Part 15

Cut a quarter of a pound of streaked salt pork, and the same quantity of lean beef into strips, and fry, with a sliced onion, in good dripping. Put them in the bottom of a pot and lay a rib roast of beef, rolled round, upon them. Add a pint of boiling water, cover, and cook ten minutes to the pound, turning the beef three times meanwhile. Transfer the meat to a dripping-pan, dredge the top with flour, then baste with its own gravy, once. Keep hot, without cooking, while you strain the gravy left in the pot, thicken it with browned flour (always _after_ taking the fat from the top), season with pepper, and stir in a teaspoonful of sugar, a handful of Sultana raisins, picked and washed, and the same quantity of blanched almonds, cut into tiny strips. Boil gently three minutes, dish the beef, and pour the sauce over it.

Odd as this receipt may seem to an American housewife, the result is extremely palatable, and a good change of fare at this season.

POTATO PUFF.

Mash the potatoes soft with milk and butter, season and beat very light with two raw eggs. Smooth and bake to a light brown in a greased pudding-dish, in which, also, serve it.

HOMINY CROQUETTES.

2 cups of fine-grained hominy, boiled and cold. 2 beaten eggs. 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter. Salt to taste. ¾ cup of finely chopped beef, left over from your soup, after straining the latter. Pepper.

Work hominy, butter, and salt to a smooth paste; beat in the eggs, finally the chopped meat, after peppering and salting it. Stir up in a farina-kettle until hot, and pour out to cool. When cold, make into long rolls with floured hands, flour each well by rolling upon a dish, and fry to a yellow-brown in sweet lard. Drain off the fat and pile upon a hot dish.

SPINACH.

Boil in hot, salted water, twenty minutes, drain and press hard; chop fine, and return to the saucepan with a large spoonful of butter, pepper, salt, a little sugar and a pinch of mace. Stir, and beat until very hot; then pour into a deep dish.

SNOW CUSTARD.

½ package of Coxe’s gelatine. 3 eggs. 1 pint of milk. 2 cups of sugar. Juice of one lemon. 1 large cup boiling water.

Soak the gelatine one hour in a teacupful of cold water, then stir in two-thirds of the sugar, the lemon-juice and the _boiling_ water. Beat the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and when the strained gelatine is quite cold, whip it into the whites, a spoonful at a time for half an hour, if you use the Dover egg-beater (at least one hour with any other). When all is white and stiff, pour into a wet mould, and set in a cold place. Make this on Saturday, and on Sunday dip the mould into hot water, and turn out into a glass dish. Make a custard of the milk, eggs, and the rest of the sugar, flavoring with vanilla; boil until it begins to thicken. When the _méringue_ is turned into the dish, pour this custard, cold, about the base.

NUTS AND RAISINS

Serve as another and a last course.

Fourth Week. Monday. —— Vermicelli Soup. Browned Mince of Beef. Stewed Potatoes, Creamed. Mixed Pickles. Broccoli. —— Canned Peaches and Cream. Myrtle’s Cake. Tea. ——

VERMICELLI SOUP.

Boil a quarter of a pound of vermicelli in a little salted water fifteen minutes. Heat the stock set aside for to-day, when you have taken the fat from the top, and when scalding, add the vermicelli.

N. B.—Always break vermicelli and macaroni small before cooking. Add a little chopped parsley; simmer fifteen minutes and pour out.

BROWNED MINCE OF BEEF.

Cut all the meat from the bones of yesterday’s roast, setting away the bones for another day’s soup. Mince the beef fine; mix with it one-fourth as much mashed potato, season highly with pepper, salt, a little mustard and catsup; work soft with the remains of yesterday’s gravy; heat in a saucepan, then heap upon a stone china dish, cover the mound with fine crumbs, and brown upon the upper grating of your oven. Put bits of butter thickly over the top as it begins to brown.

STEWED POTATOES—CREAMED.

Chop cold boiled potatoes _coarse_; put on in a saucepan with a cup of milk, and heat in an outer vessel of hot water. When scalding, pepper and salt; stir in a tablespoonful of butter, cut up and rolled in flour, and when this has melted, a beaten egg, stirred in while the potatoes are not boiling. Simmer one minute, and turn out.

BROCCOLI.

Wash, and let stand in salt and water one hour. Cook in boiling salted water fifteen minutes. When tender, drain dry, and serve with melted butter (peppered) poured over it.

CANNED PEACHES AND CREAM.

Open the can at least an hour before using, and turn into a glass dish; sprinkle with sugar. Serve in saucers, sending around powdered sugar and cream to each person.

MYRTLE’S CAKE,

Or any other good cup cake, made last week, may be sliced and passed with the fruit and cream. If you desire a receipt for this particular cake please consult “Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea,”—NO. 2, COMMON SENSE SERIES, page 334.

Fourth Week. Tuesday. —— Barley Broth. Boiled Leg of Mutton. Kidney Beans. Oyster Sauce. Bermuda Potatoes, Baked. —— Cocoanut Pudding. ——

BARLEY BROTH.

2 lbs. knuckle of veal. Beef bones from yesterday. 1 onion. 1 turnip. 1 stalk of celery. Chopped parsley. 1 cup Scotch barley. 3 quarts of water.

Break the bones to splinters and chop the meat. Mince the vegetables, and put all into a soup-kettle, with the water. Boil slowly three hours, until the liquor has fallen one-third. Meanwhile wash the barley and boil half an hour in a little salted water. Strain your soup; cool to let the fat arise, and take this off. Season with pepper and salt and boil up. Skim, put in the barley, and cook gently half an hour longer.

BOILED LEG OF MUTTON.

The mutton will be cleaner and in better shape if boiled tied up in coarse net or tarlatan. Put on in boiling water, plenty of it, slightly salt, and cook steadily fifteen minutes to the pound. Save the broth for soup. Undo the net from the meat, rub the latter over with butter, lay on a hot dish, and send the oyster sauce in a boat. Garnish the mutton with sliced cucumber pickles.

OYSTER SAUCE.

1 pint of oysters. Half a lemon. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, rolled well in flour. 1 teacupful of milk. Cayenne and nutmeg to taste.

Heat the oyster liquor, and when it boils, skim, and put in the oysters. So soon as they boil, stir in the butter, cut up and well floured, the spice and lemon-juice. Boil five minutes, take from the fire and put with the milk which has been heated in another vessel. Stir up well, and pour out.

KIDNEY BEANS.

Soak all night. In the morning put on in warm—not hot—water slightly salted, and cook tender. Drain dry, stir in a great lump of butter, a little salt and pepper, and turn into a deep dish.

BERMUDA POTATOES—BAKED.

Select those of uniform size; wash, and bake in a moderate oven until soft to the pinching fingers. Wipe clean, and serve in their skins, wrapped in a napkin.

COCOANUT PUDDING.

1 heaping cup fine bread-crumbs. 1 cocoanut, pared and grated. 1 tablespoonful corn-starch, wet in cold water. ½ cup of butter. 1 cup of powdered sugar. 2 cups of milk. 5 eggs. Nutmeg and rose-water to taste.

Soak the crumbs in the milk. Rub butter and sugar to a cream, and whip in the beaten yolks. Beat this into the soaked crumbs; stir in the corn-starch, then the whisked whites—finally, the grated cocoanut. Beat very hard, pour into a neat pudding-dish, well buttered, and bake in a moderate oven forty-five minutes. Eat cold, with powdered sugar on top.

Fourth Week. Wednesday. —— Tomato Soup. Swiss Turnovers. Salmon Pudding. Mashed Potatoes. Lettuce Salad with Cream Dressing. —— Wayne Pudding. ——

TOMATO SOUP.

Open a can of tomatoes, and cut them up small. Take the fat from the top of the liquor in which your mutton was cooked yesterday; put over the fire with the tomatoes and half a cup of raw rice, and cook slowly one hour. Season to taste, adding a lump of loaf sugar and a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour; simmer five minutes, and pour into the tureen.

SALMON PUDDING.

1 can preserved salmon. 4 eggs, beaten light. 4 tablespoonfuls of melted butter. ½ cup fine bread-crumbs. Pepper, salt, and minced parsley.

Chop the fish fine, rub to a paste with the butter. Beat the bread-crumbs up with the eggs and seasoning; work all together; put into a buttered mould, with a tight top, and boil one hour. Dip in cold water; turn it out upon a hot dish. Have ready a cupful of drawn butter with a raw egg beaten into it, and pour over the pudding.

SWISS TURNOVERS.

Mince the cold mutton left from yesterday. Put half a cupful of hot water into a saucepan; stir in a great spoonful of butter, cut up in flour; season with pepper, salt, and tomato catsup. Pour over a beaten egg, mix well, and, returning to the saucepan, add the mince, well seasoned with pepper, salt, a little grated lemon-peel and nutmeg. Stir up until very hot, but not boiling. Set by to keep hot while you make a batter of one pint of flour, four eggs, a little salt, and a quarter spoonful of soda, dissolved in vinegar, and _about_ four cups of milk—enough for _thin_ batter. Beat very light. Put a spoonful of lard (a small one) into a hot frying-pan, run it over the bottom, turn in a half cupful of batter, and fry quickly. Invert the pan upon a hot plate, and this, in turn, upon another, to have the browned side of the pancake downward; cover the lighter side with the mince; fold up neatly and lay upon a hot dish in the open oven to keep warm, while you fry and spread the rest.

They are very nice.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual, and pass with both fish and meat.

LETTUCE SALAD WITH CREAM DRESSING.

½ cupful of new milk, if you have no cream. 1 teaspoonful of corn-starch. Whites of 2 eggs, beaten stiff. 3 tablespoonfuls of vinegar. 2 tablespoonfuls best salad oil. 2 teaspoonfuls powdered sugar. 1 teaspoonful of salt. ½ teaspoonful of pepper. 1 teaspoonful of made mustard.

Heat the milk (or cream) almost to boiling; stir in the corn-starch wet up with cold milk. Boil up, add the sugar, and take from the fire. Cool, beat in the frothed whites, oil, pepper, mustard and salt, and, when the lettuce is shred fine, add the vinegar to the dressing, and pour over it. Toss up with a silver fork. Eat very soon.

WAYNE PUDDING.

2 full cups of prepared flour. ½ cup of butter. 1 cup of powdered sugar. 1 lemon, the juice and half the grated peel. ½ lb. of citron, cut into very thin strips. 5 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.

Cream butter and sugar; add the beaten yolks; whip up light with the lemon, then add the whites, alternately with the flour. Butter a mould abundantly, line it with the strips of citron; put in the batter, a few spoonfuls at a time; cover and set in a pan of boiling water, in a good oven. Keep plenty of boiling water in the pan, and cook steadily one hour and a half. Dip into cold water and turn out upon a hot plate. Eat warm with wine or brandy sauce. Leave room in the mould for the pudding to swell. _Never heat a pudding or cake mould before greasing it or the batter will stick._

Fourth Week. Thursday. —— Ox-tail Soup. Irish Stew. Corn Pudding. Potatoes à la Lyonnaise. —— Queen’s Toast. ——

OX-TAIL SOUP.

1 ox-tail. 2 lbs. of lean beef. 4 carrots. 3 onions. Thyme and parsley. Pepper and salt. 2 tablespoonfuls of browned flour. 4 quarts of cold water.

Cut the tail into joints and fry brown in good dripping. Slice the onions and two carrots, and fry in the same, when you have taken out the pieces of tail. When done, tie them, with thyme and parsley, in a lace bag, and drop into the soup-pot. Put in the tail, then the beef, cut into strips. Grate over them the two whole carrots, pour over all the water, and boil slowly four hours. Strain and season; thicken with brown flour wet with cold water; boil fifteen minutes longer, and pour out.

IRISH STEW.

3 lbs. of lean beef—a sirloin steak is best. 8 parboiled potatoes. 2 onions, or one, if it be large, also parboiled. Browned flour for thickening. Thyme and sweet marjoram. Pepper and salt. A little pie-paste—not rich—for dumplings.

Cut the meat into pieces an inch wide by two long. Slice the parboiled potatoes and onions. Put a layer of meat in a pot; then one of potatoes, next one of onions. Pepper and salt each sparingly; scatter the herbs upon the onions; put in more meat, and so on. When all are in, cover—barely—with cold water, and stew _slowly_ two hours. Strain out the meat, and put into a covered dish—a chafing-dish, if you have one. Return the gravy to the saucepan; thicken with browned flour; cut your paste into narrow strips two inches long, and drop, one by one, into the boiling gravy. Stew about eight minutes, and pour over meat, potatoes, etc., which await it in the dish.

CORN PUDDING.

To one can of corn add 3 beaten eggs. 1 cupful of milk. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 1 tablespoonful of sugar. A little salt.

Rub butter and sugar together; beat in the eggs; salt the milk, and put in next; lastly, the corn, drained of can liquor. Beat up well; pour into a greased bake-dish, and set, covered, in the oven. At the end of half an hour, take off the lid, and brown.

POTATOES À LA LYONNAISE.

Parboil double the quantity of potatoes required for your Irish stew, and lay aside eight for this dish. Cut, when cold, into dice; fry a small chopped onion in a heaping spoonful of butter, for one minute, then put in the potatoes. Stir briskly to keep them from browning; cook until very hot; add a tablespoonful of chopped parsley; stir a minute longer; turn all into a heated colander; shake hard to get rid of the grease, and serve hot in a vegetable-dish.

QUEEN’S TOAST.

Cut slices of stale baker’s bread round with a cake-cutter, taking off all the crust. Fry in sweet lard to a light brown. Dip each round quickly into _boiling_ water to remove the fat. Sprinkle thickly on both sides with a mixture of powdered sugar and nutmeg, and pile upon a hot plate. You may dispense with sauce if you will heat a glass of wine, and put a teaspoonful, or less, upon each piece, after dipping it into the water, and before sugaring it. Serve hot.

Fourth Week. Friday. —— Réchauffé Soup. Chickens with Mushroom Sauce. Lobster Croquettes. Cabbage Sprouts. Boiled Macaroni. —— Nursery Plum Pudding. ——

RÉCHAUFFÉ SOUP.

An excellent a soup as ox-tail deserves repetition, and the probability is that, since Friday is a fast day from meat with Roman Catholic servants, you have enough soup left over for your family proper. Warm it up, making very hot, but not to boiling. If you like, you can put some dice of crisp fried bread in the tureen.

LOBSTER CROQUETTES.

To a can of preserved lobster, chopped fine, add pepper, salt, and powdered mace. Mix with this one-fourth as much bread-crumbs as you have meat, work in two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, and make into egg-shaped rolls. Roll these in raw egg, then in cracker-dust, and fry in butter or very sweet lard. Serve dry and hot with cresses or parsley laid around them.

CHICKENS WITH MUSHROOM SAUCE.

Split a pair of chickens down the back as for broiling, and lay in a dripping-pan, with two cups of _boiling_ water, a little salt, poured over them. Cover very securely with another pan of the same size—inverted—and cook an hour and a half if the fowls are of fair size. Baste at least six times; twice with butter in which has been mixed a little pepper; three times, copiously, with their own gravy, and, just before they are done, again with butter. Boil half a can of mushrooms ten minutes in clear, hot water. Drain and mince them very fine. Take up the chickens and keep hot in a covered dish. Put the gravy into a saucepan; add a little chopped onion; boil three minutes, thicken with browned flour; and stir in the chopped mushrooms. Simmer, covered, five minutes, and pour half over the chickens, the rest into a sauce-boat. Save all the gravy left after dinner.

CABBAGE SPROUTS.

Wash, trim, and boil in hot, salted water, with a bit of streaked salt pork, an inch square. When tender, drain, season, and chop fine. Stir in a tablespoonful of melted butter and the juice of half a lemon. Eat very hot.

BOILED MACARONI.

Break half a pound of pipe macaroni into short lengths. Cover well with boiling water, salted, and boil—not too fast—about twenty minutes, or until tender and clear at the edges. Drain well; pour a little into a hot, deep dish, and butter it, then strew with grated cheese. Do this three times in filling the dish, with cheese scattered over the top.

NURSERY PLUM PUDDING.

1 scant cup of raw rice. 3 pints of milk. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar. ½ lb. raisins, seeded, and cut in half. 3 well-beaten eggs.

Soak the rice two hours in a farina-kettle, just covered with warm water. When all the water is soaked up, shake the rice hard, to reach that at the bottom, and add a pint of milk. Simmer gently, still in the inner kettle, until the rice is again dry, and quite tender. Shake up anew, and add another pint of milk. When this is hot, put in the raisins, dredged with flour; cover the saucepan and cook twenty minutes. Turn into a bowl; put with it the butter, rice-flour, the remaining pint of milk, heated and mixed with the beaten eggs and sugar, and stir all up thoroughly. Bake in a buttered pudding-dish, about forty minutes. Eat warm with butter and sugar, or sugar and cream.

Fourth Week. Saturday. —— Dresden Soup. Boiled Blue Fish. Baked Calf’s Head. Canned Succotash. Casserole of Rice with Tomato Sauce. —— Belle’s Dumplings. ——

DRESDEN SOUP.

2 lbs. of lean beef, cut into strips. 4 pig’s feet, cleaned well. 4 lbs. of mutton and beef bones, cracked. 2 onions. 1 bunch of sweet herbs. 2 carrots. 2 blades of mace. 4 tablespoonfuls of butter, and the same of rice-flour. Juice of a lemon. 1 tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce. 1 raw egg for force-meat. Salt and pepper. 6 quarts of cold water. 1 glass of claret.

Early in the day, put on the meat, pig’s feet and bones, and cook slowly five hours in six quarts of water. Skim then, carefully, add the onions, mace, and herbs, cut small, and the carrots, _grated_. Stew half an hour; take out the meat and the feet, leaving the bones, etc., on the fire. Cut the flesh from the feet, and return the bones to the pot. Set aside half this flesh, with a few pieces of beef, to get cold. Chop the rest fine, and make up with pepper, salt, and a raw egg, into small force-meat balls. Roll them in flour, lay upon a greased plate, and set within the oven to “crust.” When quite firm, take out and cool. Cut the reserved meat into small, square bits. When the soup has cooked half an hour after the meat was taken out, strain and season it. Divide into two portions. Into that designed for Sunday drop the dice of meat, from the pig’s feet as well as the beef, and set away, covered, in an earthenware vessel. Return the rest to the fire; thicken with the butter, melted and worked up into the rice-flour; add the sauce, lemon-juice, and a glass of claret. Put the force-meat balls into the heated tureen; pour on the soup, cover five minutes, and serve.

BOILED BLUE FISH.

Sew up the fish neatly in a thin cloth, put on in scalding water with a little salt, half a small cup of vinegar, a quarter of an onion, six whole black peppers, and a blade of mace. Let it stand, _just_ below boiling heat, half an hour; then increase the heat and boil thirty minutes more. Take out, unwrap, lay upon a hot dish and pour over it a cupful of drawn butter, with a little lemon-juice stirred in it.

BAKED CALF’S HEAD.

Put on, having removed the brains, in four quarts of cold water, and boil gently one hour. Take out the head; salt and pepper the liquor and set by as the foundation of Monday’s soup, keeping out a cupful for gravy. Put the calf’s head in a dripping-pan, rub over with butter, pour the gravy into the pan, and bake, covered—basting four times—for half an hour. Uncover, wash over with a mixture of melted butter, pepper, and salt, and a teaspoonful of catsup. Dredge with browned flour, baste again, and when the surface is of a fine froth, dish the head. Strain and thicken the gravy, and serve in a boat. The brains should be washed well, boiled quickly, then cooled; mashed to a smooth paste with pepper, salt, a dust of flour, and a raw egg, and fried, by the spoonful, in hot lard. Drain, and lay about the head.

CANNED SUCCOTASH.

Drain from the liquor; cut the beans—if French or string beans—into short pieces; cook half an hour in salted boiling water; drain this off; add a cup of hot milk, thicken with a great spoonful of butter, cut up in flour, pepper, and salt, and simmer ten minutes more.

CASSEROLE OF RICE WITH TOMATO SAUCE.

Boil one cup of rice tender in hot water, a little salt, shaking up from time to time, but never stirring. Drain dry, add a very little milk in which has been stirred a beaten egg, a teaspoonful of butter, a little pepper and salt. Simmer for five minutes, and if the rice has not absorbed all the milk, drain it again. Pile it around the inner edge of a flat dish; smooth it neatly, rounding the top, into a sort of fence; wash over carefully with the beaten yolks of two eggs, and set it in the oven until firm.

Drain more than half the juice from a can of tomatoes; season with a little chopped onion, pepper, salt, and sugar. Stew twenty minutes; stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and two tablespoonfuls of fine bread-crumbs; stew three or four minutes to thicken it well, and pour within the hedge of rice.

BELLE’S DUMPLINGS.

1 quart _prepared_ flour. 2½ tablespoonfuls of mixed lard and butter. 2 cups of milk, or enough for soft dough.

Roll out a quarter of an inch thick, cut into oblong pieces, rounded at the corners. Put a great spoonful of damson, cherry, or other tart preserve, in the middle, and roll into a dumpling. Bake about forty minutes, brush over with beaten egg, while hot, and shut up in the oven three minutes to glaze. Eat hot with brandy sauce. (_For receipt for sauce see Wednesday, 2d Week in January._)

APRIL.

First Week. Sunday. —— Clear Soup. Fricasseed Chickens, White. Buttered Parsnips. Savory Potatoes. Lettuce Salad, Plain. —— Pie-Plant (April) Fool. Coffee and Cake. ——

CLEAR SOUP.

Take the grease from the soup-jelly you will find in the crock into which the stock was poured yesterday. Take it up by the ladleful, leaving the meat and sediment at the bottom, and put on to heat in a soup-kettle. When it boils, stir in the beaten white of an egg; take off the scum as fast as it rises, and when quite clear add two teaspoonfuls of Coxe’s gelatine, previously soaked in cold water. Add, meanwhile, a little boiling water to the sediment and meat dice in the pot; strain off the liquid; pick out the bits of meat, and see that they are clean. Drop into the soup at the same time that you add four tablespoonfuls of colored water, made by burning a tablespoonful or two of sugar in a tin cup, pouring a little boiling water upon it, and stirring until you get a clear brown liquor. After these go in, do not let your soup really boil, but simmer a few minutes to throw up and remove any remaining scum. Pass sliced lemon with the soup.

FRICASSEED CHICKENS—WHITE.