Part 16

Clean, wash, and joint the fowls. Lay in cold salt and water for one hour. Put them into a pot, with half a pound of salt pork cut into strips, and cold water enough to cover them. Cover closely, and heat very slowly to a gentle boil. The excellence of the fricassee depends mainly upon care in this respect. If the fowls are full-grown and reasonably tender, stew more than one hour after they begin to boil. When done add half a chopped onion, parsley and pepper. Cover again for ten minutes. Stir up two tablespoonfuls of flour in cold water, then into a cup of hot milk, and this, in turn, into two beaten eggs. Then put in a great spoonful of butter, and pour all into the saucepan; mix well, boil fairly, and, having arranged the chickens upon a hot dish, pour the gravy over them.

BUTTERED PARSNIPS.

Boil tender and scrape. Slice lengthwise. Put three tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan with pepper, salt and a little chopped parsley. When it heats, put in the parsnips, and shake and turn until the mixture boils. Lay the parsnips in order upon a hot dish, and pour the butter over them.

SAVORY POTATOES.

Pare and cut into squares some raw potatoes. Lay in cold water half an hour, put into a saucepan, cover with boiling water, slightly salted, and stew half an hour, not so fast as to break them. Then throw off the water and add a cupful of sauce made from the gravy of Friday’s chickens, thinned with a little hot water, and strained; seasoned to taste, and again thickened with a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Simmer all for ten minutes, and turn into a deep dish.

LETTUCE SALAD—PLAIN.

Wash the lettuce; pull leaf from leaf, and pile over a lump of ice in a salad-bowl. Pass the oil and vinegar, salt, pepper, and powdered sugar to each person, with the lettuce, that he may season for himself.

PIE-PLANT (APRIL) FOOL.

1 pint of stewed pie plant, rubbed through a colander. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 cup of sugar. Yolks of four eggs. _Méringue_ of the whites. 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Juice of half a lemon.

Put the strained pie-plant into a saucepan; set it in boiling water, and, when hot, beat in the butter, sugar, and beaten yolks. Stir two minutes, and turn out to cool. This can be done on Saturday. On Sunday, a few minutes’ whirl of your egg-beater will give you the _méringue_. Beat in the powdered sugar with a few more, and when you have poured the stewed fruit (or vegetable) into a glass bowl, pile the _méringue_ (the “fool”?) on the top.

COFFEE AND CAKE

Can be handed with, or after the sweets.

First Week. Monday. —— Milk and Bread Soup. Larded Mutton Chops. Mashed Potatoes. Green Peas. Tomato Catsup. —— Corn-meal Hasty Pudding. ——

MILK AND BREAD SOUP.

Boil down the liquor in which Saturday’s calf’s head was cooked, to less than two quarts. Add a pint of milk previously heated, and mixed with three beaten eggs. Thicken with two tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in flour, and take at once from the fire. Salt and pepper, if needed. Have ready in a tureen a cupful of fine, dry crumbs. Pour on the soup, stir up for a moment, cover and send to table with a plate of grated cheese.

LARDED MUTTON CHOPS.

Trim off superfluous fat and skin; beat flat with the broad side of a hatchet, and lard each with four strips of fat, salt pork, drawn quite through, so as to project on both sides. Put into a saucepan, sprinkle with minced onion, pepper, and parsley, and barely cover with weak broth. The gravy from yesterday’s chickens will do, or any other you may chance to have. Put on the saucepan lid, set it where it will not boil under an hour, and think no more about it until the time is up. Then increase the heat and simmer half an hour, or until tender. Take up the chops and keep hot. Thicken the gravy with browned flour; add the juice of a lemon, a great spoonful of mushroom catsup, a glass of sherry, and boil one minute. Put back the chops; cover, and heat just to a feeble boil. Lay the chops in order upon a dish and pour the gravy over them.

GREEN PEAS.

Open a can of peas; turn out into a bowl, and let alone for an hour. Then, strain off the liquor, put the peas into a saucepan, and cover with salted, boiling water. Cook twenty minutes; drain, pepper, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and dish.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual, and heap in a covered dish. Wet a pretty butter-print and press firmly upon the top.

CORN-MEAL HASTY PUDDING.

1 heaping cup of Indian meal. ½ cup of flour. 1 quart of boiling _milk_. 2 cups of boiling water. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 1 tablespoonful of brown sugar. 1 teaspoonful of salt. ½ teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace.

Wet up meal and flour with the water and stir into the boiling milk. Mem.—Cook all sorts of milk-puddings (boiled) in a farina-kettle. Boil steadily half an hour, stirring very often from the bottom. Put in salt, sugar, butter, and spice, and cook ten minutes more. Pour into a bowl, or other uncovered dish. Eat hot with sugar and butter.

First Week. Tuesday. —— Bean and Corn Soup. Beefsteak Pudding. Stewed Potatoes. Mashed Turnips. Cold Slaw. —— Baked Chocolate Custards. Fancy Cakes. ——

BEAN AND CORN SOUP.

1 quart of dried beans, soaked overnight in soft water. 1 lb. of streaked salt pork, cut into shreds. 1 lb. of lean beef also cut up. 2 stalks of celery, minced. 1 bunch of chopped parsley. 1 small onion, sliced. Pepper and salt. 1 can of corn. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in two of flour. 5 quarts of water.

Put on the beans, pork, beef, and all the vegetables except the corn, with the water, and boil slowly until the beans are thoroughly broken, and the meat in rags. Meanwhile, cook the corn tender in just enough boiling water to cover it. When done, stir in half the butter and flour, salt and pepper, and cover to keep hot while you strain the soup, rubbing the beans, onion, and celery to a pulp through a colander. Set aside half for to-morrow. Return the rest to the fire; pepper to taste; add the corn with the water in which it was cooked. Simmer fifteen minutes; stir in the rest of the butter and flour; boil up well, and serve.

BEEFSTEAK PUDDING.

1 quart of prepared flour. ¼ lb. powdered suet. 1 cup of ice-water. 2 lbs. good steak without bone. Pepper and salt. 1 tablespoonful of tomato catsup.

Rub the suet into the flour, salt slightly, and make, with the water, into a paste just soft enough to roll out. Roll into a sheet nearly half an inch thick. Butter well a round-bottomed pudding mould; line with the paste, and leave in a cold place while you cut the steak into small squares, seasoning with pepper, salt, and catsup. Fill the paste-lined mould (or bowl) with this. Cut a piece of paste for the top. Cover with this, pinching the two sheets of paste tightly together at the edges. Let an assistant hold up the bowl while you cover with a stout pudding-cloth and tie tightly under the bottom, not straining the cloth so strongly over the top as to hinder the paste from swelling. (Flour the cloth before tying it over the bowl.) Plunge into a gallon of boiling water, and keep it at a fast boil for two hours, filling up from the tea-kettle when the water sinks. Turn the bowl bottom upward and dip in cold water; untie the cloth, invert a hot dish upon the mould, and turn over carefully, to get the pudding out without breaking. This is a favorite English dish.

STEWED POTATOES.

Old potatoes, by this time, need a little management to make them acceptable at a season when appetites crave fresh vegetables. This is a good way to cook them. Pare very thin, and leave in cold water one hour. Put on to cook in _cold_ water, bringing it soon to a boil. When a fork will run easily into the largest, strain off the water, throw in a handful of salt, and dry, for a minute, on the stove. Then take out the potatoes; crack each one by pressing with a wooden spoon; put into a deep dish, and pour over them a cup of hot milk thickened with two tablespoonfuls of butter, cut up in flour; cooked for a minute, then seasoned with pepper, salt, and a tablespoonful _very_ finely-minced parsley. Cover the dish; set in boiling water ten minutes, and serve.

MASHED TURNIPS.

Boil tender; press all the water out in a colander, as you mash them; return to the fire with a good lump of butter, pepper, and salt, and stir until smoking hot.

COLD SLAW.

Shred the heart of a white cabbage, and pour over it a dressing of two tablespoonfuls of oil, four of vinegar, one teaspoonful each of salt and sugar, and half as much pepper and mustard, beaten up well with the whipped yolks of two eggs. The mixture should be quite thick. Use an egg-beater in mixing.

BAKED CHOCOLATE CUSTARDS.

1 quart of milk. 6 eggs. 1 cup of sugar. 4 great spoonfuls grated chocolate. Vanilla flavoring.

Scald the milk; wet up the chocolate and stir in. Boil two minutes. Beat the yolks into the sugar, and pour the hot mixture slowly upon them, stirring constantly. Season and fill small cups, which should be set ready in a dripping-pan of boiling water. See that there is no danger of their boiling over the tops. Cook twenty minutes, or until the custards are firm. While they cool whip the whites to a stiff _méringue_ with a little powdered sugar. When the custards are cold, heap this upon the tops.

FANCY CAKES,

Macaroons, lady’s-fingers, or jumbles, should go around with the custards.

First Week. Wednesday. —— “Red Pottage.” Boiled Cod with Caper Sauce. Scalloped Chicken. Mashed Potatoes, Browned. Split Pea Pancakes. —— Queen of Puddings. ——

“RED POTTAGE.”

To the bean-stock set by on yesterday add a can of red tomatoes, cut small, and two lumps of sugar, and simmer, set in boiling water for fear of burning, until they are one mass of pulp. Strain through a colander, add seasoning, and stir in a generous glass of claret which was poured, two hours before, upon a sliced, deep-colored _beet_, warm from the boil. Strain the juice from the beet by squeezing in a cloth. Put a double-handful of fried bread into a tureen, and pour the soup upon it.

This, if not “that same red pottage” for which poor hungry Esau—who certainly came honestly, by hereditary right, by his love of “good eating”—bartered his birthright, is yet very pretty and savory.

BOILED COD WITH CAPER SAUCE.

Sew the fish up neatly in a thin cloth and cook in boiling water, fifteen minutes to the pound. Unwrap, lay upon a hot dish, and pour over it the following sauce:

Put a cupful of boiling water into a saucepan, and stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter, cut up in a heaping teaspoonful of flour. Beat in, when thick, the whipped yolk of an egg, the juice of a lemon, and twenty-four capers. Stir up well, cook half a minute, and take from the fire.

SCALLOPED CHICKEN.

Clean, wash, and cut an old fowl to pieces. Put into a pot with four quarts of cold water and cook _very_ slowly until tender. Take it out, salt and pepper the broth, and put by for to-morrow’s soup, reserving one cupful for your gravy.

Let the chicken cool, and cut—cleanly—into pieces an inch long by one fourth that width. Put the gravy, well-seasoned, over the fire, thicken with a tablespoonful of butter, cut up and rolled in flour; stir in the chicken, and just before it boils, take from the fire, and beat in two whisked eggs, with a little finely minced parsley. Strew the bottom of a bake-dish with crumbs; pour in the chicken; cover with a deeper coating of bread-crumbs; stick bits of butter over this, and bake, covered, until bubbling hot; then brown delicately.

MASHED POTATOES—BROWNED.

Mash soft with milk and butter, season, and round into a heap upon a greased pie-dish. Brown in a quick oven; glaze with butter; slip carefully to a hot dish.

SPLIT PEA PANCAKES.

Soak a pint of split peas all night. Put on, in the morning, in cold water and cook soft. Rub through a fine colander. While hot, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and season with pepper and salt. When quite cold, beat in two eggs, a cupful of milk, and half a cupful of flour in which has been sifted—twice—a quarter teaspoonful of soda and twice as much cream-of-tartar. Beat hard and long, and fry as you would griddle-cakes.

QUEEN OF PUDDINGS.

1½ cups of sugar. 5 eggs. 2 cups of dry bread-crumbs. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 2 teaspoonfuls vanilla, or other extract—Colgate’s, if you can get it. 1 quart of fresh milk. ½ cup sweet fruit-jelly, or jam.

Cream butter and sugar and whip in the yolks. Soak the crumbs in the milk and add next—then flavor. Pour into a buttered pudding-dish, filling it two-thirds of the way to the top, and bake until well “set” in the middle. Draw to the oven door, spread quickly with the jelly, and this with a _méringue_ of the whites and half a cup of sugar. Shut the oven and bake quickly until the _méringue_ begins to color. Eat cold with cream.

First Week. Thursday. —— Chicken Soup. Mayonnaise of Fish. Veal Chops with Tomato Sauce. Potato Strips. Macaroni and Eggs. —— Jelly Cake Fritters. ——

CHICKEN SOUP.

Take the fat from the top of the liquor in which your chicken was boiled yesterday, and put on the soup to heat. Meanwhile, boil half a cupful of rice tender in a pint of salted milk, and when the rice is soft, stir in a tablespoonful of butter worked up in flour to prevent oiling. When the soup boils up clear, skim and add the rice and milk, with two tablespoonfuls of minced parsley. Pepper and salt to taste; simmer ten minutes. Chop up three hard-boiled eggs fine; put into the tureen and pour the soup upon them.

MAYONNAISE OF FISH.

Yolks of 3 boiled eggs. 2 tablespoonfuls of best oil. 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar. 6 tablespoonfuls of vinegar. 1 teaspoonful of salt, and half as much each of pepper and made mustard. White of 1 raw egg. 2 cupfuls of cold boiled fish (yesterday’s cod). 2 heads of lettuce.

Rub the yolks smooth with the oil, add sugar, salt, pepper, and mustard, and, when all are mixed, the vinegar, a little at a time. Set by, covered, while you cut—not chop—the fish into strips an inch long, and shred the lettuce. Mix these in a bowl. Whip the frothed white of egg into the dressing, and pour upon the salad. Stir up with a silver fork and put into a glass dish. Garnish with rings of the whites of boiled eggs.

VEAL CHOPS WITH TOMATO SAUCE.

Trim and flatten the chops. Dip in raw egg, then in cracker dust, and fry, rather slowly, in lard or dripping. Open a can of tomatoes, and drain off the liquor. Salt the rest of the tomatoes and reserve for Friday’s soup. Put the liquor into a saucepan with a sliced onion, and stew ten minutes. Strain out the onion, return the juice to the fire; thicken with a great spoonful of butter, worked up in a teaspoonful of corn-starch; pepper and salt. Boil up sharply, and when you have laid the chops upon a dish, pour the sauce over them.

MACARONI WITH EGGS.

Break half a pound of macaroni into short bits; cook tender in boiling, salted water. Drain well; put into a deep dish and pour over it a cupful of drawn butter in which have been stirred two beaten eggs, and two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, with salt and pepper. Loosen the macaroni to allow the sauce to penetrate the mass. Pass more grated cheese with it.

POTATO STRIPS.

Pare, cut in long, even strips; lay in cold water for one hour; dry by spreading them upon a towel and pressing another upon them. Fry to a light brown in salted lard. Shake off the fat in a hot colander. Line a deep dish with a napkin and put in the strips. They should not be crowded in frying, but each should be distinct and free from the rest.

JELLY-CAKE FRITTERS.

Cut stale sponge or very plain cup cake into rounds with a cake-cutter. Fry to a nice brown in sweet lard. Dip each round in _boiling_ milk, to soften it and get rid of the grease. Lay upon a hot dish and spread with sweet jelly or jam. Pile neatly one upon another. Send around hot, sweetened cream to pour over them.

First Week. Friday. —— Graham Soup. Scalloped Oysters. Stewed Sweetbreads, Brown. Moulded Potato. Lettuce. —— Quaking Custard. ——

GRAHAM SOUP.

2 onions. 2 carrots. 4 turnips. ½ cabbage. A little celery-seed tied in a thin muslin bag. The tomatoes set by yesterday. ½ cup raw rice. ½ cup of cream (with a pinch of soda added to prevent curdling). 2 lumps of white sugar. Pepper, salt, and parsley. 3 tablespoonfuls of butter cut up in flour. 3 quarts of cold water.

Chop the cabbage and slice the onions; pare and _grate_ the other vegetables, and put over the fire with the rice, the bag of celery-seed, and the water. Stew one hour; add the tomatoes and stew twenty minutes more. Rub all to a pulp through a colander; return to the soup-pot, season, and when it boils, stir in the butter. Heat the cream to scalding in a separate vessel, and pour into the tureen. Stir the soup into it by degrees, and serve. Pass Boston crackers—split and buttered—with it.

SCALLOPED OYSTERS.

Butter a pudding-dish, and strew the bottom with rolled cracker. Wet this with oyster-liquor and milk, slightly warmed. Then lay on oysters, set closely together. Sprinkle with pepper, salt, and bits of butter, with a few drops of lemon-juice. Another stratum of moistened crumbs, and so on, until the dish is full. Let the top layer be of crumbs, with butter dots here and there. Bake, covered, half an hour, then brown quickly.

STEWED SWEETBREADS—BROWN.

4 sweetbreads. 1 cup of gravy (yesterday’s broth will do). 1 onion. ½ cup butter. ½ pint of mushrooms. Pepper and salt.

Boil the sweetbreads quickly—ten minutes are enough—blanch by throwing them into cold water, then leaving them to cool. Slice them lengthwise. Slice, also, the onion and mushrooms, and fry brown in half the butter. Strain them out, return the fat to the pan, with the rest of the butter. Heat, and fry the sweetbreads. When the latter are done, put all into a tin pail, with a tight top; add the gravy; set, covered, in boiling water, and stew gently, at the side of the range, half an hour. Arrange the sweetbreads upon a hot dish; thicken the gravy with browned flour, and pour over them. Garnish with triangles of fried bread.

MOULDED POTATO.

Mash soft with butter and hot milk in which has been stirred a beaten egg. Salt and put into a buttered cake or pudding mould. Set in a pan of hot water, put on the lid of the mould, and keep the water at a hard boil half an hour. Dip the mould in cold water, and turn out the potatoes upon a flat dish.

LETTUCE.

Treat as directed upon last Sunday.

QUAKING CUSTARD.

3 cups of milk. Yolks of 4 eggs, reserving the whites for the _méringue_. ½ package Cooper’s gelatine. 6 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Vanilla flavoring. Juice of 1 lemon for _méringue_.

Soak the gelatine two hours in a cup of the cold milk. Then add to the rest of the milk, which must be boiling hot, and stir until dissolved. Let it stand a few minutes, and strain through muslin over the beaten yolks and sugar. Put over the fire and stir five minutes, or until you can feel it thickening. Stir up well when nearly cold, flavor, and let it alone until it congeals around the edges of the bowl into which you have poured it; then stir again, and put into a wet mould. Set upon ice, or in cold water until firm. Turn it, when you are ready for it, into a glass bowl. Have ready a _méringue_ made by whipping the whites stiff with three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar, and the lemon-juice. Heap irregularly about the base.

First Week. Saturday. —— Vermicelli Soup. Glazed Ham. Spinach à la Parisienne. Chow-chow. Baked Potatoes. —— Rhubarb Tart. ——

VERMICELLI SOUP.

4 lbs. knuckle of veal. 2 lbs. of coarse, lean beef. 2 slices of corned ham, or some bones of salt pork. 2 onions. Thyme and parsley. ¼ lb. vermicelli. Pepper and salt. 6 quarts of water.

Crack the bones into splinters; cut the meat into strips; slice the onions and chop the herbs. Put on in six quarts of water, and cook slowly five hours. Strain, pressing meat, etc., hard in the colander. There should be about four quarts of soup. Set aside half, when you have salted it, for Sunday. Return the rest to the clean kettle, season and skim. The vermicelli should have been broken small, and boiled in a little hot, salted water, three minutes. Strain, without squeezing; butter and pepper; stir into the soup; simmer very gently five minutes, and pour out.

GLAZED HAM.

Wash a fine _corned_—not smoked—ham; soak all night in cold water, and boil about eighteen minutes to the pound. There should be plenty of water in the pot, cold at first, and brought gradually to a boil. Skim well from time to time. Let it get cold in the water in which it was boiled, if you can spare the time. _We_ always boil a ham the day before it is to be eaten. Take it out; remove the skin carefully, and put the latter back into the cold liquor when you have skimmed all the fat—which makes excellent dripping—from the surface of the liquid. Press soft paper on the top of the ham, to take off the clinging drops of grease. Brush all over with beaten egg. Work a cup of rolled cracker into a paste with warm milk, butter, pepper, salt, and a beaten egg. Coat the ham thickly with this, and set to brown in a moderate oven. Twist frilled paper around the knuckle, and garnish with cresses.

SPINACH À LA PARISIENNE.

Pick off the leaves from the stalks; put on in boiling water, a little salt, and cook twenty minutes. Drain hard and dry, chop fine, return to the fire with a good piece of butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, a little nutmeg, pepper and salt, and stir two minutes. Then, beat in two or three tablespoonfuls of cream, or rich milk, and whip as you would a custard. It should be smooth to taste and sight. Boil up—barely—and dish.

CHOW-CHOW

“Goes well,” as the French say, with ham.

BAKED POTATOES.

Parboil, peel, and lay in a dripping-pan, with a bit of butter upon each. As they brown, put on each a teaspoonful of warm milk mixed with butter, salt, and pepper. They should be of a light brown. Butter again just before you dish them.

RHUBARB TART.

Scrape the stalks, cut into small bits, and stew in a very little water. When tender, take from the fire and sweeten. Have ready some open shells of pastry, freshly baked. Fill with the fruit, and sift sugar on top. Eat warm or cold—never _hot_. Make more paste than you need, and keep—raw—in a cold place.

Second Week. Sunday. —— Pea and Rice Soup. Fillet of Veal with Ham. Potato Balls. Stuffed Cabbage. French Beans. —— Charlotte Cachée. Bird’s Nest in Jelly. ——

PEA AND RICE SOUP.

Open a can of green peas, and turn them into a bowl for an hour. Boil half a cup of rice soft in a cup of milk. Skim the stock made yesterday, and heat to a boil before adding the peas (drained) and the rice, which should have absorbed all the milk. Stew slowly half an hour; add what seasoning you like, and stir in a tablespoonful of butter cut up in flour. Simmer five minutes and pour out.

FILLET OF VEAL WITH HAM.