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.
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 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.
FEBRUARY.
First Week. Sunday.
——
Clear Vermicelli Soup.
Stewed Ducks. Fried Apples and Bacon.
Mashed Carrots. Potatoes à la Reine.
Potato Pie.
——
Oranges and Bananas.
——
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.
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.
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.
First Week. Monday.
——
Blanche’s Soup.
Duck Paté. Succotash.
Sweet Potatoes, Boiled. Crab-apple Jelly.
——
Cup Custard, Boiled.
Cut or Fancy Cake.
——
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 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.
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.
First Week. Tuesday.
——
Family Soup.
Rolled Beef. Baked Tomatoes.
Browned Potatoes Whole. Apple Sauce.
——
Unity Pudding.
Cream Sauce.
——
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.
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.
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.
First Week. Wednesday.
——
Split Pea Soup.
Fricasseed Chicken, Brown. Ladies’ Cabbage.
Baked Potatoes. Stewed Salsify.
——
Soft Gingerbread.
Café au Lait.
——
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. 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.
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.
First week. Thursday.
——
Dundee Broth.
Baked Calf’s Head. French Beans and Fried Brains.
Stewed Tomatoes. Potatoes in cases.
——
Snowballs.
Sweet Cream.
——
DUNDEE BROTH.
3 lbs. of mutton cut into strips.
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.
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 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.
First Week. Friday.
——
Calf’s Feet Soup.
Salt Mackerel with Cream Sauce. Larded Sweetbreads, Stewed.
Mashed Potatoes. Stewed Celery.
——
Omelette Soufflé.
Tea and Toasted Crackers.
——
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.
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.