Part 10

Wash, wipe, and bake in a moderate oven. When done, cut a round piece of skin almost entirely from the top of each, leaving a “hinge” at one side. With a small knife make an incision in the mealy part of the potato, _i. e._, the heart, put in a pinch of salt, and a bit of butter, replace the flap of skin, and send hot to table.

FARINA CUSTARD.

1 quart of milk. 4 tablespoonfuls of farina. 3 eggs well beaten. 1 cup of sugar. Vanilla essence—2 teaspoonfuls. 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Heat the milk to scalding; stir in the farina, which should have been previously soaked in a little cold water for an hour. Cook in a farina-kettle fifteen minutes, stirring often. Take out a cupful and beat into the eggs already whipped up with the sugar. Put into the kettle, stir in salt and flavoring, boil two minutes, and pour into a deep dish. Eat warm, putting a teaspoonful of sweet fruit jelly upon the top of each saucerful in serving.

Third Week. Tuesday. —— Plain Calf’s Head Soup. Boiled Mutton. Minced Cabbage. String-Beans. Beet-root Salad. —— Corn Meal Puffs. ——

PLAIN CALF’S HEAD SOUP.

Wash a calf’s head (cleaned with the skin on), in three waters, and soak one hour in salted water. Then put on to boil in five quarts of cold water. Cook until the meat slips easily from the bones. Take out the head, remove the bones, and throw back into the soup. Set aside three-quarters of the meat—the best portions—for to-morrow’s dinner. Chop the ears and other refuse parts fine; season with salt, pepper, onion, sweet marjoram, a teaspoonful of ground cloves, and as much allspice—even spoonfuls. Mix all up well, return to the soup and boil down to three quarts. Mash the brains and make into force-meat balls with raw egg, seasoning and enough flour to hold them together; roll in flour and set in a cool place until wanted. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of browned flour wet up with cold water, and stir together five minutes. Strain the soup, put back two quarts over the fire, stir in the thickening of flour and butter, boil up and put in the force-meat balls. Simmer ten minutes, add the juice of a lemon, and a glass of brown sherry, and pour out. The reserved quart of “stock” is for another day’s soup. Do not put the calf’s tongue into the soup. It is indispensable in to-morrow’s ragoût.

BOILED MUTTON.

The best part for boiling is the leg. Put on in boiling water and cook, allowing fifteen minutes to the pound. Make a sauce by taking out a cupful of liquor when it is nearly done, cooling it until you can take off the fat, then heating again in a saucepan and stirring into it one tablespoonful of butter, two teaspoonfuls of flour, wet up with cold water. Stir for five minutes, putting in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and after another boil, take from the fire before you put in the juice of a lemon.

In this, as in other cases where the liquor in which meat is boiled is to be used for broth, salt slightly while cooking, sprinkling all over lightly with salt the moment you take it from the fire. Serve the sauce in a boat.

MINCED CABBAGE.

Boil a firm head of cabbage, quartered, in two waters, throwing the first away after ten minutes’ cooking and putting in more as hot, and a little salted. When it is tender all through, drain and chop quite fine, seasoning with salt, pepper, and a liberal portion of butter. Serve hot in a vegetable dish.

STRING BEANS.

Open a can of string beans an hour before they are to be used. Cut them into short pieces when you are ready to cook them; turn off the liquor and cover them with cold water. Put into a pot with a bit of salt pork a little more than an inch square. Boil slowly until tender, strain, season with pepper, and serve hot, with the pork on top of the pile of beans.

BEET-ROOT SALAD.

Boil the beets until tender; scrape clean; drop into cold water for three minutes. Slice, and pour over them a dressing of vinegar, salt, sugar, made mustard, pepper, and one tablespoonful of oil to four of vinegar. Cover, and let all stand together for two hours. This salad will keep for a couple of days.

CORN-MEAL PUFFS.

1 quart of boiling milk. 2 scant cups of white “corn-flour.” ½ cup of wheat-flour. 1 scant cup of powdered sugar. A little salt. 4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately. 1 tablespoonful of butter. ½ teaspoonful of soda. 1 teaspoonful of cream tartar. ½ teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and nutmeg.

Sift soda and cream tartar twice through the flour. Then, mix flour and meal together, and sift a third time. Boil the milk and stir into it the meal, flour, and salt. Boil ten minutes, stirring well up from the bottom. Take it off, put into a bowl, add the butter and beat hard for three minutes. Let it cool while you whip the eggs light, then the yolks and sugar and spice together. Beat these into the cold mush, and lastly the frothed whites. Whip all together faithfully, and bake in greased cups or small “corn-bread moulds,” set within a steady oven. When done, turn out and eat hot, breaking—not cutting—them open, and after buttering sprinkling with white sugar.

Third Week. Wednesday. —— Marie’s Soup. —— Ragoût of Calf’s Head and Mushrooms. Mashed Turnips. Creamed Potatoes. Tomato Soy. —— Sponge-cake Pudding. Nuts and Raisins. ——

MARIE’S SOUP.

2 sweetbreads. 1 quart of soup jelly, left from yesterday’s stock. 1 quart of cold water. 1 onion. Bunch of parsley. 2 blades of mace. A dozen mushrooms. Pepper and salt. 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up in cold water.

Wash and scald the sweetbreads, and put on to stew in the cold water. When they have boiled slowly half an hour, salt, boil up and skim. Take all the fat from the top of the cold soup-stock, and stir into the liquor already on the fire. Add the onion and parsley minced, and the mace; season to taste, cover and stew gently for one hour. Take out the sweetbreads and lay them where they will cool quickly. Strain the soup, return to the fire; put in a dozen mushrooms (you can buy the French _champignons_ in cans), stew fifteen minutes; cut the sweetbreads into small squares, drop into the soup; thicken with the corn-starch wet with cold water; boil up once and serve.

This soup is very fine.

RAGOÛT OF CALF’S HEAD AND MUSHROOMS.

1 cold boiled calf’s head, cut into slices with the tongue. 1 can French mushrooms, _minus_ those used for the soup. 1 sliced onion. Pepper, salt, and sweet herbs. ½ teaspoonful mixed mace and allspice. Juice of a lemon. Butter or dripping for frying.

Cut three-quarters of the calf’s head—the best parts—into neat slices, also the tongue. Chop the rest, season with the onion, pepper and salt, cover with three cups of cold water, and stew gently down to one cup of gravy. Meanwhile fry the slices of meat in good dripping. Take them out with a wire spoon and put into the bottom of a tin vessel set within another of warm—not boiling—water. Cover and set over the fire. Drain, slice and fry the mushrooms in the fat left in the frying-pan. Drain and lay these upon the meat in the inner vessel. Time the cooking of the gravy so as to have it ready, spiced, and seasoned, to be strained, hot over the meat and mushrooms. Put on a tight lid and _simmer_ fifteen minutes, never boiling once. Strain off the gravy into a saucepan. Thicken, and let it boil up once. Add the lemon-juice, put the meat and mushrooms into a deep dish, and pour the hot gravy over all.

MASHED TURNIPS.

Boil soft, drain and mash, pressing the water out well, return to the saucepan, with a generous lump of butter; pepper and salt; stir constantly until the butter is dissolved, and all smoking hot, and serve in a covered dish.

CREAMED POTATOES.

In mashing them, add more milk than usual, whipping up hard with a silver fork. While still very hot, beat in the white of an egg, already frothed stiffly; pile in a deep dish and set, uncovered, within the oven, until a light crust begins to form on the top, but not long enough to injure the dish. Brush over with butter to glaze it, and serve.

TOMATO SOY

Is an excellent “stock” pickle. For directions for making it, please refer to page 488, “GENERAL RECEIPTS, NO. 1, OF COMMON-SENSE SERIES.”

SPONGE-CAKE PUDDING.

1 stale sponge-cake. 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar. 4 eggs, beaten light. 2 cups of milk. 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch, wet up with cold milk. Juice of one lemon and half the grated peel.

Slice the cake and lay some of it in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Make a custard by scalding the milk, stirring into it the corn-starch, then pouring it, by degrees, upon the beaten eggs and sugar. Add the lemon; pour over the cake, put another layer of slices; more custard, and so on, until the mould is full. Put a small, heavy plate on top, and let all stand until the custard is soaked up. Cover and bake, half an hour, or until done throughout. Turn out upon a flat dish, sprinkle thickly with white sugar, and eat warm or cold.

NUTS AND RAISINS.

Crack the nuts, and select for table use fair bunches of plump, fresh raisins.

Third Week. Thursday. —— Potage au Riz. English Pork Pie. Mock Stewed Oysters. Potato Balls. Mixed Pickles. —— Lemon Jelly and Light Cake. ——

POTAGE AU RIZ,

In plainer English, rice-broth, can be achieved for to-day, with little trouble, by the help of the liquor in which your mutton was boiled on Tuesday. Wash and soak a cup of rice in cold water. At the end of half an hour, add it, with the water in which it has soaked, to the mutton-broth, from which you must first take the fat. Boil very slowly two hours, and should the water sink below the original level more than an inch, replenish with boiling. In another saucepan heat a cup of milk, thickened with a tablespoonful of rice-flour. Season the mutton-broth with pepper and parsley—it will hardly need salt. (Boil up and skim, before the parsley goes in.) Pour the hot milk over two beaten eggs, stir in well; add to the soup in the kettle, and take instantly from the fire.

ENGLISH PORK PIE.

3 lbs. of _lean_ fresh pork, cut into strips as long as your finger. 6 large juicy apples. 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Pepper, salt, and mace to taste. 1 cup of sweet cider. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. Good pie-paste for an upper crust, made according to receipt given for Thursday of second week in this month.

Put a layer of pork within a pudding-dish; season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, or mace. Next a layer of sliced apples, strewed with sugar and bits of butter. Go on in this order until you are ready for the crust, having the last layer of apples. Pour in the cider, cover with a thick crust of good pastry, ornamented around the edge; make a slit in the middle, and bake in a moderate oven one hour and a half. Should the crust threaten to brown too fast, cover with paper. When nicely browned, brush over with butter and close the oven door for a moment; then wash well with white of egg. Eat hot. You will find it very good, odd as the receipt may seem.

MOCK STEWED OYSTERS.

Scrape and drop into cold water a bunch of salsify, or oyster-plant. Cut into short pieces and stew tender in boiling water, a little salted. Drain off nearly all the water, and pour into the saucepan a cup of cold milk. When again hot, add a heaping tablespoonful of butter and a handful of fine cracker-dust, with pepper and salt. Stir very slowly for five minutes, and pour out. It should be about as thick as oyster soup.

POTATO BALLS.

Mash potatoes with a little butter and salt, and let them get cold. Then work in a beaten egg. Make into balls about twice the size of a walnut, with floured hands, roll them well in flour, and fry yellow-brown in good dripping or lard. Drain in a colander, and pile upon a flat dish.

LEMON JELLY AND LIGHT CAKE.

5 lemons—juice of all and grated peel of two. 2 large cups of sugar. 1 package of Coxe’s gelatine, soaked in two cups of cold water. 2 glasses pale sherry. 1 pint of boiling water.

Stir sugar, lemon-juice, peel, and soaked gelatine together, and leave, covered, for an hour. Then pour over them the boiling water; stir until the gelatine is dissolved; strain through a flannel bag, without pressing. Add the wine, and let all drip, untouched, through double flannel. Pour into a wet mould. In cold weather, or if set on ice, it will be ready for use in six hours. Pass a basket of light cake with it.

Third Week. Friday. —— Lobster Bisque. Stewed Chicken. Rice Croquettes. Crab-apple Jelly. Winter Squash. —— Apple Snow. Tea and Macaroons. ——

LOBSTER BISQUE.

1 can of lobster. 1 quart of milk. 1 quart of cold water. 3 tablespoonfuls of butter. ½ cup of pounded cracker. 1 teaspoonful of salt. A little cayenne pepper.

Free the lobster from all bits of shell, and cut up small, tearing as little as may be. Put the water into a saucepan, with the salt and pepper. When boiling, stir in the lobster and stew half an hour. Heat the milk in another vessel, and, when scalding, stir in the cracker and set in hot water for ten minutes. The lobster having cooked for thirty minutes, add the butter, and simmer five minutes longer. Then pour in the milk; mix all up well; set for five minutes in hot water, and serve in a tureen. Pass sliced lemon with it.

This _bisque_ is delicious.

STEWED CHICKEN.

Prepare a fine young fowl as for roasting, with the exception of the dressing, which should be left out. Early in the day (if you have no gravy already made) put on the feet and giblets to stew in two cups of cold water, with a little minced onion. When the giblets are very tender, and the liquid has boiled down to one cupful, strain it and set aside the giblets to cool. Chop a quarter of a pound of pork, put it in the bottom of a pot, lay the chicken upon it; pour the gravy over it; cover _tightly_ and set where it will heat steadily, but not reach the boil under an hour. Increase the heat, not allowing the steam to escape, for an hour longer, but it should not stew fast at any time. By this time the fowl should be thoroughly done. Remove carefully to a hot dish; season the gravy, adding a little hot water if needful, and strain out the pork. Add the giblets, chopped fine, stew fast for one minute, pour over the chicken, and it is ready for the table.

RICE CROQUETTES.

2 cups of cold boiled rice. 1 tablespoonful of melted butter. 2 eggs, well beaten. 1 tablespoonful sugar. A little flour. Salt to taste.

Work butter and sugar to a cream, and these into the rice. Salt, and stir up with the eggs to a smooth paste. Make into oval balls or rolls, with well-floured hands. Roll in flour, and fry, a few at a time, in sweet lard. Drain well and eat hot.

WINTER SQUASH.

Pare, take out the seeds, cut into strips, and lay in cold water, one hour. Cook in boiling water, a little salt, until very soft. Drain off every drop of water, and mash with a potato beetle, stirring in a large spoonful of butter, and seasoning with pepper and salt. Mound up in a vegetable dish and serve hot.

APPLE SNOW.

6 fine pippins (raw). 2 cups of milk. 4 eggs. 1 cup of powdered sugar.

Make a custard by stirring into the hot milk half the sugar, the yolks of all the eggs, and the white of one, and cooking, stirring constantly until it thickens. Let this cool while you whip the whites to a stiff _méringue_ with the rest of the sugar. Peel the apples, and grate directly into the _méringue_, stirring in at once that the coating of egg may prevent them from changing color. Put the cold custard in the bottom of a glass dish, and heap the snow upon it. Eat soon after making it.

TEA AND MACAROONS.

Pass after dinner in the dining-room, or send into the parlor.

Third Week. Saturday. —— Ayrshire Soup. Mutton Chops and Tomato Purée. Potato Strips. Sweet Pickles. Boiled Beans. —— Macaroni Pudding. ——

AYRSHIRE SOUP.

4 lbs. of lean beef. 2 lbs. of marrow-bones well cracked. 2 onions. 2 turnips. 3 stalks of celery. Bunch of sweet herbs. 6 large potatoes. ½ cup of oatmeal. Pepper and salt. 6 quarts of cold water.

Chop the vegetables and herbs; cut the meat fine, and break up the bones. Put the oatmeal to soak in a pint of water. Slice the potatoes, and parboil them in hot water for ten minutes. Add them then to the other vegetables, and put them all, with the meat and bones, into a soup-pot, with the water. Stew for four hours, until the liquor in the pot has fallen one-third. Strain through a colander, set aside two quarts of the stock until to-morrow, after seasoning it all, and return the rest to the fire. Boil up and skim; add the oatmeal, and stew, covered, forty minutes, stirring often, lest it should burn.

MUTTON CHOPS AND TOMATO PURÉE.

Broil the chops, after trimming them neatly; rub, as soon as they leave the gridiron, with butter on both sides; pepper and salt, and cover, for a few minutes, in a hot water dish, that they may take up the seasoning.

Make the _purée_ by stewing a can of tomatoes until almost dry, then seasoning, and stirring in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Simmer three minutes, arrange the chops on their sides, overlapping each other, inside of the curve of a flat dish, and pour the _purée_ within their enclosure.

POTATO STRIPS.

Pare and cut the potatoes in long strips, the length of the potato, and not more than the sixteenth of an inch thick. Lay in ice-water for one hour; dry by laying on one clean towel and pressing another upon it, and fry, not too many at once, in _hot_ lard, a little salt. Take out so soon as they are browned lightly, toss in a hot colander, and serve in a deep dish lined with a napkin.

BOILED BEANS.

Soak all night, and in the morning change the cold water for lukewarm. Leave in this two hours; drain it off and put them on to boil in cold water, with a piece of fat salt pork two inches square. Cook slowly until soft. Take out the pork, drain the beans well, season with pepper, and dish.

MACARONI PUDDING.

½ lb. of macaroni broken into inch lengths. 2 cups of boiling water. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 large cup of milk. 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Grated peel of half a lemon. A little cinnamon and salt.

Boil the macaroni in the water until it is tender, and has soaked up the liquid. It must be cooked in a farina-kettle. Add the butter and salt. Cover for five minutes without cooking. Put in the rest of the ingredients. Simmer, after the boil begins, ten minutes longer, before serving in a deep dish. Be careful, in stirring, not to break the macaroni. Eat with butter and powdered sugar, or cream and sugar.

Fourth Week. Sunday. —— Potato Soup. Roast Beef. Baked Hominy. Sweet Potatoes, baked. Cabbage Salad. —— Arrow-Root Pudding, Cold. Coffee. ——

POTATO SOUP.

3 pints of good stock. 1 quart of cold water. 12 mealy potatoes. 1 onion. ½ cup of rice. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. Seasoning to taste.

Slice the potatoes, cover with boiling water, and cook ten minutes. Throw away this water, and add the quart of cold, slightly salted, and the onion, to the potatoes. Boil to pieces, and pass, with the water in which they were boiled, through a colander into the stock. Heat all together, and cook gently half an hour, before adding the rice, which should have been boiled soft in a very little water. When the rice is nearly dry, stir in the butter, put into the soup, and simmer five minutes.

ROAST BEEF.

A rib-roast is best for family use. Make your butcher saw off about half of the bone, after cutting the ends of the ribs clear of the meat; then fold the flap neatly around to the thick part, and secure with skewers. The “trimmings” are yours—a fact housekeepers often fail to insist upon. The meat is weighed before you buy it. Take all that you pay for—and you will seldom be at a loss for a “base” for soup or gravy. Between butchers and cooks, there is enough wasted in American kitchens to supply a National Soup-house that might feed all the poor in the land.

Put your beef in the dripping-pan; pour a cup of boiling water over it, and roast ten minutes for every pound. Bake as soon as the juices begin to flow—the oftener in reason the better. If your meat has much fat on top, cover it—the fat—with a paste of flour and water. When nearly done, remove this, dredge the beef with flour, baste well with gravy, strew salt over the top, and serve. Pour the fat off from the gravy; return to the fire, thicken with browned gravy, season, and boil up once.

SWEET POTATOES—BAKED.

Parboil, take off the skins, and, half an hour before you take up your beef, lay the potatoes in the dripping-pan to brown, basting them with the meat. They should be of a fine brown. Drain off the grease, and lay about the beef when dished.

BAKED HOMINY.

1 cupful of cold boiled hominy (small grained). 2 cups of milk. 1 large teaspoonful of butter. The same of sugar. A little salt. 2 eggs.

Work the melted butter well into the hominy, mashing all lumps. Then come the beaten yolks; next, sugar and salt; then, gradually, the milk; lastly the whites. Beat until perfectly smooth, and bake in a greased pudding-dish until delicately browned. Serve in the bake-dish.

CABBAGE SALAD.

Chop a firm white cabbage with a sharp knife. A dull one bruises it. Make a dressing of two tablespoonfuls of oil; six of vinegar; a teaspoonful each of salt and sugar; half as much each of made mustard and pepper. Work all in well, the vinegar going in last, and then beat in a raw egg, whipped light. Pour over the salad, toss up with a fork, and serve in a glass dish.

ARROW-ROOT PUDDING—(COLD).

3 even tablespoonfuls of arrow-root. Get the Bermuda if you can, or you may require more. 3 cups of fresh milk. 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar. 1 tablespoonful of butter. ¼ lb. of crystallized peaches, chopped fine.

Heat the milk to scalding, and stir in the arrow-root wet up with cold milk. Stir ten minutes, and add sugar and butter. Stir five minutes more, and pour out. When nearly cold, beat in the fruit. Pour into a wet mould. Make on Saturday, and on Sunday, turn out upon a dish, and eat with sugar and cream. It is very good without the fruit, but needs more sugar in making.

COFFEE

Should be served last of all.

Fourth Week. Monday. —— Bread Soup. Cannelon of Beef. Pork and Beans. Chow-chow. Potato Stew. —— Peach Batter Pudding. ——

BREAD SOUP.

A few raw beef-bones and trimmings, spoken of yesterday. Bones, bits of skin, gristle, etc., left from Sunday’s roast when you have cut off the meat for the _cannelon_.

1 pint of stock. 1 onion. 2 stalks of celery. Bunch of sweet herbs. 4 quarts of cold water. 1 lb. stale bread-crusts, the drier the better, provided they are not mouldy or sour. Salt and pepper. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Crack the bones, chop meat and vegetables; put on in the water, and boil slowly down to two quarts. Strain the liquor; let it cool; take off all the fat, season, and return to the pot with the stock. Boil up and skim; put in the crusts; stew, covered, half an hour. Take it from the range and _beat_ in the butter, taking out indissoluble bits. Then simmer, in a vessel set within another of boiling water, half an hour.

As you will see, by a careful perusal of these directions, the preparation of this soup requires little actual expenditure of time. I beg, therefore, that you will “gather up the fragments” from larder and bread-box, and give your family a hot, nourishing, “comforting” dish of porridge, if it _is_ wash-day.

CANNELON OF BEEF.