Part 13

Soak the rice two hours in the milk. Simmer in a farina-kettle until tender. Rub butter and sugar to a cream. Beat up the eggs, and whip the mixture into them while the rice is cooling. Stir all together; flavor, and bake three-quarters of an hour in a buttered dish. If baked too long, the custard will break. So soon as it is well set in the middle of the dish, draw to the oven-door, and spread with a _méringue_ made of the whites of three eggs whisked stiff with one tablespoonful of powdered sugar and juice of half a lemon. Close the oven-door, and brown delicately. Eat cold. Make it on Saturday.

Second Week. Monday. —— Hasty Soup. Larded Beef. Stewed Parsnips. Browned Potatoes. Made Mustard. —— “Brown Betty.” Tea and Albert Biscuit. ——

HASTY SOUP.

The trimmings of your roast beef, and any other cold meat you may have—about two and a half pounds in all, chopped very fine.

2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 2 tablespoonfuls of browned flour. 2 quarts of water. 2 handfuls of fried bread. Pepper and salt. 1 tablespoonful of walnut catsup.

Put meat, butter, salt and pepper into a saucepan; add two quarts of cold water, and bring slowly to a boil. Cook half an hour after the boil fairly begins. Strain hard through a thin cloth; thicken with browned flour; add the catsup; boil up once, and pour over the fried bread in the tureen.

LARDED BEEF.

Trim yesterday’s roast on top, bottom, and sides, saving all the fragments for your soup. Then make incisions quite through the meat, and thrust in numerous lardoons of fat salt pork, projecting above and below. Rub the meat all over with vinegar, and then with melted butter, rubbing both in well. Put in a dripping-pan. Take the fat from the top of yesterday’s gravy; thin it with a little hot water; strain this into the dripping-pan, and baste the meat plentifully with it, keeping another pan inverted over it between times. If your oven be moderately good, the beef should be ready for table in forty-five minutes. Pour a few spoonfuls of gravy over it when dished. Put the rest into a sauce-boat.

STEWED PARSNIPS.

Scrape, slice lengthwise, and lay in cold water half an hour. Cook tender in boiling water, a little salt. Drain off half the water, and stir in a tablespoonful of butter rolled thickly in flour. Pepper and salt to your taste, and stew gently five minutes before pouring into a deep, covered dish.

BROWNED POTATOES.

Mash soft with butter, milk, and salt. Heap as irregularly as possible upon a pie-dish, and set in a quick oven. Mem.: The dish should be well greased. As the potato browns, glaze it with butter. Slip carefully to a hot dish.

“BROWN BETTY.”

1 cup bread-crumbs. 2 cups chopped tart apples. ½ cup of sugar. 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Put a layer of chopped apple in a buttered pudding-dish; strew with sugar, butter, and cinnamon. Cover with bread-crumbs; then more apple. When your dish is full, cover with crumbs. Invert a tin plate over it, and “steam” forty-five minutes in a good oven. Then, uncover and brown. Eat warm, with sugar and butter, or cream.

TEA AND ALBERT BISCUIT.

Pass these after the pudding. Tea-drinking is restful as well as refreshing on a busy day. Weary housekeepers can have no more innocent nervine.

Second Week. Tuesday. —— White Soup. Boiled Shoulder of Mutton, with Oysters. Creamed Potatoes. Baked Beans. Sweet Pickles. —— Cottage Puffs. ——

WHITE SOUP.

Knuckle of veal—weight 5 or 6 pounds. ¼ lb. lean ham—raw or cooked. 2 onions. Bunch of sweet herbs. 4 blades of mace. 2 cups of milk. 2 eggs. ½ cup raw rice. 5 qts. of cold water. ¼ lb. almonds, blanched and pounded.

Crack the veal-bones, and cut off the meat in small pieces. Put into the soup-pot with the chopped ham; the onion sliced, the herbs and spice. Pour on the water, and boil very slowly five hours. The water should be reduced to three quarts. Strain off the liquor. Season three pints, and pour back upon the bones, etc. Cover tightly in a stone crock, and put away for to-morrow’s stock. To the remainder add the rice and the pint of water in which it has been soaking for two hours. Season, and cook gently, taking care it does not burn, while you blanch the almonds by scalding off their skins, and pound them in a Wedgewood mortar. When the rice is soft, put in these, and cook slowly ten minutes. Scald the milk, pour it upon the beaten eggs by degrees, add to the soup; stir one minute, but not to the boil, and pour into the tureen.

BOILED SHOULDER OF MUTTON WITH OYSTERS.

Take the main bones out of a shoulder of mutton; fill the cavity with oysters, and bind the meat firmly over the incision. Sew the shoulder into a neat shape in a piece of stout tarlatan; put on in boiling water, slightly salted, allowing eighteen minutes to each pound in cooking. When done, unbind carefully upon the dish in which you are to serve it. Pour over it a sauce made of equal parts of oyster liquor and the broth from the boiling meat, seasoned, then thickened with a generous lump of butter, cut into bits, and rolled in flour, and some chopped parsley. Boil up once well, and put half upon the meat, the rest in a sauce-boat.

CREAMED POTATOES.

Mash in the usual way, whipping very light with a fork, adding a cupful of rich milk and two tablespoonfuls of softened butter, beating in gradually. Return to the saucepan; stir constantly for three minutes; turn into a bowl and whip with an egg-beater, hard, one minute. Pile in a hot deep dish, and set in the open oven until you are ready to send it to table.

BAKED BEANS.

Soak overnight. Next day, put on in cold water—salted—and cook soft. Drain dry, turn into a greased bake-dish, stir in a great spoonful of butter, and when this has melted, enough milk to fill the dish one quarter full. Season with pepper and salt; cover and bake forty minutes. Remove the top, and brown.

COTTAGE PUFFS.

2 cups of rich milk—half cream if you can get it. 4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately. 1 good tablespoonful of butter, chopped into the flour. A pinch of salt. Enough prepared flour for thick batter. Try two cups, and add, by degrees, as you need more.

Mix the beaten yolks with the milk; then the salt and whites; at last, the flour. Bake in greased iron pans, such as are used for “gems” and corn-bread. The oven should be quick. Turn out and eat with sweet sauce.

Second Week. Wednesday. —— Giblet Soup. Smothered Chickens. Macaroni with Tomato Sauce. Peach Pickles. Potato Chips. —— Apple Cake. Coffee. ——

GIBLET SOUP.

Clean and cut the giblets of your fowls into three pieces each. Stew tender in a pint of water. Take the cake of fat from the broth set by yesterday. Put a half cupful aside for your macaroni sauce. Warm the rest and strain out the bones, etc. Return to the fire, boil up and skim, chop the giblets fine and put them in with the water in which they were boiled. Simmer a quarter of an hour; stir in half a cupful of fine, dry bread-crumbs. Season, if necessary; boil ten minutes longer, stirring often, and pour out.

SMOTHERED CHICKENS.

Prepare the chickens as for broiling, splitting each down the back. Lay flat in a dripping-pan, pour a cupful of boiling water upon them; set in the oven and invert another pan over them, so as to cover them _tightly_. Roast half an hour, lift the cover and baste freely with butter. In ten minutes more, baste with gravy from the dripping-pan. In five more, with melted butter—abundantly—going all over the fowls. Keeping the chickens covered except while basting them, increase the heat, until you ascertain, by testing with a fork, that they are done. They should be coffee-colored all over, rather than brown. Dish, salt and pepper them; cover while you thicken the gravy with browned flour, adding a little hot water, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Boil up; put a few spoonfuls over the chickens—the rest in a gravy tureen.

They are extremely nice, if faithfully basted.

MACARONI WITH TOMATO SAUCE.

Break half a pound of macaroni into inch lengths. Cover with salted boiling water, and cook twenty minutes, or until tender. Have ready a sauce prepared as follows: open a can of tomatoes; take out half the contents and cut up very small. Add, with pepper and salt, and a little minced onion, to the half cup of broth reserved for this purpose, and stew together twenty minutes. Put the macaroni into a deep dish, stir well into it a large tablespoonful of butter. Add to the sauce two great spoonfuls grated cheese; boil once and strain over the macaroni, loosening the latter with a fork that the sauce may penetrate. Serve hot.

POTATO CHIPS.

Peel and slice, round, some fine potatoes. Lay in cold water for one hour. Dry by laying them upon a dry towel and pressing with another. Fry in salted lard, quickly, to a delicate brown. Take out as soon as they are done; shake briskly in a hot colander to free them from fat, and send to table in a deep dish—uncovered—lined with a napkin.

APPLE CAKE.

2 cups of powdered sugar. 3 even cups of prepared flour. ½ cup of corn-starch, wet up with a little milk. ½ cup of butter, rubbed to a cream with the sugar. ½ cup of sweet milk. The whites of 6 eggs whipped stiff.

Add the milk to the creamed butter and sugar; then the corn-starch, lastly the flour and whites alternately. Bake in greased jelly-cake tins.

FILLING.

3 tart pippins, grated. 1 beaten egg. 1 cup of sugar. Juice and grated peel of one lemon.

Beat sugar, egg, and lemon together. Grate the apples into this mixture. Put into a farina-kettle and stir until it boils. Cool before putting between the cakes.

COFFEE

May to-day be passed with the cake.

Second Week. Thursday. —— Chicken Broth. Rolled Beefsteak. Salsify Fritters. Scalloped Tomatoes. Cucumber Pickles. —— Fig Custard Pudding. ——

CHICKEN BROTH.

Cut an old fowl into quarters. Lay in salt and water an hour; put on in a soup-kettle with an onion, and four quarts of water. Bring _very_ slowly to a gentle boil, and keep this up until the liquid has diminished one-third, and the meat shrinks from the bones. Take out the chicken, salt it, and set aside with a cupful of the broth, in a bowl (covered), until to-morrow. Season the rest of the broth and put back over the fire. Boil up and skim, and add nearly a teacupful of rice, previously soaked for two hours in a cup of water. Cook slowly until the rice is tender. Stir a cup of hot milk into two beaten eggs, and then into the soup. Let all come to the boil—barely—when you have added a handful of finely-minced parsley, pour out into the tureen.

ROLLED BEEFSTEAK.

Beat a large sirloin steak flat with the broad side of a hatchet. Fry a sliced onion in a little butter. Take it out with a skimmer, and put the meat into the pan. Fry quickly on both sides, soaking up all the butter and leaving a brown glaze upon the steak. Spread it upon a dish. Chop the onion, mix with bread-crumbs, minced herbs and a few chopped mushrooms, and lay this force-meat upon the steak. Roll the meat up tightly upon the dressing. Fasten with soft packthread and skewers. Put into a saucepan with a cupful of cold water. Set where it will heat very slowly, keeping on a close lid. Simmer thus two hours, turning now and then. Transfer the meat to a hot dish. Strain the gravy, add a little hot water, if needed; thicken with browned flour; stir in some minced mushrooms, a tablespoonful of catsup and another of butter. Boil about three minutes, pour over the steak, when you have removed the threads. The skewers are to be withdrawn by the carver.

SALSIFY FRITTERS.

Scrape, wash, and grate the roots into a mixture made of a beaten egg, one cup of milk, and enough flour for a very thin batter. Thicken with the grated salsify; salt and pepper, and drop, in large spoonfuls, into boiling lard or dripping. Drain in a hot colander. Eat while fresh.

SCALLOPED TOMATOES.

Drain off the liquor from a can of tomatoes; salt it, and put aside for another day’s soup. Strew the bottom of a bake-dish with fine crumbs; cover with tomatoes, sliced thin. Scatter over these a little minced onion and some bits of butter, with pepper, salt, and sugar. Proceed thus until the tomatoes are used up. Cover thickly with crumbs, fit a plate or tin lid over the scallop, and bake half an hour. Brown quickly upon the upper grating of the oven.

FIG CUSTARD PUDDING.

1 lb. best Naples figs. 1 quart of milk. Yolks of five eggs and whites of two. ½ package of gelatine soaked in half cup of water. 1 cup sweet fruit jelly, slightly warmed. 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Flavor to taste.

Soak the figs in warm water until quite soft. Split them; dip each piece in jelly, and line a buttered mould with them. Heat the milk, stir into the beaten eggs and sugar, return to the farina-kettle, and cook until it thickens well. Set by to cool. Beat the whites of two eggs to a stiff froth. Melt the soaked gelatine by adding two tablespoonfuls of boiling water, and setting it within a vessel of hot water. Stir until melted, and let it cool. When it begins to congeal, whip with the Dover egg-beater, gradually, into the whisked whites, until all is white and thick. Beat into the cold custard rapidly and thoroughly, and fill the fig-lined mould. Set on ice, or in a cold place, until firm. Dip the mould in hot water to loosen the pudding when you are ready for it. It is delicious.

Second Week. Friday. —— Split Pea Soup, without Meat. Baked Halibut. Chicken and Ham Pudding. Mashed Potatoes. Mixed Pickles. —— Cottage Pudding. Wine Sauce. ——

SPLIT PEA SOUP, WITHOUT MEAT.

1 pint of split peas. 2 onions. 2 stalks of celery. Bunch of sweet herbs. 1 carrot. 1 turnip. 3 tablespoonfuls of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour. Tomato juice, saved from yesterday. Pepper, salt, and fried bread. 3 quarts of water.

Soak the peas all night. In the morning, put them on, with the vegetables and herbs cut small, and the tomato juice; cover with the water, and cook slowly three hours, or until you can rub all to a pulp through a colander. Season; simmer fifteen minutes, stir in the butter, cook five minutes longer, and pour upon the fried bread in the tureen.

BAKED HALIBUT.

Lay a cut of halibut, weighing five pounds, in salt and water for two hours. Wipe dry, and score on top. Bake an hour, basting often with butter and water melted together. Test with a fork to see if it be done, and transfer to a hot dish. Strain the gravy from the dripping-pan to a saucepan. Stir in a tablespoonful of walnut catsup, the juice of a lemon, and a tablespoonful of butter, cut up in three tablespoonfuls of browned flour. Boil, and pour into a sauce-boat.

CHICKEN AND HAM PUDDING.

The meat from yesterday’s chickens, minced fine. Half as much cooked ham, also minced. ½ lb. pipe macaroni, broken into inch lengths. 2 beaten eggs. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 cup of gravy. Pepper and salt.

Add a little hot water to the chicken broth reserved yesterday; strain, heat, and cook the macaroni tender in it. Drain the latter; mix well with the ham and chicken, beaten eggs, butter, and seasoning. Pour into a greased pudding-mould with a tight top, and boil for two hours. Dip the mould into cold water for half a minute; invert a hot dish, and strike gently upon top and upon sides to turn it out.

MASHED POTATOES.

Pare and boil until a fork will pierce the largest. Drain off the water, leaving the potatoes in the pot. Set back on the range, strew with salt, and dry for three minutes. Whip up with a stout, four-tined fork until they are a mass of meal. Add, then, a great spoonful of butter, a cup of milk, salt, if necessary, whipping all in lightly. Form into a smoothed mound in a vegetable-dish. Pass with the fish.

MIXED PICKLES

Should go around with both fish and meat, to-day.

COTTAGE PUDDING.

1 cup of sugar. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 2 eggs. 1 cup of sweet milk. 3 cups of prepared flour. 1 teaspoonful of butter.

Cream the butter and sugar. Beat in the yolks, then the milk, salt, and the beaten whites alternately with the flour. Bake in a buttered mould until a straw will come out clean from the middle; turn out upon a plate. Eat hot with wine sauce.

WINE SAUCE.

½ cup of butter. 2½ cups of powdered sugar. 2 glasses of pale sherry. ½ cup of boiling water. 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg.

Cream butter and sugar, whipping up, by degrees, with the hot water. Beat five minutes before adding, gradually, the wine and sugar. Heat in a tin vessel set in boiling water, stirring often, but _not_ to a boil. Leave in warm water until you are ready for it. Stir up from the bottom as you serve.

Second Week. Saturday. —— Bone Soup. Pigeon Pie. Roast Sweet Potatoes. Grape Jelly. Baked Hominy. —— Willie’s Favorite Pudding. ——

BONE SOUP.

6 or seven lbs. of uncooked bones, beef, mutton, veal, and salt pork, bought in market for a trifle, and pounded to pieces. 2 minced carrots. 2 turnips. 2 onions. 2 stalks of celery. Bunch of sweet herbs. Salt and pepper. ½ cup tapioca, soaked two hours in one cup of cold water. 5 quarts of water.

Put on the bones and vegetables early in the day. _Purchase soup meat a day beforehand, whenever you can._ Cover with half the water. When the scum arises after the boil is reached, remove it, and pour in another quart of cold water. This will bring up more scum. Skim, after boiling again, and pour in the rest of the water. When no more scum comes up, cover the pot, and cook _gently_ four hours, if you can give it so much time. Divide the liquor into two parts. Set away half in a stone jar, with the bones in the bottom, fit on the lid, having salted the liquor. This is Sunday’s “stock.” Strain the rest through a fine soup-sieve, without pressing the residuum in the bottom, season it, and having skimmed it carefully after the boil, stir in the soaked tapioca. Simmer twenty minutes, and it is ready.

PIGEON PIE.

Clean, wash, and cut the pigeons into quarters. Wipe dry and fry lightly in butter or dripping. Sprinkle well with salt and pepper. Have ready a greased pudding-dish and a good paste, made according to the receipt given on Friday of last week. Lay some pieces of pigeon in the bottom of the dish, and cover with a mixture of chopped eggs, and the giblets, boiled tender in a little water, then minced. More pigeons, and another layer of the force-meat. Stir two tablespoonfuls of butter, rolled in flour, into the hot water in which the giblets were boiled; season, and pour enough into the pie to half cover the birds. Cover with a thick crust with a slit in the middle, and bake an hour if the pie be of fair size. Glaze with beaten egg, just before you take it from the oven.

ROAST SWEET POTATOES.

Parboil them, and lay in a moderate oven until soft to the touch. Wipe, and serve with the skins on.

BAKED HOMINY.

1 cupful cold boiled hominy (the small grained). 2 cups of milk. 1 large spoonful melted butter. 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar. 3 eggs. A little salt.

Rub the butter into the hominy until there are no lumps left. Work up very thoroughly. Scald the milk; pour upon the beaten yolks and sugar, add the salt, and beat, by degrees, into the hominy. At the last, whip in the frothed whites, and pour into a buttered bake-dish. Put at once into the oven and bake until lightly browned.

WILLIE’S FAVORITE PUDDING.

1 loaf stale baker’s bread. ½ cup of powdered suet. ¼ lb. of citron, chopped fine. ½ lb. sweet almonds, blanched and cut in thin strips. 5 pippins, also chopped. 2 cups of milk. 1 cup of powdered sugar. A little salt, stirred into the milk.

Cut the bread into thick slices, and pare off the crust. Cover the bottom of a greased mould (with plain sides) with these, fitted in nicely. Soak with milk, spread with the suet and fruit mixed together. Sprinkle this with sugar, and strew almond shavings over it. Fit on another stratum of bread, soaking it likewise with milk, more of the suet and fruit mixture, sugar and almonds, and so on to the topmost layer which must be bread, and _very_ moist with milk. Cover the mould, set in a dripping-pan, which you must keep full of boiling water, and cook in the oven one hour and a half. Pass a knife carefully between the pudding and the sides of the mould; turn it out; sift white sugar thickly over it and eat with sweet sauce. You may have enough left from yesterday.

Third Week. Sunday. —— Macaroni Soup. Roast Mutton. Potato Rissoles. Lettuce Salad. Spinach à la Crême. —— Transparent Puddings. Coffee. ——

MACARONI SOUP.

¼ lb. macaroni, broken into short pieces. The stock set aside yesterday. A heaping tablespoonful of corn-starch, wet up with cold water. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 onion sliced. A little salt.

Boil the onion five minutes in a pint of salted water. Strain it out, and when the water again boils, put in the macaroni with the butter. Boil very gently until quite tender. Drain off the water, and spread the macaroni out to cool somewhat. Meanwhile, take the fat from the top of your cold soup; thin the latter with a cup of boiling water, and strain into the soup pot. Heat to a boil, skim, season, stir in the corn-starch, and when this has thickened it, put in the macaroni. Simmer ten minutes, and it can be put into the tureen.

ROAST MUTTON.

The breast, fore leg, and saddle are best for this purpose. A nice way of cooking the breast is to sew it up in stout tarlatan and boil it _eight_ minutes for each pound. Then take it out (saving the liquor), wipe as clean as possible, and put it into a dripping-pan; score the skin with a sharp knife, rub in pepper and salt; wash with beaten egg, strew thickly with bread-crumbs, and bake half an hour in a good oven. Baste twice with melted butter. Make a gravy of a cupful of the broth, thickened with a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour. When it has boiled, stir into it a little chopped parsley; a teaspoonful of minced onion, and three times as much chopped pickled cucumber, with the pounded yolks of two hard-boiled eggs. Stew three minutes; pour part of it over the mutton; the rest into a gravy-boat.

N. B.—Test your mutton with a skewer before taking it from the oven. If not done, leave it in a while longer.

POTATO RISSOLES.

Work into cold mashed potato, a beaten egg, a little butter, pepper and salt. Make into egg-shaped balls; roll in beaten egg, then in pounded cracker, and fry in hot lard, or dripping, to a light brown. Drain _well_ in a colander, and serve in a hot napkin-lined dish.

LETTUCE SALAD.

One-third as much oil as you have vinegar; pepper and salt at discretion. Cut up the young lettuces with a sharp knife; pile in a salad-bowl; sprinkle with powdered sugar, and pour the rest of the ingredients mixed together over the salad. Toss up with a silver fork, to mix all well.

SPINACH À LA REINE.

Boil the spinach in salted water twenty minutes. Drain very thoroughly. Chop fine; return to the saucepan with a teaspoonful of sugar, two tablespoonfuls of butter, three tablespoonfuls of cream, a little nutmeg, pepper and salt. Stir constantly until almost dry. Have ready an egg-cup dipped in boiling water. Fill it with spinach, press hard and turn out upon a hot dish. Do this until all is moulded. Put a slice of egg upon the top of each.

TRANSPARENT PUDDINGS.

½ lb. butter. 1 lb. of sugar. 6 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately. Juice of 1 lemon and grated rind of two. ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg. ½ glass of brandy.