water. When all the water is soaked up, shake the rice hard, to reach
that at the bottom, and add a pint of milk. Simmer gently, still in
the inner kettle, until the rice is again dry, and quite tender.
Shake up anew, and add another pint of milk. When this is hot, put in
the raisins, dredged with flour; cover the saucepan and cook twenty
minutes. Turn into a bowl; put with it the butter, rice-flour, the
remaining pint of milk, heated and mixed with the beaten eggs and
sugar, and stir all up thoroughly. Bake in a buttered pudding-dish,
about forty minutes. Eat warm with butter and sugar, or sugar and cream.
Fourth Week. Saturday.
——
Dresden Soup.
Boiled Blue Fish. Baked Calf’s Head.
Canned Succotash.
Casserole of Rice with Tomato Sauce.
——
Belle’s Dumplings.
——
DRESDEN SOUP.
2 lbs. of lean beef, cut into strips.
4 pig’s feet, cleaned well.
4 lbs. of mutton and beef bones, cracked.
2 onions.
1 bunch of sweet herbs.
2 carrots.
2 blades of mace.
4 tablespoonfuls of butter, and the same of rice-flour.
Juice of a lemon.
1 tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce.
1 raw egg for force-meat.
Salt and pepper.
6 quarts of cold water.
1 glass of claret.
Early in the day, put on the meat, pig’s feet and bones, and cook
slowly five hours in six quarts of water. Skim then, carefully, add the
onions, mace, and herbs, cut small, and the carrots, _grated_. Stew
half an hour; take out the meat and the feet, leaving the bones, etc.,
on the fire. Cut the flesh from the feet, and return the bones to the
pot. Set aside half this flesh, with a few pieces of beef, to get cold.
Chop the rest fine, and make up with pepper, salt, and a raw egg, into
small force-meat balls. Roll them in flour, lay upon a greased plate,
and set within the oven to “crust.” When quite firm, take out and cool.
Cut the reserved meat into small, square bits. When the soup has cooked
half an hour after the meat was taken out, strain and season it. Divide
into two portions. Into that designed for Sunday drop the dice of
meat, from the pig’s feet as well as the beef, and set away, covered,
in an earthenware vessel. Return the rest to the fire; thicken with
the butter, melted and worked up into the rice-flour; add the sauce,
lemon-juice, and a glass of claret. Put the force-meat balls into the
heated tureen; pour on the soup, cover five minutes, and serve.
BOILED BLUE FISH.
Sew up the fish neatly in a thin cloth, put on in scalding water with
a little salt, half a small cup of vinegar, a quarter of an onion, six
whole black peppers, and a blade of mace. Let it stand, _just_ below
boiling heat, half an hour; then increase the heat and boil thirty
minutes more. Take out, unwrap, lay upon a hot dish and pour over it a
cupful of drawn butter, with a little lemon-juice stirred in it.
BAKED CALF’S HEAD.
Put on, having removed the brains, in four quarts of cold water, and
boil gently one hour. Take out the head; salt and pepper the liquor and
set by as the foundation of Monday’s soup, keeping out a cupful for
gravy. Put the calf’s head in a dripping-pan, rub over with butter,
pour the gravy into the pan, and bake, covered—basting four times—for
half an hour. Uncover, wash over with a mixture of melted butter,
pepper, and salt, and a teaspoonful of catsup. Dredge with browned
flour, baste again, and when the surface is of a fine froth, dish the
head. Strain and thicken the gravy, and serve in a boat. The brains
should be washed well, boiled quickly, then cooled; mashed to a smooth
paste with pepper, salt, a dust of flour, and a raw egg, and fried, by
the spoonful, in hot lard. Drain, and lay about the head.
CANNED SUCCOTASH.
Drain from the liquor; cut the beans—if French or string beans—into
short pieces; cook half an hour in salted boiling water; drain this
off; add a cup of hot milk, thicken with a great spoonful of butter,
cut up in flour, pepper, and salt, and simmer ten minutes more.
CASSEROLE OF RICE WITH TOMATO SAUCE.
Boil one cup of rice tender in hot water, a little salt, shaking up
from time to time, but never stirring. Drain dry, add a very little
milk in which has been stirred a beaten egg, a teaspoonful of butter,
a little pepper and salt. Simmer for five minutes, and if the rice has
not absorbed all the milk, drain it again. Pile it around the inner
edge of a flat dish; smooth it neatly, rounding the top, into a sort of
fence; wash over carefully with the beaten yolks of two eggs, and set
it in the oven until firm.
Drain more than half the juice from a can of tomatoes; season with a
little chopped onion, pepper, salt, and sugar. Stew twenty minutes;
stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and two tablespoonfuls of fine
bread-crumbs; stew three or four minutes to thicken it well, and pour
within the hedge of rice.
BELLE’S DUMPLINGS.
1 quart _prepared_ flour.
2½ tablespoonfuls of mixed lard and butter.
2 cups of milk, or enough for soft dough.
Roll out a quarter of an inch thick, cut into oblong pieces, rounded
at the corners. Put a great spoonful of damson, cherry, or other tart
preserve, in the middle, and roll into a dumpling. Bake about forty
minutes, brush over with beaten egg, while hot, and shut up in the oven
three minutes to glaze. Eat hot with brandy sauce. (_For receipt for
sauce see Wednesday, 2d Week in January._)
APRIL.
First Week. Sunday.
——
Clear Soup.
Fricasseed Chickens, White. Buttered Parsnips.
Savory Potatoes. Lettuce Salad, Plain.
——
Pie-Plant (April) Fool.
Coffee and Cake.
——
CLEAR SOUP.
Take the grease from the soup-jelly you will find in the crock into
which the stock was poured yesterday. Take it up by the ladleful,
leaving the meat and sediment at the bottom, and put on to heat in
a soup-kettle. When it boils, stir in the beaten white of an egg;
take off the scum as fast as it rises, and when quite clear add two
teaspoonfuls of Coxe’s gelatine, previously soaked in cold water. Add,
meanwhile, a little boiling water to the sediment and meat dice in the
pot; strain off the liquid; pick out the bits of meat, and see that
they are clean. Drop into the soup at the same time that you add four
tablespoonfuls of colored water, made by burning a tablespoonful or
two of sugar in a tin cup, pouring a little boiling water upon it, and
stirring until you get a clear brown liquor. After these go in, do not
let your soup really boil, but simmer a few minutes to throw up and
remove any remaining scum. Pass sliced lemon with the soup.
FRICASSEED CHICKENS—WHITE.
Clean, wash, and joint the fowls. Lay in cold salt and water for one
hour. Put them into a pot, with half a pound of salt pork cut into
strips, and cold water enough to cover them. Cover closely, and heat
very slowly to a gentle boil. The excellence of the fricassee depends
mainly upon care in this respect. If the fowls are full-grown and
reasonably tender, stew more than one hour after they begin to boil.
When done add half a chopped onion, parsley and pepper. Cover again for
ten minutes. Stir up two tablespoonfuls of flour in cold water, then
into a cup of hot milk, and this, in turn, into two beaten eggs. Then
put in a great spoonful of butter, and pour all into the saucepan; mix
well, boil fairly, and, having arranged the chickens upon a hot dish,
pour the gravy over them.
BUTTERED PARSNIPS.
Boil tender and scrape. Slice lengthwise. Put three tablespoonfuls of
butter into a saucepan with pepper, salt and a little chopped parsley.
When it heats, put in the parsnips, and shake and turn until the
mixture boils. Lay the parsnips in order upon a hot dish, and pour the
butter over them.
SAVORY POTATOES.
Pare and cut into squares some raw potatoes. Lay in cold water half an
hour, put into a saucepan, cover with boiling water, slightly salted,
and stew half an hour, not so fast as to break them. Then throw off
the water and add a cupful of sauce made from the gravy of Friday’s
chickens, thinned with a little hot water, and strained; seasoned to
taste, and again thickened with a tablespoonful of butter rolled in
flour. Simmer all for ten minutes, and turn into a deep dish.
LETTUCE SALAD—PLAIN.
Wash the lettuce; pull leaf from leaf, and pile over a lump of ice in a
salad-bowl. Pass the oil and vinegar, salt, pepper, and powdered sugar
to each person, with the lettuce, that he may season for himself.
PIE-PLANT (APRIL) FOOL.
1 pint of stewed pie plant, rubbed through a colander.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
1 cup of sugar.
Yolks of four eggs.
_Méringue_ of the whites.
3 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Juice of half a lemon.
Put the strained pie-plant into a saucepan; set it in boiling water,
and, when hot, beat in the butter, sugar, and beaten yolks. Stir two
minutes, and turn out to cool. This can be done on Saturday. On Sunday,
a few minutes’ whirl of your egg-beater will give you the _méringue_.
Beat in the powdered sugar with a few more, and when you have poured
the stewed fruit (or vegetable) into a glass bowl, pile the _méringue_
(the “fool”?) on the top.
COFFEE AND CAKE
Can be handed with, or after the sweets.
First Week. Monday.
——
Milk and Bread Soup.
Larded Mutton Chops. Mashed Potatoes.
Green Peas. Tomato Catsup.
——
Corn-meal Hasty Pudding.
——
MILK AND BREAD SOUP.
Boil down the liquor in which Saturday’s calf’s head was cooked, to
less than two quarts. Add a pint of milk previously heated, and mixed
with three beaten eggs. Thicken with two tablespoonfuls of butter
rolled in flour, and take at once from the fire. Salt and pepper, if
needed. Have ready in a tureen a cupful of fine, dry crumbs. Pour on
the soup, stir up for a moment, cover and send to table with a plate of
grated cheese.
LARDED MUTTON CHOPS.
Trim off superfluous fat and skin; beat flat with the broad side of a
hatchet, and lard each with four strips of fat, salt pork, drawn quite
through, so as to project on both sides. Put into a saucepan, sprinkle
with minced onion, pepper, and parsley, and barely cover with weak
broth. The gravy from yesterday’s chickens will do, or any other you
may chance to have. Put on the saucepan lid, set it where it will not
boil under an hour, and think no more about it until the time is up.
Then increase the heat and simmer half an hour, or until tender. Take
up the chops and keep hot. Thicken the gravy with browned flour; add
the juice of a lemon, a great spoonful of mushroom catsup, a glass of
sherry, and boil one minute. Put back the chops; cover, and heat just
to a feeble boil. Lay the chops in order upon a dish and pour the gravy
over them.
GREEN PEAS.
Open a can of peas; turn out into a bowl, and let alone for an hour.
Then, strain off the liquor, put the peas into a saucepan, and cover
with salted, boiling water. Cook twenty minutes; drain, pepper, stir in
a tablespoonful of butter, and dish.
MASHED POTATOES.
Prepare as usual, and heap in a covered dish. Wet a pretty butter-print
and press firmly upon the top.
CORN-MEAL HASTY PUDDING.
1 heaping cup of Indian meal.
½ cup of flour.
1 quart of boiling _milk_.
2 cups of boiling water.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
1 tablespoonful of brown sugar.
1 teaspoonful of salt.
½ teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace.
Wet up meal and flour with the water and stir into the boiling milk.
Mem.—Cook all sorts of milk-puddings (boiled) in a farina-kettle. Boil
steadily half an hour, stirring very often from the bottom. Put in
salt, sugar, butter, and spice, and cook ten minutes more. Pour into a
bowl, or other uncovered dish. Eat hot with sugar and butter.
First Week. Tuesday.
——
Bean and Corn Soup.
Beefsteak Pudding. Stewed Potatoes.
Mashed Turnips. Cold Slaw.
——
Baked Chocolate Custards.
Fancy Cakes.
——
BEAN AND CORN SOUP.
1 quart of dried beans, soaked overnight in soft water.
1 lb. of streaked salt pork, cut into shreds.
1 lb. of lean beef also cut up.
2 stalks of celery, minced.
1 bunch of chopped parsley.
1 small onion, sliced.
Pepper and salt.
1 can of corn.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in two of flour.
5 quarts of water.
Put on the beans, pork, beef, and all the vegetables except the
corn, with the water, and boil slowly until the beans are thoroughly
broken, and the meat in rags. Meanwhile, cook the corn tender in just
enough boiling water to cover it. When done, stir in half the butter
and flour, salt and pepper, and cover to keep hot while you strain
the soup, rubbing the beans, onion, and celery to a pulp through a
colander. Set aside half for to-morrow. Return the rest to the fire;
pepper to taste; add the corn with the water in which it was cooked.
Simmer fifteen minutes; stir in the rest of the butter and flour; boil
up well, and serve.
BEEFSTEAK PUDDING.
1 quart of prepared flour.
¼ lb. powdered suet.
1 cup of ice-water.
2 lbs. good steak without bone.
Pepper and salt.
1 tablespoonful of tomato catsup.
Rub the suet into the flour, salt slightly, and make, with the water,
into a paste just soft enough to roll out. Roll into a sheet nearly
half an inch thick. Butter well a round-bottomed pudding mould; line
with the paste, and leave in a cold place while you cut the steak
into small squares, seasoning with pepper, salt, and catsup. Fill the
paste-lined mould (or bowl) with this. Cut a piece of paste for the
top. Cover with this, pinching the two sheets of paste tightly together
at the edges. Let an assistant hold up the bowl while you cover with a
stout pudding-cloth and tie tightly under the bottom, not straining the
cloth so strongly over the top as to hinder the paste from swelling.
(Flour the cloth before tying it over the bowl.) Plunge into a gallon
of boiling water, and keep it at a fast boil for two hours, filling
up from the tea-kettle when the water sinks. Turn the bowl bottom
upward and dip in cold water; untie the cloth, invert a hot dish upon
the mould, and turn over carefully, to get the pudding out without
breaking. This is a favorite English dish.
STEWED POTATOES.
Old potatoes, by this time, need a little management to make them
acceptable at a season when appetites crave fresh vegetables. This is
a good way to cook them. Pare very thin, and leave in cold water one
hour. Put on to cook in _cold_ water, bringing it soon to a boil. When
a fork will run easily into the largest, strain off the water, throw in
a handful of salt, and dry, for a minute, on the stove. Then take out
the potatoes; crack each one by pressing with a wooden spoon; put into
a deep dish, and pour over them a cup of hot milk thickened with two
tablespoonfuls of butter, cut up in flour; cooked for a minute, then
seasoned with pepper, salt, and a tablespoonful _very_ finely-minced
parsley. Cover the dish; set in boiling water ten minutes, and serve.
MASHED TURNIPS.
Boil tender; press all the water out in a colander, as you mash them;
return to the fire with a good lump of butter, pepper, and salt, and
stir until smoking hot.
COLD SLAW.
Shred the heart of a white cabbage, and pour over it a dressing of two
tablespoonfuls of oil, four of vinegar, one teaspoonful each of salt
and sugar, and half as much pepper and mustard, beaten up well with the
whipped yolks of two eggs. The mixture should be quite thick. Use an
egg-beater in mixing.
BAKED CHOCOLATE CUSTARDS.
1 quart of milk.
6 eggs.
1 cup of sugar.
4 great spoonfuls grated chocolate.
Vanilla flavoring.
Scald the milk; wet up the chocolate and stir in. Boil two minutes.
Beat the yolks into the sugar, and pour the hot mixture slowly upon
them, stirring constantly. Season and fill small cups, which should
be set ready in a dripping-pan of boiling water. See that there is no
danger of their boiling over the tops. Cook twenty minutes, or until
the custards are firm. While they cool whip the whites to a stiff
_méringue_ with a little powdered sugar. When the custards are cold,
heap this upon the tops.
FANCY CAKES,
Macaroons, lady’s-fingers, or jumbles, should go around with the
custards.
First Week. Wednesday.
——
“Red Pottage.”
Boiled Cod with Caper Sauce. Scalloped Chicken.
Mashed Potatoes, Browned. Split Pea Pancakes.
——
Queen of Puddings.
——
“RED POTTAGE.”
To the bean-stock set by on yesterday add a can of red tomatoes, cut
small, and two lumps of sugar, and simmer, set in boiling water for
fear of burning, until they are one mass of pulp. Strain through a
colander, add seasoning, and stir in a generous glass of claret which
was poured, two hours before, upon a sliced, deep-colored _beet_, warm
from the boil. Strain the juice from the beet by squeezing in a cloth.
Put a double-handful of fried bread into a tureen, and pour the soup
upon it.
This, if not “that same red pottage” for which poor hungry Esau—who
certainly came honestly, by hereditary right, by his love of “good
eating”—bartered his birthright, is yet very pretty and savory.
BOILED COD WITH CAPER SAUCE.
Sew the fish up neatly in a thin cloth and cook in boiling water,
fifteen minutes to the pound. Unwrap, lay upon a hot dish, and pour
over it the following sauce:
Put a cupful of boiling water into a saucepan, and stir in two
tablespoonfuls of butter, cut up in a heaping teaspoonful of flour.
Beat in, when thick, the whipped yolk of an egg, the juice of a lemon,
and twenty-four capers. Stir up well, cook half a minute, and take from
the fire.
SCALLOPED CHICKEN.
Clean, wash, and cut an old fowl to pieces. Put into a pot with four
quarts of cold water and cook _very_ slowly until tender. Take it out,
salt and pepper the broth, and put by for to-morrow’s soup, reserving
one cupful for your gravy.
Let the chicken cool, and cut—cleanly—into pieces an inch long by one
fourth that width. Put the gravy, well-seasoned, over the fire, thicken
with a tablespoonful of butter, cut up and rolled in flour; stir in the
chicken, and just before it boils, take from the fire, and beat in two
whisked eggs, with a little finely minced parsley. Strew the bottom
of a bake-dish with crumbs; pour in the chicken; cover with a deeper
coating of bread-crumbs; stick bits of butter over this, and bake,
covered, until bubbling hot; then brown delicately.
MASHED POTATOES—BROWNED.
Mash soft with milk and butter, season, and round into a heap upon
a greased pie-dish. Brown in a quick oven; glaze with butter; slip
carefully to a hot dish.
SPLIT PEA PANCAKES.
Soak a pint of split peas all night. Put on, in the morning, in cold
water and cook soft. Rub through a fine colander. While hot, stir in a
tablespoonful of butter, and season with pepper and salt. When quite
cold, beat in two eggs, a cupful of milk, and half a cupful of flour
in which has been sifted—twice—a quarter teaspoonful of soda and twice
as much cream-of-tartar. Beat hard and long, and fry as you would
griddle-cakes.
QUEEN OF PUDDINGS.
1½ cups of sugar.
5 eggs.
2 cups of dry bread-crumbs.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
2 teaspoonfuls vanilla, or other extract—Colgate’s, if you can get it.
1 quart of fresh milk.
½ cup sweet fruit-jelly, or jam.
Cream butter and sugar and whip in the yolks. Soak the crumbs in the
milk and add next—then flavor. Pour into a buttered pudding-dish,
filling it two-thirds of the way to the top, and bake until well “set”
in the middle. Draw to the oven door, spread quickly with the jelly,
and this with a _méringue_ of the whites and half a cup of sugar. Shut
the oven and bake quickly until the _méringue_ begins to color. Eat
cold with cream.
First Week. Thursday.
——
Chicken Soup.
Mayonnaise of Fish. Veal Chops with Tomato Sauce.
Potato Strips. Macaroni and Eggs.
——
Jelly Cake Fritters.
——
CHICKEN SOUP.
Take the fat from the top of the liquor in which your chicken was
boiled yesterday, and put on the soup to heat. Meanwhile, boil half a
cupful of rice tender in a pint of salted milk, and when the rice is
soft, stir in a tablespoonful of butter worked up in flour to prevent
oiling. When the soup boils up clear, skim and add the rice and milk,
with two tablespoonfuls of minced parsley. Pepper and salt to taste;
simmer ten minutes. Chop up three hard-boiled eggs fine; put into the
tureen and pour the soup upon them.
MAYONNAISE OF FISH.
Yolks of 3 boiled eggs.
2 tablespoonfuls of best oil.
2 teaspoonfuls of sugar.
6 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
1 teaspoonful of salt, and half as much each of pepper and made mustard.
White of 1 raw egg.
2 cupfuls of cold boiled fish (yesterday’s cod).
2 heads of lettuce.
Rub the yolks smooth with the oil, add sugar, salt, pepper, and
mustard, and, when all are mixed, the vinegar, a little at a time. Set
by, covered, while you cut—not chop—the fish into strips an inch long,
and shred the lettuce. Mix these in a bowl. Whip the frothed white of
egg into the dressing, and pour upon the salad. Stir up with a silver
fork and put into a glass dish. Garnish with rings of the whites of
boiled eggs.
VEAL CHOPS WITH TOMATO SAUCE.
Trim and flatten the chops. Dip in raw egg, then in cracker dust, and
fry, rather slowly, in lard or dripping. Open a can of tomatoes, and
drain off the liquor. Salt the rest of the tomatoes and reserve for
Friday’s soup. Put the liquor into a saucepan with a sliced onion, and
stew ten minutes. Strain out the onion, return the juice to the fire;
thicken with a great spoonful of butter, worked up in a teaspoonful of
corn-starch; pepper and salt. Boil up sharply, and when you have laid
the chops upon a dish, pour the sauce over them.
MACARONI WITH EGGS.
Break half a pound of macaroni into short bits; cook tender in boiling,
salted water. Drain well; put into a deep dish and pour over it a
cupful of drawn butter in which have been stirred two beaten eggs, and
two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, with salt and pepper. Loosen the
macaroni to allow the sauce to penetrate the mass. Pass more grated
cheese with it.
POTATO STRIPS.
Pare, cut in long, even strips; lay in cold water for one hour; dry by
spreading them upon a towel and pressing another upon them. Fry to a
light brown in salted lard. Shake off the fat in a hot colander. Line
a deep dish with a napkin and put in the strips. They should not be
crowded in frying, but each should be distinct and free from the rest.
JELLY-CAKE FRITTERS.
Cut stale sponge or very plain cup cake into rounds with a cake-cutter.
Fry to a nice brown in sweet lard. Dip each round in _boiling_ milk,
to soften it and get rid of the grease. Lay upon a hot dish and spread
with sweet jelly or jam. Pile neatly one upon another. Send around hot,
sweetened cream to pour over them.
First Week. Friday.
——
Graham Soup.
Scalloped Oysters. Stewed Sweetbreads, Brown.
Moulded Potato. Lettuce.
——
Quaking Custard.
——
GRAHAM SOUP.
2 onions.
2 carrots.
4 turnips.
½ cabbage.
A little celery-seed tied in a thin muslin bag.
The tomatoes set by yesterday.
½ cup raw rice.
½ cup of cream (with a pinch of soda added to prevent curdling).
2 lumps of white sugar.
Pepper, salt, and parsley.
3 tablespoonfuls of butter cut up in flour.
3 quarts of cold water.
Chop the cabbage and slice the onions; pare and _grate_ the other
vegetables, and put over the fire with the rice, the bag of
celery-seed, and the water. Stew one hour; add the tomatoes and stew
twenty minutes more. Rub all to a pulp through a colander; return to
the soup-pot, season, and when it boils, stir in the butter. Heat the
cream to scalding in a separate vessel, and pour into the tureen. Stir
the soup into it by degrees, and serve. Pass Boston crackers—split and
buttered—with it.
SCALLOPED OYSTERS.
Butter a pudding-dish, and strew the bottom with rolled cracker. Wet
this with oyster-liquor and milk, slightly warmed. Then lay on oysters,
set closely together. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, and bits of butter,
with a few drops of lemon-juice. Another stratum of moistened crumbs,
and so on, until the dish is full. Let the top layer be of crumbs, with
butter dots here and there. Bake, covered, half an hour, then brown
quickly.
STEWED SWEETBREADS—BROWN.
4 sweetbreads.
1 cup of gravy (yesterday’s broth will do).
1 onion.
½ cup butter.
½ pint of mushrooms.
Pepper and salt.
Boil the sweetbreads quickly—ten minutes are enough—blanch by throwing
them into cold water, then leaving them to cool. Slice them lengthwise.
Slice, also, the onion and mushrooms, and fry brown in half the butter.
Strain them out, return the fat to the pan, with the rest of the
butter. Heat, and fry the sweetbreads. When the latter are done, put
all into a tin pail, with a tight top; add the gravy; set, covered, in
boiling water, and stew gently, at the side of the range, half an hour.
Arrange the sweetbreads upon a hot dish; thicken the gravy with browned
flour, and pour over them. Garnish with triangles of fried bread.
MOULDED POTATO.