little trouble, by the help of the liquor in which your mutton was
boiled on Tuesday. Wash and soak a cup of rice in cold water. At the
end of half an hour, add it, with the water in which it has soaked, to
the mutton-broth, from which you must first take the fat. Boil very
slowly two hours, and should the water sink below the original level
more than an inch, replenish with boiling. In another saucepan heat a
cup of milk, thickened with a tablespoonful of rice-flour. Season the
mutton-broth with pepper and parsley—it will hardly need salt. (Boil
up and skim, before the parsley goes in.) Pour the hot milk over two
beaten eggs, stir in well; add to the soup in the kettle, and take
instantly from the fire.
ENGLISH PORK PIE.
3 lbs. of _lean_ fresh pork, cut into strips as long as your finger.
6 large juicy apples.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Pepper, salt, and mace to taste.
1 cup of sweet cider.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Good pie-paste for an upper crust, made according to receipt given
for Thursday of second week in this month.
Put a layer of pork within a pudding-dish; season with pepper, salt,
and nutmeg, or mace. Next a layer of sliced apples, strewed with sugar
and bits of butter. Go on in this order until you are ready for the
crust, having the last layer of apples. Pour in the cider, cover with
a thick crust of good pastry, ornamented around the edge; make a slit
in the middle, and bake in a moderate oven one hour and a half. Should
the crust threaten to brown too fast, cover with paper. When nicely
browned, brush over with butter and close the oven door for a moment;
then wash well with white of egg. Eat hot. You will find it very good,
odd as the receipt may seem.
MOCK STEWED OYSTERS.
Scrape and drop into cold water a bunch of salsify, or oyster-plant.
Cut into short pieces and stew tender in boiling water, a little
salted. Drain off nearly all the water, and pour into the saucepan a
cup of cold milk. When again hot, add a heaping tablespoonful of butter
and a handful of fine cracker-dust, with pepper and salt. Stir very
slowly for five minutes, and pour out. It should be about as thick as
oyster soup.
POTATO BALLS.
Mash potatoes with a little butter and salt, and let them get cold.
Then work in a beaten egg. Make into balls about twice the size
of a walnut, with floured hands, roll them well in flour, and fry
yellow-brown in good dripping or lard. Drain in a colander, and pile
upon a flat dish.
LEMON JELLY AND LIGHT CAKE.
5 lemons—juice of all and grated peel of two.
2 large cups of sugar.
1 package of Coxe’s gelatine, soaked in two cups of cold water.
2 glasses pale sherry.
1 pint of boiling water.
Stir sugar, lemon-juice, peel, and soaked gelatine together, and leave,
covered, for an hour. Then pour over them the boiling water; stir
until the gelatine is dissolved; strain through a flannel bag, without
pressing. Add the wine, and let all drip, untouched, through double
flannel. Pour into a wet mould. In cold weather, or if set on ice, it
will be ready for use in six hours. Pass a basket of light cake with it.
Third Week. Friday.
——
Lobster Bisque.
Stewed Chicken. Rice Croquettes.
Crab-apple Jelly. Winter Squash.
——
Apple Snow.
Tea and Macaroons.
——
LOBSTER BISQUE.
1 can of lobster.
1 quart of milk.
1 quart of cold water.
3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
½ cup of pounded cracker.
1 teaspoonful of salt.
A little cayenne pepper.
Free the lobster from all bits of shell, and cut up small, tearing as
little as may be. Put the water into a saucepan, with the salt and
pepper. When boiling, stir in the lobster and stew half an hour. Heat
the milk in another vessel, and, when scalding, stir in the cracker and
set in hot water for ten minutes. The lobster having cooked for thirty
minutes, add the butter, and simmer five minutes longer. Then pour in
the milk; mix all up well; set for five minutes in hot water, and serve
in a tureen. Pass sliced lemon with it.
This _bisque_ is delicious.
STEWED CHICKEN.
Prepare a fine young fowl as for roasting, with the exception of the
dressing, which should be left out. Early in the day (if you have no
gravy already made) put on the feet and giblets to stew in two cups
of cold water, with a little minced onion. When the giblets are very
tender, and the liquid has boiled down to one cupful, strain it and set
aside the giblets to cool. Chop a quarter of a pound of pork, put it
in the bottom of a pot, lay the chicken upon it; pour the gravy over
it; cover _tightly_ and set where it will heat steadily, but not reach
the boil under an hour. Increase the heat, not allowing the steam to
escape, for an hour longer, but it should not stew fast at any time.
By this time the fowl should be thoroughly done. Remove carefully to a
hot dish; season the gravy, adding a little hot water if needful, and
strain out the pork. Add the giblets, chopped fine, stew fast for one
minute, pour over the chicken, and it is ready for the table.
RICE CROQUETTES.
2 cups of cold boiled rice.
1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
2 eggs, well beaten.
1 tablespoonful sugar.
A little flour.
Salt to taste.
Work butter and sugar to a cream, and these into the rice. Salt, and
stir up with the eggs to a smooth paste. Make into oval balls or rolls,
with well-floured hands. Roll in flour, and fry, a few at a time, in
sweet lard. Drain well and eat hot.
WINTER SQUASH.
Pare, take out the seeds, cut into strips, and lay in cold water, one
hour. Cook in boiling water, a little salt, until very soft. Drain off
every drop of water, and mash with a potato beetle, stirring in a large
spoonful of butter, and seasoning with pepper and salt. Mound up in a
vegetable dish and serve hot.
APPLE SNOW.
6 fine pippins (raw).
2 cups of milk.
4 eggs.
1 cup of powdered sugar.
Make a custard by stirring into the hot milk half the sugar, the yolks
of all the eggs, and the white of one, and cooking, stirring constantly
until it thickens. Let this cool while you whip the whites to a stiff
_méringue_ with the rest of the sugar. Peel the apples, and grate
directly into the _méringue_, stirring in at once that the coating
of egg may prevent them from changing color. Put the cold custard in
the bottom of a glass dish, and heap the snow upon it. Eat soon after
making it.
TEA AND MACAROONS.
Pass after dinner in the dining-room, or send into the parlor.
Third Week. Saturday.
——
Ayrshire Soup.
Mutton Chops and Tomato Purée. Potato Strips.
Sweet Pickles. Boiled Beans.
——
Macaroni Pudding.
——
AYRSHIRE SOUP.
4 lbs. of lean beef.
2 lbs. of marrow-bones well cracked.
2 onions.
2 turnips.
3 stalks of celery.
Bunch of sweet herbs.
6 large potatoes.
½ cup of oatmeal.
Pepper and salt.
6 quarts of cold water.
Chop the vegetables and herbs; cut the meat fine, and break up the
bones. Put the oatmeal to soak in a pint of water. Slice the potatoes,
and parboil them in hot water for ten minutes. Add them then to the
other vegetables, and put them all, with the meat and bones, into a
soup-pot, with the water. Stew for four hours, until the liquor in the
pot has fallen one-third. Strain through a colander, set aside two
quarts of the stock until to-morrow, after seasoning it all, and return
the rest to the fire. Boil up and skim; add the oatmeal, and stew,
covered, forty minutes, stirring often, lest it should burn.
MUTTON CHOPS AND TOMATO PURÉE.
Broil the chops, after trimming them neatly; rub, as soon as they leave
the gridiron, with butter on both sides; pepper and salt, and cover,
for a few minutes, in a hot water dish, that they may take up the
seasoning.
Make the _purée_ by stewing a can of tomatoes until almost dry, then
seasoning, and stirring in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour.
Simmer three minutes, arrange the chops on their sides, overlapping
each other, inside of the curve of a flat dish, and pour the _purée_
within their enclosure.
POTATO STRIPS.
Pare and cut the potatoes in long strips, the length of the potato, and
not more than the sixteenth of an inch thick. Lay in ice-water for one
hour; dry by laying on one clean towel and pressing another upon it,
and fry, not too many at once, in _hot_ lard, a little salt. Take out
so soon as they are browned lightly, toss in a hot colander, and serve
in a deep dish lined with a napkin.
BOILED BEANS.
Soak all night, and in the morning change the cold water for lukewarm.
Leave in this two hours; drain it off and put them on to boil in cold
water, with a piece of fat salt pork two inches square. Cook slowly
until soft. Take out the pork, drain the beans well, season with
pepper, and dish.
MACARONI PUDDING.
½ lb. of macaroni broken into inch lengths.
2 cups of boiling water.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
1 large cup of milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Grated peel of half a lemon.
A little cinnamon and salt.
Boil the macaroni in the water until it is tender, and has soaked up
the liquid. It must be cooked in a farina-kettle. Add the butter and
salt. Cover for five minutes without cooking. Put in the rest of the
ingredients. Simmer, after the boil begins, ten minutes longer, before
serving in a deep dish. Be careful, in stirring, not to break the
macaroni. Eat with butter and powdered sugar, or cream and sugar.
Fourth Week. Sunday.
——
Potato Soup.
Roast Beef. Baked Hominy.
Sweet Potatoes, baked. Cabbage Salad.
——
Arrow-Root Pudding, Cold.
Coffee.
——
POTATO SOUP.
3 pints of good stock.
1 quart of cold water.
12 mealy potatoes.
1 onion.
½ cup of rice.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Seasoning to taste.
Slice the potatoes, cover with boiling water, and cook ten minutes.
Throw away this water, and add the quart of cold, slightly salted, and
the onion, to the potatoes. Boil to pieces, and pass, with the water
in which they were boiled, through a colander into the stock. Heat all
together, and cook gently half an hour, before adding the rice, which
should have been boiled soft in a very little water. When the rice is
nearly dry, stir in the butter, put into the soup, and simmer five
minutes.
ROAST BEEF.
A rib-roast is best for family use. Make your butcher saw off about
half of the bone, after cutting the ends of the ribs clear of the
meat; then fold the flap neatly around to the thick part, and secure
with skewers. The “trimmings” are yours—a fact housekeepers often fail
to insist upon. The meat is weighed before you buy it. Take all that
you pay for—and you will seldom be at a loss for a “base” for soup or
gravy. Between butchers and cooks, there is enough wasted in American
kitchens to supply a National Soup-house that might feed all the poor
in the land.
Put your beef in the dripping-pan; pour a cup of boiling water over it,
and roast ten minutes for every pound. Bake as soon as the juices begin
to flow—the oftener in reason the better. If your meat has much fat
on top, cover it—the fat—with a paste of flour and water. When nearly
done, remove this, dredge the beef with flour, baste well with gravy,
strew salt over the top, and serve. Pour the fat off from the gravy;
return to the fire, thicken with browned gravy, season, and boil up
once.
SWEET POTATOES—BAKED.
Parboil, take off the skins, and, half an hour before you take up your
beef, lay the potatoes in the dripping-pan to brown, basting them with
the meat. They should be of a fine brown. Drain off the grease, and lay
about the beef when dished.
BAKED HOMINY.
1 cupful of cold boiled hominy (small grained).
2 cups of milk.
1 large teaspoonful of butter.
The same of sugar.
A little salt.
2 eggs.
Work the melted butter well into the hominy, mashing all lumps. Then
come the beaten yolks; next, sugar and salt; then, gradually, the milk;
lastly the whites. Beat until perfectly smooth, and bake in a greased
pudding-dish until delicately browned. Serve in the bake-dish.
CABBAGE SALAD.
Chop a firm white cabbage with a sharp knife. A dull one bruises
it. Make a dressing of two tablespoonfuls of oil; six of vinegar; a
teaspoonful each of salt and sugar; half as much each of made mustard
and pepper. Work all in well, the vinegar going in last, and then beat
in a raw egg, whipped light. Pour over the salad, toss up with a fork,
and serve in a glass dish.
ARROW-ROOT PUDDING—(COLD).
3 even tablespoonfuls of arrow-root. Get the Bermuda if you can, or
you may require more.
3 cups of fresh milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
¼ lb. of crystallized peaches, chopped fine.
Heat the milk to scalding, and stir in the arrow-root wet up with cold
milk. Stir ten minutes, and add sugar and butter. Stir five minutes
more, and pour out. When nearly cold, beat in the fruit. Pour into a
wet mould. Make on Saturday, and on Sunday, turn out upon a dish, and
eat with sugar and cream. It is very good without the fruit, but needs
more sugar in making.
COFFEE
Should be served last of all.
Fourth Week. Monday.
——
Bread Soup.
Cannelon of Beef. Pork and Beans.
Chow-chow. Potato Stew.
——
Peach Batter Pudding.
——
BREAD SOUP.
A few raw beef-bones and trimmings, spoken of yesterday. Bones, bits of
skin, gristle, etc., left from Sunday’s roast when you have cut off the
meat for the _cannelon_.
1 pint of stock.
1 onion.
2 stalks of celery.
Bunch of sweet herbs.
4 quarts of cold water.
1 lb. stale bread-crusts, the drier the better, provided they are
not mouldy or sour.
Salt and pepper.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Crack the bones, chop meat and vegetables; put on in the water, and
boil slowly down to two quarts. Strain the liquor; let it cool; take
off all the fat, season, and return to the pot with the stock. Boil up
and skim; put in the crusts; stew, covered, half an hour. Take it from
the range and _beat_ in the butter, taking out indissoluble bits. Then
simmer, in a vessel set within another of boiling water, half an hour.
As you will see, by a careful perusal of these directions, the
preparation of this soup requires little actual expenditure of time. I
beg, therefore, that you will “gather up the fragments” from larder and
bread-box, and give your family a hot, nourishing, “comforting” dish of
porridge, if it _is_ wash-day.
CANNELON OF BEEF.
Cut the meat from your cold roast, and chop it fine. Season well,
and beat into it the yolks of three eggs and the white of one. Add
one-third as much cold mashed potato as you have meat, wet up with
gravy, and make, with floured hands, into a long roll—three times as
long as it is broad. It should be just soft enough to handle. Dredge
thickly with flour, and lay in a greased baking-pan. Invert another
one over it, and bake until it is hissing hot on top and sides, when
uncover, and brown quickly. Brush over the outside with white of egg;
dredge again with flour, shut the oven-door to brown this, glaze again
with egg, and shut up the oven for one minute. Carefully, with the aid
of a cake-turner, slip the _cannelon_ to a hot dish and serve.
CHOW-CHOW
Should go around with the _cannelon_.
POTATO STEW.
Pare and cut the potatoes into dice. Stew in hot water, with a slice of
fat salt pork, cut very small, half a minced onion and a little chopped
parsley, until the pork is dissolved and the potatoes very tender.
Pepper, and if necessary, salt, and pour into a hot, deep dish. The
“stew” should not be too liquid, nor yet stiff.
PORK AND BEANS.
This is a good, nourishing dish for Monday, and easily managed, if
you have boiled the beans on Saturday. Fill a bake-dish nearly full
of them, and put in the middle a piece of fat salt pork, about three
inches wide, which you have parboiled in your soup. It will improve
the taste of the “stock” and be itself the better for the temporary
association. Pour in a little hot water to keep the beans from burning.
Pepper and bake, covered, for half an hour. Remove the cover and brown.
PEACH BATTER PUDDING.
Open a can of peaches—whole ones, if you have them—and pour into the
bottom of a buttered pudding-dish before you make your batter. There
should be just syrup enough to half cover the fruit.
For batter, take 1 quart of milk.
10 tablespoonfuls of _prepared_ flour.
5 eggs, beaten light.
1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
1 saltspoonful of salt.
Beat the yolks light, add the milk and salt, and pour slowly into a
hole made in the middle of the flour. Finally, stir in the whites
lightly, but not until you have beaten the batter smooth. Pour over the
peaches and bake quickly. You can put it in the oven after the beans
are done, setting the latter aside to keep warm. If you have not time
to make sauce, eat with butter and sugar. Do not let the pudding stand
after drawing from the oven, or it will fall.
Fourth Week. Tuesday.
——
Cream Soup.
Roast Breast of Veal. Stewed Tomatoes.
Plain Boiled Potatoes. Celery.
——
Essex Pudding with Jelly Sauce.
——
CREAM SOUP.
3 lbs. lean veal.
3 beaten eggs.
2 blades of mace.
1 onion.
2 quarts of water.
2 cups of milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of rice flour (or corn-starch).
Pepper and salt.
Chop the meat and onion fine, cover with the water, and stew slowly
three hours. Strain, cool and skim. Season and set back on the fire.
Boil up and skim carefully; add the milk, and when hot, the corn-starch
wet with cold water. As it thickens, take out a cupful, pour upon the
eggs; stir into the soup, and take at once from the fire.
ROAST BREAST OF VEAL.
Make incisions between the ribs and the meat, and stuff with a
force-meat of dry bread-crumbs, chopped pork or ham, pepper, sweet
marjoram, and one beaten egg. Save a little to thicken the gravy. Roast
slowly, basting often and copiously. Dredge at the last with flour, and
baste well, when this has colored, with butter.
STEWED TOMATOES.
Stew a can of tomatoes twenty-five minutes; season with pepper, salt,
a little sugar, and a tablespoonful of butter. Cook five minutes and
serve.
PLAIN BOILED POTATOES.
Pare _very_ thin, and put on (after having lain half an hour in cold
water) in boiling water. Cook fast until a fork will go easily into the
largest; drain off every drop of water, and throw in salt. Set back,
uncovered, on the side of the range, or where they will dry quickly,
yet not scorch. Serve in an uncovered dish.
CELERY.
Wash, scrape, trim off the green tops, and throw aside for seasoning
soups, vinegar, etc., the rank green stalks. Lay the better parts
in cold water until wanted for the table. Put into a tall glass or
celery-stand.
ESSEX PUDDING.
2 cups of fine bread-crumbs.
2 tablespoonfuls of sago, soaked three hours in a little water.
¾ of a cup of powdered suet.
5 eggs, beaten light.
1 cup of milk.
1 cup of sugar.
1 tablespoonful flour, wet in cold milk.
½ lb. of whole raisins, “plumped” by laying them in _boiling_ water
for two minutes.
A little salt.
Cook the sago in enough water to cover it until tender and nearly dry.
Heat the milk and pour upon the beaten eggs and sugar, add the crumbs,
beating into a good batter in a bowl; then suet, flour, sago, and salt.
Butter a mould _thickly_ and lay the raisins, dredged with flour, in
the bottom and sides, in whatever designs you fancy. Fill the mould
with the batter—well beaten up at the last—putting it in by cautious
spoonfuls not to dislodge the raisins, which should be imbedded in the
butter. Put on the lid of the pudding mould, and boil one hour, never
relaxing the heat. Dip in cold water and turn out upon a flat dish. Eat
with jelly sauce.
JELLY SAUCE.
½ cup of currant jelly.
2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
1 lemon—juice and half the grated peel.
½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
1 tablespoonful of powdered sugar.
1 glass of wine.
1 cup of boiling water.
1 teaspoonful flour.
Beat the hot water gradually into the jelly, and add the butter, lemon,
and nutmeg. Warm almost to a boil, put in the sugar, then the flour wet
up with cold water. Boil up once sharply; add the wine, and take from
the fire. Set, closely covered, in a vessel of hot water until wanted.
Stir well before pouring it out.
Fourth Week. Wednesday.
——
Julienne Soup.
Veal and Ham Pie. Halibut Steaks, Broiled.
Scalloped Potatoes. Stewed Cauliflower.
——
Pancakes with Preserves.
——
JULIENNE SOUP.
2 lbs. of mutton, and a like quantity of veal, with some beef-bones.
2 carrots.
2 turnips.
Half a cabbage.
3 onions.
3 stalks of _blanched_ celery.
½ can of tomatoes.
5 quarts of cold water.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
2 teaspoonfuls of sugar.
Bunch of sweet herbs.
Pepper and salt.
Cut the meat small, crack the bones, and put on to cook in five quarts
of water with the herbs. While it simmers, prepare the vegetables, with
the exception of the cabbage and tomatoes, by cleaning, paring, and
cutting them into narrow strips about two inches long, and as nearly as
possible of uniform size. Lay them in cold water for one hour. Drain
very dry, and put them into a frying-pan in which you have melted, but
not cooked, the butter, and dissolved the sugar. Toss them over a hot
fire until they are coated with the butter, but do not let them scorch.
Set aside in a clean vessel set within one of hot water. When the meat
has boiled to rags, and the liquid is reduced one-third, strain it and
set by until the fat rises and can be taken off. Return the soup to
the fire, season, boil up and skim; add the glazed vegetables, with
the chopped cabbage—which should have been parboiled, then drained—and
the tomatoes, cut up small. Stew gently for one hour. Serve with the
vegetables in it.
This will make enough soup for two days, unless your family be large.
HALIBUT STEAKS—BROILED.
Wash and wipe the steaks dry. Broil upon a buttered gridiron, turning
when the lower side is done. Remove carefully to a chafing-dish, and
anoint with a mixture of butter, salt, pepper, and a little lemon-juice.
Always serve fish upon hot plates. Pass potatoes, and no other
vegetable, with it.
SCALLOPED POTATOES.
3 cups of mashed potatoes.
3 tablespoonfuls of milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Yolks of four hard-boiled eggs. (Cut the whites in rings to garnish
your fish.)
Handful of dry bread-crumbs.
Salt and pepper.
Beat butter, milk, and seasoning into the potatoes while hot. Put a
layer in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish; cover this with thin
slices of yolk; pepper and salt them; spread another layer of potato
over these, and proceed in this order until the dish is full, having
the top layer of potato. Strew thickly with bread-crumbs. Bake covered
until hot through, then brown quickly. Serve in the bake-dish.
VEAL AND HAM PIE.
Cut the meat from the cold roast of yesterday. Put the bones,
well-cracked, the refuse bits of meat and skin into a saucepan with
an onion, a few spoonfuls of tomatoes, and three cups of cold water,
and cook slowly until there remains but one cup of gravy. Strain and
season, thickening with a tablespoonful of browned flour. Cut the veal
into small, even slices. If you have no cold boiled ham, cook half a
pound on purpose by boiling in your gravy stock. Slice this also, and
lay upon the veal, with now and then a slice of hard-boiled egg. Fill
the dish with alternate layers of veal and ham; pour in the gravy, and
cover with a thick crust of good pastry, such as you made last Thursday
for your pork-pie. Bake one hour.
STEWED CAULIFLOWER.
When your soup is about half done, and before you strain it, take out
a cupful, strain through a thin cloth, and put into a saucepan, with
a little salt and a tablespoonful of butter. Cut a cauliflower into
small bunches, when you have washed and trimmed it, and lay these in
the cooled broth. Stew slowly, covered, twenty-five minutes, turning
the bunches now and then. When they are tender, take them out, lay in
a covered dish to keep warm, stir into the broth a tablespoonful of
butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour, with nearly half a cup of
milk. Pepper, boil up once, and pour over the cauliflower.
PANCAKES WITH PRESERVES.
1 pint of prepared flour.
_About_ a quart of milk.
6 eggs.
A little salt.
Beat the yolks light, add the salt and two cups of milk, then the flour
and beaten whites alternately, and thin with more milk until the batter
is of the right consistency. It should be quite thin. Have ready in a
small frying-pan a tablespoonful of butter or sweet lard, hissing hot,
but not discolored by too long heating. Pour in enough batter to cover
the bottom of the pan, and fry quickly, pouring off the fat so soon as
the cakes set. Turn it with a lift of your spatula and a skilful toss
of the pan at the same time. As fast as the pancakes are done—the same
lard will do for several—let an assistant spread each upon a _hot_
plate and cover with sweet jam or jelly, rolling up neatly so soon as
this is done. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, and set in a warm oven
until you are ready for dessert.
Fourth Week. Thursday.
——
Chicken Broth.
Chickens and Rice. Potato Croquettes.
Boiled Sweet Potatoes. Cold Slaw—Cream Dressing.
——
Poor Man’s Plum Pudding.
——
CHICKEN BROTH.