Part 14
Cream butter and sugar, beat in all the yolks and the whites of three eggs, the lemon, spice and brandy. Bake in open shells of good paste. (Add another “baste” of butter to the crust made for your pigeon pie; roll out and line paté-pans with it.) When nearly done, spread each with a _méringue_ made of the reserved whites, whipped up with a little powdered sugar. Color very lightly.
As they are to be eaten cold make them on Saturday.
COFFEE,
Hot and strong, should be handed at the close of dinner particularly if you attend afternoon service!
Third Week. Monday. —— Savory Porridge. Minced Mutton and Eggs. Potatoes au Maître d’Hôtel. String-Beans, Sauté. Sweet Pickles. —— Jaune Mange. ——
SAVORY PORRIDGE.
Cut the meat from yesterday’s roast, and take the least desirable portions, with any remains of other meat you may have—veal, pork, or poultry. Chop extremely fine; and rub them through a coarse sieve or colander. Skim the fat from the liquor in which your mutton was boiled; add a chopped onion, a bunch of sweet herbs and a stalk of celery, chopped. Boil down to three pints; strain, season, and when it boils up again, skim and stir in your chopped meat, with half a cupful of dry bread-crumbs. Cook, covered, twenty minutes; put in a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour, and a little minced parsley. Stew five minutes before serving.
MINCED MUTTON AND EGGS.
Mince the cold mutton. Have ready warmed a cupful of gravy, left from yesterday, or made from the bones of the roast. Season the meat well and stir into this, but do not cook it as yet. Strew the bottom of a buttered bake-dish thickly with dry crumbs; pour the mince upon it; cover with crumbs, and set in the oven, covered, until bubbling hot. Then break enough eggs over the top to cover the mince well; stick bits of butter here and there, pepper and salt, and bake quickly until well “set.” Serve in the bake-dish.
POTATOES AU MAÎTRE D’HÔTEL.
Slice cold boiled potatoes a quarter of an inch thick, and put into a saucepan with four or five tablespoonfuls of milk, two or three of butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Heat quickly, stirring all the time until ready to boil, when stir in a tablespoonful of flour, and two minutes later, the juice of a lemon. Take instantly from the fire so soon as this last ingredient goes in.
STRING-BEANS—SAUTÉ.
Open a can of string-beans and drain off the water. Cut them into inch lengths; cook twenty minutes in salted boiling water. Drain them, put them back into the saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of butter, a pinch of salt and a little pepper. Toss them over a clear fire for three minutes, until they are very hot; then turn out into a deep dish.
JAUNE MANGE.
1 package Coxe’s gelatine, soaked in a cup of cold water. 2 cups of boiling water. Yolks of 4 eggs, beaten light. 1 orange—juice and one-half the grated rind. Juice of one lemon and one-third of the grated peel. 1 cup sherry wine. 1 cup of powdered sugar. A good pinch of cinnamon.
Put gelatine (soaked), sugar, juice, peels, and spice into a bowl and pour the boiling water over them. Stir until dissolved; put over the fire in a saucepan, and heat almost to boiling. Pour, very gradually, upon the beaten yolks. Return to the fire—in a farina-kettle—and stir _one minute_. It must not boil. Take it off, add the wine, and strain through double tarlatan.
If you have ice, or if the weather be cold, set the mould containing this in the refrigerator, or in a very cool closet from Saturday to Monday. By making it on the former day, you can add to the excellence of your _méringue_ on the transparent puddings by using the whites of the four eggs required for the receipt. Pass light cakes with the jaune mange.
Third Week. Tuesday. —— Quick Lobster Soup. Roast Tenderloin of Beef. Mashed Potatoes. Made Mustard. Canned Succotash. —— Apple Trifle. Lady’s-Fingers. ——
QUICK LOBSTER SOUP.
Three lbs. of fish—the less choice parts of halibut or cod will do—those which are too bony for table use. Cover with three quarts of cold water and boil down to less than two or until the fish is in rags. Strain through a fine sieve and put on to boil. Season with salt and pepper. When you have skimmed it well, stir in a cup of milk in which has been mixed two tablespoonfuls of corn-starch. Boil up well; then add two tablespoonfuls of butter. Stir it in, take out a cupful of soup and beat it into two eggs. Return to the soup and leaving the saucepan on the range, but not over the fire, stir in a can of preserved lobster, freed from bones and cut up small. Cover and stand in a pot of hot water ten minutes before pouring out.
ROAST TENDERLOIN OF BEEF.
As I have before stated, this is the best, and not the least economical cut for the table, there being no waste and scarcely any bone. Put in the dripping-pan, pour a cup of _boiling_ water over it, and roast carefully, basting often with its own gravy. When nearly done, dredge with flour and baste once with butter. Do not let it once get dry while cooking. Allow about ten minutes per pound if you like it rare and juicy—that is, if your oven be of moderate heat. Pour the fat from the gravy, thicken what is left with browned flour, pepper, and salt, boil up, and put into a gravy-boat. Pass made mustard with it.
MASHED POTATOES.
Please see receipt given last Friday.
CANNED SUCCOTASH.
Open the can an hour before it is to be cooked, and turn into a bowl. Drain off the liquor, put the succotash into a saucepan, cover with boiling water, and stew half an hour. Throw off half the water, and add as much cold milk. When it boils, put in a tablespoonful of butter, cut into quarters and rolled in flour; pepper and salt; simmer five minutes and serve in a vegetable-dish.
APPLE TRIFLE.
2 heaping cupfuls of good apple sauce, well sweetened and flavored with grated lemon peel. 4 eggs. 2 cups of milk. 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Heat the milk, and pour over the beaten yolks and sugar. Put back in a farina-kettle, and stir until it begins to thicken, say about eight minutes. Set by in a shallow vessel to cool. Beat the whites very stiff, then whip gradually into the apple. When all is in, and well beaten, pile up in a glass dish, and pour the cold custard about the base.
LADY’S-FINGERS,
Or small, fresh sponge-cakes, should be passed with the trifle.
Third Week. Wednesday. —— Mock-Turtle Soup. Veal Cutlets and Brains. Potatoes au Gratin. Lettuce. Stewed Tomatoes and Onion. —— Steamed Bread Pudding. ——
MOCK-TURTLE SOUP.
1 calf’s head, well-cleaned, with the skin on. 2 onions. Bunch of sweet herbs. 5 tablespoonfuls of butter. 5 tablespoonfuls of browned flour. 1 tablespoonful of allspice. ½ teaspoonful of mace. 1 teaspoonful of pepper. 2 teaspoonfuls, at least, of salt. 2 raw eggs. A little flour. 2 glasses of brown sherry. 1 tablespoonful mushroom, or walnut catsup. 5 quarts of water, cold, of course. 1 sliced lemon.
Soak the calf’s head an hour in cold water, and boil in the five quarts of water until the bones will slip easily from the flesh. Take out the head, leaving the bones and broth in the pot. Take out the tongue and brains, and put them in separate plates. Set aside, also, the cheeks and the fleshy parts of the scalp to cool. Chop the rest, including the ears, very fine. Reserve four spoonfuls of this for force-meat balls. Season the rest with pepper, salt, onion, allspice, herbs, and mace, and put back into the pot. Cover closely, and cook four hours. Should the liquor sink to less than four quarts, replenish with boiling water. Just before straining the soup, take out half a cupful; put into a frying-pan; heat, and stir in the browned flour, wet up in cold water, also the butter. Simmer these together ten minutes, stirring almost constantly. Strain the soup; scald the pot and return the broth to the fire. _Have ready_ the tongue and fleshy parts of the head cut, after cooling, into small squares; also, about fifteen balls made of the chopped meat, highly seasoned, worked into the proper consistency with a little flour and bound with the raw eggs, beaten into the paste. They should be as soft as can be handled. Grease a pie-plate, flour the balls and set in a quick oven until a crust forms upon them, then cool. Now, thicken the strained broth with the mixture in the frying-pan, stirred in well. Should there not be enough to make it almost like custard, add more flour. Then drop in the dice of tongue and fat meat. Cook slowly five minutes. Put the force-meat balls and thin slices of a peeled lemon into the tureen. Pour the soup upon them, add catsup and wine; cover five minutes and serve.
This king of soups having, of right, received such a long and minute notice, I shall not repeat the receipt in full in this work, but take the liberty of referring you, from time to time, to that just given.
VEAL CUTLETS AND BRAINS.
Flatten the cutlets with the broad side of a hatchet; dip in beaten egg, then in cracker-dust, and fry rather slowly in ham-dripping, if you have it; if not, in salted lard. Drain off the fat; put into a hot-water dish, pepper, and cover while you fry, in the same fat, after straining it, the brains from the head of which your soup was made. They should first have been boiled for ten minutes, drained, and cooled; then beaten to a paste with egg, seasoned with pepper and salt, and dropped by the spoonful into the scalding fat. Drain, and lay about the cutlets as a garnish.
POTATOES AU GRATIN.
Mash as usual; put into a shallow pie-plate well greased; strew thickly with dry crumbs, and brown upon the upper grating of the oven. Glaze with butter, when the _gratin_ begins to brown well. Slip dexterously to a flat dish.
STEWED TOMATOES AND ONION.
To one can of tomatoes add a small onion, minced fine. Season with pepper, salt, a _little_ sugar, and stew twenty-five minutes. Stir in a tablespoonful of butter; cook two minutes, and serve.
LETTUCE.
Treat as directed on last Sunday.
STEAMED BREAD PUDDING.
2 cups of milk. 2 cups fine bread-crumbs. ½ lb. suet, powdered. ½ lb. Sultana raisins, picked, washed, dried, and dredged with flour. 3 eggs. 1 even tablespoonful of corn-starch. 1 tablespoonful of sugar. A little salt.
Heat the milk; pour over the eggs and sugar, beaten together. Stir in the corn-starch; cook one minute, and pour upon the bread-crumbs, beating all to a batter. Put a layer of this in the bottom of a buttered pudding-mould. Cover this with suet; then with raisins; sprinkle with sugar; then more butter, and proceed in the foregoing order until the mould is nearly full. Fit on the top, put into the steamer over a pot of boiling water, and steam at least two hours. If you have no steamer, boil one hour and a half. When done, dip the mould into cold water for half a minute, and turn out, with care, upon a hot, flat dish. Eat hot with wine sauce.
Third Week. Thursday. —— Curry Soup. Stewed Beef. Bermuda Potatoes, au Naturel. Macaroni, Baked. Gherkin Pickles. White Puffs. —— Custard Sauce. ——
CURRY SOUP.
You can, if you dislike the taste of curry, warm up what was left from your mock-turtle soup, just as it is. But you can vary it, agreeably to most palates, by stirring into it, when melted, and almost on the boil, a tablespoonful of curry powder, if there be more than three pints of soup—half as much, should there be but a quart. Wet the powder up in cold water, add to the soup, and cook three minutes.
STEWED BEEF.
3 lbs. of beef—not _too_ lean—coarse steak or brisket. 1 chopped onion. Bunch of thyme, sweet marjoram, and summer savory. Pepper, salt, parsley. ½ teaspoonful of allspice. 1 tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce. 1 tablespoonful of browned flour. 1 pint of cold water. ½ glass of wine.
Cut the meat into strips about an inch long. Cover with a pint of water, and stew _gently_ two hours. The meat should be ready to fall to pieces. Add the onion and herbs cut up fine, the spice, salt and pepper, and stew half an hour, closely covered. Then stir in the browned flour, and when it has thickened, the sauce and wine. Cover the bottom of a deep dish with strips of fried bread, and pour the stew over it. If cooked long and slowly enough, it will be a rich brown mixture, with no hard lumps of meat in it. Save half a cupful of gravy for to-morrow.
BERMUDA POTATOES—AU NATUREL.
Wash and boil in hot salted water, until a fork will easily pierce them. Drain off the water, throw salt over them, and “dry off” upon the range for a few minutes. Peel, and serve whole.
BAKED MACARONI.
Break half a pound of macaroni into short pieces; cook in boiling water, salted, twenty minutes. Drain, put a layer into a greased bake-dish; strew thickly with grated cheese, and stick bits of butter over it. Go on in this order until the dish is full, strewing cheese and butter on top. Pour in a cup of milk; bake, covered, thirty minutes; then brown nicely. Serve in the pudding-dish.
WHITE PUFFS.
2 cups of rich milk. Whites of 4 eggs whipped stiff. 2 cups prepared flour. 1 scant cup of powdered sugar. Grated peel of half a lemon. A little salt.
Whisk eggs, lemon, and sugar to a _méringue_, and add alternately with the flour to the milk. The salt should be sifted with the flour. Beat very light, and bake in small, well-buttered tins, or cups. Turn out, sift powdered sugar over them, and eat with custard sauce.
CUSTARD SAUCE.
2 beaten eggs. 1 large cup of sugar. 1 scant cup of scalding milk. ½ teaspoonful of arrowroot, wet with cold milk. 1 tablespoonful of butter. ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
Rub the butter into the sugar, add the eggs, and beat light. Put in corn-starch and spice; finally, pour upon this mixture, by degrees, the boiling milk. Set within a saucepan of boiling water five minutes, stirring all the while, but do not let it really boil.
Third Week. Friday. —— Clam Chowder. Braised Duck. Weak Fish, Fried. Grape Jelly. Purée of Green Peas. Cauliflower à la Crème. —— Corn Meal Pudding without Eggs. ——
CLAM CHOWDER.
Fry five or six slices of fat salt pork crisp, and chop fine. Sprinkle a layer in the bottom of a pot; cover with clams; sprinkle with pepper, salt, and bits of butter, then with minced onion. Next, have a stratum of small crackers, split and soaked in warm milk. When the pot has been filled in this order, cover all with cold water, and cook slowly (after the water is heated) three-quarters of an hour. Strain the chowder, without pressing or shaking; put clams, etc., into a covered tureen; return the liquor to the pot. Thicken with rolled crackers; add a glass of wine, a tablespoonful of catsup; boil up, and pour over the chowder. Pass sliced lemon with it.
FRIED WEAK FISH.
Clean, wash, and dry the fish. Lay in a broad pan or dish; salt, and dredge with flour. Fry in hot lard or very nice dripping to a light brown. In serving, lay the fish side by side, the head of each to the tail of the one next him. Garnish with parsley.
BRAISED DUCK.
Clean and wash the duck. Stuff with a dressing of bread-crumbs seasoned with pepper and salt, a little onion and sage. Sew up the vent, and tie the neck to keep in the flavor. Fry the duck in a great spoonful of butter until lightly browned, turning it often. Add the butter used for frying to the gravy saved from yesterday; thin with boiling water, and, having put the duck into a saucepan, strain this gravy over it. It should half cover the fowl. Stew slowly forty-five minutes, or until tender, keeping the lid on all the while. Take up the duck, cover to keep it warm, strain the gravy, and if very oily, take off the top. Boil sharply ten minutes in an open saucepan; thicken with browned flour; put back the duck into it, and set the saucepan, again covered, in boiling water for a quarter of an hour. Serve the gravy in a boat.
PURÉE OF GREEN PEAS.
Open a can of peas, drain off the liquor, and cook twenty minutes in boiling water slightly salted. Strain off the water through a colander; mash the peas with the back of a wooden spoon, and rub through the colander into a bowl below. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan, with pepper, salt, and a little sugar, and, if you fancy it, three mint leaves finely chopped. Heat, but not to boiling, stir in the pulped peas, and toss about with a silver fork or spoon until they are a smoking mass. Pile in a hot dish, with triangles of fried bread laid up around the base.
CAULIFLOWER À LA CRÈME.
Boil a fine cauliflower, tied up snugly in coarse tarlatan, in hot water, a little salt. Drain and lay in a deep dish, flower uppermost. Heat a cup of milk; thicken with two tablespoonfuls of butter, cut into bits, and rolled in flour. Add pepper, salt, the beaten white of an egg, and boil up one minute, stirring well. Take from the fire, squeeze the juice of a lemon through a hair sieve into the sauce, and pour half into a boat, the rest over the cauliflower.
CORN-MEAL PUDDING WITHOUT EGGS.
2 cups Indian meal. 1 cup of flour. 2 tablespoonfuls of molasses. 3 cups of sour milk—“loppered,” or “bonny-clabber,” if you can get it. 1 great spoonful of melted butter. 1 _full_ teaspoonful of soda. 1 teaspoonful of salt. ½ teaspoonful of cinnamon.
Sift the salt with the flour, and mix up well with the meal. Make a hole in the middle, and pour in the milk, stirring the meal and flour down into it. Beat smooth. Mix molasses, spice, butter, and the soda—this last dissolved in hot water—all together, and beat into the batter—well and _hard_. Butter a tin mould with a cover; pour in the pudding, and boil steadily an hour and a half. Eat hot with butter and sugar.
Third Week. Saturday. —— Chicken Broth. Paté of Salt Cod. Boiled Chicken and Rice. Mashed Turnips. Egg Sauce. —— Ambrosia. Café au Lait and Sponge-Cake. ——
CHICKEN BROTH.
Clean, wash, and truss, but do not stuff, a full-grown fowl. Set aside the giblets for another use. Bind the legs and wings of the fowl closely to its sides. Put into a pot with four quarts of water (cold), and cook gently until the liquor has fallen one-third. Then add a full cup of rice, soaked for one hour in a very little water, and boil half an hour more, or until the chicken is tender and the rice soft, but not broken to pieces. Take out the chicken. Wipe off the adhering grains of rice, wash over with butter, salt and pepper, and set, covered, upon a pot of boiling water to keep hot. Season the soup with pepper and salt, and simmer ten minutes more. Then strain out the rice, and cover _it_ to keep hot. Return the soup to the pot, stir in a cup of hot milk, a tablespoonful of corn-starch wet with cold water, and a handful of very finely minced parsley. Boil up, take from the fire, and pour by degrees upon two beaten eggs. Cover for three minutes; then pour into the tureen.
PATÉ OF SALT COD.
1 cup of cold salt cod, soaked all night in soft water, boiled in the morning, left to cool, then “picked” into boneless flakes. 1 cup of oyster-liquor. 2 even tablespoonfuls of rice flour, or corn starch. 3 tablespoonfuls of butter. Chopped parsley and pepper. 3 hard-boiled eggs, minced. Some rich paste. (See “French Puff Paste,” page 352, NO. 1, COMMON SENSE SERIES—GENERAL RECEIPTS.)
Boil the oyster-liquor, stir in the corn-starch wet up with cold milk. When it thickens, add the butter and pepper; next the parsley and fish. Heat almost to boiling, and stir in the chopped egg. Take from the fire, and cover, over a pot of boiling water, ten minutes.
Make the shell by lining a profusely buttered cake-mould, or round pan with nearly straight sides, with a thick sheet of puff-paste, pricking it at the bottom to prevent too much puffing. Cut a round piece exactly the size of the top, for a cover, and bake separately. Bake both in a quick oven. Let them get almost cool, turn out the shell with the utmost care; fill slowly with the prepared fish, that the sides may not give way; fit on the top; hold an inverted hot plate firmly upon it and reverse the paté skilfully, leaving the closed side uppermost. It is easily done, if one is only fearless yet dexterous. Eat hot.
BOILED CHICKEN AND RICE.
Boil the giblets tender in a little salted water; chop fine, and when the rice is strained from the soup, mix them well through it. Pile the rice, when you are ready to serve it, upon a meat dish; lay the chicken upon the top; pour a few spoonfuls of egg sauce over it, and send to table.
EGG SAUCE.
One cup of the broth in which the chicken was boiled, heated; thickened with a tablespoonful of butter rolled thickly in flour; poured over two beaten eggs; boiled one minute, with a tablespoonful of parsley stirred in; then seasoned and poured upon the pounded yolks of two boiled eggs placed in the bottom of a bowl. Stir up well, and it is ready.
MASHED TURNIPS.
Boil in salted water, until tender; mash and drain in a hot colander, working in butter, salt, and pepper. Mound up in a hot, deep dish, covered.
AMBROSIA.
8 fine oranges, peeled and sliced. ½ grated cocoanut. ½ cup of powdered sugar.
Arrange slices of orange in a glass dish; scatter grated cocoanut thickly over them; sprinkle this lightly with sugar, and cover with another layer of orange. Fill the dish in this order, having a double quantity of cocoanut and sugar at top. Serve soon after it is prepared.
CAFÉ AU LAIT AND SPONGE-CAKE.
To one pint _strong_ made coffee, add the same quantity of boiling milk. The coffee should be first strained through muslin into the table-urn, then the milk poured in with it. Wrap the urn in a woollen cloth, if you have no “cozy,” for five minutes before serving. Send around sponge-cake, home-made or bought, with it.
Fourth Week. Sunday. —— A Good Stock Soup. Beef à la Mode de Rome. Potato Puff. Hominy Croquettes. Spinach. Chow-chow. —— Snow Custard. Nuts and Raisins. ——
A GOOD STOCK SOUP.
5 lbs. brisket of beef. 2 lbs. mutton-bones. 2 onions, sliced and fried. 2 carrots. 2 turnips. 4 stalks of celery. Bones of chicken or duck, if you have them. 6 cloves. ½ cup of sago or barley. 6 quarts of cold water. Sweet herbs. Pepper and salt.
Slice the meat, crack the bones, chop the vegetables, and put all on over the fire with the water. Boil slowly five or six hours; strain; pick out the meat as well as you can, and set aside. Then, rub the vegetables through a colander, prior to straining all through your soup-sieve. Set aside half the stock for Monday. Do this much on Saturday. Or, if you choose, do not strain the soup at all until Sunday morning. It will be the richer for cooling with meat, etc., in it. In either case, season before setting it away, or it may sour. Put Sunday’s stock back into the pot; boil up and skim, before adding the half cup of pearl sago, previously soaked for two hours in a very little cold water. Simmer twenty minutes and pour out.
BEEF À LA MODE DE ROME.