Lay a neat cut of rib-roast, trimmed and skewered, in a dripping-pan;
dash a cupful of boiling water all over it, and roast ten minutes to
the pound, if you like it rare. Just before taking it up, baste it with
butter—the previous and abundant bastings should have been with its own
gravy—dredge with flour, and, as it browns, again with butter. Pour off
the fat from the gravy before thickening and seasoning it. Much of the
so-called beef gravy is only fit for the dripping-pot.
MASHED SQUASH.
Pare, quarter, seed, and boil in hot, salted water. Drain, and mash in
a hot colander; season with pepper, salt, and butter, and dish hot.
GREEN CORN CUT FROM THE COB.
After boiling, cut the corn, with a sharp knife, from the cob, into a
hot dish; stir in butter, pepper, and salt, and cover to keep hot until
eaten.
FRIED EGG-PLANT.
Please see Sunday, First Week in August.
OPEN APPLE CUSTARD TART.
12 juicy, tart apples; 1 cup of sugar; grated peel of a lemon; 1 pint
of milk; 3 eggs, and 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar, for the custard; good
pie-paste.
Put a border of pie-crust around the flat brim of a pie-plate, without
lining the bottom. Fill the plate with sliced apple, sugared, with
lemon-peel scattered here and there. Put in a _little_ water. Cover
with a crust, in the centre of which you have marked a circle with a
cake-cutter, or large tumbler. Bake the pie; with a sharp knife, cut
out the marked circle, lift the centre-piece, and fill the inside of
the pie with a warm custard made of the milk, eggs, and sugar, boiled
until it begins to thicken. Eat cold.
Third Week. Thursday.
——
Mrs. B.’s Corn Soup.
Smothered Chicken. Stuffed Tomatoes.
Scalloped Potatoes. Beets.
——
Cottage Pudding.
——
MRS. B.’S CORN SOUP.
15 ears of corn, grated from the cob as close as the grater will take
off the grains; the bones and other “trimmings” of yesterday’s roast
beef, both raw and cooked; 1 onion; 1 cup of milk; 2 great spoonfuls of
butter, rolled in flour; pepper and salt; 3 quarts of water.
Put the empty cobs, the bones, etc., with the onion, on in the water,
and stew two hours. Strain off the water, and put the grated corn into
it with pepper and salt. Stew gently one hour; add the floured butter;
simmer ten minutes, and pour into the tureen. Add the milk, boiling
hot; stir up and serve.
SMOTHERED CHICKEN.
Split a pair of young, but well-grown chickens down the back, as for
broiling. Lay flat in a dripping-pan; pour a cup of boiling water over
them, and invert another pan over them so as to cover closely. Roast
half an hour, and baste very freely with butter and water. Ten minutes
later baste with gravy from the pan. In five more, with melted butter,
profusely. Bake until the fowls are tender and well colored. Dish,
salt and pepper them; thicken and season the gravy; pour some over the
chickens and send up the rest in a boat.
STUFFED TOMATOES.
Choose large, smooth tomatoes; cut a piece from the top of each;
take out the inside, taking care not to cut the skin. Chop up
the tomato-pulp with a little cold beef; add one-fourth as much
bread-crumbs as you have pulp, and wet all with beef-gravy, seasoning
with a little sugar, pepper, and salt. Fill the tomatoes with this
force-meat; put on the top slices; pack the stuffing that remains
between the tomatoes, and pour gravy upon this; cover and bake from
forty to forty-five minutes.
SCALLOPED POTATOES.
2 cups of mashed potatoes; 3 tablespoonfuls of cream; 2 tablespoonfuls
of butter; yolks of 4 hard-boiled eggs, 1 raw beaten egg; handful fine
crumbs; pepper and salt.
Beat up the hot potatoes light with butter, cream, raw egg and
seasoning. Put a layer in the bottom of a bake-dish; cover with thin
slices of yolk; salt and pepper; put on more potato, and go on thus
until the dish is full. Cover the top layer of potato with crumbs, and
bake, covered, half an hour, then brown quickly. Serve in the bake-dish.
BEETS.
Cut off the tops, taking care not to scratch the skins. Boil at least
one hour in hot salted water; scrape and slice. Put into a deep dish
and season with a few spoonfuls of hot water mixed with as much vinegar
and a little pepper and salt.
COTTAGE PUDDING.
1 cup of milk; 1 tablespoonful of butter rubbed in a cup of sugar; 2
eggs; 3 cups of prepared flour; a little salt.
Beat the yolks into the butter and sugar; add the milk, then the flour,
alternately with the whisked whites. Bake in a cake-mould; turn out hot
upon a plate, cut in slices, and eat with sweet sauce.
Third Week. Friday.
——
Fish Chowder.
Omelette with Gravy. Boiled Corn.
Potato Salad.
——
Peach Batter Pudding.
——
FISH CHOWDER.
3 lbs. of cod, or halibut, or any other firm white fish; 8 potatoes,
sliced and parboiled; 1 sliced onion, large; ½ lb. fat salt pork, cut
into dice; 2 cups of boiling milk, with a pinch of soda stirred in; 6
Boston crackers, split and buttered thickly; chopped parsley, pepper,
and salt to taste; 1 lemon, pared and cut into thin slices; claret.
Fry the pork in its own fat; add the onions, and, when they are brown,
drain from the fat. Put a layer of pork into the soup pot; then, one of
potatoes, peppered; next, fish, onions, more pork, and so on. Pour in
a glass of claret, then just enough boiling water to cover all. Stew
gently half an hour. Line the tureen with buttered crackers; pour on
the boiling milk, and set the tureen in boiling water until the chowder
is done. Just before taking it up add the parsley. Boil one minute, and
pour out.
OMELETTE WITH GRAVY.
6 or 8 eggs; 1 tablespoonful of cream; 1 scant cup of gravy left from
or made of the remains of yesterday’s chickens; butter for frying.
Put a good piece of butter in a frying-pan, and when it hisses, pour
in the beaten eggs. Shake and loosen them as they form; fold over in
the middle; invert the pan over a hot dish, and pour hot, savory gravy
around it.
BOILED CORN.
See Sunday of First Week in August.
POTATO SALAD.
See Sunday of First Week in August.
PEACH BATTER PUDDING.
12 rich ripe peaches, pared, but not stoned; 1 quart of milk; about 10
tablespoonfuls of prepared flour; 5 beaten eggs; 1 tablespoonful melted
butter; 1 saltspoonful of salt.
Set the peaches closely together in a buttered pudding-dish; strew with
sugar, and pour over them a batter made of the ingredients above named.
Third Week. Saturday.
——
White Mock Turtle Soup.
Calf’s Liver and Bacon. Breaded Egg-plant.
Corn and Tomatoes. Made Mustard.
String-Beans.
——
Nutmeg Melons and Peaches.
——
WHITE MOCK TURTLE SOUP.
1 calf’s head, cleaned with the skin on; ½ lb. lean ham, cut into
strips; 1 carrot; 1 onion; 1 turnip; bunch of sweet herbs; 4
tablespoonfuls of flour and the same of butter; 1 cup of milk; 6 quarts
of water; pepper and salt.
Boil the head in the water with the ham, onion, turnip, and carrot
sliced, and the chopped herbs. Cover, and stew slowly until the bones
fall from the meat. Take out the head; return the bones to the soup.
Divide the meat into two portions; set by one to cool for present use;
put the other, highly seasoned, into a large bowl, and strain half the
stock over it. When cool, set on the ice for to-morrow. Chop the calf’s
ears, and the less desirable parts of the meat reserved for to-day,
fine, and put back upon the bones in the soup. Boil gently half an
hour. Meantime, put the butter into a frying-pan, and when hot, stir
in the flour. It must not get at all brown. When it is again bubbling
hot, stir in a cupful of the soup; boil one minute, and pour it out to
cool. Strain your soup; stir in the cooled mixture; boil up and skim,
when you have seasoned quite highly; put in three or four handfuls
of meat-dice cut up from the fat, gelatinous parts of the cold head;
simmer to a boil; pour into the tureen, add the milk, boiling hot, and
send to table.
CALF’S LIVER AND BACON.
3 lbs. of fresh liver; 1 lb. of streaked bacon; juice of a lemon; 1
tablespoonful of flour, and same of butter; pepper, salt, and onion.
Soak the liver in cold water fifteen minutes; wipe dry, and cut in
strips an inch wide, and three long. Cut as many thinner strips of
bacon, and fry these three minutes in their own fat; take out and keep
hot while you fry an onion—sliced—with the liver in the same fat. Salt,
pepper, and dredge the liver in flour before it goes in. When it is
done lay in two rows, the length of the dish, with a strip of bacon
between each piece and the next. Strain the fat, and return to the pan
with a cupful of hot water, the butter rubbed into the flour, and,
when it has boiled up, the juice of a lemon. Pour over the liver. Pass
mustard with this dish.
BREADED EGG-PLANT.
Slice half an inch thick, and lay in salt and water one hour, with a
heavy plate on top to keep them under. Then wipe dry, dip in beaten
egg, roll in cracker-crumbs, and fry in hot lard or dripping. Drain,
pepper and salt them, and serve.
STRING-BEANS.
Be doubly careful, as the season advances, to pare off the toughening
fibres on both sides. Cut in short pieces; boil in hot salted water
forty minutes, drain, pepper, salt, and butter.
CORN AND TOMATOES.
8 large tomatoes, pared and sliced thin; 6 ears of corn, the grains
_shaved_ from the cob by successive strokes of a keen knife; sugar,
pepper, salt, and butter.
Put corn and tomatoes together, and cook forty minutes. Season, and
simmer ten minutes more. Pour out.
NUTMEG MELONS AND PEACHES.
Halve the melons, take out the seeds, and put a piece of ice in each
half. Pile the peaches in a fruit-dish, or basket, with green leaves
between.
Fourth Week. Sunday.
——
Clear Soup.
Larded Ducks. Succotash.
Stewed Squash. Boiled Potatoes.
——
Peach Ice-Cream.
Cake.
——
CLEAR SOUP.
Take the fat from your soup-jelly; pour into a pot and heat until you
can strain it off from the meat. Cut up the latter; season with salt
and a little spice, and put back on the ice. There is still gelatine
enough in it to make it valuable. Boil and skim your soup two or three
minutes, and add a small cup of German sago which has been soaked in a
little water one hour. When clear, serve.
LARDED DUCKS.
After cleaning and washing, lard the breasts of a pair of ducks with
narrow strips of bacon. You _must_ have a larding-needle for this,
since both ends of the lardoons must project upon the same surface.
Half roast the ducks; put on in a saucepan, with two cups of broth made
by abstracting a cup of jelly from your soup-stock, thinning it with
boiling water and seasoning it. Add a chopped onion and a glass of
claret. Stew half an hour, or until tender; dish; take the fat from the
gravy, thicken, boil and pour half over the ducks, the rest into a boat.
SUCCOTASH.
8 ears of corn—the grains cut off; about a pint of Lima beans; 1
tablespoonful of floured butter; pepper and salt; 1 cup of milk.
Boil corn and beans for nearly an hour in enough boiling water to cover
them. Turn this off, add the milk; when this heats, butter, pepper and
salt. Simmer ten minutes.
STEWED SQUASH.
Pare, seed, quarter, and cook soft in boiling salted water. Pour this
off, and add a few tablespoonfuls of strained gravy from your ducks—or
any other you may have. Beat the squash to pieces in this, in the
saucepan; season well and stir until as stiff and smooth as apple
sauce; then dish upon crustless slices of fried bread.
BOILED POTATOES.
See Saturday, Second Week in August.
PEACH ICE-CREAM.
1 quart of rich milk and as much sweet cream; 4 cups of sugar; 6 eggs;
1 quart of very ripe peaches pared and cut small.
Make as directed in full on Sunday of Second Week in July; but stir
in the peaches just before closing the freezer for the second time,
beating them well into the congealing cream. Unless they are very
sweet, you would do well to dredge them in sugar before they go in.
Fourth Week. Monday.
——
A Medley Soup.
Casserole of Ducks, and Macaroni.
Broiled Ham. Stewed Onions.
Chopped Potatoes.
——
Watermelons and Pears.
——
A MEDLEY SOUP.
Cut up the cold calf’s head—or the remains of it set by for the second
time on yesterday—into dice. Save half to be added as a final touch
to your soup. Put the rest with the skeleton of your ducks into the
soup-pot, and cover with three quarts of water. When it has simmered
three hours and boiled down one-third, strain and return to the fire,
with half a cup of green peas, and the same of tomato-sauce—or you can
put in, if more convenient, the remnants of the succotash and squash
left from Sunday’s dinner. If you use the raw peas, simmer half an
hour; if the cooked vegetables, but ten minutes. Add the meat-dice,
boil up once, and serve.
CASSEROLE OF DUCKS AND MACARONI.
Make according to directions given for “Dijon Paté,” on Monday of Third
Week in August, substituting macaroni boiled twenty minutes in hot
salted water, then cut into quarter-inch lengths, for the boiled rice,
and minced duck for the veal.
BROILED HAM.
Cut smooth slices of cooked ham, and broil five minutes over—or
under—clear coals. Pepper and butter each, and give also a mere touch
of French mustard.
STEWED ONIONS.
Top, tail, and skin the onions. Cook twenty minutes in boiling water;
throw this off, and cover with milk. Simmer ten minutes, or until
tender; stir in a lump of floured butter, season with pepper and salt;
cook two minutes, and dish.
CHOPPED POTATOES.
Chop coarsely cold boiled potatoes. Have ready in a saucepan a little
good dripping, well flavored. As it heats, put in the potatoes, and
stir until smoking hot all through.
WATERMELONS AND PEARS.
Keep the watermelons on ice for some hours before you send them to
table. Lay upon a large flat dish, and serve the pears in a fruit-dish
or basket.
Fourth Week. Tuesday.
——
Farina Soup.
Haricot of Mutton. Moulded Potato.
Raw Tomatoes.
——
Baked Berry Dumplings.
Iced Tea.
——
FARINA SOUP.
2 lbs. of lean coarse beef; 2 lbs. of mutton-bones; 1 onion; 1 grated
carrot, and 1 grated turnip; bunch of herbs; pepper and salt; ½ cup of
farina, soaked two hours in a cup of milk; 3 qts. of water.
Crack the bones and chop the meat and onion. Put these on with the
other vegetables, the herbs, and water, and boil slowly three or four
hours. Strain, cool, skim and season. Put in the farina with a pinch of
soda, and simmer half an hour.
HARICOT OF MUTTON.
3 lbs. of lean mutton; 1 onion; 1 cup of gravy taken from your soup;
1 dessertspoonful of tomato catsup; 1 carrot; 1 cup of green peas; 1
glass of sherry; 2 spoonfuls of butter; browned flour for thickening
the gravy; pepper and salt.
Cut the mutton into strips three inches long by one wide, and fry
these, with the sliced onion, in the butter. Have ready the gravy in
a saucepan, and put in the meat. Stew slowly nearly an hour. Then add
the carrot, parboiled and sliced, and the peas. Stew twenty minutes;
thicken the butter used for frying with browned flour, add pepper,
salt, and the catsup; pour into the stew, and cook three minutes. Add
the wine; boil up, and serve in a deep dish.
MOULDED POTATO.
Mash the potato smooth, working in a little milk, butter, and salt.
Grease a pudding-mould; press the potato in firmly, and turn out upon a
hot dish.
RAW TOMATOES.
See Friday of First Week in August.
BAKED BERRY DUMPLINGS.
1 quart of prepared flour; 2½ tablespoonfuls of lard and butter mixed;
2 cups of milk, or enough to make a soft dough.
Roll out a quarter of an inch thick; cut into oblong pieces, rounded at
the corners. Put blackberries or huckleberries in the middle, sprinkle
with sugar, and bring the edges together, pinching them to keep them
from parting. Put into the oven with the joined edges downward, and
bake forty minutes. Glaze with butter just before taking them up.
Fourth Week. Wednesday.
——
Squirrel Soup.
Fricasseed Chicken. Boiled Rice.
Scalloped Tomatoes. Lima Beans.
——
Fruit.
Iced Coffee and Ellie’s Cake.
——
SQUIRREL SOUP.
2 large fine gray squirrels, skinned, cleaned and cut up, 1 lb. lean
corned ham, cut into dice; 1 onion; 2 blades of mace; a little cayenne;
juice of a lemon; browned flour; 3 quarts of cold water; dripping; 2
tablespoonfuls of butter.
Fry squirrel and onion in the dripping to a light brown. Drain off the
fat and put them into the soup-pot with the water, ham, and mace. Cover
closely, and stew until the meat is in rags, and the water reduced
one-third. Strain, cool, and skim; season and put over the fire. When
it boils, skim well, and stir in the butter, cut up in browned flour.
When it has thickened, add the lemon-juice and serve.
FRICASSEED CHICKEN.
Clean, wash and cut up a pair of full-grown chickens. Wash, but do not
soak. Put into a pot with half a pound of fat salt pork, cut very thin,
and enough cold water to cover them. Heat very slowly, and cook until
tender. When done add a chopped onion, with chopped parsley and pepper.
Cover again, and five minutes later, stir in a great tablespoonful of
butter rolled in flour. Heat in another saucepan a cup of milk; add two
beaten eggs; boil one minute. Arrange the chickens upon a dish; strain
the gravy; stir in the milk and eggs, and without putting again over
the fire, pour over the fowls.
BOILED RICE.
Wash well in several waters. Strain a half cupful of your chicken gravy
with an equal quantity of soup; add a little boiling water, and put
on with the rice in a farina-kettle. When it is quite soft, and has
absorbed all the broth, salt it, and stir in a little boiling milk in
which has been melted a teaspoonful of butter, and a little minced
parsley. Turn into a hot dish, when it has soaked up the milk, and pass
grated cheese with it.
SCALLOPED TOMATOES.
Pare and slice fine ripe tomatoes. Put into a bake-dish with alternate
layers of buttered bread-crumbs. Season each stratum of tomato with
pepper, salt and sugar. Bake covered, until very hot—then, brown. The
uppermost layer should be of crumbs.
LIMA BEANS.
See Wednesday, First Week in August.
FRUIT.
Dispose to the best advantage in baskets or dishes, with a garnishing
of green leaves.
ICED COFFEE AND ELLIE’S CAKE.
See Monday, Second Week in August, for Iced Coffee. For Ellie’s Cake,
please consult “GENERAL RECEIPTS, NO. 1, OF COMMON SENSE IN THE
HOUSEHOLD SERIES,” page 326.
Fourth Week. Thursday.
——
Ham and Veal Soup.
Beefsteak Pudding. Stuffed Egg-plant.
Mashed Potatoes. Summer Salad.
——
Peach Trifle.
——
HAM AND VEAL SOUP.
2 lbs. of lean ham—that near the hock will do—cut into strips; 2 lbs.
of lean veal; 2 carrots; 2 onions; 1 blade of mace; ¼ of a cabbage
heart, minced and parboiled; 2 lemons; pepper; 4 quarts of water; 1
tablespoonful of flour wet up in cold water.
Put on meat, chopped vegetables, and water, and cook for four hours.
Strain, cool, and take off the fat. The vegetables should be pulped
through the colander. Return to the fire, boil and skim for five
minutes; having seasoned with pepper, stir in the flour; boil three
minutes, and pour out.
BEEFSTEAK PUDDING.
2½ lbs. of rumpsteak; 1 quart of prepared flour; ¼ lb. powdered suet,
chopped with the flour; pepper; salt; a very little minced parsley; 1
small pickled onion, chopped; nearly a cupful of broth, taken from the
soup, cooled and skimmed.
Make a paste of the suet and salted flour mixed with a little
ice-water. Roll it out and line a round bowl with it. Cut the meat into
dice; pepper and salt each piece, and roll in flour. Put them inside
of the paste; strew over them the parsley and pickle, and pour in the
_cold_ gravy. Cover the top with a paste-crust, overlapping the greased
edges of the bowl; press this down firmly all around; envelop all in
a stout cloth, tied tightly under the bottom of the bowl; plunge into
boiling water and cook, at a steady boil, two hours and a quarter.
Untie the cloth, invert the bowl with care over a hot dish; turn out
the pudding, and serve at once.
STUFFED EGG-PLANT.
Parboil for ten minutes. Slit down the side, and take out the seeds.
Prop open the cut with a bit of clean wood, and lay in salt and water
for one hour. Stuff with a force-meat of crumbs, fat salt pork, salt,
pepper, nutmeg, parsley, and a bit of onion, all chopped. Moisten with
a good gravy. Wind soft string about the egg-plant, to keep the cut
closed, and bake, putting a cupful of weak broth in the dripping pan.
Baste frequently; at first, with butter and water, then with the gravy.
Baste twice with butter at the last. Lay the egg-plant in a deep dish;
add to the gravy a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour, and, when
this boils, two or three spoonfuls of milk or cream. Just boil, and
pour upon the egg-plant.
MASHED POTATOES.
Whip boiled potatoes light with a fork; beat in milk, butter, and salt,
and heap like rock-work upon a hot dish.
SUMMER SALAD.
2 heads of lettuce; a handful of water-cresses; 5 very tender radishes,
scraped and cut up; 1 cucumber, pared, laid in ice-water for an hour,
then sliced; 3 hard-boiled eggs; 2 teaspoonfuls of white sugar, and 1,
each, of salt, pepper, and made mustard; 2 tablespoonfuls of salad oil,
and 6 of vinegar.
Rub sugar, salt, pepper, and mustard, to a paste with the oil. Pound
the yolks fine, and work in. Then whip in, very gradually, the vinegar.
Arrange the vegetables, all cut up neatly, in a salad-bowl, and
_strain_ the dressing over it. Garnish with the whites, sliced, laid
around in a chain, with a nasturtium flower in every two or three links.
PEACH TRIFLE.
12 fine peaches, pared and sliced very thin; 1 package Coxe’s gelatine;
2 cups white sugar; 1 pint of boiling and 1 cup of cold, water; 1
cup of rich, sweet cream, with a pinch of soda dissolved in it, then
whipped light in a syllabub-churn.
Soak the gelatine two hours in the cup of cold water. Put it, with
peaches and sugar, into a bowl; cover, and let stand an hour. Then pour
on the boiling water; stir and mash the peaches, and strain through
muslin. When cold and slightly congealed, beat in quickly, a spoonful
at a time, the whipped cream. It should be thick and white, or faintly
colored. Form in a wet mould set an ice. Eat with cake.
Fourth Week. Friday.
——
Cauliflower Soup, without Meat. Fillets of Halibut, with Potatoes.
Beef’s Tongue, with Peas.
Green Corn Pudding. Raw Cucumbers.
——
Melons, Peaches, and Pears.
——
CAULIFLOWER SOUP, WITHOUT MEAT.
1 fine cauliflower; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in 1 of flour; 1
onion; bunch of parsley; 2 blades of mace; 2 quarts of water; 2 cups of
milk; pepper and salt; a pinch of soda in the milk.
Cut the cauliflower into bunches, reserving about a cupful of small
clusters to put whole into the soup. Chop the rest, also the onion and
herbs, and put on in the water, with the mace. Cook an hour, and rub
through a colander. Return the _purée_, thus obtained, to the pot, and
season with pepper and salt. As it boils, stir in the whole clusters,
previously boiled tender in hot, salted water, and left to cool. When
the soup is again hot, put in the floured butter; stir until this has
thickened; pour into the tureen, and add the boiling milk. Pass sliced
lemon and cream crackers with it.
FILLETS OF HALIBUT, WITH POTATOES.
3 lbs. of halibut, cut into strips three inches long, one wide, and
three-quarters of an inch thick; 3 tablespoonfuls of butter; pepper;
salt; 1 teaspoonful of anchovy paste; a pinch of cayenne; a little
boiling water; juice of a lemon.
Lay the slices of fish in salt and water for half an hour. Wipe them
dry. Have ready the butter in a saucepan, with pepper and salt. When it
is hot, put in the pieces of fish, and cook gently, without browning,
until tender.
Meanwhile, cut some potatoes round with your “gouge,” or, if you
have none, into neat squares; parboil and drain them, and simmer
ten minutes in enough hot milk to cover them; then stir in a lump of
butter; season with pepper and salt. Cook five minutes; drain the
liquid into another saucepan, and keep the potatoes hot. Lay the fish
in order upon a hot dish, the potatoes around it, and set over hot
water, while you thicken the milk in which the potatoes were boiled
(never omitting the pinch of soda), with a little flour. Boil up, add
the butter used for cooking the fish, and the anchovy sauce. Squeeze a
small lemon over the fish, and pour on the hot sauce.
BEEF’S TONGUE WITH GREEN PEAS.