Part 22

Drain the liquor from a can of corn, and chop the grains in a chopping-tray. Beat into this paste three eggs, one cup of milk, a heaping tablespoonful of sugar, and as much warmed butter, with two tablespoonfuls of prepared flour. Beat thoroughly, season with pepper and salt, and fry, by the spoonful, upon a greased griddle.

MARMALADE ROLL.

1 quart prepared flour—Hecker’s _always_, when you can get it. 1 tablespoonful of lard and two of butter. 1 pint of milk, or enough for soft dough. 1 cup of sweet marmalade.

Rub the lard into the flour; wet into a soft paste with the milk, and roll out very thin. Baste thickly with the butter, sprinkle with flour lightly, and roll up in close folds. Lay upon ice, or in a very cold place, one hour. Roll out into a square sheet, a quarter of an inch thick, spread with the marmalade, leaving a narrow margin all around, and roll up neatly. Lay in a buttered baking-pan, the joined edge downward, and bake three-quarters of an hour. Wash over with white of egg, beaten with a little sugar, just before you take it up. Eat hot with a good sauce.

Third Week. Thursday. —— Sheep’s Head Soup. Roast Beef. Fried Potatoes. Asparagus with Eggs. Spinach on Toast. —— Corn-Starch Blanc-Mange with Preserves. ——

SHEEP’S HEAD SOUP.

1 sheep’s head, dressed with the skin on. 2 onions. 2 carrots. Bunch of parsley. Crumbs and egg for force-meat balls. 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch. Pepper and salt. Dripping. 4 quarts of cold water.

You will probably have to coax your butcher to dress the head properly, but the head itself he will be willing to give you, as almost worthless in his eyes. Be sure it is quite clean, even to the mouth. Soak it in tepid water, one hour—then put into a pot with the vegetables, sliced, the chopped herbs and the cold water. Cook gently four hours. Strain off the soup, rubbing the vegetables through the sieve; let it get almost cool, that you may remove the fat from the top, and put back over the fire with pepper and salt. Chop the brains and mix them into a paste with an equal quantity of crumbs; also pepper, salt, and raw egg, with enough flour to enable you to roll into little balls. Fry these to a nice brown, drain in a colander, and put into your tureen. Skim the boiling soup and stir in the corn-starch wet with half a cup of milk, then the tongue, skinned and cut into dice. Boil once and pour into the tureen.

ROAST BEEF.

Put into your dripping-pan; pour a cupful of boiling water over it, and roast, basting often, allowing a quarter of an hour to the pound. Towards the last, pepper and salt, dredge with flour, and baste once well with butter. If you send made gravy to the table, take off all the “top-grease,” thicken the brown juice in the dripping-pan with browned flour, boil up, and pour out into a boat.

FRIED POTATOES.

Cut peeled potatoes into long strips, not too thin. Lay in cold water one hour, dry between two towels, and fry in boiling fat, a little salt, to a light brown. Drain and dish upon a napkin.

SPINACH UPON TOAST.

Wash well. Cook twenty minutes in boiling, salted water. Drain and chop very fine. Put a tablespoonful of butter into a saucepan with a teaspoonful of sugar, a pinch of nutmeg, and pepper and salt. Stir in the spinach, and beat smooth while it heats. At the last add a tablespoonful of cream, or two of milk. Pour upon crustless slices of buttered toast laid upon a flat dish.

ASPARAGUS WITH EGGS.

Boil a bunch of asparagus twenty minutes; cut off the tender tops and lay in a deep pie-plate, buttering, salting, and peppering well. Beat four eggs just enough to break up the yolks, add a tablespoonful of melted butter, with pepper and salt, and pour upon the asparagus. Bake eight minutes in a quick oven, and serve immediately.

CORN-STARCH BLANC-MANGE WITH PRESERVES.

1 quart of milk. 4 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch wet in cold water. 3 beaten eggs. 1 cup of sugar. Grated peel of half a lemon. 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Scald the milk in a farina-kettle; stir in corn-starch, lemon, and salt, and cook five minutes. Pour this upon the beaten eggs and sugar, return to the fire and stir two minutes more. Pour into a wet mould and set in a cold place for four or five hours. Turn out upon a broad glass dish, and pour rich, sweet preserves about the base.

In helping it out, put a spoonful of preserve upon each share of blanc-mange.

Third Week. Friday. —— Purée of Tomatoes. Boiled Bass with Mushrooms. Roast Sweetbreads. Mashed Potatoes. Succotash. —— Strawberry Méringue. ——

PURÉE OF TOMATOES.

1 can of tomatoes. 2 cups boiling milk with half a teaspoonful of soda stirred in. 1 heaping teaspoonful sugar. 1 small minced onion. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter rubbed up with one of flour. Pepper and salt. Handful of dry bread-crumbs. 1 cup of boiling water.

Put tomatoes and onion over the fire with the hot water. Boil half an hour; strain and rub through a colander, working the tomatoes to a pulp. Meanwhile, boil the milk, stir in soda, butter and flour, and after one boil, keep hot. Put pepper, salt, and sugar with the tomatoes; simmer five minutes; pour into the tureen; stir in the crumbs, and one minute later the thickened milk. Serve at once. If the milk be cooked with the _purée_, it will almost surely curdle.

BOILED BASS WITH MUSHROOMS.

Clean a fine bass, and sew up in a thin cloth. Put into boiling water in which you have mixed four tablespoonfuls of vinegar, with six whole black peppers, and a little salt. Cook about twelve minutes to the pound. Prepare a cupful of drawn butter, boil half a can of mushrooms twenty minutes; drain, chop up and stir, with the juice of half a lemon and a little pepper, into the drawn butter. Simmer together three minutes—put the fish upon a hot dish, and pour one-third of the sauce over it, serving the rest in a boat.

ROAST SWEETBREADS.

3 or 4 fine sweetbreads. 1 raw egg. ½ cup rolled crackers. 1 cup of gravy (saved from yesterday’s fricassee). 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter. 1 tablespoonful mushroom or walnut catsup. Pepper and salt. Rounds of fried bread.

Parboil and blanch the sweetbreads. Dry, and dip, first, in egg, then, in cracker-crumbs. Lay in a small dripping-pan; pour the butter over them, set in the oven, and roast, covered, three-quarters of an hour, basting often with the gravy. Dish upon fried bread. Add the catsup to the gravy; boil up and strain over the sweetbreads.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual, and pass with the fish.

SUCCOTASH.

Drain off the can liquor; cook the succotash half an hour in boiling water; drain, add a cup of hot milk, and stir in pepper, salt, and a great spoonful of butter cut up in flour. Simmer three minutes and pour out.

STRAWBERRY MÉRINGUE.

Make a good puff-paste, cut out large, and round as a dinner-plate, and bake to a light brown in a quick oven. Draw to the oven door; lay strawberries, rolled in sugar, over it, and cover these an inch deep with a _méringue_ made of the whites of four eggs whisked stiff, with three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Bake until the _méringue_ is faintly tinged with yellow brown. Eat fresh, but not hot. It is delicious.

Third Week. Saturday. —— Amber Soup. Ham and Omelette. Ladies Cabbage. Buttered Rice. Summer Salad. —— Irish Potato Pie. ——

AMBER SOUP.

This soup should be prepared very early in the day; therefore, have the materials in the house overnight.

4 lbs. lean beef. 2 slices of _lean_ ham. 2 lbs. of veal-bones. 2 onions, sliced and fried. 1 carrot. 2 teaspoonfuls essence of celery. Pepper, and, if required, salt. ½ cup granulated tapioca. Whites and shell of an egg. 5 quarts of cold water. Butter and dripping. Burnt sugar.

Cut the meat into strips; put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a soup-pot, and lay the meat in it. Let it stand where it will heat slowly for half an hour. Then set over the fire, and stir until the meat is glazed with a brownish crust. Put a quart of water—cold—upon it, and bring gradually to a boil. Fry the onion and carrot in dripping to a fine brown, and drain off the fat, then put the vegetables into the pot with the meat, as soon as the latter is boiling hot. Cook half an hour; put in the rest of the cold water, the minced ham, and the bones broken to bits. Boil slowly four hours, then strain. Put meat and bones—highly seasoned—into a stone vessel, and pour half the soup over them for to-morrow. Put the rest back into the soup-kettle; season and boil up. Skim with care; put in the white and shell of an egg; boil three minutes; take from the fire and pour into a broad pan to cool. Burn two tablespoonfuls of sugar in a tin cup, on the hot range, and while still liquid, pour in half a cupful of boiling water. Let it stand thus until you are ready for it. The tapioca should have been soaking two hours in a little cold water. When the soup is cold, take off fat and scum—every particle; return to the scalded pot; boil up once, put in tapioca, and strain the sugar-water upon it. Simmer ten minutes, or until the tapioca is clear; skim once again, and pour out.

This is a fine company soup, but you should make it once or twice for family dinners in order to manage it properly. It is really not difficult.

HAM AND OMELETTE.

3 lbs. of ham, cut in _very_ thin slices. 7 eggs. 4 tablespoonfuls of milk. Pepper and a little salt. 1 large spoonful of butter.

Lay the ham in boiling water fifteen minutes, then let it get cold. Cut off all the rind and trim each slice neatly; then broil upon a greased gridiron. Pepper and keep hot while you prepare the omelette. Beat whites and yolks together with a few whirls of the beater; put in the milk and beat fast for one minute; season and pour into a frying-pan in which the butter is heating—not hissing. Shake briskly over the fire, slipping your cake-turner under it to prevent sticking, and in four minutes, double it over in the middle and turn out into a hot dish by a dexterous inversion of the pan. Lay the ham about it in the dish.

LADIES’ CABBAGE.

Boil a firm cabbage in two waters, and let it get perfectly cold. Chop fine; add two beaten eggs, a tablespoonful of melted butter, pepper, salt, and a few spoonfuls of milk. Stir all up well; put into a buttered bake-dish, strew with fine crumbs; bake, covered, half an hour, then brown quickly. Eat hot.

BUTTERED RICE.

Boil a cup of rice soft in hot, salted water. Drain, and heap in a deep dish. Fry an onion (sliced) very lightly in two tablespoonfuls of butter; add pepper, and strain the hot butter over the rice in the dish. Pass grated cheese with it.

SUMMER SALAD.

3 heads of lettuce. 2 handfuls cresses. 1 cucumber, pared and sliced. 4 radishes, also pared and cut up. 3 hard-boiled eggs cut lengthwise into sixths.

Cut lettuces and cresses with a sharp knife, and mix with the other vegetables in a bowl. Pour over them a dressing made as directed on Thursday of the second week in this month. Lay the sliced eggs on the top of all.

IRISH POTATO PIE.

1 lb. mashed potato, rubbed through a colander. ½ lb. butter, creamed with the sugar. 6 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately. 1 lemon, squeezed into the hot potato. 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg, and the same of mace. 2 cups of sugar.

Mix as you would cake, putting the whites in last, and bake in open shells of paste. Eat cold.

Fourth Week. Sunday. —— German Sago Soup. Roast Lamb. Green Peas. Young Onions, Stewed. Potato Puff. —— Strawberries and Cream. Silver Cake. ——

GERMAN SAGO SOUP.

Soak half a cup of German sago in a little cold water for two hours. Take the fat from the top of your soup stock, and pour off carefully from the bones, etc. If you have any left from the “amber soup,” add that, and a cupful of boiling water. Heat, season, and skim; put in the sago, and simmer half an hour.

ROAST LAMB.

Cook as you did the mutton, last Sunday, leaving out the stuffing and omitting the egg and crumb coating at the last. Roast about twelve minutes to the pound.

GREEN PEAS.

See receipt for Saturday of second week in May.

YOUNG ONIONS—STEWED.

Cook ten minutes in boiling water; throw this off, and pour on a cup of cold milk. Stew tender in this, add pepper, salt, a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour; simmer five minutes and turn out.

POTATO PUFF.

Mash the potatoes very soft, beating in butter, and milk, and finally, the whipped white of an egg. Whisk to a cream; heap roughly in a neat bake-dish and brown in a good oven.

STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM.

Cap and pile the strawberries in a glass dish. Send around powdered sugar and a pitcher of cream with them.

SILVER CAKE.

This delicate and handsome cake should have been made on Friday or Saturday. Please see “COMMON-SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD,” Series No. 1, General Receipts, page 332.

Fourth Week. Monday. —— Baked Hotch-Potch. Minced Lamb, with Poached Eggs. Potato Cakes. Raw Tomatoes. —— Bread Pudding. ——

BAKED HOTCH-POTCH.

2 lbs. of lean beef. 1 lb. of good sausage-meat. 1 sliced onion. 1 sliced cucumber. 3 raw tomatoes peeled and sliced. Handful of asparagus-tops. 1 sliced carrot. ¼ of a cabbage-heart, chopped fine. ½ cup of raw rice. 2 cups of green peas. Pepper and salt. Cold water.

Cut the meat small and put in alternate layers with the vegetables and rice, into a stout stone jar. Pour in three quarts of water, when you have seasoned the vegetables. Fit a close cover on the jar, sealing around the edges with a paste of flour and water. Set in the oven early in the day and do not open for six hours; then pour into the tureen. This is a good soup for Monday, and almost a dinner in itself.

MINCED LAMB.

Cut the meat from the bone of your cold roast. Salt the bone and put by for another day’s soup. Mince the meat fine, season highly; put the gravy left from yesterday (or a cup of your Sunday’s soup would be even better) in a saucepan, when you have taken off the fat, heat it, and stir in the mince. Make it very hot; thicken with a little browned flour if it is too thin, and pile up in a flat dish, with poached eggs and toast about it.

POACHED EGGS.

Nearly fill a frying-pan with boiling water. Add a little salt and vinegar. Break your eggs, one at a time, into a wet saucer, and slip from this upon the surface of the water. Cook slowly three minutes; take up with a perforated skimmer, and lay carefully upon rounds of buttered toast laid around the minced lamb.

POTATO CAKES.

Work cold mashed potato—or the remains of your “puff,” soft with a little melted butter and milk; knead into it enough prepared flour to enable you to roll it out into a sheet half an inch thick. Cut into rounds like biscuit, and bake in a floured pan rather quickly to a good brown. Glaze with butter just before you take them out. Eat hot.

RAW TOMATOES.

Please see receipt for last Monday.

BREAD PUDDING.

2 cups fine crumbs. 1 quart of milk. ¼ lb. of citron cut into short shavings. 4 eggs. 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar. ¼ teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace. 2 tablespoonfuls of brandy. 1 tablespoonful melted butter.

Soak the crumbs in the milk to a soft paste. Put a layer of this into a buttered bake-dish. Sprinkle with citron, then spice, and cover with more soaked crumbs. Having nearly filled the dish in this order, pour over all the eggs whipped light with sugar, butter, and brandy. Bake covered twenty-five minutes, then brown. Eat warm. It will need no sauce.

Fourth Week. Tuesday. —— Cracker Soup. Beefsteak and Onion. Green Peas. Baked Corn. Cress-Salad. —— Jersey Puffs. ——

CRACKER SOUP.

The cracked bone of the cold lamb. 1 lb. lean mutton, chopped up. ½ lb. Boston crackers, split. 2 quarts of cold water. 2 cups boiling milk, with a pinch of soda stirred in. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, cut up in one teaspoonful of flour. Pepper, salt, and a pinch of mace. 1 sliced onion. A little chopped parsley.

Put meat, onion, and bones on in the water and cook slowly two hours. Strain and cool, and take off every particle of fat. While the soup is cooling, put your crackers into a bowl, or tin pail, salting and peppering them. Pour on the milk, cover closely, and set for half an hour in boiling water at one side of the range. Return the broth to the fire, season and skim as it heats. Now strain the milk from the crackers, if it be not all absorbed, and turn them, with care, into your tureen. They should be like a jelly, yet retain their shape. Stir into the soup the floured butter and parsley; boil one minute and pour slowly upon the crackers. Set the tureen in hot water—covered—ten minutes, before sending to the table.

BEEFSTEAK AND ONION.

Broil the steak in the usual manner and lay upon a hot dish. Pepper and salt, and strain over it three tablespoonfuls of butter in which a sliced Bermuda onion has simmered—not browned—for ten minutes. Cover with a hot tin platter for five minutes, and make cuts in the steak, here and there, to draw out the juices and enable the butter to penetrate it. This is a nicer way of flavoring a steak than the usual fashion of serving the onion with it.

GREEN PEAS.

Boil twenty minutes in hot, salted water, with a lump of white sugar, unless the peas are newly gathered from the home garden. When tender, drain well, pepper, and add a generous lump of butter. Serve hot.

BAKED CORN.

Open a can of sweet corn; drain and chop it fine. Beat up three eggs with a tablespoonful of sugar, the same of butter, two cups of milk, pepper and salt to taste. Stir in the corn and bake forty-five minutes in a buttered pudding-dish.

CRESS-SALAD.

Cut up—not too small—pile in a salad-bowl, sprinkle with sugar, and pour over it a dressing made by working up a saltspoonful each of salt, pepper, and made mustard with two tablespoonfuls of oil, and when this is well mixed, adding, a few drops at a time, and whipping these in with an egg-beater, four tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Toss up with a silver fork.

JERSEY PUFFS.

1 quart Hecker’s prepared flour, sifted with a saltspoonful of salt. 1 tablespoonful of butter melted in 2 cups of hot milk. 5 eggs—very well whisked.

While milk and butter are cooling—a little above blood-heat—beat in the yolks, then the flour, and let the batter get stone cold before whipping in the frothed whites. Bake in greased muffin rings in a quick oven. Serve as soon as they are baked. Tear open with your fingers, and eat with liquid sauce.

Fourth Week. Wednesday. —— Scotch Broth. Roast Chickens and Pork. Asparagus Pudding. Mashed Potatoes. Tomato Salad. —— Chocolate Blanc-Mange. ——

SCOTCH BROTH.

3 lbs. scrag of mutton, the meat sliced and bones broken. 2 chopped carrots. 2 young turnips, sliced. 1 onion. Rather more than ½ cup of barley. 3 quarts of water. 1 quart of green peas. Pepper and salt.

Put on the mutton and all the vegetables, except the peas, in the water, and cook slowly four hours. Meanwhile, soak the barley in a cup of tepid water. Strain the broth, pulping the vegetables through the colander. Let it cool, and take off the fat. Season, put over the fire, skim when it reaches the boil, and add peas and barley. Simmer steadily half an hour, and serve.

ROAST CHICKENS AND PORK.

Clean, wash, and stuff a pair of chickens. Slice half a pound of fat salt pork very thin and bind with soft strings over the breasts and upper parts of the bodies. Lay in a dripping-pan; pour in a cup of boiling water, and roast one hour in a good oven, basting often. Then clip the strings, lay the pork in the pan; dredge the chickens with flour, and, as this colors, baste once with butter, and twice afterwards with gravy. When the chickens are done to a fine brown, lay upon a hot dish with the pork about them. Strain and skim the gravy, pepper it, thicken with a little browned flour and serve in a boat.

ASPARAGUS PUDDING.

The green tops of two bunches of asparagus, boiled tender, left to cool, and cut up small. 4 eggs, well beaten. 1 tablespoonful melted butter. 3 tablespoonfuls prepared flour. 1 scant cup of milk, with a pinch of soda stirred in. Pepper and salt.

Beat eggs, butter, pepper and salt together; add the flour; then, by degrees, the milk, finally the asparagus. Put into a well-greased mould with a top, and cook in a pot of boiling water nearly two hours. Turn out upon a dish and pour a cup of drawn butter over it. It is very nice.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare in the customary way, taking care not to have them too stiff.

TOMATO SALAD.

Pare with a sharp knife; slice and lay in a salad-bowl. Make a dressing such as was directed yesterday for your cresses, with the addition of the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, _powdered_, and worked in with the oil, pepper, etc. Pour over the tomatoes, and set upon ice for an hour.

CHOCOLATE BLANC-MANGE.

1 quart milk. 1 package Cooper’s gelatine, soaked for one hour in a cup of cold water. 4 heaping tablespoonfuls of chocolate wet in a little milk. ¾ of a cup of sugar. 2 teaspoonfuls of vanilla essence.

Boil the milk; stir in sugar and gelatine, and when these are dissolved, the chocolate. Cook five minutes, stirring all the time, and strain through double tarlatan, into a wet mould. Set upon ice to form. When firm, turn out and eat with sweet cream.

Fourth Week. Thursday. —— Mock Turtle Soup. Boiled Corned Beef. Young Turnips. Casserole of Rice with Calf’s Brains. Green Pea Fritters. —— Bananas, Oranges, Nuts, and Raisins. Tea, Toasted Crackers, and Cheese. ——

MOCK TURTLE SOUP.

As I stated, after writing out the receipt in full for this soup (see Wednesday—Third Week in March), I shall not repeat it in this volume. Please, therefore, refer to the minute directions then given, and follow them in preparing to-day’s soup—_only_ leaving out the brains in the force-meat. You may make enough soup for two days, keeping that for Friday upon the ice.

BOILED CORNED BEEF.

Select a piece not too salt. The brisket is a good cut for family use, when not too fat. Boil in plenty of hot water, allowing fifteen minutes per pound. Make a good cup of drawn butter, taking some of the beef-liquor—strained—as a base. Chop up a little parsley and half a pickled onion, and stir into the butter one minute before pouring it out into a sauce-boat. Save the liquor for Saturday. For directions for making drawn butter and other sauces, please consult “General Receipts,” page 183.

YOUNG TURNIPS.

Peel and quarter. Cook in boiling water, a little salted, about half an hour, or until tender. Drain, but do not mash. Pepper and salt, then butter, after dishing them.

CASSEROLE OF RICE WITH CALF’S BRAINS.

Make a cupful of gravy from the bones and stuffing of yesterday’s chickens. Cool and skim it. Soak a cup of rice two hours in two cups of cold water; drain this off; put the rice into a farina-kettle with the gravy, previously heated to a boil, and a cup of boiling water. Season with salt and pepper, and cook tender, shaking up once in a while, but not stirring. When the rice is nearly dry, make a rounded hillock of it in the middle of a dish; strew with grated cheese, and brown upon the upper grating of the oven.

Boil the calf’s brains ten minutes; lay in cold water twice as long. Then dry well and beat up with an egg, pepper, salt, and a very little flour. Fry, by the spoonful, in hot fat, drain, and lay around the rice.

GREEN PEA FRITTERS.

1 pint boiled green peas, mashed while hot, with pepper, butter, and salt. 2 beaten eggs. 1 cup of milk. Less than ½ cup prepared flour.

Beat eggs, milk, and mashed peas smooth, then add the flour and fry upon a griddle as you would breakfast-cakes.

BANANAS, ORANGES, NUTS AND RAISINS.