Part 34

PRESERVED GREEN TOMATAS.--Take a peck of button tomatas, full grown, but quite green. Weigh them, and to each pound allow a pound of the best double-refined loaf-sugar, broken up small. Scald and peel them. Have ready ten lemons rolled under your hand on a table, to increase the juice. Grate off, upon lumps of sugar, the yellow surface of the rind, scraping up the grating or zest with a spoon, and transferring it to a bowl. Squeeze over it, through a strainer, the juice of the lemon. Take a quarter of a pound of root ginger, scrape off the outside, grate the ginger and mix it with the lemon.

Put the sugar into a large preserving kettle, and pour water on it; allowing half a pint of water to each pound of sugar. Stir it about with a large, clean wooden spoon, till it melts. Set it over a clear fire, and boil and skim it. After it has boiled, and is very clear, and the scum has ceased to rise, put in the tomatas and boil them till every one has slightly bursted. Next add the lemon and ginger, and boil them about a quarter of an hour longer. Then take them out and spread them on large dishes to cool. Boil the syrup by itself, ten minutes longer. Put the tomatas into jars, about half full, and fill up with the syrup. Cover the jars closely, and paste paper round the lids; or tie bladders over them.

Green tomatas, done as above, make an excellent sweetmeat. Ripe or red tomatas may be preserved in the same manner; yellow ones also.

The lemon and ginger must on no account be omitted.

PRESERVED FIGS.--Take figs when perfectly ripe, and wipe them carefully, leaving the stem about half an inch long. Boil them rapidly, for about ten minutes, in water that has a small bag of hickory wood-ashes laid at the bottom of the preserving kettle. Then take them out carefully, so as not to break the skins. Wash out the kettle, and boil the figs a second time, in clean hot water, for ten minutes. Take them out, spread them separately on large dishes, and let them rest till next morning.

Prepare a syrup, by allowing to every pound of the finest loaf-sugar, half a pint of water, and, when melted together, placing the kettle over the fire. When the syrup has boiled, and is thoroughly skimmed, put in the figs, and boil them about twenty-five minutes or half an hour. Then take them out, and again spread them to cool on large dishes. Afterwards, put them up in glass jars, pouring the syrup over them. Cover the jars closely, and set them in the hot sun all next day. Then seal the corks with the red cement made of melted rosin and bees-wax, thickened with fine brick-dust.

Another way is to cut the stems closely, and to peel off the skin of the figs; and to substitute for the bag of wood-ashes, a little powdered alum. Then proceed as above.

MYRTLE ORANGES PRESERVED.--The small myrtle of the South, makes a very fine green sweetmeat. Lay them three days in weak salt and water. Then three days in cold water, changed at least three times a day. Afterwards, put a layer of green vine-leaves at the bottom of the preserving kettle, and round the sides. Put in a layer of oranges, sprinkling among them a very little powdered alum, allowing not more than a heaped salt-spoonful of alum to the whole kettle of oranges and vine-leaves. Then fill up with water; hang them over the fire till they are of a fine green, and boil them till they are so tender that you can pierce them through with a twig from a whisk broom. When clear and crisp, take them out of the kettle, spread them on flat dishes, and throw away the vine-leaves. Then wash out the kettle, and, having weighed the oranges, allow to each pound one pound of double-refined sugar, broken small. Put the sugar into the preserving-kettle, and pour on half a pint of water to each pound of sugar. When it is quite dissolved, hang it over the fire, and boil and skim it till it is very clear, and no more scum appears on the surface. Then put in the oranges, and boil them slowly in the syrup till they slightly burst.

Another way is to scoop out all the inside of oranges as soon as they are greened, and make a thick jelly of it, with the addition of some more orange-pulp from other oranges. Press it through a strainer, and, after adding a pound of sugar to each pint of orange juice, boil it to a jelly. Having boiled the empty oranges in a syrup till they are crisp and tender, spread them out to cool--fill them with the jelly, and put them up in glass jars, pouring the syrup over them.

TO KEEP STRAWBERRIES.--Take the largest and finest ripe strawberries, hull them, and put them immediately into large wide-mouthed bottles, filling them quite up to the top. Cork them directly, and be sure to wire the corks. Set the bottles into a large preserving-kettle full of cold water. Place them over the fire, and let the water boil around them for a quarter of an hour after it has come to a boil. Then take out the bottles, drain them, and wipe the outside dry. Proceed at once to seal the corks hermetically, with the red cement made of one-third bees-wax cut up, and two-thirds rosin, melted together in a skillet over the fire, and, when completely liquid, taken off the fire, and thickened to the consistence of sealing-wax by stirring in sufficient finely powdered brick-dust. This cement must be spread on hot over the wired corks. It is excellent for all sweetmeat and pickle jars. Nothing is better. Keep the bottles in boxes of dry sand. When opened, the strawberries will be found fresh and highly flavoured, as when just gathered. They must, however, be used as soon as they are opened, for exposure to the air will spoil them.

Raspberries, ripe currants stripped from the stalk, ripe gooseberries topped and tailed, and any small fruit, may be kept in this manner for many months.

In France, where syrups of every sort of fruit are made by boiling the juice with sugar, and then bottling it, it is very customary to serve up, in glass dishes, fruits preserved as above, with their respective syrups poured round them, from the bottles. They are delicious.

TO KEEP PEACHES.--Take fine ripe juicy free-stone peaches. Pare them, and remove the stones by thrusting them out with a skewer, leaving the peaches as nearly whole as possible. Or you may cut them in half. Put them immediately into flat stone jars, and cement on the covers with the composition of bees-wax and rosin melted together, and thickened with powdered brick dust. The jars (_filled up to the top_) must be so closely covered that no air can possibly get to the peaches. Then pack the jars in boxes of sand, or of powdered charcoal, and nail on the box-lid.

Peaches done in this manner, have arrived at California in perfect preservation. But they must be eaten as soon as the jars are opened.

GREEN CORN MUFFINS.--Having boiled the corn, grate it, as if for a pudding. Beat six eggs very light, and stir them gradually into a quart of milk. Then stir in, by degrees, the grated corn, till you have a moderately thick batter. Add a salt-spoon of salt. Butter the inside of your muffin-rings. Place them on a hot griddle, over a clear fire, and nearly fill them with the batter. Bake the muffins well, and send them to table hot. Eat them with butter.

COMPOTE OF SWEET POTATOES.--Select fine large sweet potatoes, all nearly the same size. Boil them well and then peel off the skins. Then lay the potatoes in a large baking-dish; put some pieces of fresh butter among them, and sprinkle them very freely with powdered sugar. Bake them slowly, till the butter and sugar form a crust. They should be eaten after the meat. This is a Carolina dish, and will be found very good.

BAKED HAM.--Soak a nice small sugar-cured ham in cold water, from early in the evening till next morning--changing the water at bed-time. (It may require twenty-four hours' soaking.) Trim it nicely, and cut the shank-bone short off. Make a coarse paste of merely flour and water, sufficient in quantity to enclose the whole ham. Roll it out, and cover the ham entirely with it. Place it in a well-heated oven, and bake it five hours, or more, in proportion to its size. When done, remove the paste, peel off the skin, and send the ham to table, with its essence or gravy about it. It will be found very fine.

If the ham is rather salt and hard, parboil it for two hours. Then put it into the paste, and bake it three hours.

MUSHROOM SWEET-BREADS.--Take four fine fresh sweet-breads; trim them nicely, split them open, and remove the gristle or pipe. Then lay the sweet-breads in warm water till all the blood is drawn out. Afterwards, put them into a saucepan, set them over the fire, and parboil them for a quarter of an hour. Then take them out, and lay them immediately in a pan of cold water.

Have ready a quart of fresh mushrooms; peel them, and remove the stalks. Spread out the mushrooms on a large flat dish, with the hollow side uppermost, and sprinkle them slightly with a little salt and pepper. Having divided each sweet-bread into four quarters, put them into a saucepan with the mushrooms, and add a large piece of the best fresh butter rolled in flour. Cover the pan closely, and set it over a clear fire that has no blaze. You must lift the saucepan by the handle, and shake it round hard, otherwise, the contents may burn at the bottom. Keep it closely covered all the time; for if the lid is removed, much of the mushroom-flavour may escape. Let them stew steadily for a quarter of an hour or more. Then take them up, and send them to table in a covered dish, either at breakfast or dinner. They will be found delicious. If the mushrooms are large, quarter them.

PANCAKE HAM.--Cut very thin some slices of cold ham, making them all nearly of the same size and shape. Beat six eggs very light, and smooth. Stir them, gradually, into a pint of rich milk, alternately with six table-spoonfuls of sifted flour, adding half a nutmeg, grated. If you find the batter too thick, add a little more milk. For pancakes or fritters, the batter should be rather thin. Take a yeast-powder; dissolve the contents of the blue paper (the soda) in a little warm water, and, when quite melted, stir it into the batter. In another cup, dissolve the tartaric acid from the white paper, and stir that in immediately after. Have ready, in a frying-pan over the fire, a sufficiency of lard melted and boiling, or of fresh butter. Put in a ladle-full of the batter, and fry it brown. Have ready a hot plate, and put the pancakes on it as soon as they come out of the frying-pan, keeping them covered, close to the fire. When they are all baked, pile them evenly on a hot dish, with a slice of cold ham between every two pancakes, beginning with a cake at the bottom of the pile, and finishing with a cake at the top. You may arrange them in two piles, or more. In helping, cut down through the whole pile of pancakes and ham alternately.

In making yeast-powders, allow twice as much carbonate of soda as of tartaric acid. For instance, a level tea-spoonful of soda to a level salt-spoonful of the tartaric acid. Put up the two articles, separately folded in papers of different colours; the former in blue paper, the latter in white.

AN APPLE PANDOWDY.--Make a good plain paste. Pare, core, and slice half a dozen or more fine large juicy apples, and strew among them sufficient brown sugar to make them very sweet; adding some cloves, cinnamon, or lemon-peel. Have ready a pint of sour milk. Butter a deep tin baking-pan, and put in the apples with the sugar and spice. Then, having dissolved, in a little lukewarm water, a small tea-spoonful of soda, stir it into the milk, the acid of which it will immediately remove. Pour the milk, foaming, upon the apples, and immediately put a lid or cover of paste over the top, in the manner of a pie. This crust should be rolled out rather thick. Notch the edge all round, having made it fit closely. Set it into a hot oven, and bake it an hour. Eat it warm, with sugar.

HONEY PASTE (_for the HANDS_.)--Take half a pound of strained honey, half a pound of white wax, and half a pound of fresh lard. Cut up the wax very small, put it into a porcelain-lined saucepan, and set it over the fire till it is quite melted. Then add alternately the honey and the lard; stirring them all well together. Let them boil moderately, till they become a thick paste, about the consistence of simple cerate, or of lip salve. Then remove the saucepan from the fire, and stir into the mixture some rose-perfume, or carnation, or violet--no other. Transfer the paste, while warm, to gallicups with covers; and paste a slip of white paper round each cover.

For keeping the hands white and soft, and preventing their chapping, there is nothing superior to this paste; rubbing on a little of it, after dipping your hands lightly in water.

GLYCERINE.--This is an excellent and very convenient preparation for the hands. Buy a bottle of it at one of the best druggists, and keep it well corked. After washing your hands with palm or castile soap, empty the basin, and pour in a little fresh water, to which add a few drops of glycerine. Finish your hands with this, rubbing it in hard. It will render them very soft and smooth, and prevent chapping. Try it, by all means.

TO KEEP OFF MUSQUITOES.--Before going to bed, put a little eau de cologne into a basin of clean water, and with this wash your face, neck, hands, and arms, letting it dry on. The musquitoes then will not touch you.

It may be necessary to repeat this washing before morning, or about day-light. There is nothing better. You may also do it early in the evening, before the musquitoes begin.

CORN-STARCH BLANCMANGE.--Buy at one of the best grocer's, a half-pound paper of corn-starch flour. Boil a quart of milk, taking out of it a large tea-cup-full, which you may put into a pan. While the milk is boiling, mix with the cold milk four heaping table-spoonfuls of the corn-starch. Beat three eggs very light, and stir them into the mixture. Flavour it with a tea-spoonful of extract of bitter almonds, or of vanilla, or a wine-glass of rose-water. Add a quarter of a pound of powdered loaf-sugar, and stir the whole well together. When the other milk is boiling hard, pour it gradually on the mixture in the pan, which mixture will thicken while the milk is pouring. Transfer it to blancmange moulds, (first wetting them with cold water,) and set them in a cold place till dinner-time. Eat it with cream. Serve up sweetmeats at the same time.

If you use new milk, the mixture will be like a soft custard, and must be sent to table as such. Skim-milk makes it blancmange.

If you wish it as a pudding, use five heaping spoonfuls of the corn-starch powder. Send it to table hot, and eat it with wine sauce. It is a pudding very soon prepared.

Blancmange moulds are best of block tin. Those of china are more liable to stick.

These preparations of corn-starch are much liked.

FARINA.--Is the finest, lightest, and most delicate preparation of wheat flour. It is excellent for all sorts of boiled puddings, for flummery, and blancmange. Also, as gruel for the sick.

CINNAMON CAKE.--Take as much of the very best and lightest bread-dough as will weigh a pound. The dough must have risen perfectly, so as to have cracked all over the surface. Put it into a pan, and mix into it a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, melted in half a pint of milk, adding a well-beaten egg, and sufficient flour to enable you to knead the dough over again. Then mix in a heaping tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon. Next, take a yeast-powder. In one cup, melt the soda or contents of the blue paper, in as much lukewarm water as will cover it; and, when thoroughly melted, mix it into the dough. Immediately after, having dissolved in another cup the tartaric acid, or contents of the white paper, stir that in also, and knead the dough a little while, till the whole is well mixed. Spread the dough thick and evenly in a square pan greased with lard or fresh butter, and with a knife make deep cuts all through it. Having previously prepared in a bowl a mixture of brown sugar, moistened with butter, and highly flavoured with powdered cinnamon, in the proportion of four heaping table-spoonfuls of sugar to two large spoonfuls of butter and one heaped tea-spoonful of cinnamon. Fill the cuts with this mixture, pressing it down well into the dough. Bake the cake half an hour or more, in a rather quick oven. When done, set it to cool; and when cold, cut it in squares, and sift powdered white sugar over it. It is best the day it is baked.

You may, previous to baking, form the dough into separate round cakes; and in placing them in the pan, do not lay them so near each other as to touch.

By bespeaking it in time, you can get risen bread dough from your baker. For two pounds of dough you must double the proportions of the above ingredients.

THAWING FROZEN MEAT, &c.--If meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, or any other article of food, when found frozen, is thawed by putting it into _warm water_ or placing it before the fire, it will most certainly spoil by that process, and be rendered unfit to eat. The only way is to thaw these things by immersing them in _cold_ water. This should be done as soon as they are brought in from market, that they may have time to be well thawed before they are cooked. If meat that has been frozen is to be boiled, put it on in cold water. If to be roasted, begin by setting it at a distance from the fire; for if it should not chance to be thoroughly thawed all through to the centre, placing at first too near the fire will cause it to spoil. If it is expedient to thaw the meat or poultry the night before cooking, lay it in cold water early in the evening, and change the water at bed-time. If found crusted with ice in the morning, remove the ice, and put the meat in fresh cold water; letting it lie in it till wanted for cooking.

Potatoes are injured by being frozen. Other vegetables are not the worse for it, provided they are always thawed in cold water.

KEEPING MEAT, &c., IN SUMMER.--In summer, meat, poultry, fish, fruit, &c., should always be kept in ice, from the time they are brought from market till it is time to cook them. Families, who have not an ice-house, should have _two_ refrigerators; one for meat and poultry, the other for milk, butter, and fruit. If the three last articles are kept in the same refrigerator with meat and poultry, the milk, butter and fruit will imbibe a bad taste.

A barrel of salt fish should never be kept in the same cellar with other articles of food. The fish-smell will injure them greatly, and render them unwholesome; milk and butter particularly.

It is best to buy salt fish a little at a time, as you want it. A fish-barrel in the cellar will sometimes vitiate the atmosphere of the whole lower story of the house, and, indeed, may be smelt immediately on entering the door. In this case, let the barrel and its contents be conveyed to the river and thrown in; otherwise, its odour may produce sickness in the family.

Avoid eating anything that is _in the very least_ approaching to decomposition. Even sour bread and strong butter are unwholesome as well as unpalatable. If the bread is sour, or the butter rancid, it is because (as the French, in such cases, unceremoniously say) "putrefaction has commenced." Fortunately, the vile practice (once considered fashionable) of eating venison and other game when absolutely tainted, is now obsolete at all good tables. Persons who have had opportunities of feasting on fresh-killed venison, just from the woods, and at a season when the deer have plenty of wild berries to feed on and are fat and juicy, can never relish the hard, lean, black haunches that are brought to the cities in winter.

BROILED SHAD.--Cut off the head and tail, and clean the fish. Wipe it very dry with a cloth, and sprinkle the inside with a little salt and pepper. You may either broil it split open, and laid flat; or you may cut it into three or four pieces without splitting. In the latter case, it will require a longer time to broil. Keep it in ice till you are ready to cook it. Having well greased the bars with lard, or beef suet, or fresh butter, set your gridiron over a bed of clear, bright, hot coals; place the shad upon it (the inside downwards) and broil it thoroughly. When one side is done, turn it on the other with a knife and fork. Have ready a hot dish, with a large piece of softened fresh butter upon it, sprinkled with cayenne. When the shad is broiled, lay it on this dish, and turn it in the butter with a knife and fork. Send it hot to table, under a dish-cover.

APPLE PORK.--Take a fillet of fine fresh pork, and rub it slightly all over with a very little salt and pepper. Score the outside skin in diamonds. Take out the bone, and fill up the place with fine juicy apples, pared, cored, and cut small, and made very sweet with plenty of brown sugar; adding some bits of the yellow rind of a lemon or two, pared off very thin. Then have ready a dozen and a half or more of large apples, pared, cored, and quartered, sweetened well with sugar, and also flavoured with yellow rind of lemon. The juice of the lemons will be an improvement. Put the pork into a large pot, or into an iron bake-oven; fill up with the cut apples the space all round, adding just sufficient water to keep it from burning. Stew or bake it during three hours. When done, serve all up in one large dish.

STEWED SALT PORK.--Take a good piece of salt pork, (not too fat,) and, early in the evening, lay it in water, to soak all night, changing the water about bed-time. In the morning, drain and wash the pork, and cut it in very thin slices, seasoning it with pepper. Put a layer of this pork in the bottom of a large dinner-pot, and then a layer of slices of bread. Next put in a layer of potatoes, pared and cut up; then another layer of pork slices, covered by another layer of sliced bread; and then again potatoes. Proceed till the pot is two-thirds full, finishing with bread. Lastly, pour on just sufficient water to stew it well and keep it from burning. Set it over the fire, and let it cook slowly for three hours. If it becomes too dry, add a little boiling water.

This is a homely dish, but a very good one, particularly on a farm or on ship-board. At sea, you must substitute biscuit for bread.

Cold pork, left from yesterday, may be cooked in this manner.

TO MAKE GOOD TOAST.--Cut the bread in even slices, and moderately thick. When cut too thin, toast is hard and tasteless. It is much nicer when the crust is pared off before toasting. A long-handled toasting-fork (to be obtained at the hardware or tin stores) is far better than the usual toasting apparatus, made to stand before the fire with the slices of bread slipped in between, and therefore liable to be browned in stripes, dark and light alternately; unless the bread, while toasting, is carefully slipped along, so that the whole may receive equal benefit from the fire. With a fork, whose handle is near a yard in length, the cook can sit at a comfortable distance from the fire, and the bread will be equally browned all over; when one side is done, taking it off from the fork, and turning the other. Send it to table hot, in a heated plate, or in a toast-rack; and butter it to your taste. Toast should neither be burnt nor blackened in any way. You may lay it in even piles, and butter it before it goes to table; cutting each slice in half.

CARVING.

The seat, for the carver should be somewhat elevated above the other chairs: it is extremely ungraceful to carve standing, and it is rarely done by any person accustomed to the business. Carving depends more on skill than on strength. We have seen very small women carve admirably sitting down; and very tall men who knew not how to cut a piece of beef-steak without rising on their feet to do it.