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.
Second Week. Friday.
——
Friars’ Soup.
Oyster Pie. Calf’s Liver à l’Anglaise.
Apple Sauce. Stewed Parsnips.
Potatoes au gratin. Picklette.
——
Chocolate Custard.
——
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 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 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.
Second Week. Saturday.
——
Macaroni Soup.
Baked Ham. Cheese Fondu.
Stewed Potatoes. Spinach with Eggs.
——
Seymour Pudding.
——
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 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 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.
Third Week. Sunday.
——
Beef and Barley Soup.
Steamed Turkey. Naples Rice Pudding.
Cranberry Sauce. Boiled Sweet Potatoes.
——
Pumpkin Pie.
——
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.
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.
Third Week. Monday.
——
Giblet Soup.
Turkey and Ham. Corn Puddings.
Peach Pickles. Baked Potatoes.
——
Farina Custard.
——
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.
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.
Third Week. Tuesday.
——
Plain Calf’s Head Soup.
Boiled Mutton. Minced Cabbage.
String-Beans. Beet-root Salad.
——
Corn Meal Puffs.
——
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 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.
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.
Third Week. Wednesday.
——
Marie’s Soup.
——
Ragoût of Calf’s Head and Mushrooms. Mashed Turnips.
Creamed Potatoes. Tomato Soy.
——
Sponge-cake Pudding.
Nuts and Raisins.
——
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.
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. 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.
NUTS AND RAISINS.
Crack the nuts, and select for table use fair bunches of plump, fresh
raisins.
Third Week. Thursday.
——
Potage au Riz.
English Pork Pie. Mock Stewed Oysters.
Potato Balls. Mixed Pickles.
——
Lemon Jelly and Light Cake.
——
POTAGE AU RIZ,