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 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, 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.
First Week. Saturday.
——
Macaroni Soup.
Ham and Eggs. Salmi of Duck.
Fried Parsnips. Stewed Salsify.
Sweet Potatoes—in Jackets.
——
Rosie’s Rice Custard.
——
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, 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.
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.
Second Week. Sunday.
——
Soupe au Julienne.
Roast Turkey. Cranberry Sauce.
Mashed Potatoes, Browned. Stewed Corn.
Celery.
——
Tropical Snow.
Light Cakes and Coffee.
——
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 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 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.
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.
Second Week. Monday.
——
Next Day’s Soup.
Turkey Scallop. Panned Oysters.
Roast Potatoes. Tomato Sauce.
——
Floating Island.
Tea.
——
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 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 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.
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.
Second Week. Tuesday.
——
Mutton Soup with Tapioca.
Salmon Pudding. Beefsteak.
Potatoes à la Lyonnaise. Macaroni with Cheese.
——
Susie’s Bread Pudding.
——
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
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 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.
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.
Second Week. Wednesday.
——
Bean Soup.
Fillet of Veal, Stuffed. Baked Corn.
Potato Cakes. Canned String-Beans.
——
Baked Apple Dumplings.
Brandy Sauce.
——
BEAN SOUP.