splinters; cut the meat into strips; slice the onions and chop the herbs. Put on in six quarts of water, and cook slowly five hours. Strain, pressing meat, etc., hard in the colander. There should be about four quarts of soup. Set aside half, when you have salted it, for Sunday. Return the rest to the clean kettle, season and skim. The vermicelli should have been broken small, and boiled in a little hot, salted water, three minutes. Strain, without squeezing; butter and pepper; stir into the soup; simmer very gently five minutes, and pour out.

Glazed Ham.

Wash a fine corned—not smoked—ham; soak all night in cold water, and boil about eighteen minutes to the pound. There should be plenty of water in the pot, cold at first, and brought gradually to a boil. Skim well from time to time. Let it get cold in the water in which it was boiled, if you can spare the time. We always boil a ham the day before it is to be eaten. Take it out; remove the skin carefully, and put the latter back into the cold liquor when you have skimmed all the fat—which makes excellent dripping—from the surface of the liquid. Press soft paper on the top of the ham, to take off the clinging drops of grease. Brush all over with beaten egg. Work a cup of rolled cracker into a paste with warm milk, butter, pepper, salt, and a beaten egg. Coat the ham thickly with this, and set to brown in a moderate oven. Twist frilled paper around the knuckle, and garnish with cresses.

Spinach à la Parisienne.

Pick off the leaves from the stalks; put on in boiling water, a little salt, and cook twenty minutes. Drain hard and dry, chop fine, return to the fire with a good piece of butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, a little nutmeg, pepper and salt, and stir two minutes. Then, beat in two or three[242] tablespoonfuls of cream, or rich milk, and whip as you would a custard. It should be smooth to taste and sight. Boil up—barely—and dish.

Chow-chow

“Goes well,” as the French say, with ham.

Baked Potatoes.

Parboil, peel, and lay in a dripping-pan, with a bit of butter upon each. As they brown, put on each a teaspoonful of warm milk mixed with butter, salt, and pepper. They should be of a light brown. Butter again just before you dish them.

Rhubarb Tart.

Scrape the stalks, cut into small bits, and stew in a very little water. When tender, take from the fire and sweeten. Have ready some open shells of pastry, freshly baked. Fill with the fruit, and sift sugar on top. Eat warm or cold—never hot. Make more paste than you need, and keep—raw—in a cold place.

Pea and Rice Soup.

Open a can of green peas, and turn them into a bowl for an hour. Boil half a cup of rice soft in a cup of milk. Skim the stock made yesterday, and heat to a boil before adding the peas (drained) and the rice, which should have absorbed all the milk. Stew slowly half an hour; add what seasoning you like, and stir in a tablespoonful of butter cut up in flour. Simmer five minutes and pour out.[243]

Fillet of Veal with Ham.

Have the fillet rolled and skewered by your butcher. Stuff a good force-meat of crumbs and minced fat ham between the folds of meat, and lay sliced ham over the top and sides, binding it in place with packthread. Put into a dripping-pan with a cup of boiling water, and roast twelve minutes for each pound. Baste very often. Half an hour before you take it up, remove the ham, and lay on one side of the pan; dredge the meat with flour and baste abundantly and frequently until well browned. Dish with the ham cut into strips and laid next the edge of the dish—the potato balls close to the meat. Send around sweet pickles with it. Strain the gravy, thicken with browned flour, add pepper and a tablespoonful of tomato catsup; boil up and pour into a boat.

Potato Balls.

To one cup of mashed potato add a beaten egg, pepper, and salt, and work smooth. Make into balls; roll them in flour. When the veal is half done, skim off the fat from the gravy, lay the balls in the pan, basting, now and then, and turning until they are browned all over. Drain well, and lay about the dished veal.

Stuffed Cabbage.

Boil a large, firm cabbage, whole, on Saturday, tying coarse net over it to keep it in shape. Do not remove the net until next day. Then, bind a broad strip of muslin about it that it may not crack in the stuffing. Extract the stalk with a thin, sharp knife. Without making a wide external aperture, “dig out” the heart, until you have room for nearly a cupful of force-meat. Chop the bits you have taken out, mix with cooked sausage-meat, a very little onion, pepper, salt, a pinch of thyme and bread-crumbs. Stuff the cabbage with this, remove the band, tie up firmly again in a net bag, and put it into a pot, covering with the liquor in which your ham was boiled yesterday, having first again skimmed the latter. Stew gently one hour. Take out the cabbage, unbind, with care, and pour a cup of drawn butter over it. Strain the useful “pot liquor,” and put away heedfully.[244]

French Beans.

Cut into short lengths, when you have poured off the can liquor; cook half an hour in boiling water, salted. Drain well, stir up with a tablespoonful of butter, with pepper and salt to taste.

Charlotte Cachée.

• 1 thick loaf of sponge or plain cup cake.
• 2 kinds of fruit-jelly, tart and sweet.
• Whites of 5 eggs.
• 1 heaping cup of powdered sugar.
• Juice of 1 lemon.

Cut the cake into horizontal slices of uniform width. Spread each with jelly—first, the tart, then the sweet, and fit into their former places. Ice thickly with a frosting made of the whites, sugar, and lemon-juice. Set in a sunny window, or slow oven, to harden. The former is the better plan.

Bird’s Nest in Jelly.

• 1 quart of wine jelly—not too thin.
• 3 cups of white blanc-mange.
• 9 empty egg-shells.
• Rind of 2 oranges cut into strips and stewed in water, until tender, then in syrup until clear, or, if you have it, use preserved orange-peel.

Empty the eggs carefully through a hole in the small end; wash them out with cold water, and while wet inside set firmly in a pan of bran or meal, to keep them steadily upright. Fill them with blanc-mange. Next morning, fill a glass dish two-thirds full with clear jelly, reserving a large cupful. So soon as the jelly is firm enough to bear their weight, break the shells, with care, from the blanc-mange eggs, and pile them upon the jelly. Lay the “straw”—i. e., the orange-peel—over and about them; pour the rest of the half congealed jelly over all, and set in a very cold place.

A beautiful variation of this dessert can be made for Easter Sunday, by coloring part of the blanc-mange brown with chocolate, part pink with currant jelly or cranberry juice, part yellow with yolk of egg, and leaving the rest white.[245]

Ham and Egg Soup.

Skim once more and re-heat the liquor in which your ham was cooked, and, when boiling, take off the scum; stir in two tablespoonfuls of corn-starch, wet in a half cup of milk. Take out a pint of the soup, and pour slowly, stirring well, upon four beaten eggs. Return to the soup, with a handful of very finely minced parsley. Stir one minute, without letting it boil, and pour upon half a dozen split Boston crackers, lining the tureen.

Veal Patés.

Chop up the meat left from Sunday’s fillet—reserving some for salad—also the crisped ham. Season well, warm up the gravy, when you have removed the fat; mix a little oyster liquor with it, and stir in the mince. Heat almost to boiling, and set by, covered, where it will keep warm. Line paté-pans with the paste reserved for this purpose from Saturday. If kept in the refrigerator or cool cellar, it will be perfectly good. Bake these “shells,” buttering the tins well; slip out while hot; arrange on a warm dish; fill with the mince, sprinkling the top of each with fine, dry crumbs; set upon the upper grating of your oven for a minute or so, and send to table.

Creamed Parsnips.

Boil, scrape, and slice lengthwise. Have ready in a saucepan a great spoonful of butter, with pepper and salt. Put in the parsnips, shake and turn until very hot; lay the parsnips upon a dish; add to the sauce three tablespoonfuls of cream, or four of milk, in which has been rubbed a teaspoonful of flour. Boil up briskly, and pour over the sliced vegetable.[246]

Salad of Lettuce and Veal.

Cut half a pound of your cold veal into inch-long strips, and strew with salt and pepper. Shred a head of lettuce, and chop two boiled eggs—not too finely. Mix these together in a bowl. Prepare a dressing thus: Beat the yolks of two eggs (add the whites to the soup); salt lightly, and beat in, a few drops at a time, four tablespoonfuls of oil; then, as gradually, three teaspoonfuls of best vinegar, and half a teaspoonful of celery essence—Colgate’s, if you can get it. The mixture should be thick as cream. Pour over the meat and lettuce, toss up with a silver fork, and transfer to a glass dish.

Mashed Potatoes.

Prepare as often before directed.

Corn-Starch Hasty Pudding.

• 1 quart of fresh milk.
• 3 full tablespoonfuls of corn-starch.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.

Scald the milk, and stir in the corn-starch, previously wet in cold water to a white liquid. Boil steadily, stirring constantly, ten minutes. Salt and butter. Let the pudding stand three minutes in hot water, after you take it from the fire, and turn out into a deep, open dish. Cook, of course, in a farina-kettle.

Mélange Soup.

• 1 cup of rice (scant).
• [247]3 lbs. of coarse, lean beef.
• Some mutton bones.
• 2 carrots.
• 2 turnips.
• 1 onion.
• Essence of celery, two teaspoonfuls.
• Pepper and salt.
• 4 quarts of cold water.
• 1 cup of tomato-juice.

Cut the meat into dice, and put on in the water. Boil gently two hours, when add the rice, tomato-juice, and the vegetables cut into small squares, and already cooked five minutes in hot water, to take off the rank taste. Stew half an hour, or until the vegetables and rice are tender, but not a pulp; season; boil up once and pour out—meat, vegetables, and all—into the tureen.

Ragoût of Mutton.

• 3 lbs. of mutton—lean and boneless—cut into strips four inches long by one inch wide.
• 1 cup of gravy, made of bones, etc.
• A tablespoonful of walnut catsup.
• Browned flour.
• Salt and pepper.
• 1 slice of lemon.
• Parsley.
• A slice of ham or fat pork, cut small.
• Dripping.

Fry the mutton to a nice brown, quickly, in the dripping. Lay in a saucepan, the chopped ham upon it, and cover with the gravy, highly seasoned. Stew slowly until very tender; take up, and keep hot, while you add the lemon to the gravy, with the catsup. Boil five minutes; strain, and return the gravy to the saucepan. Thicken, and put in the parsley minced fine. Boil up, and pour over the meat in a flat dish. Put sippets of fried bread around the edge of the dish.

Canned Corn Pudding.

• 1 can of corn, drained.
• 3 eggs.
• [248]2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
• 1 tablespoonful of sugar.
• A little salt.
• 2 cupfuls of milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch, wet up in the milk.

Beat eggs, sugar, and butter together; then add the corn. Salt the milk, and dissolve the corn-starch well in it, and pour, by degrees, upon the rest, mixing well. Bake in a greased bake-dish three-quarters of an hour. Keep covered until nearly done; then, brown.

Baked Tomatoes.

Drain off the liquor from a can of tomatoes, and put it into your soup. Pare the crust from some slices of bread, cut them to fit the bottom of a greased pie-dish, and fry to a light brown in dripping. Dip each in boiling, salted milk, fit to their places in the dish, pour the tomatoes upon them, season with pepper, salt, butter, and a little sugar. Strew thickly with crumbs, and bake, covered, twenty minutes; then, brown.

Peach Batter Pudding.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 2 cups of prepared flour, or enough for soft batter.
• 4 beaten eggs.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter, slightly warmed.
• 1 saltspoonful of salt.
• 1 can of peaches, drained.

Lay the drained peaches in a buttered bake-dish. Salt the flour, and sift into a pan. Beat eggs and butter together, stir in the milk, and pour, by degrees, into a hole in the middle of the flour, until you have a smooth batter. Pour upon the peaches, and bake in a brisk oven. Add a glass of brandy to the peach syrup; sweeten to taste; stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter, and set in boiling water until the butter is melted. Serve the pudding in the bake-dish and eat with this sauce.[249]

Eel Soup.

• 4 lbs. of eels.
• 1 onion.
• 12 whole peppers.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Tablespoonful of chopped parsley.
• 1 cup of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, rubbed into the butter.
• 2 quarts of water.
• 2 slices of toast cut into strips.
• Dripping.

Clean the eels with care, removing all the fat; cut them into short pieces, and fry for five minutes in dripping. Drain, put into a saucepan with the water, onion, and pepper, and stew slowly one hour, or until they are tender, without breaking. Strain through a colander; pick out the eels and cover in a tureen, the bottom of which is lined with strips of buttered toast. Strain the soup, through a soup-sieve, back into the saucepan; heat, and stir in butter, flour, and parsley. Boil up, add the milk, already heated, and pour over the eels and toast.

Boiled Chicken.

Clean and stuff as for roasting. Bind legs and wings to the sides; tie in a net, and put on in boiling water—if tender. If doubtful, use cold water, and cook very slowly. When the fork-test shows that it is done, unwrap and lay on a dish. Salt, pepper, and butter well, and cover while preparing the sauce. Take out a cup of the liquor, cool, and skim, put on in a saucepan; put in a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour, and stir to a boil. Take[250] off, and pour gradually over two beaten eggs. Return to the fire, with minced parsley, almost boil, and pour over the fowl.

Salt the liquor and set aside for soup.

Potatoes à la Crème.

Mash thin, whip up with a fork, at first, with butter, salt, and milk; at last, with the frothed white of an egg. Heap roughly upon a dish, set upon the upper grating of the oven until they begin to color, and serve.

Rice Croquettes.

• 2 cups cold boiled rice.
• 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• 1 tablespoonful of flour.
• 1 raw egg, and some cracker dust.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar.
• A pinch of grated lemon peel, and the same of nutmeg.
• Lard for frying.

Work the butter into the rice, then the seasoning, lastly, the beaten eggs. Make into long balls, roll in egg, then in powdered cracker, and fry, a few at a time, in hot lard.

Steamed Corn-Meal Pudding.

• 2 cups Indian meal.
• 1 cup of flour.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of white sugar.
• 2½ cups of “loppered” milk, or buttermilk.
• 1 teaspoonful of soda, sifted twice through the flour.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.
• 1 heaping tablespoonful of butter, melted.

Put meal, flour, salt, sugar, and soda in a bowl; mix thoroughly; make a hole in the middle and work in the milk and butter. Beat hard and long when all are in; put into a buttered mould with a tight top, and steam one hour and a half. If you have no regular steamer, fit the mould in the top of a pot of boiling water, taking care it does not hang into the water. Lay a thick wet towel,[251] folded, over the top of the mould to keep in all the heat. Or, you may simply boil it. Eat hot, with butter and sugar.

Cream Almond Soup.

• Broth in which yesterday’s chickens were boiled.
• ½ lb. of almonds.
• 1 cup rich milk—half cream, if you can get it.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, rubbed up with two of flour.
• Pepper and salt.
• 3 boiled eggs.
• 2 blades of mace.

Skim and heat the soup. Meanwhile, blanch (that is, scald and skin) the almonds, and pound in a mortar. Rub to a powder the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs, and work up, with the butter, flour, and almonds, to a paste. When the soup boils, pepper and salt, and put in the mace. Skim clean, strain out the mace; return to the pot and stir in the paste of almonds, etc. Boil up gently, have the milk scalding hot in the tureen, and pour in the soup, mixing all up well. Serve at once.

Beefsteak.

Flatten with the broad side of a hatchet; broil over (or under) a clear fire upon a buttered gridiron—turning often. Lay upon a hot dish; salt, pepper, and butter, plentifully. Cover with a hot dish or lid, and let it stand five minutes to draw out the juices.[252]

Chopped Potatoes.

Chop cold boiled potatoes into dice. Put some butter or nice dripping into a frying-pan; heat, and stir in the potatoes. Shake to prevent them from sticking to the pan, and when very hot, and glazed with the butter, pepper and salt, and turn into a hot colander. Shake and toss for a moment, and pour into a deep dish.

Chicken Salad.

Cut the meat from the “carcasses” of yesterday’s chickens. If you have but a little it may be worth while to give John a piquant side-dish. Add an equal quantity of shred lettuce, when you have cut your chicken into narrow strips, two inches long. Mix in a bowl; prepare a dressing according to the receipt given on Monday; pour over it, mix well and lightly; put into a salad-dish, and lay sections of two hard-boiled eggs on top, with a chain of sliced whites—left from the yolks used for the soup—around the outer edge.

Moulded Spinach.

Boil twenty minutes in hot, salted water; drain, pressing hard. Chop fine, and put into a saucepan, with a good lump of butter, a little pepper, salt and sugar. Beat and toss until nearly dry. Press hard into an oblong pan or mould. Invert this upon a hot dish. Lay slices of egg upon the top.

Soft Gingerbread.

• 1 cup of sugar.
• 1 cup of molasses.
• 1 cup of butter.
• 1 cup of sweet milk.
• 4 cups of flour.
• 4 eggs.
• 1 tablespoonful mixed ginger and mace.
• 1 small teaspoonful of soda dissolved in the milk.

Beat molasses, butter, sugar, and spice to a cream; whip in the beaten yolks, the milk, and lastly, the whites, alternately with the flour. Bake in two loaves, or in round tins or cups.[253]

Chocolate.

• 6 tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate.
• 2 cups of boiling water and the same of milk.

Wet the chocolate in cold water; stir into the hot. Boil fifteen minutes; add the milk, and simmer ten minutes longer. Sweeten upon the fire, or as you pour it out.

Oyster Soup.

• 2 quarts of oysters.
• 1 quart of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 teacupful of water.
• 2 eggs.
• Cayenne pepper, salt, mace.
• 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch.

Strain the liquor from the oysters into a saucepan, mixing in the water. Season and spice to taste. When the liquor boils, add a quarter of the oysters chopped fine. Boil five minutes; strain through muslin and put back into the saucepan. Thicken with the butter rubbed up in a tablespoonful of corn-starch. When this boils, drop in the whole oysters. Cook until they “ruffle.” Meanwhile, make a sugarless custard by heating and salting the milk, adding the beaten eggs, and stirring four minutes over the fire. Put some split crackers into the tureen; pour on the custard, then the oyster-soup, stirring all up well. Send around oyster crackers and sliced lemon with it.[254]

Fillets of Halibut.

Cut a tolerably thick halibut steak into strips four inches long by two wide. Put three tablespoonfuls of butter, with pepper and salt, into a saucepan, and simmer gently—not frying—until tender. Then drain, and put upon a hot water dish to keep hot. Cut some potatoes into small balls. There is a little instrument for this purpose, like a rounded gouge, which turns them out rapidly and neatly. A small iron spoon will give you oval balls. Or, if you find it easier, cut the potatoes into equal cubes; lay in cold water half an hour, then cook fifteen minutes in boiling water. Drain and dry, and after taking your fish from the butter, strain the latter, put in the potatoes, and shake over a hot fire until they begin to brown. Drain, and lay about the fish-fillets. Add a tablespoonful of butter to that in the pan (previously cut up in flour), a teaspoonful of anchovy-sauce, and the juice of a lemon, with a little minced parsley. Boil once, and pour over fish and potatoes.

Paté of Sweetbreads.

Cut good puff-paste into rounds a quarter of an inch thick. Reserve one of these for the bottom of each paté. With a smaller cutter take out the centre of three others and pile upon this, making a deep well over an inch across. Bake quickly, glazing with white of egg when nearly done.

Boil three sweetbreads ten minutes, leave in cold water as long; cut into dice, put into a saucepan with a great spoonful of butter, a little pepper and salt, and a few spoonfuls of boiling water, and stew twenty minutes. Stir, meanwhile, into half a cup of boiling milk a tablespoonful of butter, cut up in as much flour. Add to the sweetbreads with a little minced parsley. Boil up. Fill the patés, and arrange upon a heated dish.

Lima Beans.

If dried, soak over night, put on next day in cold water, salted, and cook gently until soft. Drain, stir in butter and pepper. If you use the canned beans, put on in boiling water, then proceed as above directed.[255]

Boston Cream Cakes.

• ½ lb. of butter.
• ¾ lb. of flour.
• 6 eggs.
• 1 pint water—warm—not scalding.

Stir the butter into the warm water, and heat slowly to a boil. Then put in the flour, boil and stir one minute; empty into a dish to get cold. Beat the eggs light, and whip, first the yolks, then the whites, into the cooled paste. Drop in great spoonfuls, upon buttered paper, not letting them touch each other, and bake, in a quick oven, ten minutes. They should puff up to quadruple their original size. Pass a sharp knife lightly around each, split, and fill with the following mixture:

• 1 quart of milk.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch.
• 2 eggs.
• 2 cups of sugar.
• 1 teaspoonful butter.
• Vanilla.

Heat three cups of milk, and stir in the corn-starch wet with the other cupful. Beat the eggs and sugar together, and add the boiling mixture, by degrees. Put in the butter; mix well and cool before adding the vanilla.

Soup Verte.

• 2 lbs. coarse beef, chopped fine.
• 1 turnip.
• [256]1 onion.
• Celery-seed tied in a bag.
• 1 grated carrot.
• Nearly a quart of spinach leaves.
• 2 lumps of sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter, rubbed in flour.
• Bunch of parsley.
• Pepper and salt.
• A little of yesterday’s pastry, cut into strips—like “noodles.”
• 2 quarts of cold water.

Stew the beef with the celery-seed in a quart of water for two hours, or until the meat is in rags. Strain hard in a bag. Add the other quart of water in which have been simmering, for half an hour, the grated carrot, the spinach cut small, and the other vegetables sliced. Stew all together fifteen minutes; rub entirely through a colander; return to the fire, season; add sugar, chopped parsley, butter and flour; boil up and drop in the noodles, one by one. Simmer ten minutes, and pour out. It is a very good and wholesome soup for the spring-time.

Baked Mutton Cutlets.

Trim neatly and put the bits of bone, skin, etc., on in a pint of cold water to stew down into gravy. Pour a little melted butter upon the cutlets and set over hot water, fifteen minutes. Then dip each in egg, next in rolled cracker, and lay in your dripping-pan with a very little water. Bake rapidly, basting with butter and water. When the gravy has boiled down to one cupful, strain into a saucepan; season with pepper, salt, and tomato catsup. Thicken with browned flour; strain into it the gravy from the dripping-pan; lay the chops carefully in a frying-pan, as being broad and easily managed. Pour over them the gravy, simmer ten minutes; arrange the chops upon a dish, and serve the gravy in a boat.

Hominy Pudding.

• 1 cupful cold boiled hominy—the small-grained kind.
• 2 cups of milk.
• [257]1 great spoonful of melted butter.
• 1 teaspoonful of white sugar.
• 3 eggs.
• A little salt.

Work the butter into the hominy; then the beaten yolks and sugar; then, by degrees, the milk, and when all are smoothly mixed, the whites. Bake in a buttered pudding-dish.

Potato Cakes.

Make cold mashed potatoes into flat cakes, seasoning well, and flouring all over. Fry to a good brown in dripping. Take up and drain as soon as they are done, and serve hot.

Lettuce.

Wash and pile the best parts in a salad-dish. Pass oil, vinegar, pepper, salt, and powdered sugar to each one and let him season for himself. It is well to do this, once in a while, that the children may learn how to prepare their own salad.

Tapioca Pudding.

• 1 cup of tapioca.
• 1 quart of milk.
• 5 eggs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter, and the same of sugar.

Soak the tapioca in cold water three hours; drain off the water, if it be not all absorbed. Soak another hour in the warmed milk. Then, beat eggs and sugar up with the butter, add the milk and tapioca, stir up well from the bottom, after it goes into the oven, and bake in a buttered pudding-dish until firm and nicely browned. Eat warm with sweet sauce. It is also good cold, eaten with sugar and cream.[258]

Calf’s Head Soup.

• The liquor in which a calf’s head has been boiled.
• 1 lb. of lean beef cut into dice and fried brown.
• 3 sliced and fried onions.
• 1 grated carrot.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter rubbed warm into the same quantity of browned flour.
• 1 tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce.
• 1 glass brown sherry.
• Dice of meat from the head.
• Pepper and salt.

Boil a calf’s head on Saturday until the flesh slips from the bones. Salt and pepper the meat and set away, with the brains—also salted and cooked—in a cool place. Return the bones to the liquor with the vegetables and herbs cut small, the fried beef and onions, and boil one hour. Season highly and put by in a cool cellar until Sunday. Take off the fat, and melt the soup-jelly under it by heating all together in a soup-kettle. When hot, strain, and set aside half the stock for Monday. Boil up that meant for to-day, stir in the butter and flour, and a cupful of dice made from one cheek of the cold head. Simmer ten minutes, add sauce and wine, and pour out.

Imitation Turtle.

• The cold calf’s head, with the tongue.
• [259]1 cup of good gravy. If you have nothing else, borrow a cupful from your soup-jelly.
• A dozen force-meat balls, made of the ears chopped fine, mixed with bread-crumbs, bound with beaten egg and rolled in flour.
• 1 teaspoonful minced parsley and thyme.
• A little minced onion.
• Browned flour.
• 4 hard-boiled eggs.
• Pepper and salt.

Slice the meat from the head neatly. Heat the gravy with seasoning, herbs, and onion, and boil ten minutes. Strain; put the meat into the saucepan; pour the gravy over it, and set all in boiling water fifteen minutes. Put over the fire with the sliced eggs and force-meat balls. Let them begin to boil, and take off. Lay the meat evenly upon a dish, and the eggs upon it, the force-meat balls around all, and pour half the gravy over it, sending up the rest in a boat.

Chopped Macaroni.

Boil half a pound of macaroni tender in hot salted water, and let it cool. Then chop small. Have ready in a saucepan a cupful of hot milk in which an onion has been boiled and strained out. Stir into this a great spoonful of butter, pepper, salt, and two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese. When these are well mixed, put in the macaroni, and shake—not stir—until very hot. Turn into a deep dish, and grate more cheese on the top. Pass a red-hot shovel over this until the cheese browns—or if dry, takes fire. Blow it out, and serve.

String-Beans and Fried Brains.

Cut the beans into short lengths and cook in boiling water salted. Drain, stir in butter, pepper, and salt, and dish. Garnish with the brains, rubbed smooth, seasoned, beaten up with a raw egg and a little flour, and fried by the spoonful in hot fat.

Bermuda Potatoes.

Put on in boiling water; cook until a fork will go in easily; dry off, and serve in their skins.[260]

Alice’s Pudding.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 4 eggs.
• 1 cup dry crumbs.
• ½ cup of strawberry or other sweet jam.
• ½ cup of sugar.

Sprinkle the bottom of a buttered bake-dish with crumbs. Pour in the jam, and cover this with the rest of the crumbs, wet with a little milk. Scald the remainder of the milk, and pour, gradually, upon the beaten eggs and sugar. Heat and stir three minutes; put it, spoonful by spoonful, upon the crumbs, so as not to displace them, and when all is in, bake until well set and slightly colored by the heat. Eat cold—with cream, if you can get it.

Coffee and Whipped Cream.

Whip a little cream in a syllabub churn, and lay a spoonful upon the surface of each cup of made coffee.

A Good White Soup.

Skim the stock set aside yesterday; heat and season, then strain through thin muslin, and return to the fire. Skim again; add a great spoonful of butter, cut up in flour, and boil up. Have ready in your tureen a cupful of hot milk, in which has been soaked half a cupful of bread-crumbs; beat into these the whites of two eggs; pour in the soup, by degrees, stirring in well, and serve.[261]

Ham and Eggs.

Cut slices of ham of equal size; cover with boiling water, and cook ten minutes, then let them get cold. Cut off the rind and fry in their own fat, until browned. Lay upon a hot dish; strain the fat, returning it to the pan with a little butter, and when hot break in the eggs. Fry upon one side; trim off the ragged edges, and lay upon the ham. Dust with pepper, and serve.

Succotash.

Open a can of succotash; drain off the liquor, cut the beans into short lengths, and put on in boiling water, salted. Cook twenty-five minutes; drain off the water, and add as much cold milk. When this is hot, stir in a great spoonful of butter, cut up in flour; pepper and salt, cook three minutes more and serve.

Oyster Salad.

Cut the oysters into thirds; pull the hearts out of nice lettuce heads and shred up one-third as much as you have oysters. Make a dressing in the proportion of two tablespoonfuls of best oil to four of vinegar; one teaspoonful of salt and the same of sugar; half as much pepper, and made mustard. Rub all up well, and pour over oysters and lettuce just before serving.

Stewed Potatoes.

Cut into small squares and put on in boiling water, slightly salted. When tender, but not broken, throw off half the water, and proceed as with the succotash, only adding a teaspoonful of finely minced parsley.

Plain Macaroni Pudding.

• ½ lb. macaroni, broken in pieces an inch long, boiled tender (or about twenty minutes) in hot, salted water.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 large cup of milk.
• [262]2 tablespoonfuls powdered sugar.
• 2 eggs.
• Grated peel of half a lemon.
• A little cinnamon and salt.

When the macaroni is tender, drain off the water and add the salt and butter. Heat the milk and pour over the beaten eggs, sugar and flavoring. Mix with the macaroni, and bake in a buttered pudding-dish, covered, for half an hour; then brown. Eat with butter and sugar.

Pot-au-feu.

• 3 lbs. of lean beef, cut into dice.
• 1 sliced and fried onion.
• 2 carrots, cut into small squares.
• 2 turnips, ditto.
• 1 bunch of sweet herbs, minced.
• 2 potatoes, parboiled and sliced.
• Pepper and salt.
• 3 quarts of water.

Put on the beef in two quarts of water and cook slowly until it is tender, and the water reduced to one quart. Put the vegetables—except the potatoes—on in boiling water. Cook ten minutes; throw away the water and cover with a quart of cold. Add the potatoes; pepper and salt and cook gently half an hour. Put in the meat and the quart of gravy and simmer ten minutes more, with the minced herbs. Then pour out. This is only a family soup, but is a good one when properly cooked.

Boiled Leg of Mutton.

Do not have the shank too long, nor cut it so short as to make the leg “chunky.” The meat will look cleaner[263] and less sodden if you boil it in a piece of mosquito net or tarlatan, sewed about it somewhat tightly. Put on in boiling salted water, plenty of it, and cook fifteen minutes to the pound. Unwrap and lay upon a hot dish. Butter all over, and sprinkle lightly with salt. Twist frilled paper about the end of the shank.

Caper Sauce.

Take out a cupful of the liquor in which the mutton was boiled (putting away the rest for soup), strain, heat, and skim; stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter rubbed in a teaspoonful of flour; pepper, boil up, pour upon a beaten egg; return to the fire and stir for a minute; add two dozen capers or nasturtium-seed, and pour into a sauce-boat. Pass, of course, with the mutton.

Potatoes à la Lyonnaise.

Parboil the potatoes, and cut into dice. Chop a small onion and mince a tablespoonful of parsley. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter or excellent dripping into a frying-pan, and when hot, stir in potatoes, onion, and parsley. Shake and toss until all are hissing hot, but do not let them brown. Shake off the fat in a hot colander, and serve in a deep dish.

Stewed Pie-Plant.

Skin and wash the stalks, and cut into half inch lengths. Stew tender in a little water, with a handful of seedless raisins. Sweeten to taste. Eat cold with meat.

Peach Lèche Crèma.

• 1 can of peaches.
• Yolks of 3 eggs and whites of four.
• 3 cups of milk.
• ½ cup of powdered sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch.
• 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.

Scald the milk; stir in the corn-starch wet with cold milk, and cook, still stirring, until it begins to thicken. Take from the fire, and beat in the butter, then the[264] whipped yolks, two whites and sugar. Whisk to a light cream. Drain the syrup from the peaches; lay them in the bottom of a bake-dish, and pour the mixture gently over them. Bake in a quick oven ten minutes, then spread with a méringue of four whites whisked stiff with a little sugar. Shut up in the oven until this is slightly tinged. Eat warm with sauce, or cold with cream.

Scotch Broth.

Take the fat from the top of the broth in which the mutton was boiled yesterday. Chop up an onion, a good sized one, and put in it. Boil half an hour and strain. Add a cup of barley, previously soaked two hours in cold water, and cook for two hours more. Chop up some parsley fine and add. When the barley is very soft, and the broth has boiled down one-half, pour out and serve, having peppered to taste.

Mutton Pie.

Cut the meat from yesterday’s mutton, into strips two inches long by half an inch wide. Chop a pickled cucumber to pieces, also two boiled eggs. Put a layer of meat in a bake-dish, strew with pickle and egg; salt and pepper and drop, pretty thickly, over it, bits of butter rolled in flour. Go on in this order, until your meat is used up, when pour in a cup of oyster-liquor or cold water. Cover with a good crust, ornamented around the edges; make a slit in the middle, and bake one hour.

N. B.—The bare bones will “help out” to-morrow’s soup.[265]

Stewed Tomatoes.

Receipts for these, as also for plain mashed potatoes, have been given so lately that repetition here is needless.

Cabbage Salad.

• 1 small, firm white cabbage, shred fine.
• 1 cup of boiling milk.
• 1 smaller cup of vinegar, also hot.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter, and the same of sugar.
• 2 eggs, well beaten.
• 1 teaspoonful essence of celery.
• Pepper and salt to taste.

When the vinegar boils, put in butter, sugar, and seasoning. Boil, and add the shred cabbage. When this is scalding hot, take from the fire. Pour the hot milk upon the eggs, and cook one minute, stirring constantly. Turn the cabbage into a bowl, pour over it the smoking custard, toss up and mix well, and set it, covered, in ice-cold water. Eat perfectly cold.

Lemon Puffs.

• 1 cup of prepared flour.
• ½ cup of powdered sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 3 eggs—whites and yolks beaten separately.
• Grated peel of 1 lemon.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of milk.
• A little salt.

Cream butter and sugar, whip in the yolks, milk, and lemon-peel; then, the whisked whites and flour, alternately. Bake in small, buttered tins, or in “gem” pans. Turn out while hot, and eat with sweet sauce.[266]

Soup à la Bonne Femme.

• Bones of cold mutton, cracked.
• 2 lbs. of lean veal from the knuckle, bones broken, and meat cut up.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, rubbed in flour.
• ½ cup of raw rice.
• ½ cup of milk.
• 1 onion, chopped.
• 3 eggs.
• Minced parsley.
• Salt and pepper.
• 3 quarts of water.

Put bones, meat, onion, and rice on in the cold water, and cook slowly three hours. Strain, rubbing the rice and onion to a pulp, through a coarse sieve. Season, boil up, skim, and stir in parsley and butter. Heat the milk, pour upon the beaten eggs, and add to the soup, stirring in well. Let it almost boil, and take from the fire. Pour out, and serve at once.

Corned Beef.

Wash the beef well, put on in plenty of boiling water, and cook at least eighteen minutes to the pound, if the piece be tolerably thick. Put away the liquor for to-morrow. Dish the meat. Make a sauce as directed on Tuesday, for mutton, but substituting pickled cucumber, chopped, and a very little pickled onion, for the capers. Serve in a boat.

Mashed Turnips.

At this season the yellow turnips are best. Put on, when you have pared and quartered them, in cold water,[267] salted, and cook tender. Mash, and press out the water; stir in a good piece of butter; pepper and salt to taste, and dish very hot.

Scalloped Cauliflower.

The cauliflowers in market now are less nice than those to be had earlier, or later in the year. Still, you can get them, now and then. Boil, tied in a net, in hot water. Clip into neat clusters, and set, stems downward, in a buttered bake-dish. Beat up a cupful of bread-crumbs to a soft paste with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, and four of milk. Season with pepper and salt, and whip in a raw egg. Butter, salt, and pepper the cauliflower, and pour the mixture over it. Cover closely, and bake ten minutes, or until very hot, in a brisk oven; then brown lightly and rapidly.

Fried Potatoes.

Wash, pare, and slice round, very thin. Leave in cold water one hour; wipe, by spreading upon one towel, and pressing another upon it, and fry, not too many at a time, in boiling lard, salted. Cook quickly, take out with a wire spoon, and shake in a hot colander. Serve in a deep dish lined with a hot napkin.

Orange Cream Pie.

• 1 teacup of powdered sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 egg.
• 1 orange—juice and half the grated peel soaked together, for half an hour, then squeezed in a muslin bag.
• 1 teacupful boiling water.
• 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch, dissolved in cold water.
• Pulp of half an orange.

Stir the corn-starch into the water; cream the butter and sugar, and pour over them the hot mixture. Cool, and add the orange and beaten egg. Take the inner rind from the half-orange, remove the seeds, and chop very fine. Bake in open shells.[268]

“Peas Porridge Hot.”

Soak a quart of split peas all night. In the morning put on in the liquor from your corned beef, with a sliced onion and a little celery-seed, tied in thin muslin. The liquor should be skimmed and poured cold upon the peas. Cook slowly, until these are soft enough to pulp through a colander. Rub them; if the soup be very salt, add hot water; pepper to taste; boil up, and stir in a cup of hot milk, in which have been dissolved two tablespoonfuls of corn-starch, wet up in water, and a tablespoonful of butter. Add minced parsley; simmer two minutes; have a double handful of fried bread dice in the tureen, and pour on the soup.

Baked Shad.

Clean, wash, and wipe a large shad. Stuff with a dressing of bread-crumbs, butter, salt, and pepper, wet with milk, and sew up carefully with fine cotton. Lay in the dripping-pan; pour over it a cupful of hot water, and bake one hour, covered, except when you are basting it with butter and water. Put into a hot dish, and keep warm, while you add to the gravy a teaspoonful of anchovy sauce, the juice of a lemon, a tablespoonful of browned flour, wet up with cold water, and pepper. Boil up well, and serve in a boat. Garnish the fish with sliced lemon, and pass the cress-salad with it.

Miroton of Beef.

Chop your cold corned beef fine. Have ready in a saucepan a cup of drawn butter, into which stir a teaspoonful[269] of minced onion, the yolk of a boiled egg, pounded, and a beaten raw egg. Boil gently three minutes, and add the mince of beef. Stir until hot, but not boiling; pour into a bake-dish; spread with a cover of mashed potatoes, into which have been worked half a cup of milk and a great spoonful of butter. Brown in a good oven, and glaze with butter, when it begins to color well. Serve in the dish. It is very good.

Cresses.

Pick over, wash, and cut into small pieces. Pile in a salad-bowl, and season with vinegar, salt, pepper, and a little sugar, mixing in well.

Spinach with Eggs.

Cut the leaves from the stems, and cook twenty minutes in boiling, salted water. Drain and chop very fine upon a board or chopping-tray. Return to the fire with a good spoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of sugar; salt and pepper to taste. Heat, stirring constantly and beat in the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, rubbed to a fine powder. When well mixed, turn the spinach into a deep dish and garnish with a chain of sliced whites laid on top.

An Ambushed Trifle.

• A round, stale sponge-cake.
• 1 pint of milk.
• 1 teaspoonful of corn-starch.
• 1 cup of sweet jelly or jam.
• 3 eggs.
• Vanilla flavoring.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar.
• A little salt.

Cut the top carefully from the cake in one piece. Scoop out the inside of the loaf, leaving side-walls and bottom an inch thick. Coat these with the jelly. Heat the milk; beat eggs and sugar, with the cake-crumbs, and pour on the hot milk. Stir over the fire until thick, and add the corn-starch wet up with cold milk. Cook one minute and turn out. When cold, flavor and fill the cake[270] with it. Coat the inside of the lid with jelly, and fit into its place; brush the whole cake with white of egg, sift powdered sugar over it, and set in a cool, dry place until wanted.

Clam Soup.

Strain the liquor from the clams, add one-third as much water, bring to a slow boil, skim and strain. Then put in the clams, chopped, with pepper and salt. Stew half an hour, and stir in two great spoonfuls of butter rolled in cracker-dust, one teaspoonful essence of celery (Colgate’s), and the juice of a lemon. Simmer ten minutes, have ready in your tureen a cup of scalding milk, slightly salted. Pour upon this the soup, stirring up well.

Beefsteak.

Cook according to receipt given on Thursday of Second Week in this month. If you use the “Vertical Broiler,” manufactured by the Dover Stamping Company, 88 North Street, Boston, you will save every drop of gravy, and be spared the trouble of watching and turning the steak.—See Familiar Talk, “Touching Saucepans.”

Scalloped Tomatoes and Corn.

Open a can of corn; drain, and cook twenty minutes in boiling water, salted. Throw off the water; cover the bottom of a bake-dish with fine crumbs; put in a layer of corn, butter, pepper, and salt; upon this a layer of canned tomatoes; butter and pepper, and sprinkle with a little[271] sugar. Go on in this order until the dish is full. Cover with bread-crumbs; stick bits of butter over them, and bake, covered, half an hour. Brown and serve in the dish.

Whole Bermuda Potatoes.

Pick out those of uniform size; put on in boiling water, salted slightly, and cook until a fork will pierce the largest. Turn off the water; set back on the range to “dry off;” lay a napkin, heated and neatly folded, upon a dish. Pare the potatoes quickly by pulling off their skins, and heap upon the napkin.

Boiled Custards.

• 1 quart of milk.
• Yolks of 5 eggs and the whites of two—reserving three for the méringue.
• 6 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• 2 teaspoonfuls bitter almond or vanilla flavoring.

Heat the milk; beat yolks and two whites light, and pour the milk upon them. Return to the fire and cook, stirring all the while, until the custard begins to thicken. Let it cool. Season and put into glass cups. Whip the whites to a méringue with a little powdered sugar, and heap upon the top of each.

Ox Head Soup.

• 1 ox head, well cleaned.
• [272]2 grated carrots.
• 2 turnips.
• 2 onions.
• 1 dozen whole allspice, and the same of whole peppers.
• 1 bunch sweet herbs, chopped.
• Browned flour.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 tablespoonful Worcestershire Sauce.
• 1 glass of sherry.
• 5 quarts of water.
• Small bag of celery seed.

Soak the head two hours in cold, salted water. Wash well, and put on in cold water, with the vegetables and herbs. Cover, bring slowly to a boil, and cook four hours. Then, take out the meat of the head; salt well, and set away in a cool place. Salt and pepper the soup, and set by in an earthenware crock, leaving in the bones and vegetables. Do this on Saturday.

On Sunday, take off the fat and heat the soup. Strain, first through a colander, rubbing the vegetables to a pulp, then through a sieve, back into the kettle. Cut the meat into dice and drop in; season with sauce and wine, and having let it barely boil, pour out.

There should be enough for two days. In setting aside Monday’s portion, make an equal distribution of meat and broth.

Roast Breast of Mutton.

Sew up in a thin cloth and boil ten minutes to the pound. (Take care of the broth for gravy.) When unwrapped, lay in a dripping-pan, wash well with butter, dredge with flour, and set in the oven half an hour, basting freely with its own broth, and lastly with butter. A few minutes before taking it up, strew thickly with crumbs—fine and dry—pepper these, and drop dots of butter over it. Brown, and dish. Garnish with sliced beet-root and cresses.

Hominy Fritters.

• 2 cups cold boiled hominy—small-grained.
• 1 tablespoonful of sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of cream.
• [273]2 beaten eggs.
• ½ teaspoonful soda dissolved in vinegar.
• A little salt.

Rub the sugar and salt into the hominy; wet with the milk, and when smooth beat in the whipped eggs. Drop by the spoonful into boiling fat, and fry quickly. Drain in a hot colander. Everything depends upon beating and cooking. The soda should go in last of all the ingredients, and be whipped in hard.

Browned Potatoes.

Mash soft, with butter and milk; mound smoothly upon a greased plate and brown in a quick oven, glazing with butter. Slip to a hot flat dish.

Lettuce Salad.

Pull out the hearts and pick them apart. Heap loosely in a salad-bowl, and season, first sprinkling lightly with powdered sugar—with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Toss up with a silver fork; lay cold-boiled eggs, cut into sixths, lengthwise, upon the top.

Pine-apple Ambrosia.

• 1 pine-apple, pared and cut into small squares.
• 1 cocoanut, pared and grated.
• 1 cup powdered sugar.
• 1 large glass good sherry or Marsala.

Put a layer of pine-apple in a glass bowl; strew with sugar, and wet with wine. Next, put a stratum of cocoanut, and sprinkle more sparsely with sugar. More pine-apple, sugar, and wine, and continue to add layers in the order given. The top coating must be of cocoanut. Eat soon, or the pine-apple will wither in the wine and become tough. Pass light cake with it.[274]

Next Day Soup.

Take the fat from the top of the cold soup set by on Sunday; heat it almost to the boil, and pour out. It is better for the second and third warming up. Save every drop that is left over.

Pilau of Mutton.

Cut your cold roast into neat strips an inch long. Make a gravy of the cracked bones and skin, hard bits, etc., and a pint of water. While it is stewing down one-half, skim the liquor in which the meat was parboiled; put it over the fire with a cup of washed rice, and cook the latter tender. When there is but one cup of gravy left upon the bones, etc., strain, season highly with pepper, salt, and nearly a teaspoonful of curry powder. Chop, also, a quarter of a pickled onion, and mix in. Roll a tablespoonful of butter in a heaping spoonful of browned flour, and when the gravy is hot stir it in; lastly, put in the mutton, and when nearly on the boil, draw aside. Drain the rice, and season well. Pile the meat upon a hot dish, and make a fence of rice about it.

Green Peas.

Open a can of green peas, drain, and cook twenty minutes in boiling water, a little salt. Strain off the water; dish the peas, stir in butter, pepper, and if needed, salt.

Cheese Fondu.

• 1 cup of bread-crumbs, very dry.
• [275]2 cups of fresh milk.
• ½ lb. of dry cheese, grated.
• 3 eggs.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• Pepper and salt.
• A pinch of soda dissolved in boiling water, and stirred into the milk.

Soak the crumbs in the milk; beat in the eggs, butter, seasoning, and at last, the cheese. Butter a bake-dish; pour in the fondu; cover with crumbs, and bake in a brisk oven. Serve at once, as it soon falls.

Farina Hasty Pudding with Sauce.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of farina.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.

Heat the milk, when the farina has soaked two hours in just enough water to cover it, and has absorbed it all. Salt the milk and stir in the farina. Boil half an hour, steadily stirring now and then, from the bottom. Add the butter; and let the pudding stand in hot water three minutes after you cease to stir, before turning out into an open, deep dish. Make a good sauce of butter, sugar, and nutmeg, and eat with it.

Crust Soup.

• 1 quart of dry crusts, the more stale the better, if sweet.
• [276]2 cups of yesterday’s soup.
• 2 cups of boiling water.
• 1 onion.
• 3 great spoonfuls of butter.
• 2 eggs.
• Salt and pepper.
• A little chopped parsley.

Pour the boiling water upon the crusts, which should be broken small. Set in a pot of boiling water for one hour, with a small onion minced fine, and the seasoning. Meanwhile skim the cold soup (or any good gravy) and heat to a boil. At the end of the hour, add the butter to the bread, and cover ten minutes longer. Then turn into the soup; beat up the bread and stir in the parsley. Simmer fifteen minutes, beat the eggs light, pour a little of the soup upon them to heat them before stirring them well into the contents of the kettle. Take from the fire at once, lest the eggs should curdle.

Mock Pigeons with Mushroom Sauce.

• 2 fillets of veal.
• Force-meat of crumbs and chopped salt pork, well seasoned.
• ½ cup of mushrooms and a little minced onion.
• 1 sweetbread.
• 12 oysters.
• Pepper and salt.

The fillets must be boneless. Sprinkle with pepper and spread with force-meat. Roll up closely and wind with packthread. Put into a dripping-pan with enough water to half cover them. Invert a pan over them, and bake from forty-five minutes to one hour in proportion to their size. Boil, then blanch the sweetbread, by dropping it into cold water. Cut into dice, put into a cup of oyster liquor with a spoonful of butter, and simmer fifteen minutes. Baste the “pigeons” four times—twice with butter, and when tender, lay on a hot dish, clip and carefully withdraw the threads, and cover to keep warm. Add the gravy from the dripping-pan to the sweetbread; thicken with browned flour; boil once; put in the oysters and mushrooms, chopped, and stew five minutes quite[277] fast. Pour a few large spoonfuls, taking up the thickest part, over the “pigeons;” send the rest up in a sauce-boat. You will find this a very nice dish.

Baked Potatoes.

Parboil and skin while hot. Lay in a pan and anoint with beef-dripping or butter, from time to time, as they brown. Drain off the grease and serve hot, after peppering and salting.

Cabbage Sprouts and Eggs.

Boil the sprouts tender, drain well, pepper and salt. Lay some slices of crustless toast in a deep dish, and soak in boiling water; drain them and cover with a soft omelette made of three or four eggs, “stirred” up in a pan in which has been heated a spoonful of butter. Lay the sprouts upon this, butter well and eat hot.

Bread and Raisin Pudding.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 1 loaf of stale light bread, pared and sliced.
• Butter to spread the bread.
• 4 eggs.
• ½ cup of sugar.
• ¾ lb. of raisins, seeded and cut into thirds.

Butter the bread. Make a raw custard of eggs, sugar and milk. Line the bottom of a buttered dish with the bread. Wet with custard; strew with raisins, and lay in more bread. Go on in this order until the dish is full. The uppermost layer should be of bread, well buttered and soaked. Cover the dish; set in boiling water, and bake one hour, keeping the water at a fast boil. Turn out carefully, and pour hot, sweet sauce over it. The liquor from brandied peaches, made hot, with a little butter, makes a delicious sauce for it.[278]

Bouillon of Beef.

• 6 lbs. of brisket or round of beef, all in one piece.
• 4 turnips.
• 3 carrots.
• 2 Bermuda onions.
• A good handful of cabbage sprouts.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, cut up in flour.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• 1 teaspoonful of made mustard.
• 4 quarts of water.

Cover the beef with the water and cook slowly one hour. Meanwhile, cut the vegetables into long strips—not too thin—leaving the sprouts whole. Cook them all in boiling, salted water twenty minutes. Throw this water away, and at the end of the hour, skim the soup well, and put in the vegetables. Stew all very slowly two hours longer. There must never be a fast boil. Take out the beef; put into a dripping-pan; pour a cup of the soup (strained), seasoned well with pepper, salt, and mustard, over it; dredge thickly with flour and brown in a good oven, basting every few minutes. Take half the vegetables from the pot and keep hot. Rub the rest through a colander; season the soup and pulp, add the herbs and return to the saucepan; boil sharply five minutes; stir in butter and flour; simmer five minutes, and the soup is ready for the tureen. Season the reserved vegetables, and having dished your beef, lay them, very hot, around it. Serve with each slice.

Tomato Omelette with Cheese.

Break six eggs into a bowl and give about a dozen whirls of the beater, just enough to mingle whites and yolks well. Have ready in a frying-pan a great spoonful[279] of butter. When it begins to hiss, run it quickly over the bottom of the pan, and pour in your eggs. Take the handle of the pan in one hand, a cake-turner in the other, and with the latter, loosen all around the edges of the omelette, while with the other hand you shake the pan to keep the eggs free from the bottom. In about three minutes, the eggs should be “set,” but still soft. Let an assistant lay upon one-half of the omelette five or six slices of canned tomatoes. Fold the other half over this by a dexterous motion of the turner; invert a hot dish upon the pan; upset the latter, and dish the omelette. Have at hand a handful of dry cheese, grated and seasoned with pepper and salt. Strew the omelette thickly, singe with a red-hot shovel held very close to the cheese, and serve hot.

N. B.—Teach your cook the art of omelette-making at breakfasts, and she will soon be capable of managing this very delightful entrée.

Savory Rice Pudding.

• 1 teacupful of raw rice.
• 1 small onion.
• 1 cup of weak broth. Steal from your soup before the vegetables go in, if you have no other.
• 1 cup of milk.
• 1 egg.
• Nearly a cupful of chopped cold meat—left from yesterday.
• Pepper and salt.

Boil the rice with the whole onion in the broth, adding more, or hot water, as it swells. When the rice is soft and has soaked up the broth, remove the onion and add a raw custard made of the milk, egg, pepper, and salt. Mix well with the meat, put into a greased mould, set in a pan of boiling water, and bake, covered, until firm. Keep the water boiling hard. About forty-five minutes should be ample time. Turn out and eat with meat.

Corn-Starch Custard Pie.

• 6 eggs.
• [280]3 pints of milk.
• 6 tablespoonfuls of white sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch.
• 2 teaspoonfuls essence bitter almonds.

Boil the milk, stir in the corn-starch wet with milk. Boil one minute and cool. When cold, beat in the sugar, the yolks and two whites. Flavor, and bake in open shells of paste. When the custard is “set,” draw to the door of the oven, and cover with a méringue made of the reserved whites whipped stiff with two tablespoonfuls of white sugar and a teaspoonful of vanilla. Do this quickly and close the oven until the whites begin to color. Eat cold.

Frugal Soup.

• 3 lbs. of bones.
• ½ lb. of liver.
• 1 slice of corned ham.
• 2 turnips.
• 2 carrots.
• Nearly a can of tomatoes.
• ½ cup of sago.
• Pepper and salt.
• Sweet herbs.
• 3 quarts cold water.

Break the bones, chop the meat, vegetables, and herbs, and cook slowly three hours in the water. Soak the sago, all this time, in a little cold water. Strain the soup, rubbing the vegetables and liver through the colander; season, boil, and skim; put in the sago and cook half an hour more.[281]

Calf’s Liver à l’Anglaise.

• 2 lbs. liver—sliced.
• ½ lb. fat salt pork.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 small onion, minced fine.
• 1 teaspoonful chopped parsley.
• Pepper and browned flour.

Melt, but not heat the butter in a saucepan; lay in the liver, then the pork, next the minced parsley and onion, with a little salt and pepper. Cover closely, and set where it will heat very slowly without boiling, for one hour and a half. Then increase the heat gradually until the gravy begins to bubble. Remove from the fire; cover the liver in a hot water dish, thicken the gravy in the saucepan and pour over it when it has boiled one minute. Please obey these directions implicitly.

Potato Croquettes.

• 2 cups cold mashed potato, free from lumps.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• 1 tablespoonful melted butter.
• Salt and pepper to taste.
• 1 raw egg, beaten alone.
• Cracker-crumbs.

Mix soft, as for hominy croquettes, roll in egg and cracker, and fry in hot lard or dripping. You can make into long rolls, or round balls. Drain, and serve hot.

Spinach and Eggs.

Pick the leaves from the stems; cook twenty minutes in plenty of boiling, salted water; drain, chop fine, return to the fire with butter, a little sugar, pepper, and salt. Beat until nearly dry, and very smooth; mould in a hot, oblong pan; turn out and garnish with sliced egg.

Cocoanut Pudding.

• 1 large cup bread-crumbs.
• 1 cocoanut, pared and grated.
• [282]1 tablespoonful corn-starch, wet with cold water.
• ½ cup of butter.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 2 cups of milk.
• 5 eggs.
• Nutmeg and rose-water to taste.

Soak the crumbs in the milk; cream butter and sugar, and beat in the yolks, then add to the soaked crumbs. Stir in corn-starch, beaten whites and flavoring—at last, cocoanut. Beat hard and bake forty-five minutes in a buttered pudding-dish. Eat cold.

Onion Soup.

• 3 sliced onions.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, and twice as much flour.
• 1 quart of milk.
• 2 cups of boiling water.
• 1 cup of mashed potato.
• Pepper, salt, and fried bread.
• 1 teaspoonful essence of celery.
• Soda.

Fry the onions in the butter; strain the latter; return to the frying-pan and stir in the flour gradually, cooking until it is a light bistre color. Thin with boiling water, added slowly. Meanwhile, heat the milk, and work by degrees, into the potato. Then strain through a colander into a saucepan; add a piece of soda the size of a pea, and set within a pot of boiling water. Cook ten minutes,[283] season well, put in the flour and butter. Then mince the onions very fine, and stir in. Let all stand in the hot water ten minutes; add celery. Flavor and pour upon the fried bread, cut into dice and put into the tureen.

Salmon Croquettes.

• 1 can preserved salmon.
• 2 raw eggs.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• Yolks of 2 hard boiled eggs.
• 1 teaspoonful anchovy sauce.
• Juice of ½ lemon.
• Season with salt, pepper, a little mace and nutmeg.
• ½ cup crumbs.

Mince the fish; work in the butter, slightly warmed; the powdered yolks, the seasoning, raw eggs—finally, the crumbs. Make into rolls; shape well by rolling in a dish covered thickly with flour. Fry quickly in sweet lard. Roll each, when done, for one instant, upon a clean cloth to take off the grease. Lay a square of treble tissue-paper, red, green, and white, upon a dish (fringing the ends), and serve.

Mutton Chops—Broiled.

If you have not a “vertical broiler,” lay upon a hot gridiron—greased—and turn often over a clear fire, until nicely browned. Butter, salt, and pepper each one as it is taken from the fire.

Squeezed Potatoes.

Put old potatoes on in cold water, and cook soft. Skin rapidly, set over the fire for one minute; then, twist a soft, dry cloth around each one until you feel it crush but not quite break open. Lay each, as you squeeze it, within a hot dish, lined with a napkin. When all are in, turn the four corners of the napkin over the top to keep in the heat.

Parsnip Fritters.

Boil, scrape, and mash; take out fibres and hard bits. Work into four large parsnips one beaten egg, a teaspoonful[284] of flour, with pepper and salt. Make into small, round cakes, roll in flour and fry in good dripping. Drain well, and serve hot.

Almond Blanc-Mange.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 1 oz. Cooper’s gelatine.
• ¼ lb. of almonds, blanched and pounded, with 1 tablespoonful of rose-water to prevent oiling.
• ¾ cup of sugar.

Soak the gelatine one hour in a cup of the milk. Heat the rest; add the almond-paste, and stir over the fire three minutes, then put in the sugar and gelatine, and stir five minutes more. Strain through thin muslin, pressing hard. When cool, pour into a wet mould, and set upon ice, or in cold water to form. Eat with cream and sugar. It is a good plan to blanch the almonds the day before they are to be pounded.

White Cake.

Please see “Common Sense in the Household” Series No. 1., “General Receipts,” page 334.

Okra and Tomato Soup.

• 6 lbs. of coarse beef.
• 2 lbs. of mutton bones.
• [285]Two slices of corned ham, or a ham bone, or bones of salt pork.
• 1 can okra and tomatoes.
• 6 quarts of cold water.
• Large bunch of sweet herbs.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 lump of white sugar.

Crack the bones into splinters. Cut the meat into strips and mince the herbs. Put on in the water, and cook slowly, four hours. Strain off the liquor, and divide into two portions. Season the meat, bones, etc., highly, put them back into that portion designed for Sunday, and set aside in a cold place. Pour the stock for to-day’s soup back into the pot; season with salt and pepper; boil up, and skim, and add the okra, tomatoes, and sugar. Simmer half an hour, boil briskly one minute. Skim and serve.

Beef’s Heart.

Choose a fine, fresh one. Wash well, lay in salt and water an hour, then wipe dry. Stuff with a force-meat of crumbs, minced salt pork, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley with a little onion. Pack this in tightly, sew the heart up in coarse net, fitted well to it, and stew one hour and a half in weak broth. (A cupful can be taken from your soup stock.) At the end of this time, take it out, undo the cloth, and return the heart to the saucepan with enough gravy to half cover it. Add to this a tablespoonful of butter cut up in as much flour; pepper and salt to taste. Cover closely, and simmer half an hour, turning the heart as it browns. Dish it; add the juice of half a lemon to the gravy, boil once, and pour over the heart.

Ramakins.

• Rounds of lightly toasted bread.
• 3 tablespoonfuls grated cheese.
• 2 eggs, beaten light.
• 1 tablespoonful melted butter.
• 1 teaspoonful anchovy sauce.
• 1 teaspoonful of flour, wet with cream.
• A little salt and cayenne.

Beat eggs, butter, and seasoning together; then the[286] cheese, lastly, the flour. Work all to a cream; spread thickly upon the bread, and brown lightly.

Potatoes à la Crème.

Heat a cupful of milk; stir in a heaping tablespoonful of butter cut up in as much flour. Stir until smooth and thick; pepper and salt, and add two cupfuls of cold boiled potatoes, sliced, and a little very finely chopped parsley. Shake over the fire until the potatoes are hot all through, and pour into a deep dish.

Lima Beans.

Open the can an hour before it is needed, and empty into a bowl. When ready for the beans drain off the liquor and cook in boiling water twenty-five minutes. Drain, butter, pepper and salt, and serve.

Newark Pudding.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 5 eggs.
• 1 large cup fine crumbs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of rice-flour.
• ½ lb. of raisins cut in two, seeded and dredged with flour.
• 2 teaspoonfuls vanilla, or other extract. (If possible get your flavoring extracts from Colgate & Co., 53 and 55 John Street, New York. They are good from first to last, which is more than I can say for many others.)
• 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
• ½ teaspoonful of soda.

Beat the yolks. Add the crumbs soaked in a pint of the milk. Stir in the rice-flour, wet in cold milk; the reserved pint of milk; the butter, flavoring, the fruit, and lastly, the whisked whites. Bake one hour in a well-greased mould; turn out and eat with hard sauce.

[287]

MAY.

Clear Soup.

Take all the fat from the stock reserved for to-day, and pour the liquid carefully off from the meat and bones, not disturbing the sediment in the bottom. (Mem. Take out a little of the meat, beef, and ham, for a purpose of which we shall speak presently—add boiling water—about a quart—to the rest of the residuum with more seasoning, and the remains of your okra and tomato soup. Stew gently half an hour, and set aside in a cool place for to-morrow. The growing heat of the weather makes this a necessary precaution.) Put then the clear stock upon the fire with a whole onion, and simmer thirty minutes. Skim well, take out the onion, and stir in two tablespoonfuls of gelatine previously soaked one hour in cold water, with a tablespoonful (scant) of Harvey’s sauce. Cook five minutes and pour out.

Roast Lamb.

Lay in the dripping-pan; dash a cupful of boiling water over it and roast in a good oven, allowing about ten minutes—not more—to the pound. Baste often and freely, and after half an hour, cover with a sheet of thick paper. Five minutes before taking it up, remove this, dredge with flour, and as this browns, bring to a froth with butter. Do not send the gravy to table if you use mint sauce.[288]

Mint Sauce.

• 2 tablespoonfuls green mint, chopped very fine.
• 1 tablespoonful white sugar.
• About half a cupful best cider vinegar.

Put sugar and vinegar into a sauce-boat and stir in the mint. Let it stand fifteen minutes before serving.

Green Peas.

I have purposely avoided too early an introduction of green vegetables and other spring dainties, through fear that the high prices demanded for them might make this part of my work useless for housekeepers of moderate means. By the first of May, however, even our Northern markets should be well supplied at reasonable rates with many delightful esculents which are, as yet, brought only from the South.

Shell the peas and wash well in cold water. Cook in boiling water—salted—for twenty-five minutes. A lump of sugar will be an addition, and a pleasant one, to market peas. Drain well, stir in a great lump of butter, and pepper and salt. Serve hot.

Asparagus upon Toast.

Cut the stalks of equal length, rejecting the woody portions and scraping the whiter parts retained. Tie in a bunch with soft tape, and cook about thirty minutes, if of fair size. Have ready six or eight slices of crustless bread, nicely toasted. Dip in the asparagus-liquor, butter well and lay upon a very hot dish. Drain the asparagus, untie, and arrange upon the toast, peppering and buttering to taste.

Potato Eggs.

• 2 cups mashed potato.
• ½ cup minced meat.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls hot milk.
• 1 tablespoonful melted butter.
• 3 tablespoonfuls gravy.
• Pepper, salt, and dripping.

[289]

Work the potato smooth with butter, milk, gravy, and beaten eggs. Put into a saucepan, and stir over the fire until smoking hot. Stir in the meat; let it get cool enough to handle. Flour your hands and make the mixture into egg-shaped balls. Roll in flour and fry in hot dripping. Pile upon a hot dish.

Rice and Tapioca Pudding.

• ½ cup rice.
• ½ cup tapioca.
• ¾ cup sugar.
• 3 pints of milk.
• Cinnamon to taste.

Soak the tapioca three hours in half of the milk. Wash the rice in three waters and soak in the rest of the milk the same length of time. Put them together, stir in the sugar by degrees, until all is melted; season with cinnamon and a pinch of salt; mix up well, and bake in a slow oven two hours. Make it on Saturday, and eat cold on Sunday with sugar and cream.

Yesterday’s Soup.

Strain the stock heated up on Sunday with the remains of Saturday’s soup. Boil four tablespoonfuls of rice in a little water until soft. Add, with the water, to the soup, with additional seasoning, if necessary, and heat almost to a boil. If it has been kept in a cool place you will find it very good. Never throw away a spoonful of any soup. It will come into use if you can keep it from spoiling.[290]

Cold Lamb.

Trim neatly, garnish with curled parsley, and pass mixed pickles with it. Few methods of preparing lamb for the table by warming over can compare with the easier way of setting it on cold, if it has been nicely roasted at first.

Savory Macaroni.

To a cup of yesterday’s soup add another of boiling water. Let them boil once; skim and put in half a pound of macaroni broken into inch lengths. While it is cooking tender, boil one sweetbread fifteen minutes; throw into cold water and let it cool, then cut into small dice. When the macaroni is tender, but not broken, mix with it a custard made of two eggs, one large cup of milk, and a little salt. Stir into the macaroni a very little minced onion, pepper to taste; add the chopped sweetbread; put into a greased mould, with a cover; put this into a dripping-pan full of boiling water and cook in a good oven a little over one hour. Turn out upon a hot dish, and send around grated cheese with it.

Sea-Kale.

Pick over carefully, tie up in bunches, and lay for half an hour in cold water. Put into salted boiling water and cook twenty-five minutes. Put buttered toast in the bottom of a deep dish; clip the threads binding the kale, and lay it upon the toast. Pepper, and pour a cupful of drawn butter over it.

Potato Salad.

Slice cold boiled potatoes, and put a layer in a salad dish. Cover with thin slices of hard boiled egg, and strew with bits of pickled onion. When the dish is full pour over them a dressing made in the proportion of one tablespoonful of vinegar to three of salad oil; one spoonful of salt to half as much pepper, and the same quantity of made mustard. Beat up well before pouring over the salad. Let all stand ten minutes—or more—before serving.[291]

Coffee and Sister Mag’s Cake.

Let your coffee be strong and hot, with plenty of boiling milk.

For receipt for the delightful cake mentioned please see “Common Sense in the Household” Series No. 1, “General Receipts,” page 321. Friday is a good cake-baking day.

Veal and Tapioca Broth.

• 3 lbs. scrag of veal, well broken, and the meat cut small.
• 1 onion.
• 1 turnip.
• ½ cup of pearl tapioca.
• 2 blades of mace.
• 2 teaspoonfuls essence of celery.
• Pepper and salt.
• 3 quarts of cold water.

Put meat, bones, and sliced vegetables on in the water, and cook slowly three hours. Soak the tapioca during this time in a very little milk. Strain the soup, rubbing the vegetables through the colander; cool to throw up the fat. Skim and season. When hot again put in the tapioca and stir until it melts. Simmer half an hour, add the celery essence and serve.

Baked Beefsteak.

Take the bone from a large sirloin steak; flatten it with the side of a hatchet, wash over the upper side with[292] a beaten egg and spread thickly with a force-meat of crumbs, minced ham, and any other cold meat you may have, a teaspoonful of minced onion, a pinch of grated lemon peel, with pepper and salt, a beaten egg and three tablespoonfuls of cream or milk. Work these into a paste before spreading. Roll the steak upon them, binding closely with soft pack-thread. Have ready some dripping in a frying-pan, and cook the steak five minutes in this, turning as it browns. Now lay it in a dripping-pan with a cupful of boiling water; cover and bake forty minutes, basting and turning often. When done, remove the strings; lay the beef upon a hot dish; thicken the gravy with browned flour, boil up and pour half over it—the rest into a boat.

Young Onions Stewed.

Skin, wash well, and cook in boiling water, salted, until half-done—say fifteen minutes. Then, throw off nearly all the water and replenish with scalding milk. Cook tender in this, stir in pepper, salt, a great spoonful of butter cut up in a teaspoonful of flour. Simmer three minutes, and pour out.

Potatoes Baked with Steak.

Parboil, skin, and quarter some large potatoes. About ten minutes before you take up your steak, lay the potatoes around it in the pan, and brown in the hot gravy. Serve in the dish with the meat, laid on the outer edge.

Lettuce Salad.

Pull out the hearts and blanched leaves, heap them within a salad bowl; strew with powdered sugar, and pour over them a dressing made according to directions given yesterday. Toss up well with a silver fork.

Oatmeal Pudding with Cream.

• 1 quart of boiling milk.
• 4 tablespoonfuls best Irish oatmeal.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of flour.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.

[293]

Wet up flour, oatmeal, and salt, with cold milk and stir into the hot, which must be in a farina-kettle. Stir twenty minutes well from the bottom, and let it stand ten minutes in the boiling water without cooking before pouring into an uncovered deep dish. Eat with cream and sugar.

Hot Pot.

• 4 lbs. coarse lean beef, cut up small.
• 2 good-sized crabs.
• ½ lb. of streaked salt pork.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• 1 onion.
• 1 bunch of asparagus—the green tops only.
• 8 Boston crackers.
• Cayenne pepper.
• Butter for crackers.
• 6 quarts of water.
• Juice of 1 lemon.

Boil beef, herbs and onion together in the water—cooking slowly—three hours. Cool, to throw up the fat, and skim well. Put away half of the liquor with the meat, well-seasoned, for another day. Strain the remainder back into the pot; add the meat of two boiled crabs nicely cut—not chopped—up, and the pork, also boiled and cut into dice; the asparagus-tops, with plenty of seasoning. Stew for half an hour, gently. Have ready in your tureen eight Boston crackers split, laid for five minutes in boiling water, then drained and buttered. Pour[294] the soup over these, cover, and serve, having added the lemon-juice at the last. Send sliced lemon around with it.

Stewed Breast of Veal with Mushroom Sauce.

Trim neatly; take out the largest bone, and fill the cavity with a good force-meat. Skewer into a compact shape. Lay in a frying-pan with three tablespoonfuls of butter, and brown on both sides. Line the bottom of a large saucepan with slices of pork, pepper them, and lay in the veal. Cover tightly, and heat very slowly, one hour, without opening the pot. Then turn the meat, add half a can of chopped mushrooms, and half a Bermuda onion, sliced, with a cup of boiling water. Cover again, and cook for another hour—never fast. The meat should be cooked almost wholly in its own steam. Turn again, and simmer fifteen minutes. Take up the meat, thicken the gravy with browned flour, wet with cold water, adding a little boiling water, if needful; boil up, and pour over the veal. If these directions be exactly followed, this dish will be excellent.

Spinach à la Reine.

Wash well, pick off the leaves, and cook them twenty minutes in salted, boiling water. Drain and press out all the water; chop very fine. Return to the saucepan with a good lump of butter, pepper, salt, a pinch of mace, a teaspoonful of sugar, and three spoonfuls—large ones—of good gravy. Stir, beat, and toss, until nearly dry. Fill hot, wet egg-cups with the mixture, and turn out upon a heated, flat dish. Lay a slice of egg upon each.

Rhubarb (or Pie-plant) Sauce.

Skin, and cut up the stalks. Put into a saucepan, with just enough water to keep them from burning, and stew slowly until soft. Sweeten while hot, but not on the fire. Eat cold.

Browned Potatoes—Mashed.

Whip up boiled potatoes very light with a fork; beat in butter, milk, and salt. Heat roughly upon a neat bake-dish[295] (one with a silver stand for the table, if you have it), and brown in a quick oven, glazing with butter, when done.

Burnt Custard.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 5 eggs.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Nutmeg and flavoring extract to taste.

Scald the milk, but not to boiling; beat eggs light with the sugar, and pour upon them the hot milk. Mix well, and bake in a well-buttered dish. Turn out when cold; strew very thickly with white sugar. Set the plate containing the custard upon the upper grating of a hot oven. The sugar will melt, and run in brown streams all over the moulded pudding. Slip carefully to a dish, and eat cold.

Italian Minestra Soup.

Strain the stock reserved for to-day from the bones, after taking the fat from the top. Never neglect this. Greasy soups are not good, and plenty of dripping may be thus obtained for kitchen use. Heat the soup, season to taste, and add a little more than half a cupful of minestra, by some known as Italian Paste. It can be had at the best grocers in various shapes—like wheat-grains, in small squares, or in stars, circles, letters, etc. Simmer twenty minutes, and pour out. The minestra should be tender, but not broken.[296]

Chicken Pudding.

Cut up a tender fowl into neat joints, and parboil, seasoning well, ten minutes before you take it up, with pepper, salt, and a generous spoonful of butter. It should cook slowly for half an hour. Take up and cool, setting aside the liquor for your gravy.

Batter for the Pudding.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 3 cups of prepared flour, not heaping.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
• 4 well-whipped eggs.
• A little salt.

Make a hole in the flour, when you have sifted the salt through it. Mix eggs, milk, and butter together, and pour in by degrees, beating all up hard at the last. Put a layer of chicken in the bottom of a bake-dish; pour a cupful of batter upon it; then more chicken, and so on, until the dish is full, with batter for the upper crust. It will require about one hour to bake in a moderate oven. Skim the cooled gravy, and boil down one-half. Then, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, cut up in flour. Boil once, and pour over a beaten egg. Season with chopped parsley; return to the fire; let it almost boil, and serve in a sauce-boat. Pass with the pudding.

Boiled Potatoes.

Put on in cold water, and bring to a rapid boil. When nearly done, pour off all but a cupful of water. Cover closely, return to the fire, and steam until the skins crack, and the potatoes are soft. They will need about half an hour’s boiling in all. Uncover, strew with salt, leave for a few moments for the moisture to evaporate, and serve at once. Old potatoes, treated thus, can be made mealy.

Asparagus and Eggs.

Cut about two dozen stalks of asparagus—leaving out the hard parts—into inch lengths, and boil tender. Drain; pour upon them a cupful of drawn butter; stir[297] until hot, then turn into a bake-dish. Break six eggs upon the top; put a bit of butter upon each; salt and pepper, and put into a quick oven until the eggs are “set.”

German Puffs.

• 3 cups of prepared flour.
• 3 cups of milk.
• 3 eggs—whites and yolks whipped separately, and very light.
• 3 teaspoonfuls of melted butter.
• 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Make a batter as directed for your chicken pudding, beat up hard, and bake in nine cups, such as you used for measuring, to a fine brown. The oven should be a quick one, and the puffs be served immediately in their cups.

Canned Corn Soup.

• 1 can of sweet corn.
• 1 quart of boiling water.
• 1 quart of milk.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in one tablespoonful of flour.
• 2 eggs.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 tablespoonful tomato catsup.

[298]

Drain the corn and chop it in a chopping-tray. Put on in the boiling water and cook steadily one hour. Rub through a colander, leaving the husks behind and return, with the water in which it has boiled, to the fire. Season; boil gently three minutes and stir in the butter and flour. Have ready the boiling milk, pour it upon the beaten eggs, and these into the soup. Simmer one minute, stirring all the while; take up, add the catsup and pour out.

Boiled Shad.

Clean, wash and wipe a large roe shad. Set aside the roes for your scallop. Sew up the fish in a thin cloth fitted to its shape; cover well with boiling salted water, and cook from forty-five minutes to an hour, according to its size. Unwrap and butter and pepper, after laying it upon a hot dish. Pour over it a few spoonfuls of drawn butter in which have been mixed the chopped yolks of two eggs, a little parsley, and the juice of a lemon. Serve the same in a boat. Garnish the fish with rings of the whites of the boiled eggs, with a sprig of parsley in each.

Scalloped Roes.

• The roes of the shad.
• 1 cup of drawn butter, and the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs.
• 1 teaspoonful of anchovy paste.
• Juice of half a lemon.
• 1 cup of bread-crumbs.
• Parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

Boil the roes in water with a little vinegar stirred in. Lay in cold water five minutes and wipe dry. Break up with the back of a spoon, but do not crush the eggs. Set by, and pound the boiled yolks to a powder. Beat this into the drawn butter, then the parsley and other seasoning, finally the roes. Strew the bottom of a bake-dish with crumbs; pour in the mixture, and cover thickly with fine crumbs. Stick dots of butter over the top, and bake, covered, until it begins to bubble, then brown upon the upper grating of the oven.[299]

Potato Snow.

Mash with a beetle very fine, working in salt only. Then rub hard and fast through a colander into a hot dish. The potato should fall in light spiral threads. Set in the oven three minutes to renew the heat, but do not let it “crust” or brown.

Green Peas.

See receipt given on Sunday.

Cress Salad.

Pull the sprigs to pieces and pour over them a dressing such as was made for your potato salad on Monday.

Lemon Trifle.

• Juice of 2 lemons and grated peel of one.
• 1 pint cream, well sweetened and whipped stiff.
• 1 cup of sherry.
• A little nutmeg.

Let sugar, lemon-juice, and peel lie together two hours before you add wine and nutmeg. Strain through double tarlatan, and whip gradually into the frothed cream. Serve very soon, heaped in small glasses. Pass cake with this as well as with the tea.

Tea and Cake.

Whereas pound, jelly, or cup-cake should accompany your trifle, small sponge-cakes, or cookies—not too sweet—taste better with tea, and do not detract so much from its flavor.[300]

Minced Beef Soup.

• 4 lbs. lean beef, minced fine, as for beef-tea.
• 2 lbs. mutton-bones.
• 2 carrots, grated.
• 2 sliced onions.
• Bunch of sweet herbs, and small bunch of asparagus, also chopped.
• Pepper and salt.
• 5 quarts of water.
• Strips of buttered toast.

Crack the bones to splinters, and put on with the vegetables in three quarts of cold water and boil two hours. Strain, rubbing the vegetables to a pulp, and add, with the rest of the water, also cold, to the minced beef. Bring to a boil, cook gently one hour after it boils, and strain, pressing hard. Reserve a little of the beef for force-meat, and put away the rest well seasoned, after pouring back over it half the soup, as stock for to-morrow. Keep in a cool place. Chop the herbs and put into that meant for to-day, with pepper and salt. Boil and skim fifteen minutes. Have ready some long strips of buttered crisp toast in the tureen and pour on the soup.

Ragoût of Mutton.

• 3 lbs. of mutton, without bone, cut into strips three inches long by one wide.
• 2 lamb sweetbreads.
• 1 cup of gravy made from bones, skin, etc.—the “trimmings” of the meat.
• [301]2 eggs.
• ¼ lb. streaked salt pork.
• 1 fried onion.
• 1 cup of green peas.
• Pepper, salt, and parsley.
• Dripping for frying.
• Browned flour.

Fry the onion in plenty of dripping; then the meat for five minutes. Parboil the sweetbreads, throw into cold water to blanch; wipe and slice; then fry also in the fat. Lay sliced pork in the bottom of a saucepan, upon this the mutton, then the sweetbreads, next the onion, the green peas, then pepper and salt. Cover with the gravy; put on a close lid and stew gently for an hour after the boil sets in. Take up the meat and sweetbreads; thicken the gravy with browned flour; pour it upon two beaten eggs, stir one minute over the fire and pour upon the meat.

Broiled Potatoes.

Cut cold boiled potatoes lengthwise; cook over a clear fire upon a greased gridiron, until they begin to brown. Lay upon a hot dish, butter, pepper, and salt.

French Beans with Force-meat Balls.

Chop the beef taken from the soup when cold. Add one-third as much bread-crumbs, and season well. Put a spoonful of butter into a saucepan, and when it hisses, stir in the meat, then a little browned flour wet up with cold water. Beat an egg light, pour the meat upon it, and mix well. Make into floured balls and fry in hot dripping. Cook the beans as usual and lay the balls about them when dished.

Boiled Rice.

Wash well and cook in hot salted water, shaking up from time to time until the water is nearly all absorbed, and the rice soft, with every grain distinct. Put a good piece of butter upon the top after it is dished.

Neapolitan Pudding.

• 1 large cup of bread-crumbs soaked in milk.
• [302]¾ cup of sugar.
• 5 eggs.
• 1 lemon, juice and grated rind.
• ½ lb. stale sponge-cake.
• ½ lb. almond maccaroons.
• ½ cup jelly or jam.
• 1 small tumbler of sherry wine.
• ½ cup of milk for the crumbs.
• 1 tablespoonful melted butter.

Cream butter and sugar. Beat in the whipped yolks; then the crumbs, the lemon, and when this is a smooth paste, the whites. Butter a mould thickly, and cover the bottom with dry bread-crumbs, and these with maccaroons, laid evenly. Wet with wine, and pour on a layer of the mixture just made; next, put sliced cake spread with jelly, then more maccaroons wet with wine, more custard, cake and jam, until all the materials are used up, with a layer of custard on top. Cover closely; set in a pan of boiling water and cook three-quarters of an hour in the oven, then remove the top and brown. Turn out carefully, and pour over it a sauce made of currant-jelly warmed, and beaten up with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter and a glass of wine. A plain round mould is best for this pudding.

Soup à l’Italienne.

Take the fat from the top of the reserved stock, strain it and heat to scalding. Heat in another vessel a pint of milk, pour it upon three beaten eggs; return to the saucepan with a little salt and a pinch of soda, and cook[303] two minutes, stirring all the while. Have ready four tablespoonfuls of grated cheese in the bottom of a tureen, pour in, first, the milk and eggs, then the soup. Stir all up well, and serve.

Beef à la Mode.

Remove the bone from a round of beef, and trim away the gristle and tough bits from the edges. (Cover these with water and boil down for soup-stock. Season highly and put by in a cool place for Monday.) Bind the beef into a good shape by sewing about it a broad band of stout muslin, as wide as the round is high. Cut a pound of salt pork into strips long enough to reach from top to bottom of the beef—make incisions in it with a thin, long-bladed knife, and thrust these in closely together. Fill the hole from which the bone was taken with a force-meat of minced pork and crumbs, highly spiced. Put the meat thus prepared in a deep earthenware dish, and rub well into it a mixture of one cup of vinegar, a teaspoonful of mixed cloves and allspice, a teaspoonful of salt, and the same of made mustard; a tablespoonful of sugar and a bunch of sweet herbs minced, with as much pepper as salt. Leave the beef in the pan with the spiced vinegar about the base from Saturday until Sunday morning, turning several times. Early on Sunday, put it into a large pot, with enough boiling water to half-cover it; cover tightly with a weight upon the lid, and stew at least four hours—or half an hour for each pound. Open once, when half-done, to turn the meat. Dish the meat; cut the stitches in the band, and withdraw it carefully. Keep hot while you prepare the gravy. Pour off all but a cupful, and set aside for soup-stock. Thicken that reserved with browned flour, and serve in a boat. Cut the beef in horizontal slices.

When dinner is over, pin another band tightly about the meat; pour gravy on the top, and set a plate with a heavy weight upon it, on the round, before putting it away for Monday’s dinner.

Asparagus upon Toast, and Green Peas.

Please see receipts given on last Sunday.[304]

Mashed Potatoes.

Mash in the usual manner, working in milk, butter, and salt. Make into a smooth mound in a deep dish, and score deeply on top with the back of a knife.

Tropical Snow.

• 10 sweet oranges.
• 1 cocoanut, pared and grated.
• 2 glasses sherry.
• 1 cup powdered sugar.
• 6 bananas.

Peel and cut the oranges small, taking out the seeds. Put a layer in a glass-bowl and wet with wine, then strew with sugar. Next, put a layer of grated cocoanut, slice the bananas thin, and cover the cocoanut with them. When the dish has been filled in this order, heap with cocoanut. Eat soon, or the oranges will toughen.

Jelly Cake,

In some of its pretty variations, and sliced in triangles, should go around with the snow.

Macaroni Soup.

Take the fat from both portions of stock set by for to-day; put them together, and strain into a soup-kettle. Heat to a boil, skim well, and after fifteen minutes’ cooking, add a quarter of a pound of macaroni, boiled tender in salted hot water, and cut into pieces about an inch long. Simmer ten minutes and pour out.[305]

Pressed Beef.

Take the weight from your round of beef; undo the bandage, and set on the table cold, garnished with cresses. Cut in thin horizontal slices. It will be handsomely mottled with the pork. Many prefer to eat à la mode beef cold, always.

Spinach.

Cook as directed upon last Wednesday, but leaving out the gravy and not drying out so much. Beat to a smooth cream, and turn into a deep dish, with sippets of fried bread at the base.

Potato Puff.

• 2 cupfuls of cold mashed potatoes.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• ½ cup of milk.
• Salt to taste.

Beat in butter, then milk and salt, finally the eggs. Whip all up to a cream. Pile in a bake-dish and cook in a good oven until lightly colored.

Southern Rice Pudding.

• 1 quart fresh milk.
• 1 cup raw rice.
• 2 tablespoonfuls butter.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 4 eggs, beaten light.
• Grated peel of half a lemon.
• Pinch of cinnamon and the same of mace.

Soak the rice in the milk for two hours in a farina-kettle, surrounded by warm water. Then increase the heat, and simmer until the rice is tender. Cream butter and sugar, and whisk into the eggs, until very light. When the rice is almost cold, stir all together, and bake in a buttered dish three-quarters of an hour. Eat warm with sauce, or cold with sugar and cream.[306]

Green Pea Soup.

• 3 lbs. lean beef.
• 3 quarts of water.
• ½ peck of green peas.
• Salt and pepper.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of rice-flour.
• Chopped parsley.

Boil the empty pea-pods in the water one hour. Strain these out, put in the beef, cut up fine, and cook gently one hour and a half longer, or until the beef is in rags. Add the peas; boil half an hour, and rub hard through a colander to pulp the peas. Return to the fire, season, and stir in the rice-flour wet up in cold water, and the parsley. Stir ten minutes, and serve.

Breaded Mutton Chops.

Trim neatly, cutting off all the fat and skin. Roll in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry in hot dripping, turning as the under-side browns. Drain well and serve, standing upon the thick part around the base of your potatoes.

Mashed Potatoes.

After mashing soft and smooth with butter, milk, and salt, mound upon a flat, hot dish, with the chops laid up against them.

Stewed Tomatoes.

Empty a can of tomatoes an hour before you mean to use them, and leave in a crockery bowl. Put on in a saucepan, and stew twenty minutes; add salt, pepper, a[307] little sugar, and a good spoonful of butter, and simmer ten minutes more.

Lettuce.

Cut up—not chop—and pour over them a dressing made of—

• 2 tablespoonfuls of salad-oil.
• ½ teaspoonful of salt.
• 5 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
• 1 teaspoonful white sugar.
• ½ teaspoonful of made mustard.
• 1 teaspoonful pepper.
• Yolks of 2 boiled eggs.

Rub the eggs to a powder, add all the ingredients except the vinegar, and let alone five or ten minutes. Then beat in the vinegar with your “Dover” egg-whisk until the mixture is smooth. Garnish with a chain of the whites.

Batter Pudding.

• 1 pint of milk.
• 4 eggs—whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 2 even cups of prepared flour.
• 1 teaspoonful salt.

Beat up the eggs, and add the yolks to the milk. Salt the flour, and stir in alternately with the whites. Beat hard and bake in a buttered pudding-dish forty-five minutes. Eat with sweet sauce, at once, as it soon falls.

Fine White Soup.

• [308]3 lbs. veal knuckle, cracked to pieces.
• 1 old chicken, cut up as for fricassee.
• 1 onion.
• ¼ lb. of almonds blanched some hours before you use them, and when quite dry and brittle, pounded to a paste.
• Lump of white sugar.
• 1 pint of milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter, cut up in two tablespoonfuls of corn-starch.
• 1 teaspoonful essence of celery.
• Pepper and salt.
• 5 quarts cold water.
• Soda.

Cut the meat from the knuckle; put this, the chicken, bones and onion, with the water, and boil slowly two hours. Take out the chicken, and put into a deep jar or bowl, sprinkling well with salt. Cook the soup an hour longer; strain back into the pot, pressing the meat hard. Take out half of the liquid, season well, and pour upon the chicken, cover, and set in a cold place for to-morrow’s “stock.” Season the soup in the kettle with pepper and salt. Boil and skim. Chop the veal-shreds very fine, and mix with the almonds. Have ready the milk, scalding hot, with a pinch of soda stirred in, and pour upon the veal-and-almond paste. Set over the fire in a saucepan, and stir in the butter and corn-starch, simmering five minutes. Add the sugar, and turn into the tureen, then pour in the soup. Stir all up well, and let them stand, covered, in hot water, a few minutes. Stir up again and send to table.

Calf’s Liver, Larded.

Cut half a pound of fat salt pork into lardoons, and thrust them, about half an inch apart, into a fresh liver, so that they will project on both sides. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan, with a small onion minced, pepper, and some sweet herbs chopped, also a few spoonfuls of strained tomato (left over from yesterday). Cover closely, and set in a frying-pan of boiling water for one hour, keeping the outer pan full all the time, and turning[309] the liver twice. Then, take out the saucepan, and set over the fire, but cook slowly. When the liver is nicely browned below, turn it. At the end of forty minutes, boil up once sharply—and for the first time. Take out the liver, and keep hot. Add a little boiling water to the gravy, strain, thicken with browned flour, and pour over the liver.

Green Pea Pancakes.

Two cups of green peas, boiled, and mashed when hot. Season with butter, pepper, and salt, and when cold, beat in two eggs, a cupful of milk, half a teaspoonful of soda, and twice as much cream of tartar, sifted twice through half a cupful of flour. Beat well, and bake as you would griddle-cakes. Eat very hot.

Asparagus in Ambush.

• The green tops of two bunches of asparagus.
• 8 or 9 stale biscuits, or small, light rolls.
• 2 cups of milk.
• 4 eggs.
• 1 great spoonful of butter, rolled in flour.
• Salt and pepper to taste.

Take out the crumb from the rolls, when you have cut off the tops to serve as covers, and set them open in the oven to crisp, laying the tops by them. Heat the milk, pour upon the beaten eggs; stir over the fire until they begin to thicken, when add the butter and flour. Lastly, put in the asparagus, boiled tender, and chopped fine. Fill the rolls with this mixture, put on the tops, and serve hot. Good!

Bermuda Potatoes en robe de chambre.

Put on in boiling water, and cook until a fork will pierce them. Throw off the water and set back, uncovered, upon the range to dry off, strewing with salt at the same time, Send to table in a dish lined with a napkin, peeling as you eat them.

Pine-Apple Pie.

• 1 large pine-apple, pared and grated.
• [310]1 cup of sugar.
• ½ cup of butter.
• 5 beaten eggs.
• A little nutmeg.
• Some good pie-paste.

Cream, butter and sugar. Beat in the yolks for three minutes; add pine-apple and spice; lastly, the whites. Bake in open shells of paste. Eat cold.

Mulligatawny Soup.

Skim the stock set aside yesterday, and strain from the chicken into a soup-pot. Add a small onion and half a cupful of raw rice, and simmer forty minutes, or until the rice is tender. Wet up a tablespoonful of curry powder with the juice of a lemon, and stir in then a large spoonful of butter rolled in flour. Boil once and serve.

Chicken Patés.

Chop the meat of your cold chicken fine, and season well. Make a large cupful of rich drawn butter, and while it is on the fire, stir in two eggs boiled hard and minced very fine, also a little chopped parsley—then the chicken-meat. Let it almost boil. Have ready some paté pans of good paste, baked quickly to a light brown. Slip while hot from the pans, fill with the mixture, and set in the oven to heat. Arrange upon a dish and send up hot.

Sea-Kale.

Choose fresh, and pick over carefully; cook twenty-five minutes in boiling, salted water; drain and press well.[311] Chop fine; put back in the saucepan with a great lump of butter, pepper, salt, and the juice of half a lemon. Stir and beat, and heap upon slices of buttered crustless toast laid upon a hot dish.

Potatoes au Maître d’Hôtel.

Put a cup of milk into a saucepan, and when it heats, stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in flour, with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley; then about two cupfuls cold boiled potatoes, sliced rather thick. Heat scalding hot, take from the fire and add a pinch of grated lemon-peel with the juice of half a lemon. Serve in a deep dish.

Lettuce and Cress Salad.

Cut up lettuce and cresses, having washed both well, and pile in a salad bowl; then pour over them a dressing made by beating together four tablespoonfuls of vinegar, one teaspoonful each of salt and sugar, half as much mustard, and when these are well mixed, adding, gradually, two tablespoonfuls of best salad oil. Toss with a silver fork, and serve.

Queen of Puddings with Strawberry Méringue.

• 1½ cups of sugar.
• 5 eggs.
• 2 cups fine bread-crumbs.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• Lemon flavoring.
• 1 quart fresh milk.
• 1 pint fresh strawberries.

Cream the butter, and a cup of sugar. Beat in the whipped yolks; the crumbs, soaked in the milk; lastly, the seasoning. Fill a pudding-dish two-thirds full and bake until the custard is “set.” Draw to the mouth of the oven, and cover with the strawberries, rolled in sugar, then with a méringue made of the whipped whites and the half-cup of sugar. Bake until the méringue begins to color. Eat cold with cream.[312]

A Soup Maigre.

• 2 carrots.
• 2 onions.
• 1 large potato.
• 1 pint of green peas.
• ½ cup of raw rice.
• 1 tablespoonful of white sugar.
• 2 great spoonfuls of butter rolled in flour.
• Pepper and salt.
• 4 quarts of cold water.
• Dripping for frying.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.

Slice the vegetables, with the exception of the peas, and fry them in dripping until brown. Put with the herbs into a kettle and cover with the water. Cook slowly two hours, reducing the liquid one-third. Pulp the vegetables through a colander, return the soup to the fire with the rice and peas, and stew half an hour. Season, stir in the butter and flour with the sugar. Simmer five minutes and serve.

Fried Shad.

Clean, wash, and wipe a fine roe-shad. Split it and cut each side into four or five pieces, leaving out the head and tail, and cutting off the fins: Sprinkle with salt and pepper; roll in flour and fry to a fine brown in plenty of lard or dripping, turning as each piece browns. Drain well, and serve hot. Garnish with sliced cucumber, pickle and parsley, and pass sliced lemon with it. Send around mashed potatoes with this dish.[313]

Roe Croquettes.

• The roes of your shad, parboiled, cooled, and rubbed into a loose, granulated mass.
• One fourth as much mashed potato as you have roes.
• ½ cup of drawn butter with a raw egg beaten in it.
• Chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and ½ teaspoonful of anchovy paste for seasoning.
• Beaten egg and cracker-crumbs.
• Dripping.

Work roes, potato, drawn butter, and seasoning together; put over the fire in a saucepan and stir well until hot. When almost cold, make into short rolls, dip in raw egg, then in rolled cracker, and fry to a nice brown. Drain in a heated colander, and pile upon a hot dish.

Mashed Potatoes.

Proceed with this oft-repeated and ever-welcome dish as I have directed upon other pages.

Stewed Tomatoes with Onion and Bread.

Empty a can of tomatoes into a saucepan, and when hot, add a small onion, sliced, with pepper, salt, and a little sugar. Stew twenty minutes, and add a tablespoonful of butter and a good handful of bread-crumbs. Simmer five minutes more and pour out.

Cup Custards—Baked.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 5 eggs.
• 5 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Nutmeg and vanilla.
• Powdered sugar for méringue.

Scald the milk, and pour upon the beaten yolks and sugar. Add to this, when you have flavored it, the whites of two eggs. Fill small stone-ware cups and set in a dripping-pan of boiling water. Bake until “set,” cover with a méringue made of the whisked whites (reserved) and a little powdered sugar. Bake until they begin to be tinged. Eat cold from the cups.[314]

Corn-Starch Cake.

Please see “Common-Sense in the Household” Series No. 1, “General Receipts,” page 333.

Sweetbread Soup.

• 4 lbs. of lean, coarse veal.
• ½ lb. corned ham.
• 2 lbs. beef bones.
• 2 fine sweetbreads.
• Bunch of parsley.
• 1 onion.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of tapioca, soaked in cold water one hour.
• Pepper and salt.
• 5 quarts of cold water.

Cut the meat into strips; crack the bones; mince the onion and parsley, and put on with the water. Cook slowly four hours. Strain; set aside some bits of “ragged” veal and ham for your dish of rice. Put the rest into a crock; season highly and pour on half your soup stock—setting this by, as usual, in a cool place for Sunday. Season the remainder of the broth; boil and skim; put in the sweetbreads, and cook half an hour. Take them out and drop into cold water. Add the tapioca to the soup; simmer ten minutes; chop the sweetbreads, and put them back; boil one minute and serve.[315]

Beefsteaks.

Flatten your steaks with the side of an axe or hatchet, taking out the bones for your soup. Butter a gridiron—if you have no “broiler”—and cook the steaks quickly over a bright fire, turning often as they drip. Lay upon a hot dish; butter abundantly and season. Cover with another heated platter, and let them stand five minutes before serving.

Baked Rice.

Wash a cup of rice well. Take a cupful of broth from your soup-pot; strain through a thin cloth, and add twice as much boiling water, with a little salt. Put in the rice and cook slowly until it has taken up all the water and is soft. Pour in a large cup of hot milk in which have been mixed two eggs (raw), two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, and a tablespoonful of butter. Stir up well; add about half a cupful of minced veal and ham, taken from your soup; turn into a greased mould; cover and bake one hour in a dripping-pan of hot water. Dip in cold water, and invert upon a flat dish.

Green Peas.

See receipts for last Sunday week.

Roast Potatoes.

Roast in a moderate oven until soft. Cut a piece nearly off the top of each; thrust a thin-bladed knife into the heart, and slip in a bit of butter. Replace the skin and send up hot.

Omelette aux Confitures.

• 7 eggs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• ½ cup of milk (or cream).
• Grated peel of ½ lemon.
• ½ cup of marmalade or jam.

Beat yolks and whites apart and very stiff. Add sugar, lemon, and milk to the yolks; then, with a few rapid whirls of your “beater,” the whites. Put the marmalade in the[316] bottom of a neat bake-dish (buttered), pour on the omelette, and bake until it has puffed up high and begins to “crust” well. Serve at once, or it will fall. Eight minutes should suffice to cook it—at the outside.

Tea and Albert Biscuits

May be partaken of at the same time with the omelette, or afterwards.

Sago Soup.

• The stock made on yesterday.
• Little more than ½ cup of pearl sago.
• 3 eggs.
• 1 cup of milk.
• Pepper and salt.

Take the fat from your cold stock; pour off carefully from the sediment and strain. Heat to boiling. Wash the sago well; soak in warm water half an hour; put into the soup, and simmer twenty-five minutes. Meanwhile, heat the milk in another vessel, and pour upon the eggs. Heat this until it begins to thicken, pour into the tureen, season with a little salt and pepper, and turn in the boiling soup. It should be about as thick as hot custard when all the ingredients are in.

Stuffed Shoulder of Mutton.

Get your butcher to take out the bone. (It will help out to-morrow’s soup.) Fill the hole from which it was taken with a good force-meat of crumbs, minced pork,[317] sweet herbs, pepper, salt, and one raw egg. Sew up the edges of the skin to keep in the stuffing, and roast about fifteen minutes—not more—for each pound, basting often, at first with the boiling water you have poured upon it, at the last twice with butter. When done, brush with beaten egg; sift crumbs all over it; put into a stout stone-ware dish—or one of block-tin—surround with the potato-edging, and brown in a quick oven. Pour off the fat from the gravy, strain, thicken with browned flour, and serve in a boat.

Potato Edging.

Mash the potatoes very soft with milk and butter; beat in two eggs; return to the saucepan and stir until smoking hot all through. Let them get quite cool; then, mould by pressing firmly into a wet egg-cup, and turning out each form upon the mutton-dish. Arrange the little cones side by side until you have a barricade about the meat. Set in the oven and brown, glazing with butter just before you take the dish out. Serve a cone with each slice of mutton.

Boiled Asparagus.

See receipt on first Sunday in May.

Purée of Green Peas.

• Take for half a peck of peas—
• 1 small onion.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of cream.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter cut up in one tablespoonful of flour.
• 1 lump of white sugar.
• Pepper and salt.

Boil the empty pods twenty minutes in hot, salted water. Strain these out, and put in the peas with the sugar. Boil gently until they are very soft. Rub through a fine colander. Add a cupful of the water in which they were cooked, pepper and salt, and put over the fire. When very hot, stir in the floured butter, and, when this is mixed, the cream. Stir three minutes and pour out into a dish lined with strips of fried bread.[318]

Neapolitan Blanc-Mange.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 1 package Cooper’s gelatine, soaked two hours in a cup of cold water.
• ¾ of a cup of sugar.
• 1 great spoonful grated chocolate, wet in a little boiling water.
• Beaten yolk of an egg.
• 1 great spoonful currant jelly, or cranberry jam.
• Rose-water for flavoring.

Heat the milk to boiling, stir in the sugar, then the gelatine. Cook about five minutes, and strain through thin muslin. Divide the blanc-mange into four equal portions. Beat the chocolate well into one; heat for one minute, and put by in a cup or bowl. Do the same with the egg to a second, and the currant jelly for the third. This last must be heated carefully, and a little sugar added, that the milk may not curdle. Leave the fourth white, and flavor with rose-water. When cold and a little stiff, pour into a wet mould—the white first; when this is so firm as to bear the weight of the next without mixing, the pink; then, the yellow; lastly, the brown. Do this on Saturday. On Sunday dip the mould in warm water, work the surface free with your fingers, and turn out upon a flat dish. Eat with cream and sugar, or brandied fruit.

Clam Soup.

Early in the morning crack your mutton-bone, and put on in a quart of cold water, at the back of the range. When[319] little more than a large cupful of liquor remains, take it off and strain into a bowl to cool. When perfectly cold take off the fat, put in a quart of clam liquor and the hard parts of fifty clams. Season with a teaspoonful of minced onion, as much chopped parsley, a pinch of mace, pepper and salt to taste, and cook, covered, half an hour after the boil begins. Heat in another vessel two cups of milk; when hot, stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter, rolled in a heaping tablespoonful of flour, and set in boiling water to keep hot, after it has boiled two minutes. Strain the soup back into the pot, put in the soft parts of the clams—the only digestible portions—and simmer five minutes. Pour the thickened milk into the tureen, stir in the soup, and serve.

This is a delightful and nutritious soup, and since you are to have cold meat for dinner, you need not grudge the care of preparing it, even on Job’s birthday.

Cold Mutton.

Your stuffed shoulder will be nearly as nice cold as hot. Garnish it tastefully with curled parsley and bleached lettuce-leaves.

Brussels Sprouts.

Cook in boiling, salted water twenty-five minutes; drain well; add a liberal lump of butter, with pepper and salt to taste, and put into a deep dish.

Raw Tomatoes.

Peel with a sharp knife; slice, and lay in a salad-bowl. Season with a dressing of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper in the proportions given on last Thursday.

Stewed Potatoes.

Boil whole until a fork will pierce them. Peel quickly; crack, without breaking, each, by pressing it, and drop into a saucepan containing a large cup of milk, almost on the boil. When all the potatoes are in, add two tablespoonfuls of butter, with salt and pepper. Cover and heat—below the boiling point—until the potatoes begin to crumble. Pour into a deep dish.[320]

Oranges and Bananas.

Serve whole, upon china plates, with a knife for each.

Coffee and Cake.

You need not be ashamed of “cold meat on Monday,” even should John have “picked up” his unexpected friend on the street, when your bright coffee-urn, with the fragrant contents, flanked by a basket of sliced home-made cake, comes in as a reserved force.

Brown Beef Soup.

• 3 lbs. of coarse, lean beef, cut into strips.
• 3 onions—small ones.
• 3 quarts of cold water.
• 1 teaspoonful mixed allspice and mace.
• Bunch of sweet herbs chopped.
• 1 teaspoonful Colgate’s essence of celery.
• Glass of brown sherry.
• Dripping.
• Toasted bread.

Fry the sliced onion brown in good dripping; then the beef, quickly. Put into a soup-pot, cover with the water; put on a tight lid, and stew four hours. Strain and press hard. Let the soup cool to throw up the fat. Skim, and return to the pot, with the salt, pepper, herbs, and spice. Simmer fifteen minutes; add wine and celery, and pour into a tureen upon dice of crisp, buttered toast.[321]

Veal Cutlets and Ham.

• 2 lbs. veal cutlets without bone.
• 1½ lbs. of ham.
• Grated lemon-peel.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 raw, beaten egg.
• Rolled cracker.
• Dripping or lard.

Boil the slices of ham ten minutes; let them get cold, and cut of the same size and shape as the strips of veal, viz., about three inches long by one and a half wide. Salt and pepper the veal; sprinkle each cutlet with a pinch of lemon-peel; roll in egg, then cracker, and fry to a good brown. Fry the ham in its own fat in another pan, and lay upon a hot dish, alternately with the cutlets.

String-Beans.

If fresh, top and tail, and, with a sharp knife, take off the strings on both sides. Cut into short pieces, and cook tender in boiling water, and a little salt. Drain well, heap upon a hot dish; butter freely, and season to taste.

Chopped Potatoes.

Chop cold boiled potatoes rather coarsely. Have ready a great spoonful of butter in a saucepan, with a little grated lemon-peel, pepper and salt. Stir in the potatoes until very hot, but do not let them brown. Serve in a deep dish, after draining.

Lettuce.

Pick out and pull apart the hearts and best blanched leaves. Pour over it a dressing such as was directed on last Thursday.

Graham Hasty Pudding.

• 2 eggs.
• 1 quart of milk.
• 2 even cups of Graham flour.
• ½ teaspoonful of salt.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.

[322]

Heat half the milk in a greased saucepan or farina-kettle. Wet the flour with the rest, and beat very light with the butter—melted—the eggs and salt. Stir this into the hot milk—or, better still—pour the milk upon it. When thoroughly mixed, return to the fire, and stir fifteen minutes, surrounded by boiling water at its highest bubble. Take from the range, leave in the water five minutes; stir up again, and serve in a deep, uncovered dish. Eat with butter, sugar, and nutmeg.

Green Asparagus Soup.

• 3 lbs. knuckle of veal.
• ½ lb. streaked salt pork.
• 3 bunches of asparagus.
• 4 quarts of water.
• 1 pint of spinach leaves.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 small onion, sliced.
• Butter and sugar.

Put the veal, pork, onion, and the hard parts of the asparagus-stalks—all cut up fine—on in the water, and boil gently four hours. Meanwhile cook the spinach tender in a little water; chop and squeeze it through double tarlatan back into the cupful of water in which it was boiled. Add a lump of sugar to the green liquid. Strain the soup; season, boil once, and skim; put in the green heads of the asparagus (kept until now in cold water) and boil slowly twenty minutes. Stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter, rolled in flour, and when this has boiled[323] a minute, the green water. Simmer five minutes more, and pour out. Dip up from the bottom with each ladleful in helping the soup.

Stewed Chicken.

Cut into joints, leaving none of the pieces large. Put the scrags, feet (having scalded off the skin), and giblets into two cupfuls of water, and stew until the meat is in rags. Put a quarter of a pound of pork, cut as fine as shavings, in the bottom of a saucepan; lay on this a teaspoonful of minced onion, and then the uncooked chicken. Strain, and partly cool the gravy, which should have boiled down to one cupful—setting by the giblets. Pour this over the chicken, pepper and salt; put on a tight top, and cook very slowly one hour. Then increase the heat, but still do not let it boil hard, for half an hour longer. Open the saucepan at the end of the first hour to change the upper pieces to lower places—and again when the half hour is up, to see if they are all tender. If not, cover and cook until they are. Take out the chicken, lay in order upon a hot-water dish, and add to the gravy the giblets, minced fine, and a tablespoonful of butter rubbed into one of flour. Boil one minute, and pour upon a half cup of milk in which have been beaten two eggs. Set over the fire, and stir one minute, but do not let the gravy boil. Pour upon the chicken.

Scalloped Tomatoes.

If raw tomatoes are dear still, drain off most of the liquor from a can of the vegetable. Cover the bottom of a pie-dish with bread-crumbs, lay in the tomatoes, well seasoned with butter, pepper, salt, and sugar; cover thickly with fine, dry crumbs; put dots of butter, with pepper and salt, over all, and bake, covered, half an hour—then, brown quickly.

Corn Fritters.

Drain the liquor from a can of corn, and chop the grains in a chopping-tray. Beat into this paste three eggs, one cup of milk, a heaping tablespoonful of sugar,[324] and as much warmed butter, with two tablespoonfuls of prepared flour. Beat thoroughly, season with pepper and salt, and fry, by the spoonful, upon a greased griddle.

Marmalade Roll.

• 1 quart prepared flour—Hecker’s always, when you can get it.
• 1 tablespoonful of lard and two of butter.
• 1 pint of milk, or enough for soft dough.
• 1 cup of sweet marmalade.

Rub the lard into the flour; wet into a soft paste with the milk, and roll out very thin. Baste thickly with the butter, sprinkle with flour lightly, and roll up in close folds. Lay upon ice, or in a very cold place, one hour. Roll out into a square sheet, a quarter of an inch thick, spread with the marmalade, leaving a narrow margin all around, and roll up neatly. Lay in a buttered baking-pan, the joined edge downward, and bake three-quarters of an hour. Wash over with white of egg, beaten with a little sugar, just before you take it up. Eat hot with a good sauce.

Sheep’s Head Soup.

• 1 sheep’s head, dressed with the skin on.
• 2 onions.
• 2 carrots.
• Bunch of parsley.
• Crumbs and egg for force-meat balls.
• [325]1 tablespoonful of corn-starch.
• Pepper and salt.
• Dripping.
• 4 quarts of cold water.

You will probably have to coax your butcher to dress the head properly, but the head itself he will be willing to give you, as almost worthless in his eyes. Be sure it is quite clean, even to the mouth. Soak it in tepid water, one hour—then put into a pot with the vegetables, sliced, the chopped herbs and the cold water. Cook gently four hours. Strain off the soup, rubbing the vegetables through the sieve; let it get almost cool, that you may remove the fat from the top, and put back over the fire with pepper and salt. Chop the brains and mix them into a paste with an equal quantity of crumbs; also pepper, salt, and raw egg, with enough flour to enable you to roll into little balls. Fry these to a nice brown, drain in a colander, and put into your tureen. Skim the boiling soup and stir in the corn-starch wet with half a cup of milk, then the tongue, skinned and cut into dice. Boil once and pour into the tureen.

Roast Beef.

Put into your dripping-pan; pour a cupful of boiling water over it, and roast, basting often, allowing a quarter of an hour to the pound. Towards the last, pepper and salt, dredge with flour, and baste once well with butter. If you send made gravy to the table, take off all the “top-grease,” thicken the brown juice in the dripping-pan with browned flour, boil up, and pour out into a boat.

Fried Potatoes.

Cut peeled potatoes into long strips, not too thin. Lay in cold water one hour, dry between two towels, and fry in boiling fat, a little salt, to a light brown. Drain and dish upon a napkin.

Spinach upon Toast.

Wash well. Cook twenty minutes in boiling, salted water. Drain and chop very fine. Put a tablespoonful[326] of butter into a saucepan with a teaspoonful of sugar, a pinch of nutmeg, and pepper and salt. Stir in the spinach, and beat smooth while it heats. At the last add a tablespoonful of cream, or two of milk. Pour upon crustless slices of buttered toast laid upon a flat dish.

Asparagus with Eggs.

Boil a bunch of asparagus twenty minutes; cut off the tender tops and lay in a deep pie-plate, buttering, salting, and peppering well. Beat four eggs just enough to break up the yolks, add a tablespoonful of melted butter, with pepper and salt, and pour upon the asparagus. Bake eight minutes in a quick oven, and serve immediately.

Corn-Starch Blanc-Mange with Preserves.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch wet in cold water.
• 3 beaten eggs.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• Grated peel of half a lemon.
• 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Scald the milk in a farina-kettle; stir in corn-starch, lemon, and salt, and cook five minutes. Pour this upon the beaten eggs and sugar, return to the fire and stir two minutes more. Pour into a wet mould and set in a cold place for four or five hours. Turn out upon a broad glass dish, and pour rich, sweet preserves about the base.

In helping it out, put a spoonful of preserve upon each share of blanc-mange.[327]