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; 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 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.
Second Week. Thursday.
——
Veal and Sago Soup.
Jugged Rabbit. Scalloped Potatoes.
Sweet Potatoes, Fried. Minced Celery with Egg Dressing.
——
Macaroni and Almond Pudding.
——
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.
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.
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.
Second Week. Friday.
——
Fish Chowder.
Fricasseed Chicken, White. Potatoes à l’Italienne.
Tomatoes Stewed with Onion. Cheese Fondu.
——
Sponge Gingerbread.
Chocolate.
——
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.
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 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, 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.
Second Week. Saturday.
——
Clear Gravy Soup.
Oyster Salad. Calf’s Liver à la Mode.
Salsify Fritters. Potatoes à la Duchesse.
——
Corn-meal Fruit Pudding.
——
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, 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.
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.
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.
Third Week. Sunday.
——
Tomato Soup.
Roast Beef, with Yorkshire Pudding.
Macaroni al Napolitano.
Potatoes au naturel. French Beans, Sauté.
Apple Sauce. Made Mustard.
——
Narcissus Blanc-mange.
Coffee.
——
TOMATO SOUP.
Stew one can of tomatoes half an hour; strain and rub through a
colander into the soup left from yesterday. 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 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, 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.
Third Week. Monday.
——
Variety Soup.
Beef Pudding. Scored Potatoes.
Canned Peas. Mixed Pickles.
——
Apple Méringue.
Crackers and Cheese.
——
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.