tomatoes. Put all these, with the onion, into the soup-pot, with the
gallon of cold water, and boil gently three hours. The liquor should be
reduced one-third. Wash the barley and boil fifteen minutes in a very
little water. Strain the soup, pressing hard. Season; let it boil up
once, and skim before adding the barley and the water in which it has
boiled. Simmer half an hour, and serve.
STUFFED LOIN OF VEAL.
Prepare a dressing of bread-crumbs, a little chopped _corned_ ham,
parsley, pepper and salt, moistened with milk. Have the bones taken out
of the meat, and fill the holes thus left with the stuffing. Secure
the meat into a good shape with skewers, and cover the top and sides
with thick foolscap paper, binding it with strings. Grease paper and
strings, put the veal into your dripping-pan with a cup of hot water,
and bake, basting the paper now and then with dripping, to prevent
scorching. At the end of an hour, take out the meat and remove the
paper. Pour off the gravy, carefully setting it by; return the meat to
the oven with a cupful of _milk_ in the pan instead of the gravy. Baste
with butter, lavishly, once,—afterwards, and often with the milk as it
heats. Roast, not too fast, nearly an hour more, or until your meat is
tender. Should the milk evaporate too rapidly, add a little hot water.
Indeed, this is a wise precaution against scorching. Take up the veal,
thicken the gravy left in the oven, with a tablespoonful of butter
rolled in flour, salt, and pepper, heat carefully that the milk may not
“catch,” and pour some over the meat, serving the rest in a boat. Veal
cooked in this way is very nice, but requires much attention at the
last.
BAKED TOMATOES.
Strew the bottom of a pie-dish with fine crumbs, having greased it
first. Drain off much of the liquor from a can of tomatoes, add it to
the soup, pour the tomatoes upon the crumbs, season with pepper, salt,
and butter; strew more crumbs thickly over the top. Bake, covered,
twenty minutes; then brown.
KIDNEY BEANS WITH SAUCE.
Soak the beans overnight. The next day boil them until soft in
salted water. Drain this off. Strain the first gravy taken from the
roast veal—before the milk is substituted—into a saucepan; add a
tablespoonful of butter, and half a small onion, minced. Boil five
minutes, strain through a soup-sieve, pressing the onion hard; season
with pepper, salt, and a little chopped parsley; pour over the beans,
simmer fifteen minutes, closely covered, drain off half of the liquor,
and serve in a covered dish.
PLAIN BOILED PUDDING.
3 cups—full ones—of good flour.
2 cups of “loppered” milk or buttermilk; sour cream is best of all.
1 _full_ teaspoonful of soda dissolved in hot water.
A little salt.
½ cup finely-powdered suet.
Stir the milk and soda gradually into the flour, working it smooth. Put
suet and salt in, and beat all thoroughly. Boil in a buttered mould an
hour and a half.
HARD SAUCE.
1 cup of sugar.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
½ glass of wine.
Juice of a lemon and half of the grated peel.
Warm the butter, and rub into the sugar, working into a light cream.
Add lemon and wine. Mould as you like, and set aside to cool.
First Week. Friday.
——
Oyster Soup.
Brown Fricassee of Chicken. Ladies’ Cabbage.
Potatoes au naturel. Grape Jelly.
——
Sliced Apple Pie.
——
OYSTER SOUP.
Drain the liquor from the oysters through a colander. Put the liquor
over the fire with half as much water, salt, pepper, and a large
tablespoonful of butter for each quart of soup. Let it boil up well,
and put in the oysters. Heat slowly, and as soon as they “ruffle,”
which should be about five minutes after they reach the boil, strain
off the soup. Have in another vessel as much boiling milk as there was
oyster liquor. Pour the oysters into a hot tureen, put a large spoonful
of butter upon them; when it melts entirely, turn in the milk. Stir in
well, add the hot soup, cover, and serve with sliced lemon and crackers.
BROWN FRICASSEE OF CHICKEN.
Joint the chicken neatly, and lay in salted cold water half an hour.
Cut a quarter of a pound of salt pork into strips, and fry in good
dripping. Strain it out, skin the chicken as far as possible, and fry
in the same fat, with a sliced onion. Chop the pork fine and put into
a saucepan; next, the onion; at last, the fowl. Sprinkle a teaspoonful
of mixed allspice and cloves over all, pour on cold water to cover them
well, put on a tight lid, and stew gently for an hour or more, until
the meat is tender. Arrange the fowl upon a hot dish; strain the gravy;
season to taste with pepper, salt, and parsley; thicken with browned
flour; boil up once; pour over the chicken; cover, and let all stand
for five minutes before serving.
LADIES’ CABBAGE.
Boil a firm cabbage in two waters. Drain, then set aside to get cold.
Chop fine; add two beaten eggs, a tablespoonful of butter, pepper,
salt, and three tablespoonfuls of milk. Stir all well, and bake brown
in a buttered pudding-dish. Eat very hot.
POTATOES AU NATUREL.
Choose those of uniform size; put on in their skins, in boiling water.
When about half done, check the boil suddenly by a cupful of cold
water. This is said to make old potatoes mealy. Boil again until a fork
will pierce them. Drain off the water; sprinkle with salt to make the
skins crack, and dry out in the uncovered pot, on the range, for a few
minutes before peeling.
SLICED APPLE PIE.
1 lb. of prepared flour.
¾ lb. of butter.
Ice-water to make stiff dough.
Chop half of the butter into the flour. Work up with ice-water. Roll
out thin; baste all over with butter, and sprinkle lightly with flour;
fold closely into a long roll; flatten, and re-roll as thin as at
first; then baste again. Repeat this three times. Set the last roll
in a cold place for at least an hour. Roll out, and line two buttered
pie-plates, reserving enough for upper crusts.
Pare, core and slice juicy pippins; put a layer within the crust;
sprinkle sugar liberally over it, strew half a dozen whole cloves upon
this; then more apples, etc., until the dish is full. Cover with crust
and bake.
Eat barely warm, with sugar and cream.
First Week. Saturday.
——
A Plain Soup.
Breaded Mutton Chops. Milanaise Potatoes.
Currant Jelly. Green Peas.
——
Cocoanut Sponge Pudding.
——
A PLAIN SOUP.
5 lbs. shin of beef.
2 stalks of celery.
2 carrots.
2 onions.
2 turnips.
5 quarts of water.
2 tablespoonfuls of tomato catsup.
½ cup coarse corn-meal.
Pepper and salt.
1 cup of boiling milk.
Slice the meat and crack the bones. Cut the vegetables into strips and
fry the onions in good dripping. Then put all, with meat and bones,
into a soup-pot with the water. Cover and cook gently five hours.
Strain the liquor from the shreds of meat and rub the vegetables
through the colander. Season and set aside half the stock for
to-morrow. Put that meant for to-day into a soup-kettle; season and
boil up for a minute, that you may skim it; then add the corn-meal,
previously scalded with a cup of boiling milk. Stir in well, and simmer
half an hour before adding the catsup and pouring into the tureen.
BREADED MUTTON CHOPS.
Trim the chops from fat and skin, leaving a bit of bone clean at the
end of each. Beat up a raw egg; dip the chops in this—having peppered
and salted them; roll in cracker-dust, and fry brown in good dripping
or sweet lard. Drain, and arrange in rows upon a hot dish, the large
end of each overlapping the small end of the next. Garnish with parsley.
MILANAISE POTATOES.
12 boiled potatoes.
¾ cupful of gravy left from yesterday’s fricassee.
Juice of half a lemon.
Yolks of 2 raw eggs.
4 tablespoonfuls of dry grated cheese.
½ cup stale bread-crumbs.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
Pepper and salt.
Heat and strain your gravy. Put into a saucepan with the seasoning,
butter, and lemon, bring to a boil, and stir it into the beaten egg.
Slice the potatoes; lay a row within the outer round of a neat
pie-plate. (I hope you have one with a silver stand for the table.)
Pour a few teaspoonfuls of sauce upon these; lay another and smaller
row inside of the first; more sauce, and so on, until you have a low
cone of sliced potato; pour sauce over all, coat with the bread-crumbs
and cheese, mixed together; pepper and salt, and bake twenty minutes in
a quick oven.
GREEN PEAS.
Open a can of green peas; turn off the liquor and cover with boiling
water, a little salt. Boil fast until tender; drain well; stir in a
tablespoonful of butter; pepper and salt, and serve in a deep dish.
COCOANUT SPONGE PUDDING.
2 cups of stale sponge-cake crumbs.
2 cups of milk.
1 cup of grated cocoanut.
Yolks of two eggs and whites of four.
1 cup of white sugar.
1 tablespoonful rose-water.
A little nutmeg.
Scald the milk and beat into this the cake-crumbs. When nearly cold
add the eggs, sugar, rose-water, and lastly the cocoanut. Bake
three-quarters of an hour in a buttered pudding-dish. Should it brown
too fast, cover with white paper. Eat cold, with white sugar sifted
over it.
Second Week. Sunday.
——
Tapioca Soup.
Roast Beef and Potato Balls. Sliced Sweet Potatoes.
Gherkin Pickle. Cauliflower au Gratin.
——
Southern Rice Pudding, méringued.
——
TAPIOCA SOUP.
Take the fat from the stock reserved for to-day. Bring the soup to a
boil and stir in half a teacupful of “grained” tapioca, which has
been soaked three hours in a little cold water. Add also seasoning, if
needed; simmer half an hour and pour out. Send around grated cheese
with it.
ROAST BEEF AND POTATO BALLS.
When your beef is about three-quarters done, pour nearly all of the
gravy from the dripping-pan. Have ready some mashed potato worked
smooth with a beaten egg, pepper and salt, then made into balls and
rolled in flour. Place them in the pan around the meat and baste until
well browned. Serve in the same dish with the beef.
SLICED SWEET POTATOES.
Boil in their skins until a fork will go easily into them. Pare and
slice with a sharp knife lengthwise; fry lightly and quickly in good
dripping, or butter; drain off the grease, and serve hot.
CAULIFLOWER AU GRATIN.
Wash the cauliflower, cut off green leaves and stalks, and divide into
neat bunches. Boil in hot water, salted, until tender. Drain well;
dip each piece in melted butter, and strew thickly with fine, dry
crumbs, mixed with pepper and salt. Arrange flower end uppermost, in a
pudding-dish, and brown the crumbs upon the upper grating of an oven.
Serve in a vegetable dish, and pass a boat of drawn butter with them.
SOUTHERN RICE PUDDING—MÉRINGUED.
1 qt. of fresh milk.
1 cup of raw rice.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
1 cup of sugar.
4 eggs beaten light.
1 teaspoonful grated lemon-peel.
A pinch of cinnamon, and the same of mace.
Soak the rice two hours in the milk. Simmer in a farina-kettle until
tender. Rub butter and sugar to a cream. Beat up the eggs, and whip the
mixture into them while the rice is cooling. Stir all together; flavor,
and bake three-quarters of an hour in a buttered dish. If baked too
long, the custard will break. So soon as it is well set in the middle
of the dish, draw to the oven-door, and spread with a _méringue_ made
of the whites of three eggs whisked stiff with one tablespoonful of
powdered sugar and juice of half a lemon. Close the oven-door, and
brown delicately. Eat cold. Make it on Saturday.
Second Week. Monday.
——
Hasty Soup.
Larded Beef. Stewed Parsnips.
Browned Potatoes. Made Mustard.
——
“Brown Betty.”
Tea and Albert Biscuit.
——
HASTY SOUP.
The trimmings of your roast beef, and any other cold meat you may
have—about two and a half pounds in all, chopped very fine.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
2 tablespoonfuls of browned flour.
2 quarts of water.
2 handfuls of fried bread.
Pepper and salt.
1 tablespoonful of walnut catsup.
Put meat, butter, salt and pepper into a saucepan; add two quarts of
cold water, and bring slowly to a boil. Cook half an hour after the
boil fairly begins. Strain hard through a thin cloth; thicken with
browned flour; add the catsup; boil up once, and pour over the fried
bread in the tureen.
LARDED BEEF.
Trim yesterday’s roast on top, bottom, and sides, saving all the
fragments for your soup. Then make incisions quite through the meat,
and thrust in numerous lardoons of fat salt pork, projecting above
and below. Rub the meat all over with vinegar, and then with melted
butter, rubbing both in well. Put in a dripping-pan. Take the fat
from the top of yesterday’s gravy; thin it with a little hot water;
strain this into the dripping-pan, and baste the meat plentifully with
it, keeping another pan inverted over it between times. If your oven
be moderately good, the beef should be ready for table in forty-five
minutes. Pour a few spoonfuls of gravy over it when dished. Put the
rest into a sauce-boat.
STEWED PARSNIPS.
Scrape, slice lengthwise, and lay in cold water half an hour. Cook
tender in boiling water, a little salt. Drain off half the water, and
stir in a tablespoonful of butter rolled thickly in flour. Pepper and
salt to your taste, and stew gently five minutes before pouring into a
deep, covered dish.
BROWNED POTATOES.
Mash soft with butter, milk, and salt. Heap as irregularly as possible
upon a pie-dish, and set in a quick oven. Mem.: The dish should be well
greased. As the potato browns, glaze it with butter. Slip carefully to
a hot dish.
“BROWN BETTY.”
1 cup bread-crumbs.
2 cups chopped tart apples.
½ cup of sugar.
1 teaspoonful of cinnamon.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Put a layer of chopped apple in a buttered pudding-dish; strew with
sugar, butter, and cinnamon. Cover with bread-crumbs; then more apple.
When your dish is full, cover with crumbs. Invert a tin plate over it,
and “steam” forty-five minutes in a good oven. Then, uncover and brown.
Eat warm, with sugar and butter, or cream.
TEA AND ALBERT BISCUIT.
Pass these after the pudding. Tea-drinking is restful as well as
refreshing on a busy day. Weary housekeepers can have no more innocent
nervine.
Second Week. Tuesday.
——
White Soup.
Boiled Shoulder of Mutton, with Oysters.
Creamed Potatoes.
Baked Beans. Sweet Pickles.
——
Cottage Puffs.
——
WHITE SOUP.
Knuckle of veal—weight 5 or 6 pounds.
¼ lb. lean ham—raw or cooked.
2 onions.
Bunch of sweet herbs.
4 blades of mace.
2 cups of milk.
2 eggs.
½ cup raw rice.
5 qts. of cold water.
¼ lb. almonds, blanched and pounded.
Crack the veal-bones, and cut off the meat in small pieces. Put into
the soup-pot with the chopped ham; the onion sliced, the herbs and
spice. Pour on the water, and boil very slowly five hours. The water
should be reduced to three quarts. Strain off the liquor. Season three
pints, and pour back upon the bones, etc. Cover tightly in a stone
crock, and put away for to-morrow’s stock. To the remainder add the
rice and the pint of water in which it has been soaking for two hours.
Season, and cook gently, taking care it does not burn, while you blanch
the almonds by scalding off their skins, and pound them in a Wedgewood
mortar. When the rice is soft, put in these, and cook slowly ten
minutes. Scald the milk, pour it upon the beaten eggs by degrees, add
to the soup; stir one minute, but not to the boil, and pour into the
tureen.
BOILED SHOULDER OF MUTTON WITH OYSTERS.
Take the main bones out of a shoulder of mutton; fill the cavity with
oysters, and bind the meat firmly over the incision. Sew the shoulder
into a neat shape in a piece of stout tarlatan; put on in boiling
water, slightly salted, allowing eighteen minutes to each pound in
cooking. When done, unbind carefully upon the dish in which you are to
serve it. Pour over it a sauce made of equal parts of oyster liquor
and the broth from the boiling meat, seasoned, then thickened with a
generous lump of butter, cut into bits, and rolled in flour, and some
chopped parsley. Boil up once well, and put half upon the meat, the
rest in a sauce-boat.
CREAMED POTATOES.
Mash in the usual way, whipping very light with a fork, adding a cupful
of rich milk and two tablespoonfuls of softened butter, beating in
gradually. Return to the saucepan; stir constantly for three minutes;
turn into a bowl and whip with an egg-beater, hard, one minute. Pile in
a hot deep dish, and set in the open oven until you are ready to send
it to table.
BAKED BEANS.
Soak overnight. Next day, put on in cold water—salted—and cook soft.
Drain dry, turn into a greased bake-dish, stir in a great spoonful
of butter, and when this has melted, enough milk to fill the dish
one quarter full. Season with pepper and salt; cover and bake forty
minutes. Remove the top, and brown.
COTTAGE PUFFS.
2 cups of rich milk—half cream if you can get it.
4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
1 good tablespoonful of butter, chopped into the flour.
A pinch of salt.
Enough prepared flour for thick batter. Try two cups, and add, by
degrees, as you need more.
Mix the beaten yolks with the milk; then the salt and whites; at last,
the flour. Bake in greased iron pans, such as are used for “gems” and
corn-bread. The oven should be quick. Turn out and eat with sweet
sauce.
Second Week. Wednesday.
——
Giblet Soup.
Smothered Chickens. Macaroni with Tomato Sauce.
Peach Pickles. Potato Chips.
——
Apple Cake.
Coffee.
——
GIBLET SOUP.
Clean and cut the giblets of your fowls into three pieces each. Stew
tender in a pint of water. Take the cake of fat from the broth set by
yesterday. Put a half cupful aside for your macaroni sauce. Warm the
rest and strain out the bones, etc. Return to the fire, boil up and
skim, chop the giblets fine and put them in with the water in which
they were boiled. Simmer a quarter of an hour; stir in half a cupful of
fine, dry bread-crumbs. Season, if necessary; boil ten minutes longer,
stirring often, and pour out.
SMOTHERED CHICKENS.
Prepare the chickens as for broiling, splitting each down the back.
Lay flat in a dripping-pan, pour a cupful of boiling water upon them;
set in the oven and invert another pan over them, so as to cover them
_tightly_. Roast half an hour, lift the cover and baste freely with
butter. In ten minutes more, baste with gravy from the dripping-pan.
In five more, with melted butter—abundantly—going all over the fowls.
Keeping the chickens covered except while basting them, increase the
heat, until you ascertain, by testing with a fork, that they are done.
They should be coffee-colored all over, rather than brown. Dish, salt
and pepper them; cover while you thicken the gravy with browned flour,
adding a little hot water, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Boil up;
put a few spoonfuls over the chickens—the rest in a gravy tureen.
They are extremely nice, if faithfully basted.
MACARONI WITH TOMATO SAUCE.
Break half a pound of macaroni into inch lengths. Cover with salted
boiling water, and cook twenty minutes, or until tender. Have ready a
sauce prepared as follows: open a can of tomatoes; take out half the
contents and cut up very small. Add, with pepper and salt, and a little
minced onion, to the half cup of broth reserved for this purpose, and
stew together twenty minutes. Put the macaroni into a deep dish, stir
well into it a large tablespoonful of butter. Add to the sauce two
great spoonfuls grated cheese; boil once and strain over the macaroni,
loosening the latter with a fork that the sauce may penetrate. Serve
hot.
POTATO CHIPS.
Peel and slice, round, some fine potatoes. Lay in cold water for one
hour. Dry by laying them upon a dry towel and pressing with another.
Fry in salted lard, quickly, to a delicate brown. Take out as soon as
they are done; shake briskly in a hot colander to free them from fat,
and send to table in a deep dish—uncovered—lined with a napkin.
APPLE CAKE.
2 cups of powdered sugar.
3 even cups of prepared flour.
½ cup of corn-starch, wet up with a little milk.
½ cup of butter, rubbed to a cream with the sugar.
½ cup of sweet milk.
The whites of 6 eggs whipped stiff.
Add the milk to the creamed butter and sugar; then the corn-starch,
lastly the flour and whites alternately. Bake in greased jelly-cake
tins.
FILLING.
3 tart pippins, grated.
1 beaten egg.
1 cup of sugar.
Juice and grated peel of one lemon.
Beat sugar, egg, and lemon together. Grate the apples into this
mixture. Put into a farina-kettle and stir until it boils. Cool before
putting between the cakes.
COFFEE
May to-day be passed with the cake.
Second Week. Thursday.
——
Chicken Broth.
Rolled Beefsteak. Salsify Fritters.
Scalloped Tomatoes. Cucumber Pickles.
——
Fig Custard Pudding.
——
CHICKEN BROTH.
Cut an old fowl into quarters. Lay in salt and water an hour; put
on in a soup-kettle with an onion, and four quarts of water. Bring
_very_ slowly to a gentle boil, and keep this up until the liquid has
diminished one-third, and the meat shrinks from the bones. Take out the
chicken, salt it, and set aside with a cupful of the broth, in a bowl
(covered), until to-morrow. Season the rest of the broth and put back
over the fire. Boil up and skim, and add nearly a teacupful of rice,
previously soaked for two hours in a cup of water. Cook slowly until
the rice is tender. Stir a cup of hot milk into two beaten eggs, and
then into the soup. Let all come to the boil—barely—when you have added
a handful of finely-minced parsley, pour out into the tureen.
ROLLED BEEFSTEAK.
Beat a large sirloin steak flat with the broad side of a hatchet. Fry
a sliced onion in a little butter. Take it out with a skimmer, and put
the meat into the pan. Fry quickly on both sides, soaking up all the
butter and leaving a brown glaze upon the steak. Spread it upon a dish.
Chop the onion, mix with bread-crumbs, minced herbs and a few chopped
mushrooms, and lay this force-meat upon the steak. Roll the meat up
tightly upon the dressing. Fasten with soft packthread and skewers. Put
into a saucepan with a cupful of cold water. Set where it will heat
very slowly, keeping on a close lid. Simmer thus two hours, turning
now and then. Transfer the meat to a hot dish. Strain the gravy, add a
little hot water, if needed; thicken with browned flour; stir in some
minced mushrooms, a tablespoonful of catsup and another of butter. Boil
about three minutes, pour over the steak, when you have removed the
threads. The skewers are to be withdrawn by the carver.
SALSIFY FRITTERS.
Scrape, wash, and grate the roots into a mixture made of a beaten egg,
one cup of milk, and enough flour for a very thin batter. Thicken with
the grated salsify; salt and pepper, and drop, in large spoonfuls, into
boiling lard or dripping. Drain in a hot colander. Eat while fresh.
SCALLOPED TOMATOES.
Drain off the liquor from a can of tomatoes; salt it, and put aside for
another day’s soup. Strew the bottom of a bake-dish with fine crumbs;
cover with tomatoes, sliced thin. Scatter over these a little minced
onion and some bits of butter, with pepper, salt, and sugar. Proceed
thus until the tomatoes are used up. Cover thickly with crumbs, fit a
plate or tin lid over the scallop, and bake half an hour. Brown quickly
upon the upper grating of the oven.
FIG CUSTARD PUDDING.
1 lb. best Naples figs.
1 quart of milk.
Yolks of five eggs and whites of two.
½ package of gelatine soaked in half cup of water.
1 cup sweet fruit jelly, slightly warmed.
4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Flavor to taste.
Soak the figs in warm water until quite soft. Split them; dip each
piece in jelly, and line a buttered mould with them. Heat the milk,
stir into the beaten eggs and sugar, return to the farina-kettle,
and cook until it thickens well. Set by to cool. Beat the whites of
two eggs to a stiff froth. Melt the soaked gelatine by adding two
tablespoonfuls of boiling water, and setting it within a vessel of hot
water. Stir until melted, and let it cool. When it begins to congeal,
whip with the Dover egg-beater, gradually, into the whisked whites,
until all is white and thick. Beat into the cold custard rapidly and
thoroughly, and fill the fig-lined mould. Set on ice, or in a cold
place, until firm. Dip the mould in hot water to loosen the pudding
when you are ready for it. It is delicious.
Second Week. Friday.
——
Split Pea Soup, without Meat.
Baked Halibut. Chicken and Ham Pudding.
Mashed Potatoes. Mixed Pickles.
——
Cottage Pudding.
Wine Sauce.
——
SPLIT PEA SOUP, WITHOUT MEAT.
1 pint of split peas.
2 onions.
2 stalks of celery.
Bunch of sweet herbs.
1 carrot.
1 turnip.
3 tablespoonfuls of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour.
Tomato juice, saved from yesterday.
Pepper, salt, and fried bread.
3 quarts of water.