Part 27

“_Delacre’s Extract of Meat Chocolate._--This agreeable article combines in one preparation, and under a most agreeable form, a large proportion of tonic and nutritive principles. It contains both the properties of chocolate and beef. It is a useful tonic and nutritive agent for invalids and convalescents, and for persons of delicate constitutions. It contains three per cent. of La Plata Extract of Meat, and every square represents the nutritive constituents of one and a quarter ounces of beef. It is employed as ordinary chocolate. Full directions accompany each box.

“_Welluc’s Biscotine._--A most excellent, healthy, and invigorating food for infants and invalids. It is prepared from sweetened bread and other nutritious substances, reduced to a fine powder, so as to render them easily soluble in water or milk. As an article of common diet for infants, particularly those suffering from delicate constitutions or with looseness of the bowels, it will be found to give health and strength with more certainty than the _crude_ substances now in use, and not, like them, liable to sour on the stomach.”

SOME DISHES FOR “BABY.”

No particular diet can be recommended for the infant that is so unfortunate as to be deprived of its natural nourishment. What agrees with one is quite unsuccessful with another. Different kinds of diet can only be tested. Children’s little illnesses are often the result of food which, in their case, is unassimilating and indigestible; and it is often better to attempt a change of food than to resort to medicines.

City babies generally thrive poorly with cow’s milk. Some can stand it, however, diluting it with a third water, adding a slight thickening of rice, well boiled and mashed, and also a little sugar. Others thrive well on goat’s milk, when no other kind will answer. The Borden condensed milk serves like a charm with very young infants in cold weather; but in warm weather its excessive sweetness seems to cause acidification when taken. In New York, where it may be obtained fresh, without sweetening, I have heard that it is more satisfactory.

Some babies are ruddy and strong with an oatmeal diet (oatmeal porridge strained and mixed with the milk). I have already mentioned this as especially successful in Ireland and Scotland. However, in the warm climate of many of our cities in summer I have known the oatmeal diet to cause eruptions or boils. It is almost a crime to undertake to bring up children artificially in warm summer climates. Many a heart-ache is caused when, failing to supply the natural food, nothing would seem to agree with the baby.

PAP.

Put a little butter into a saucepan for the purpose of keeping the mixture from sticking. When it is hot, pour in a thin batter of milk and flour, a little salted; stir well, and boil gently about five minutes; then add a little sugar. If the child is over three months old, an egg may be mixed in the batter for a change.

WHEAT-FLOUR AND CORN-MEAL GRUEL.

Tie wheat flour and corn meal (three-quarters wheat flour and one-quarter corn meal) into a thick cotton cloth, and boil it three or four hours. Dry the lump, and grate it as you use it. Put on the fire cream and water (one part cream to six parts water), and when it comes to a boil, stir in some of the grated lump, rubbed to a smooth paste with a little water. Salt it slightly. Judgment must be used as to the amount of thickening. For a young infant, the preparation should be thin enough to be taken in the bottle; if the child is older, it may be thicker. If the child is troubled with constipation, the proportion of corn meal should be larger; if with summer complaint, it may be left out altogether.

ROASTED RICE

boiled and mashed is a good infant diet in case of summer complaint.

CORN-MEAL GRUEL

is undoubtedly the best relaxing diet for infants, and may be used instead of medicine.

FOOD FOR INFANTS WITH WEAK DIGESTIVE ORGANS.

OATMEAL GRUEL (_Dr. Rice, of Colorado_), No. 1.

Add one tea-cupful of oatmeal to two quarts of boiling water, slightly salted; let this cook for two hours and a half, then strain it through a sieve. When cold, add to one gill of the gruel one gill of thin cream and one tea-spoonful of sugar. To this quantity add one pint of boiling water, and it is ready for use.

BEEF (_Dr. Rice_), No. 2.

Scrape one-half pound of beef, and remove all the shreds; add one-half pint of water, and three drops of muriatic acid. Let it stand one hour; then strain it through a sieve, and add a small portion of salt.

HOW TO SERVE FRUITS.

The French deserve much praise for their taste in arranging fruits for the table. They almost invariably serve them with leaves, even resorting to artificial ones in winter.

In the following arrangements, I have some of their dainty dishes in mind.

STRAWBERRIES.

The French serve large fine strawberries without being hulled. Pulverized sugar is passed, the strawberry is taken by the thumb and finger by the hull, dipped into the sugar, and eaten. The Wilson strawberry, however, which seems to be our principal market strawberry, certainly requires stemming, and deluging with sugar before serving.

MIXED FRUITS.

Always choose a raised dish for fruits. Arrange part of the clusters of grapes to fall gracefully over the edge of the dish. Mix any kind of pretty green leaves or vines, which may also fall, and wind around the stem of the dish. Although the colors of the fruits should blend harmoniously, and the general appearance should be fresh and _négligé_, arrange them firmly, so that when the dish is moved there will be no danger of an avalanche.

WATER-MELONS.

A water-melon should be thoroughly chilled; it should be kept on the ice until about to be served. It may be simply cut in two, with a slice cut from the convex ends, to enable the halves to stand firmly on the platter. When thus cut, the pulp is scooped out in egg-shaped pieces with a table-spoon and served; or it may be cut as shown in figure, when slices with the rind attached may be served.

CANTALOUPE MELONS.

Put it into the refrigerator until just before serving, to become thoroughly chilled; cut it as in figure here given, removing the seeds. Arrange four or five grape leaves on a platter, upon which place the melon.

CURRANTS.

Serve currants in rows of red and white, with a border of leaves around the outside, as shown in annexed cut.

CURRANTS OR OTHER FRUITS ICED.

Beat the white of an egg barely enough to break it. Dip in selected bunches of fine currants, and while moist roll them in pulverized sugar. Place them on a sieve to dry. This makes a refreshing breakfast dish.

Plums, cherries, grapes, or any other fruit may be iced in the same way.

HOW THEY EAT ORANGES IN HAVANA.

A fork is pierced partly through the centre of an orange, entering it from the stem side; the fork serves for a handle, which is held in the left hand, while with a sharp knife the peel and thin skin are cut off in strips from the top of the orange to the fork handle; now, holding it in the right hand, the orange can be eaten, leaving all the fibrous pulp on the fork.

FRESH PEACHES.

Choose large, fresh, ripe, and juicy peaches; pare, and cut them into two or three pieces. They should be large, luscious-looking pieces, not little chipped affairs. Sprinkle over granulated sugar, put them into the freezer, and half freeze them; this will require about an hour, as they are more difficult to freeze than cream. Do not take them from the freezer until the moment of serving, when sprinkle over a little more sugar. Serve in a glass dish. Canned peaches may be treated in the same manner.

PINE-APPLES.

When pine-apples are picked and eaten fresh in their own climate, they seem to dissolve in the mouth, and the fibrous texture is hardly perceived. Not so at our tables. Here I have sometimes partly resolved that they are not much of a luxury after all, especially when the slices are so tough as to require the knife and fork. They are better cut into dice, saturated with sugar, and piled in the centre of a glass dish, with a row _à la Charlotte_ of sponge-cake slices, or of ladies’-fingers around the sides.

BEVERAGES.

PUNCH (_Mrs. Williams_).

Rub loaf-sugar over the peels of six lemons to break the little vessels and absorb the ambrosial oil of the lemons. Then squeeze out all the juice possible from six oranges and six lemons, removing the seeds; add to it five pounds of loaf-sugar (including the sugar rubbed over the peels) and two quarts of water, with five cloves and two blades of mace (in a bag); simmer this over the stove about ten minutes, making a sirup.

This sirup will keep forever. It should be bottled and kept to _sweeten_ the liquors, whenever punch is to be made.

Mix then one pint of green tea, a scant pint of brandy, one quart of Jamaica rum, one quart of Champagne, and one tea-cupful of Chartreuse. When well mixed, sweeten it to taste with the sirup; pour it into the punch-bowl, in which is placed an eight or ten pound piece of ice. Slice three oranges and three lemons, removing the seeds, which put also into the punch-bowl.

MILK PUNCH (_Mrs. Filley_).

Ingredients: Four quarts of Jamaica rum, three quarts of water, five pints of boiling milk, three pounds of loaf-sugar, twenty-four lemons, two nutmegs.

Cut thin slices, or only the yellow part of the rinds of the twenty-four lemons. Let these thin parings and the two grated nutmegs infuse for twenty-four hours in one quart of the rum. It should be put in a warm place.

At the end of the twenty-four hours, add to the juice of the twenty-four lemons (freed from seeds) the water, sugar, rum, and also the rum containing the lemon-peel and nutmeg. Put all into a large vessel. When the sugar is dissolved, add the five pints of boiling milk while the mixture is being stirred all the time. It will curdle, of course. Then cover it, and let it stand still one hour, when filter it through a bag, until it is as clear and bright as a crystal. It may take three or four hours. Pale rum should be used. This quantity will make enough to fill about one dozen quart bottles. Cork them well, and keep them standing. It may be used at once, but it will not be in perfection until it is a year or two old. It will keep forever. The bag may be made three-cornered with a yard square of rather coarse Canton flannel.

This punch is nice to serve with mock-turtle soup, or it may be used for making Roman punch. Like sherry, it is a convenient beverage to offer, with cake, to a lady friend at any time.

ROMAN PUNCH.

Make or purchase lemon ice. Just before serving, put enough for one person at table into a saucer or punch-glass, and pour over two table-spoonfuls of the milk punch, made as in the last receipt. A course of Roman punch is often served at dinner parties just after the roast. There is no better, cheaper, or easier way of preparing it than this.

CLARET PUNCH.

Cut up the yellow part of one lemon, and let it soak for three or four hours in half of a quart bottle of claret; add then the other half of the wine. Sweeten to taste, and add one bottle of soda. Put a clove into each glass before pouring out the punch.

EGGNOG.

Ingredients: Six eggs, half a pound of sugar, half a pint of brandy or whisky, three pints of cream whipped to a froth.

Beat the yolks of the eggs and the sugar together until it is a froth; add the brandy or whisky, next the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth, and then the whipped cream.

SHERRY, CLARET, OR CATAWBA COBBLERS.

Put four or five table-spoonfuls of the wine into a glass with half a table-spoonful of sugar; one or two thin slices of orange or lemon may be added. Fill the glass with finely chopped ice. Now pour this from one glass to another once or twice, to mix well. Put then two or three strawberries, or a little of any of the fruit of the season, for a garnish. The beverage can not be completed without the addition of two straws.

LEMONADE.

Rub loaf-sugar over the peels of the lemons to absorb the oil; add to the lemon-juice the sugar to taste. Two lemons will make three glassfuls of lemonade, the remainder of the ingredients being water and plenty of ice chopped fine.

TOM AND JERRY.

Ingredients: Four eggs and six large spoonfuls of powdered sugar beaten together very light (a perfect froth), six small wine-glassfuls of rum, and one pint of boiling water.

Stir the water into the mixture, and then turn it back and forth into two pitchers, the pitchers being hot, and the glasses also hot. Grate nutmeg on the top of each glass, and drink immediately.

MINT-JULEP.

Bruise several tender sprigs of fresh mint in a tea-spoonful of sugar dissolved in a few table-spoonfuls of water. Fill the glass to one-third with brandy, claret, sherry, or any wine preferred, and the rest with finely pounded ice. Insert some sprigs of mint with the stems downward, so that the leaves above are in the shape of a bouquet. Drink through a straw.

MILK PUNCH AND EGG-AND-MILK PUNCH (see page 326).

BLACKBERRY CORDIAL.

Ingredients: Two quarts of blackberry juice, two pounds of loaf-sugar, half an ounce of powdered cinnamon, half an ounce of powdered allspice, half an ounce of powdered nutmeg, quarter of an ounce of powdered cloves.

Boil it all together two hours. Add, while hot, one pint of fourth-proof pure French brandy. Bottle it.

CURRANT WINE.

To two quarts of the currant-juice (after the currants are pressed) add one quart of water and three and a half pounds of sugar. Let it stand in an open jar until it stops fermenting; then draw it off carefully, bottle, and cork it securely.

RASPBERRY VINEGAR (_Miss Nellie Walworth_).

Pour one quart of vinegar over three quarts of ripe black raspberries in a china vessel. Let it stand twenty-four hours, then strain it. Pour the liquor over three quarts of fresh raspberries, and let it infuse again for a day and night; strain again, and add one pound of white sugar to each pint of juice. Boil twenty minutes, skimming it well. Bottle when cold. When it is to be drunk, add one part of the raspberry vinegar to four parts of ice water.

SUITABLE COMBINATION OF DISHES.

There are dishes which seem especially adapted to be served together. This should be a matter of some study. Of course, very few would serve cheese with fish, yet general combinations are often very carelessly considered.

SOUP.

Soup is generally served alone; however, pickles and crackers are a pleasant accompaniment for oyster-soup, and many serve grated cheese with macaroni and vermicelli soups. A pea or bean soup (without bread _croutons_) at one end of the table, with a neat square piece of boiled pork on a platter at the other end, is sometimes seen. When a ladleful of the soup is put in the soup-plate by the hostess, the butler passes it to the host, who cuts off a thin wafer-slice of the pork, and places it in the soup. The thin pork can be cut with the spoon. Hot boiled rice is served with gumbo soup. Well-boiled rice, with each grain distinct, is served in a dish by the side of the soup-tureen. The hostess first puts a ladleful of soup into the soup-plate, then a spoonful of the rice in the centre. This is much better than cooking the rice with the soup.

Sometimes little squares (two inches square) of thin slices of brown bread (buttered) are served with soup at handsome dinners. It is a French custom. Cold slaw may be served at the same time with soup, and eaten with the soup or just after the soup-plates are removed.

FISH.

The only vegetable to be served with fish is the plain boiled potato. It may be cut into little round balls an inch in diameter, and served in little piles as a garnish around the fish, or it may be the flaky, full-sized potato, served in another dish. Some stuff a fish with seasoned mashed potatoes, then serve around it little cakes of mashed potatoes, rolled in egg and bread-crumbs and fried. Cucumbers, and sometimes noodles, are served with fish.

BEEF.

Almost any vegetable may be served with beef. If potato is not served with fish, it generally accompanies the beef, either as a bed of smooth mashed potatoes around the beef, or _à la neige_, or as fried potato-balls (_à la Parisienne_), or, in fact, cooked in any of the myriad different ways. At dinner companies, beef is generally served with a mushroom-sauce. However, as any and all vegetables are suitable for beef, it is only a matter of convenience which to choose. Horse-radish is a favorite beef accompaniment.

CORNED BEEF

should be served with carrots, turnips, parsnips, cabbage, or pickles around it.

TURKEYS.

Cranberry-sauce, or some acid jelly, such as currant or plum jelly, should be served with turkey. Many garnish a turkey with sausages made of pork or beef. Any vegetable may be served with a turkey; perhaps onions, cold slaw, turnips, tomatoes, and potatoes are the ones oftenest selected.

CHICKENS.

Fried chickens with cream dressing are good served with cauliflower on the same dish, with the same sauce poured over both. A boiled chicken is generally served in a bed of boiled rice. A row of baked tomatoes is a pretty garnish around a roast chicken. It is fashionable to serve salads with chickens.

LAMB

is especially nice served with green pease or with spinach; cauliflowers and asparagus are also favorite accompaniments.

PORK.

The unquestionable combination for pork is fried apples, apple-sauce, sweet-potatoes, tomatoes, or Irish potatoes. Pork sausages should invariably be served with apple-sauce or fried apples. Thin slices of breakfast bacon make a savory garnish for beefsteak. Thin slices of pork, egged and bread-crumbed, fried, and placed on slices of fried mush, make a nice breakfast dish; or it may garnish fried chickens, beefsteak, or breaded chops.

MUTTON.

The same vegetables mentioned as suitable for lamb are appropriate for mutton. The English often serve salad with mutton.

VEAL.

Any vegetable may be served as well with veal as with beef. I would select, however, tomatoes, parsnips, or oyster-plant.

ROAST GOOSE,

apple-sauce, and turnips especially.

GAME.

Game should invariably be served with an acid jelly, such as a currant or a plum jelly. Saratoga potatoes, potatoes _à la Parisienne_, spinach, tomatoes, and salads, are especially suitable for game.

CHEESE

is served just before the dessert. It is English to serve celery or cucumbers with it. Thin milk crackers or wafer biscuits (put into the oven just a moment before serving, to make them crisp) should be served with cheese; butter also for spreading the crackers, this being the only time that it is usually allowed for dinner. Macaroni with cheese, Welsh rare-bits, cheese omelets, or little cheese-cakes, are good substitutes for a cheese course.

SWEET-BREADS.

Sweet-breads and pease--this is the combination seen at almost every dinner company. They are as nice, however, with tomatoes, cauliflowers, macaroni mixed with tomato-sauce or cheese, or with asparagus or succotash.

ROMAN PUNCH

is generally served as a course just after the beef. It is a refreshing arrangement, preparing one for the game which comes after. In England, punch is served with soup, especially with turtle or mock-turtle. One often sees Roman punch served as a first course just before the soup.

CANTALOUPE MELONS

are served just after the soup at dinner. This is especially French; however, this melon is more of a breakfast than a dinner dish. The water-melon is served the same time as fruit at dinner.

SERVING OF WINES.

At dinners of great pretension, from eight to twelve different kinds of wines are sometimes served. This is rather ostentatious than elegant. In my judgment, neither elegance nor good taste is displayed in such excess. Four different kinds of wine are quite enough for the grandest occasions imaginable, if they are only of the choicest selection. Indeed, for most occasions, a single wine--a choice claret or Champagne--is quite sufficient. In fact, let no one hesitate about giving dinners without any wine at all. Proper respect for conscientious scruples about serving wine would forbid a criticism as to the propriety of serving any dinner without it. Such dinners are in quite as good taste, and will be just as well appreciated by sensible people; and it makes very little difference whether people _who are not sensible_ are pleased or not.

If three wines are served, let them be a choice sherry with the soup, claret with the first course after the fish, and Champagne with the roast. If a fourth is desired, there is no better selection than a Château Yquem, to be served with an _entrée_. If Champagne alone is used, serve it just after the fish. Many serve claret during the entire dinner, it matters not how many other varieties may be served; others do the same with Champagne--for the benefit of the ladies, they say. I believe, however, Champagne is considered with more disfavor every day. In England, punch is served with turtle or mock-turtle soup. A receipt may be found for one of their best punches (see page 339). I consider it, however, a decided mistake to serve so strong a beverage, especially at the beginning of a dinner. A fine ale is often served with the cheese-and-cracker course at family dinners, when wine is not served.

As a rule, I would say that the white wines, Sauterne, Rhine, etc., are served with raw oysters, or just before the soup; sherry or Madeira, with the soup or fish; Champagne, with the meat; claret, or any other of the red wines, with the game. Many prefer claret just after the fish, as it is a light wine, and can be drunk instead of water. If still another wine is added for the dessert, it is some superior sherry, port, Burgundy, or any fine wine. Very small glasses of _liqueurs_, such as maraschino and curaçoa, are sometimes served at the end of a dinner after coffee.

In France, coffee (_café noir_) is served after the fruit at dinner, a plan which should be generally followed at dinner parties at least. It is always well to serve cream and sugar with coffee, as many prefer it.

PROPER TEMPERATURE IN WHICH WINES SHOULD BE SERVED.

Sherry should be served thoroughly chilled.

Madeira should be neither warm nor cold, but of about the same temperature as the room.

Claret should be served at the same temperature as Madeira, never with ice; it should remain about forty-eight hours standing, then decanted, care being observed that no sediment enter the decanter.

Champagne should either be kept on ice for several hours previous to serving, or it should be half frozen; it is then called _Champagne frappé_. It is frozen with some difficulty. The ice should be pounded quite fine, then an _equal_ amount of salt mixed with it. A quart bottle of Champagne well surrounded by this mixture should be frozen in two hours, or, rather, frozen to the degree when it may be poured from the bottle.

TREATMENT OF WINES.

Connoisseurs on the subject of wine say much depends upon its treatment before it is served; that it is invariably much impaired in flavor through ignorance of proper treatment in the cellar; and that a wine of ordinary grade will be more palatable than one of better quality less carefully managed. They say wine should never be allowed to remain in case, but unpacked, and laid on its side. Above all, wine should be stored where it is least exposed to the changes of temperature.

All red wines should be kept dry and warm, especially clarets, which are more easily injured by cold than by heat. Consequently, on account of the rigor of our winters, clarets are better stored in a closet on the second floor (not too near a register) than in a cellar. Champagnes and Rhine wines stand cold better than heat, which frequently causes fermentation. The warmer sherry, Madeira, and all spirits are kept, the better.

CHOICE OF BRANDS.