Part 20

First Week. Tuesday. —— Veal and Tapioca Broth. Baked Beefsteak. Young Onions Stewed. Potatoes Baked with Steak. Lettuce Salad. —— Oatmeal Pudding with Cream. ——

VEAL AND TAPIOCA BROTH.

3 lbs. scrag of veal, well broken, and the meat cut small. 1 onion. 1 turnip. ½ cup of pearl tapioca. 2 blades of mace. 2 teaspoonfuls essence of celery. Pepper and salt. 3 quarts of cold water.

Put meat, bones, and sliced vegetables on in the water, and cook slowly three hours. Soak the tapioca during this time in a very little milk. Strain the soup, rubbing the vegetables through the colander; cool to throw up the fat. Skim and season. When hot again put in the tapioca and stir until it melts. Simmer half an hour, add the celery essence and serve.

BAKED BEEFSTEAK.

Take the bone from a large sirloin steak; flatten it with the side of a hatchet, wash over the upper side with a beaten egg and spread thickly with a force-meat of crumbs, minced ham, and any other cold meat you may have, a teaspoonful of minced onion, a pinch of grated lemon peel, with pepper and salt, a beaten egg and three tablespoonfuls of cream or milk. Work these into a paste before spreading. Roll the steak upon them, binding closely with soft pack-thread. Have ready some dripping in a frying-pan, and cook the steak five minutes in this, turning as it browns. Now lay it in a dripping-pan with a cupful of boiling water; cover and bake forty minutes, basting and turning often. When done, remove the strings; lay the beef upon a hot dish; thicken the gravy with browned flour, boil up and pour half over it—the rest into a boat.

YOUNG ONIONS STEWED.

Skin, wash well, and cook in boiling water, salted, until half-done—say fifteen minutes. Then, throw off nearly all the water and replenish with scalding milk. Cook tender in this, stir in pepper, salt, a great spoonful of butter cut up in a teaspoonful of flour. Simmer three minutes, and pour out.

POTATOES BAKED WITH STEAK.

Parboil, skin, and quarter some large potatoes. About ten minutes before you take up your steak, lay the potatoes around it in the pan, and brown in the hot gravy. Serve in the dish with the meat, laid on the outer edge.

LETTUCE SALAD.

Pull out the hearts and blanched leaves, heap them within a salad bowl; strew with powdered sugar, and pour over them a dressing made according to directions given yesterday. Toss up well with a silver fork.

OATMEAL PUDDING WITH CREAM.

1 quart of boiling milk. 4 tablespoonfuls best Irish oatmeal. 4 tablespoonfuls of flour. 1 teaspoonful of salt.

Wet up flour, oatmeal, and salt, with cold milk and stir into the hot, which must be in a farina-kettle. Stir twenty minutes well from the bottom, and let it stand ten minutes in the boiling water without cooking before pouring into an uncovered deep dish. Eat with cream and sugar.

First Week. Wednesday. —— Hot Pot. Stewed Breast of Veal with Mushrooms. Rhubarb Sauce. Spinach à la Reine. Browned Mashed Potatoes. —— Burnt Custard. ——

HOT POT.

4 lbs. coarse lean beef, cut up small. 2 good-sized crabs. ½ lb. of streaked salt pork. Bunch of sweet herbs. 1 onion. 1 bunch of asparagus—the green tops only. 8 Boston crackers. Cayenne pepper. Butter for crackers. 6 quarts of water. Juice of 1 lemon.

Boil beef, herbs and onion together in the water—cooking slowly—three hours. Cool, to throw up the fat, and skim well. Put away half of the liquor with the meat, well-seasoned, for another day. Strain the remainder back into the pot; add the meat of two boiled crabs nicely cut—not chopped—up, and the pork, also boiled and cut into dice; the asparagus-tops, with plenty of seasoning. Stew for half an hour, gently. Have ready in your tureen eight Boston crackers split, laid for five minutes in boiling water, then drained and buttered. Pour the soup over these, cover, and serve, having added the lemon-juice at the last. Send sliced lemon around with it.

STEWED BREAST OF VEAL WITH MUSHROOM SAUCE.

Trim neatly; take out the largest bone, and fill the cavity with a good force-meat. Skewer into a compact shape. Lay in a frying-pan with three tablespoonfuls of butter, and brown on both sides. Line the bottom of a large saucepan with slices of pork, pepper them, and lay in the veal. Cover _tightly_, and heat very slowly, one hour, without opening the pot. Then turn the meat, add half a can of chopped mushrooms, and half a Bermuda onion, sliced, with a cup of boiling water. Cover again, and cook for another hour—never fast. The meat should be cooked almost wholly in its own steam. Turn again, and simmer fifteen minutes. Take up the meat, thicken the gravy with browned flour, wet with cold water, adding a little boiling water, if needful; boil up, and pour over the veal. If these directions be exactly followed, this dish will be excellent.

SPINACH À LA REINE.

Wash well, pick off the leaves, and cook them twenty minutes in salted, boiling water. Drain and press out all the water; chop very fine. Return to the saucepan with a good lump of butter, pepper, salt, a pinch of mace, a teaspoonful of sugar, and three spoonfuls—large ones—of good gravy. Stir, beat, and toss, until nearly dry. Fill hot, wet egg-cups with the mixture, and turn out upon a heated, flat dish. Lay a slice of egg upon each.

RHUBARB (OR PIE-PLANT) SAUCE.

Skin, and cut up the stalks. Put into a saucepan, with just enough water to keep them from burning, and stew slowly until soft. Sweeten while hot, but not on the fire. Eat cold.

BROWNED POTATOES—MASHED.

Whip up boiled potatoes very light with a fork; beat in butter, milk, and salt. Heat roughly upon a neat bake-dish (one with a silver stand for the table, if you have it), and brown in a quick oven, glazing with butter, when done.

BURNT CUSTARD.

1 quart of milk. 5 eggs. 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Nutmeg and flavoring extract to taste.

Scald the milk, but not to boiling; beat eggs light with the sugar, and pour upon them the hot milk. Mix well, and bake in a well-buttered dish. Turn out when cold; strew very thickly with white sugar. Set the plate containing the custard upon the upper grating of a hot oven. The sugar will melt, and run in brown streams all over the moulded pudding. Slip carefully to a dish, and eat cold.

First Week. Thursday. —— Italian Minestra Soup. Chicken Pudding. Boiled Potatoes. Asparagus and Eggs. Crab-apple Jelly. —— German Puffs. ——

ITALIAN MINESTRA SOUP.

Strain the stock reserved for to-day from the bones, after taking the fat from the top. Never neglect this. Greasy soups are not good, and plenty of dripping may be thus obtained for kitchen use. Heat the soup, season to taste, and add a little more than half a cupful of _minestra_, by some known as Italian Paste. It can be had at the best grocers in various shapes—like wheat-grains, in small squares, or in stars, circles, letters, etc. Simmer twenty minutes, and pour out. The _minestra_ should be tender, but not broken.

CHICKEN PUDDING.

Cut up a tender fowl into neat joints, and parboil, seasoning well, ten minutes before you take it up, with pepper, salt, and a generous spoonful of butter. It should cook slowly for half an hour. Take up and cool, setting aside the liquor for your gravy.

BATTER FOR THE PUDDING.

1 quart of milk. 3 cups of prepared flour, not heaping. 3 tablespoonfuls of melted butter. 4 well-whipped eggs. A little salt.

Make a hole in the flour, when you have sifted the salt through it. Mix eggs, milk, and butter together, and pour in by degrees, beating all up hard at the last. Put a layer of chicken in the bottom of a bake-dish; pour a cupful of batter upon it; then more chicken, and so on, until the dish is full, with batter for the upper crust. It will require about one hour to bake in a moderate oven. Skim the cooled gravy, and boil down one-half. Then, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, cut up in flour. Boil once, and pour over a beaten egg. Season with chopped parsley; return to the fire; let it almost boil, and serve in a sauce-boat. Pass with the pudding.

BOILED POTATOES.

Put on in cold water, and bring to a rapid boil. When nearly done, pour off all but a cupful of water. Cover closely, return to the fire, and steam until the skins crack, and the potatoes are soft. They will need about half an hour’s boiling in all. Uncover, strew with salt, leave for a few moments for the moisture to evaporate, and serve at once. Old potatoes, treated thus, can be made mealy.

ASPARAGUS AND EGGS.

Cut about two dozen stalks of asparagus—leaving out the hard parts—into inch lengths, and boil tender. Drain; pour upon them a cupful of drawn butter; stir until hot, then turn into a bake-dish. Break six eggs upon the top; put a bit of butter upon each; salt and pepper, and put into a quick oven until the eggs are “set.”

GERMAN PUFFS.

3 cups of prepared flour. 3 cups of milk. 3 eggs—whites and yolks whipped separately, and very light. 3 teaspoonfuls of melted butter. 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Make a batter as directed for your chicken pudding, beat up hard, and bake in nine cups, such as you used for measuring, to a fine brown. The oven should be a quick one, and the puffs be served immediately in their cups.

First Week. Friday. —— Canned Corn Soup. Boiled Shad. Scalloped Roes. Potato Snow. Green Peas. Cress Salad. —— Lemon Trifle. Tea and Cake. ——

CANNED CORN SOUP.

1 can of sweet corn. 1 quart of boiling water. 1 quart of milk. 3 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in one tablespoonful of flour. 2 eggs. Pepper and salt. 1 tablespoonful tomato catsup.

Drain the corn and chop it in a chopping-tray. Put on in the boiling water and cook steadily one hour. Rub through a colander, leaving the husks behind and return, with the water in which it has boiled, to the fire. Season; boil gently three minutes and stir in the butter and flour. Have ready the boiling milk, pour it upon the beaten eggs, and these into the soup. Simmer one minute, stirring all the while; take up, add the catsup and pour out.

BOILED SHAD.

Clean, wash and wipe a large roe shad. Set aside the roes for your scallop. Sew up the fish in a thin cloth fitted to its shape; cover well with boiling salted water, and cook from forty-five minutes to an hour, according to its size. Unwrap and butter and pepper, after laying it upon a hot dish. Pour over it a few spoonfuls of drawn butter in which have been mixed the chopped yolks of two eggs, a little parsley, and the juice of a lemon. Serve the same in a boat. Garnish the fish with rings of the whites of the boiled eggs, with a sprig of parsley in each.

SCALLOPED ROES.

The roes of the shad. 1 cup of drawn butter, and the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs. 1 teaspoonful of anchovy paste. Juice of half a lemon. 1 cup of bread-crumbs. Parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

Boil the roes in water with a little vinegar stirred in. Lay in cold water five minutes and wipe dry. Break up with the back of a spoon, but do not crush the eggs. Set by, and pound the boiled yolks to a powder. Beat this into the drawn butter, then the parsley and other seasoning, finally the roes. Strew the bottom of a bake-dish with crumbs; pour in the mixture, and cover thickly with fine crumbs. Stick dots of butter over the top, and bake, covered, until it begins to bubble, then brown upon the upper grating of the oven.

POTATO SNOW.

Mash with a beetle very fine, working in salt only. Then rub hard and fast through a colander into a hot dish. The potato should fall in light spiral threads. Set in the oven three minutes to renew the heat, but do not let it “crust” or brown.

GREEN PEAS.

See receipt given on Sunday.

CRESS SALAD.

Pull the sprigs to pieces and pour over them a dressing such as was made for your potato salad on Monday.

LEMON TRIFLE.

Juice of 2 lemons and grated peel of one. 1 pint cream, well sweetened and whipped stiff. 1 cup of sherry. A little nutmeg.

Let sugar, lemon-juice, and peel lie together two hours before you add wine and nutmeg. Strain through double tarlatan, and whip gradually into the frothed cream. Serve very soon, heaped in small glasses. Pass cake with this as well as with the tea.

TEA AND CAKE.

Whereas pound, jelly, or cup-cake should accompany your trifle, small sponge-cakes, or cookies—not too sweet—taste better with tea, and do not detract so much from its flavor.

First Week. Saturday. —— Minced Beef Soup. Ragoût of Mutton. Boiled Potatoes. French Beans with Force-meat Balls. Boiled Rice. —— Neapolitan Pudding. ——

MINCED BEEF SOUP.

4 lbs. lean beef, minced fine, as for beef-tea. 2 lbs. mutton-bones. 2 carrots, grated. 2 sliced onions. Bunch of sweet herbs, and small bunch of asparagus, also chopped. Pepper and salt. 5 quarts of water. Strips of buttered toast.

Crack the bones to splinters, and put on with the vegetables in three quarts of cold water and boil two hours. Strain, rubbing the vegetables to a pulp, and add, with the rest of the water, also cold, to the minced beef. Bring to a boil, cook gently one hour after it boils, and strain, pressing hard. Reserve a little of the beef for force-meat, and put away the rest well seasoned, after pouring back over it half the soup, as stock for to-morrow. Keep in a cool place. Chop the herbs and put into that meant for to-day, with pepper and salt. Boil and skim fifteen minutes. Have ready some long strips of buttered crisp toast in the tureen and pour on the soup.

RAGOÛT OF MUTTON.

3 lbs. of mutton, without bone, cut into strips three inches long by one wide. 2 lamb sweetbreads. 1 cup of gravy made from bones, skin, etc.—the “trimmings” of the meat. 2 eggs. ¼ lb. streaked salt pork. 1 fried onion. 1 cup of green peas. Pepper, salt, and parsley. Dripping for frying. Browned flour.

Fry the onion in plenty of dripping; then the meat for five minutes. Parboil the sweetbreads, throw into cold water to blanch; wipe and slice; then fry also in the fat. Lay sliced pork in the bottom of a saucepan, upon this the mutton, then the sweetbreads, next the onion, the green peas, then pepper and salt. Cover with the gravy; put on a close lid and stew gently for an hour after the boil sets in. Take up the meat and sweetbreads; thicken the gravy with browned flour; pour it upon two beaten eggs, stir one minute over the fire and pour upon the meat.

BROILED POTATOES.

Cut cold boiled potatoes lengthwise; cook over a clear fire upon a greased gridiron, until they begin to brown. Lay upon a hot dish, butter, pepper, and salt.

FRENCH BEANS WITH FORCE-MEAT BALLS.

Chop the beef taken from the soup when cold. Add one-third as much bread-crumbs, and season well. Put a spoonful of butter into a saucepan, and when it hisses, stir in the meat, then a little browned flour wet up with cold water. Beat an egg light, pour the meat upon it, and mix well. Make into floured balls and fry in hot dripping. Cook the beans as usual and lay the balls about them when dished.

BOILED RICE.

Wash well and cook in hot salted water, shaking up from time to time until the water is nearly all absorbed, and the rice soft, with every grain distinct. Put a good piece of butter upon the top after it is dished.

NEAPOLITAN PUDDING.

1 large cup of bread-crumbs soaked in milk. ¾ cup of sugar. 5 eggs. 1 lemon, juice and grated rind. ½ lb. stale sponge-cake. ½ lb. almond maccaroons. ½ cup jelly or jam. 1 small tumbler of sherry wine. ½ cup of milk for the crumbs. 1 tablespoonful melted butter.

Cream butter and sugar. Beat in the whipped yolks; then the crumbs, the lemon, and when this is a smooth paste, the whites. Butter a mould thickly, and cover the bottom with dry bread-crumbs, and these with maccaroons, laid evenly. Wet with wine, and pour on a layer of the mixture just made; next, put sliced cake spread with jelly, then more maccaroons wet with wine, more custard, cake and jam, until all the materials are used up, with a layer of custard on top. Cover closely; set in a pan of boiling water and cook three-quarters of an hour in the oven, then remove the top and brown. Turn out carefully, and pour over it a sauce made of currant-jelly warmed, and beaten up with two tablespoonfuls of melted butter and a glass of wine. A plain round mould is best for this pudding.

Second Week. Sunday. —— Soup à l’Italienne. Beef à la Mode. Asparagus upon Toast. Green Peas. Mashed Potatoes. —— Tropical Snow with Jelly Cake. ——

SOUP À L’ITALIENNE.

Take the fat from the top of the reserved stock, strain it and heat to scalding. Heat in another vessel a pint of milk, pour it upon three beaten eggs; return to the saucepan with a little salt and a pinch of soda, and cook two minutes, stirring all the while. Have ready four tablespoonfuls of grated cheese in the bottom of a tureen, pour in, first, the milk and eggs, then the soup. Stir all up well, and serve.

BEEF À LA MODE.

Remove the bone from a round of beef, and trim away the gristle and tough bits from the edges. (Cover these with water and boil down for soup-stock. Season highly and put by in a cool place for Monday.) Bind the beef into a good shape by sewing about it a broad band of stout muslin, as wide as the round is high. Cut a pound of salt pork into strips long enough to reach from top to bottom of the beef—make incisions in it with a thin, long-bladed knife, and thrust these in closely together. Fill the hole from which the bone was taken with a force-meat of minced pork and crumbs, highly spiced. Put the meat thus prepared in a deep earthenware dish, and rub well into it a mixture of one cup of vinegar, a teaspoonful of mixed cloves and allspice, a teaspoonful of salt, and the same of made mustard; a tablespoonful of sugar and a bunch of sweet herbs minced, with as much pepper as salt. Leave the beef in the pan with the spiced vinegar about the base from Saturday until Sunday morning, turning several times. Early on Sunday, put it into a large pot, with enough boiling water to half-cover it; cover tightly with a weight upon the lid, and stew at least four hours—or half an hour for each pound. Open once, when half-done, to turn the meat. Dish the meat; cut the stitches in the band, and withdraw it carefully. Keep hot while you prepare the gravy. Pour off all but a cupful, and set aside for soup-stock. Thicken that reserved with browned flour, and serve in a boat. Cut the beef in horizontal slices.

When dinner is over, pin another band tightly about the meat; pour gravy on the top, and set a plate with a heavy weight upon it, on the round, before putting it away for Monday’s dinner.

ASPARAGUS UPON TOAST, AND GREEN PEAS.

Please see receipts given on last Sunday.

MASHED POTATOES.

Mash in the usual manner, working in milk, butter, and salt. Make into a smooth mound in a deep dish, and score deeply on top with the back of a knife.

TROPICAL SNOW.

10 sweet oranges. 1 cocoanut, pared and grated. 2 glasses sherry. 1 cup powdered sugar. 6 bananas.

Peel and cut the oranges small, taking out the seeds. Put a layer in a glass-bowl and wet with wine, then strew with sugar. Next, put a layer of grated cocoanut, slice the bananas thin, and cover the cocoanut with them. When the dish has been filled in this order, heap with cocoanut. Eat soon, or the oranges will toughen.

JELLY CAKE,

In some of its pretty variations, and sliced in triangles, should go around with the snow.

Second Week. Monday. —— Macaroni Soup. Pressed Beef. Spinach. Potato Puff. Chow-chow. —— Southern Rice Pudding. ——

MACARONI SOUP.

Take the fat from both portions of stock set by for to-day; put them together, and strain into a soup-kettle. Heat to a boil, skim well, and after fifteen minutes’ cooking, add a quarter of a pound of macaroni, boiled tender in salted hot water, and cut into pieces about an inch long. Simmer ten minutes and pour out.

PRESSED BEEF.

Take the weight from your round of beef; undo the bandage, and set on the table cold, garnished with cresses. Cut in thin horizontal slices. It will be handsomely mottled with the pork. Many prefer to eat à la mode beef cold, always.

SPINACH.

Cook as directed upon last Wednesday, but leaving out the gravy and not drying out so much. Beat to a smooth cream, and turn into a deep dish, with sippets of fried bread at the base.

POTATO PUFF.

2 cupfuls of cold mashed potatoes. 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter. 2 beaten eggs. ½ cup of milk. Salt to taste.

Beat in butter, then milk and salt, finally the eggs. Whip all up to a cream. Pile in a bake-dish and cook in a good oven until lightly colored.

SOUTHERN RICE PUDDING.

1 quart fresh milk. 1 cup raw rice. 2 tablespoonfuls butter. 1 cup of sugar. 4 eggs, beaten light. Grated peel of half a lemon. Pinch of cinnamon and the same of mace.

Soak the rice in the milk for two hours in a farina-kettle, surrounded by warm water. Then increase the heat, and simmer until the rice is tender. Cream butter and sugar, and whisk into the eggs, until very light. When the rice is almost cold, stir all together, and bake in a buttered dish three-quarters of an hour. Eat warm with sauce, or cold with sugar and cream.

Second Week. Tuesday. —— Green Pea Soup. Mutton Chops, Breaded. Stewed Tomatoes. Mashed Potatoes. Lettuce. —— Batter Pudding. ——

GREEN PEA SOUP.

3 lbs. lean beef. 3 quarts of water. ½ peck of green peas. Salt and pepper. 4 tablespoonfuls of rice-flour. Chopped parsley.

Boil the empty pea-pods in the water one hour. Strain these out, put in the beef, cut up fine, and cook gently one hour and a half longer, or until the beef is in rags. Add the peas; boil half an hour, and rub hard through a colander to pulp the peas. Return to the fire, season, and stir in the rice-flour wet up in cold water, and the parsley. Stir ten minutes, and serve.

BREADED MUTTON CHOPS.

Trim neatly, cutting off all the fat and skin. Roll in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry in hot dripping, turning as the under-side browns. Drain well and serve, standing upon the thick part around the base of your potatoes.

MASHED POTATOES.

After mashing soft and smooth with butter, milk, and salt, mound upon a flat, hot dish, with the chops laid up against them.

STEWED TOMATOES.

Empty a can of tomatoes an hour before you mean to use them, and leave in a crockery bowl. Put on in a saucepan, and stew twenty minutes; add salt, pepper, a little sugar, and a good spoonful of butter, and simmer ten minutes more.

LETTUCE.

Cut up—not chop—and pour over them a dressing made of—

2 tablespoonfuls of salad-oil. ½ teaspoonful of salt. 5 tablespoonfuls of vinegar. 1 teaspoonful white sugar. ½ teaspoonful of made mustard. 1 teaspoonful pepper. Yolks of 2 boiled eggs.

Rub the eggs to a powder, add all the ingredients except the vinegar, and let alone five or ten minutes. Then beat in the vinegar with your “Dover” egg-whisk until the mixture is smooth. Garnish with a chain of the whites.

BATTER PUDDING.

1 pint of milk. 4 eggs—whites and yolks beaten separately. 2 even cups of prepared flour. 1 teaspoonful salt.

Beat up the eggs, and add the yolks to the milk. Salt the flour, and stir in alternately with the whites. Beat hard and bake in a buttered pudding-dish forty-five minutes. Eat with sweet sauce, at once, as it soon falls.

Second Week. Wednesday. —— Fine White Soup. Calf’s Liver, Larded. Green Pea Pancakes. Asparagus in Ambush. Bermuda Potatoes _en robe de chamber_. —— Pine-Apple Pie. ——

FINE WHITE SOUP.