Part 23

Pile bananas and oranges together, garnishing with green leaves. Put nuts and raisins upon two smaller dishes. Pass all at the same course.

TEA, TOASTED CRACKERS, AND CHEESE.

If you have a hot-water pot and a spirit-lamp, make the tea upon the table a few minutes before it is needed, then cover the pot with a “cozy.” This is a pretty English fashion which, I am glad to see, is gaining ground in our country. Butter the split crackers while hot, and send around with the tea and cheese.

Fourth Week. Friday. —— Yesterday’s Soup. Lobster Fricassee. Potato Pasty. String-Beans. Boiled Asparagus. —— Strawberry Shortcake with Cream. ——

YESTERDAY’S SOUP.

Take the fat from the top of the cake of soup-jelly you will find in the refrigerator, and warm the stock cautiously, lest it should scorch. It should not quite boil.

LOBSTER FRICASSEE.

Meat of one large lobster, boiled and cold. 1 cup of your soup. ½ cup of milk. Juice of half a lemon. 1 tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour. Pepper and salt to liking.

Cut the lobster into dice. Put the gravy, pepper, and salt into a saucepan, and, when hot, the lobster. Cook gently five minutes, and put in the lemon. Heat the milk in another vessel, stir in the floured butter; boil up; turn into a deep bowl. Pour the lobster in also, stir up faithfully, and turn into a deep dish.

POTATO PASTY.

Chop your cold, boiled beef fine; season with pepper and add the remains of yesterday’s drawn butter, or make more if you have none, putting in parsley and onion pickle, chopped. Pour this mixture into a greased bake-dish; cover with hard-boiled eggs, sliced. Work a large cup of mashed potato soft with a cup of milk and two tablespoonfuls of butter. Add prepared flour until you can just roll it out—the softer the better, so long as you can handle it. Roll into a thick sheet; spread upon the surface of your mince, printing the edges, and bake in a moderate oven to a fine brown.

STRING-BEANS.

See Tuesday, Third Week in May.

BOILED ASPARAGUS.

Receipt given First Sunday in May.

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE WITH CREAM.

1 cup of powdered sugar, creamed with one tablespoonful of butter. 3 eggs. 1 cup of prepared flour, heaping. 2 tablespoonfuls of cream.

Beat the yolks into the creamed butter and sugar; the cream, then the whites, alternately with the flour. Bake in three jelly-cake tins. When cold, lay between the cakes nearly a quart of fresh, ripe strawberries. Sprinkle each layer with powdered sugar, and sift the same whitely over the top. Eat fresh with cream poured upon each slice.

Fourth Week. Saturday. —— Pea and Potato Soup. Stewed Mutton Cutlets. Green Peas. Raw Tomatoes. Potato Scallops. —— Fig Pudding. ——

PEA AND POTATO SOUP.

The liquor in which your beef was boiled on Thursday. 10 parboiled potatoes. 1 pint of green peas. 1 sliced onion. ½ cup raw rice. Pepper and parsley.

Take the fat from the liquor, and put on with the onion and potatoes, sliced. Cook one hour; strain, rubbing the vegetables through the sieve. Pepper, and return to the fire with the rice, parsley, and peas. Stew half an hour, or until the rice is tender. Pour out and serve. Dip up from the bottom in helping it out.

STEWED MUTTON CUTLETS.

3 lbs. of mutton cutlets. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 2 raw tomatoes, chopped. Pepper and salt. ½ cup of boiling water. Browned flour and currant jelly.

Put the butter into a saucepan, and lay in the cutlets, then the tomatoes. Set where they will heat very slowly for one hour. Then turn the meat, add the boiling water, and stew steadily—not fast—half an hour, keeping the pan closely covered. Lay the cutlets upon a hot dish, strain the gravy back into the saucepan, thicken with a little browned flour, stir in a heaping teaspoonful of currant jelly, and when this has melted, pour over the meat.

GREEN PEAS.

Cook as directed on Tuesday of this week.

RAW TOMATOES.

See “Tomato Salad” on Wednesday. Leave out the boiled eggs.

POTATO SCALLOPS.

Mash the potatoes light with a little milk, and an _even_ tablespoonful of butter for every cupful. Salt and pepper to taste. Fill buttered patty-pans, or scallop-shells with the mixture, sift fine crumbs over the tops, and brown in a good oven. Serve in the shells.

FIG PUDDING.

½ lb. best white figs, washed, dried, and minced. 2 cups of fine crumbs. 3 eggs. ½ cup of beef-suet, powdered. 2 scant cups of milk. ½ cup of white sugar. A little salt. A pinch of soda, dissolved in hot water, and stirred into the milk.

Soak the crumbs in the milk. Stir in the eggs beaten light with the sugar, suet, salt, and figs. Beat hard three minutes; pour into a buttered mould and boil two hours and a half. Eat hot with wine sauce.

JUNE.

First Week. Sunday. —— All-night Soup. Roast Beef and Round Potatoes. Boiled Macaroni. Green Peas. —— Snow Custard. ——

ALL-NIGHT SOUP.

4 lbs. of coarse lean beef. 3 slices of lean ham. 2 onions. 2 turnips. 2 carrots. 2 blades of mace. Bunch of sweet herbs. 6 tomatoes. Pepper and salt. ½ cupful of German sago. 4 quarts of water. 1 tablespoonful of walnut catsup.

Cut the meat into dice, and chop the vegetables. Season, as you put them with sago and herbs in close layers, into a jar with a tight top. About eight o’clock on Saturday night, set this in a pot of boiling water (having tied a thick cloth over the lid of the jar) and cook until bed-time. Leave pot and jar upon the range. When the fire is built next day see that there is plenty of water in the pot, and pay no more attention to your soup, except to replenish the water in the pot with more, as hot from the tea-kettle, until half an hour before dinner is served. Then strain the contents of the jar, pressing the vegetables to a pulp. Divide the broth into two portions. Return one to the jar, with the meat, and set, when cold, in the refrigerator for to-morrow. Put the other into a saucepan, boil two minutes, skim, add the catsup, and pour into the tureen. Mem.: _Never_ forget to let the soup stand in a broad bowl after straining, long enough for the fat to rise and be skimmed off.

ROAST BEEF AND ROUND POTATOES.

Roast the meat in the usual manner, and, about half an hour before taking it out, pour off three-quarters of the gravy from the dripping-pan and lay about the meat some balls of mashed potato, worked smooth, with pepper, salt and a raw egg, moulded in your hands, and rolled in flour. Turn as they brown, and, when done, drain off the grease, and dish with the beef.

BOILED MACARONI.

Break half a pound of macaroni into short pieces; cook about twenty minutes in salted boiling water. It should be clear at the edges, but not ragged. Drain well, pepper and salt, and stir in a tablespoonful of butter. Strew grated cheese over the top when dished, and pass more with it at table.

GREEN PEAS.

Cook from twenty to twenty-five minutes in boiling water, a little salt. Drain very well when tender, stir in a great lump of peppered butter, and serve hot in a vegetable dish.

SNOW CUSTARD.

½ package of Coxe’s gelatine. 3 eggs. 2 cups of milk. 2 cups of sugar. Juice of one lemon. 2 cups of boiling water. Vanilla, or other essence.

Soak the gelatine one hour in a cup of cold water. Add then a pint of boiling water, and stir until the gelatine is dissolved. Put in two-thirds of the sugar and all the lemon-juice. Beat the whites of the eggs stiff, and when the gelatine is quite cold, whip it in, a spoonful at a time, for half an hour with the “Dover”—an hour, if you use the common egg-whisk. When all is a white sponge, put into a wet mould to form. Make a custard of the milk, yolks, and the reserved sugar, flavor as you like, and when the “snow” is turned out into a glass dish, pour this around the base. Prepare this dessert on Saturday, and keep in the refrigerator. It is very nice.

First Week. Monday. —— Tomato Soup. Larded Beef. Stewed Cream Potatoes. Spinach Dressed with Egg. Green Pickles. —— Strawberries and Cream. Martha’s Cake. ——

TOMATO SOUP.

Peel, by pouring boiling water over them, a dozen fine tomatoes, cut them up, throwing aside the hard cores and unripe portions. Take the fat from the surface of your soup stock; pour it off from the meat and sediment; add the tomatoes, and stew gently half an hour. Strain, rubbing the tomatoes through the sieve; return to the pot; add a little pepper and salt, a lump of sugar, and a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Boil one minute, and pour out. It will be a delicious soup.

LARDED BEEF.

Make perpendicular incisions in your cold roast, having trimmed the top smoothly, and thrust in lardoons of fat salt pork, set closely together. Take the fat from the cold gravy, and add to the latter a little minced onion, a tablespoonful of catsup, and a large cup of boiling water. Lay the meat in a dripping-pan, pour the gravy upon it, invert another pan over it, and cook in a moderate oven about an hour. Turn the meat once, and baste six times with the gravy. Dish the meat; strain the gravy, thicken it with browned flour, boil up and pour into a boat.

STEWED CREAM POTATOES.

Peel and cut into neat dice. Leave in cold water half an hour; then cook as long in boiling water, salted. Drain this off before the potatoes break; add half a cup of milk (or cream) with a pinch of soda. When it heats, stir in a generous lump of butter cut up in a teaspoonful of flour, and a mere pinch of finely-grated lemon-peel. Stew one minute and pour into a deep dish.

SPINACH DRESSED WITH EGG.

Boil the spinach in plenty of hot water, salted, for twenty minutes. Drain and press out the water. Chop fine; put back over the fire with a large spoonful of butter, and a teaspoonful of sugar, with salt and pepper to taste, also a little nutmeg. Beat until hot and smooth; turn into a hot, deep dish, and cover with a dressing of the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, left to cool, then pounded in a Wedgewood mortar, and rubbed to a paste with a teaspoonful of melted butter, one of cream, and lastly, one of lemon-juice. Spread over the surface of the spinach and garnish with a border of the sliced whites.

STRAWBERRIES AND CREAM.

Cap the berries, and pile in a glass bowl. Do _not_ sugar them, but pass powdered sugar and cream with each saucerful.

MARTHA’S CAKE.

An economical and very nice variety of jelly-cake, easily made, and which keeps well. Please see “COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD” Series No. 1, “General Receipts,” page 314.

First Week. Tuesday. —— Quick Beef Soup. Lamb Chops. Purée of Potatoes. Asparagus Rolls. Lettuce. —— Rosie’s Rice Custard. ——

QUICK BEEF SOUP.

2 lbs. of lean beef, chopped _very_ fine. 3 pints of water. 1 grated carrot. 1 onion, sliced. 1 grated turnip. 1 clove. 1 tablespoonful of tomato catsup. Pepper and salt.

Put onion and other vegetables with spice on in two quarts of water, and boil down to three pints. Strain and press over the beef. Season with pepper, salt, and catsup; simmer half an hour, or until the meat is nearly white and the soup brown, and serve with the meat in it. The vegetable liquor must be boiling when it is poured upon the minced beef.

LAMB CHOPS.

Broil quickly over a clear fire; pepper and salt; butter on both sides, and lay in a heap, symmetrically arranged, in the centre of a dish, surrounded by the potato purée.

PURÉE OF POTATOES.

2 cups of hot, mashed potatoes, rubbed through a colander. ½ cup of milk. 1 large spoonful of butter. Pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg.

Mix all up well; put into a _greased_ saucepan, and stir until hot, never allowing it to stick to the sides or scorch, and lay, in a white hedge, about the chops.

ASPARAGUS ROLLS.

8 or 10 stale French rolls. 2 bunches of asparagus. Yolks of 2 raw eggs. 1 cup of milk. 1 tablespoonful of butter, rolled in a very little flour. Salt and pepper.

Cut off the top of each roll; pick out the crumb carefully, and set the hollowed rolls, with their tops, in a slow oven to dry to crispness. Boil the asparagus twenty minutes, cut off the green tops, and let them get perfectly cold. Then heat the milk; stir in the butter; pour upon the beaten yolks; beat one minute with your egg-whisk; return to the fire; put in the asparagus-tops—minced—leaving out as many whole tops as you have rolls—stir until very hot, but not until it boils. Fill your rolls with the mixture; make a round hole in the top of each crust-cover; fit in a bit of asparagus, as if it had sprouted from below; fit each cover upon its roll, and the pretty and delightful dish is ready.

LETTUCE.

Pick hearts and blanched leaves from the stems; pile in a salad-bowl, and cover with a dressing made of two tablespoonfuls of oil, one teaspoonful of white sugar, half as much each of salt, pepper, and made mustard—all rubbed smooth together—then thickened, rather than thinned, by whipping in a few drops at a time, four tablespoonfuls of vinegar. Stir up with a silver fork after the dressing goes on.

ROSIE’S RICE CUSTARD.

1 quart of milk. 3 well-beaten eggs. 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar. 1 small cup of boiled and still warm rice. 1 scant tablespoonful of butter. A little salt.

Cream butter and sugar; add the beaten eggs, salt, then, the rice stirred warm into the milk. Bake in a buttered dish half an hour in a quick oven. Eat warm.

First Week. Wednesday. —— Chicken Broth. Milanaise Pudding. Fried Shad au Gratin. Mashed Potatoes. Navy Beans. —— Cottage Pudding. ——

CHICKEN BROTH.

1 large chicken, jointed as for fricassee. ½ cup of raw rice. 5 quarts of cold water. Chopped parsley, pepper, and salt. 1 cup of milk. 2 beaten eggs.

Put water and chicken on quite early in the day, and cook slowly until the water has boiled down to about three and a half quarts, and the chicken slips easily from the bones. Take off all the meat, and return the bones to the pot. Cook gently until an hour before dinner, when strain, and let it cool. Take off the fat; return to the fire—with the seasoning and rice—and simmer half an hour, or until the rice is soft. Have the milk heated in a separate vessel, with a pinch of soda; pour upon the beaten eggs; put back over the fire, and stir until it begins to thicken. Turn into the tureen. Boil up the chicken broth once sharply, and add to the milk in the soup-tureen, stirring up well.

FRIED SHAD AU GRATIN.

Clean, wash, and wipe a fine roe-shad. Take off head, tail, and fins, and cut into eight pieces. Pepper and salt these; dip into beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry in hot dripping or lard. Drain, and serve on a hot, flat dish. The roes should be parboiled, then cooled—afterward dipped in egg and cracker, fried in the same manner as the fish, and dished with it.

=Milanaise Pudding.=

½ lb. cold cooked ham. The meat of your soup-chicken. Nearly ½ lb. of macaroni. 2 eggs. A cup of your soup, strained and skimmed before the rice is put in. 1 tablespoonful of butter. Pepper and salt to taste.

Boil the macaroni in the broth until tender; then let it cool somewhat, and, with a pair of old scissors, clip it into inch lengths. Chop ham and chicken, and pepper. Mix with the macaroni—which should have absorbed the broth—stir in the melted butter and eggs. Put into a well-greased mould, and boil an hour and a half. Turn out; pour over it a cup of drawn butter, and serve. Pass grated cheese with it.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual and pass with the fish course.

NAVY BEANS.

This is a variety of white kidney beans. Shell and lay them in cold water half an hour, to take off the raw, rank taste. Cook about twenty-five minutes in boiling water, a little salt. Drain well; pepper, salt, and butter. Eat hot.

COTTAGE PUDDING.

1 cup of sugar. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 2 eggs. 1 cup of sweet milk. 3 cups of flour, or enough for pretty stiff batter. (Use Hecker’s prepared flour.) ½ teaspoonful of salt.

Cream butter and sugar; beat in the yolks, then the salted flour, alternately with the whites. Bake in a buttered cake-mould until a straw will come up clean from the middle. Turn out and eat hot with sweet sauce.

First Week. Thursday. —— White Asparagus Soup. Stuffed Fillet of Veal with Bacon. Scooped Potatoes. Tomato Salad. Hominy Pudding. —— Cocoanut Puddings. ——

WHITE ASPARAGUS SOUP.

3 lbs. knuckle of veal. 1 slice of corned ham. 3 bunches of well-bleached asparagus, cut into short pieces. 4 quarts of water. 1 cup of milk. 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch. Pepper, salt, chopped parsley, and dice of fried bread.

Crack the bones to splinters and chop the meat. Put on with all the asparagus stalks and one-half of the heads. Cover with the water and cook gently, covered, three hours. Strain; cool to let the grease rise; skim and return to the pot with the seasoning and reserved heads of asparagus. Boil slowly for twenty minutes longer. Heat the milk separately, salt and pepper, and stir in the corn-starch, boiling one minute to thicken it. Pour into the tureen upon the dice of fried bread; stir into this the boiling soup, and send to table.

STUFFED FILLET OF VEAL WITH BACON.

Take out the bone from the meat, and pin into a round with skewers. Bind securely with soft tapes. Fill the cavity left by the bone with a force-meat of crumbs, chopped pork; thyme, and parsley, seasoned with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and a pinch of lemon-peel. Cover the top of the fillet with thin slices of cold, _cooked_, fat bacon or salt pork, tying them in place with twines crossing the meat in all directions. Put into a pot with two cups of boiling water, and cook slowly and steadily two hours. Then take from the pot and put into a dripping-pan. Undo the strings and tapes. Brush the meat all over with raw egg, sift rolled cracker thickly over it, and set in the oven for half an hour, basting often with gravy from the pot. When it is well browned, lay upon a hot dish with the pork about it. Strain and thicken the gravy, and serve in a boat.

If your fillet be large, cook twice as long in the pot. The time given above is for one weighing five pounds.

SCOOPED POTATOES.

Pare and cut round with a potato-gouge—a neat little instrument that costs but a trifle. The waste bits can be boiled, mashed, and set by for to-morrow’s uses. Boil the scooped pellets in hot, salted water twenty minutes; throw this off and put in a cup of cold milk. Simmer gently until the potatoes are tender; stir in a good lump of butter rolled in flour, and when this is melted, a little minced parsley, with pepper and salt. Stew three minutes, and pour into a deep dish.

TOMATO SALAD.

Pare with a keen knife; arrange upon a glass dish and cover with a dressing like that made on Tuesday for lettuce, but adding the beaten yolks of two raw eggs, whipped in the last thing.

HOMINY PUDDING.

1 cupful cold, boiled, small-grained hominy. 2 cups of milk. 1 heaping tablespoonful of melted butter. 3 eggs. 1 tablespoonful of sugar. A little salt.

Rub the hominy very smooth with the butter; then the yolks, beaten up with the sugar. Beat well before thinning with the salted milk. Lastly, add the frothed whites. Bake in a greased pudding-dish until nicely browned.

COCOANUT PUDDINGS.

1 lb. of cocoanut, grated. ½ lb. of powdered sugar. 1 quart rich milk. 5 beaten eggs. 1 teaspoonful nutmeg. 2 teaspoonfuls of vanilla.

Scald the milk and pour, gradually, upon the beaten eggs. Do not return to the fire, but, when nearly cold, season, add the cocoanut; stir up well; pour into buttered cups, and bake by setting in a pan of boiling water, and stirring again as the custard begins to heat, that the cocoanut may not settle to the bottom. Bake until well “set,” and slightly browned. Eat cold.

First Week. Friday. —— Clam Chowder. Baked Pickerel. Veal Scallop. Mashed Potatoes, Browned. Green Peas. —— Strawberry Shortcake. Tea. ——

CLAM CHOWDER.

100 clams. 1 sliced onion. 12 butter or other small crackers, that can be split. 12 tomatoes, peeled and chopped. 1 tablespoonful minced parsley and half the quantity of mixed thyme, summer savory and sweet marjoram. A large pinch of mace and the same of cayenne pepper. 1 cup of milk—hot—for soaking the crackers, and butter for spreading them. 3 tablespoonfuls butter for chowder. Salt.

Put a layer of clams in the bottom of a soup-pot, next one of sliced tomatoes and onion. Sprinkle with seasoning, and drop bits of butter upon them. More clams, more tomato, etc., until all are in. Pour on the liquor—there should be at least three pints—cover, heat slowly for half an hour, then boil quite briskly for twenty minutes. Meanwhile, soak the split crackers—covered—in the boiling milk. When soft all through, butter thickly, and keep warm over boiling water until the soup is ready. Then line a hot tureen with them, and pour in the chowder. Pass sliced lemon with it.

BAKED PICKEREL.

Select a couple of large, fresh fish; score the back-bones with a sharp knife, and lay them in a baking-pan. Pour a cupful of boiling water over them, cover, and bake slowly, basting with butter and water, at least six times. The fish should be tender, yet firm when done. Transfer them carefully to a hot-water dish. Have ready a cupful of rich, drawn butter; strain the gravy from the dripping-pan into it, with a little minced parsley. Heat almost to a boil and pour over the fish. There is no better way of cooking large pickerel than this.

VEAL SCALLOP.

Chop the remains of your fillet fine, and season with pepper and salt. Put a layer of dry crumbs in a buttered bake-dish; stick bits of butter over it; cover with the meat and wet this with gravy and warm milk. Repeat this order of strata until your dish is full, covering deep with crumbs. Fit a tin cover on the top and bake half an hour; remove the lid and brown nicely. Serve in the bake-dish.

MASHED POTATOES—BROWNED.

Mash soft with milk and butter; whip up to a cream; season, and make into a four-sided pyramid upon a greased pie-dish. Brown in a good oven and slip to a warm dish. Pass with the fish.

GREEN PEAS.

Please see receipt given on Sunday of this week.

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE.

Please see receipt given on Friday of Fourth Week in May. The strawberry season is so short that you can hardly give this popular dessert often enough to weary your family while the scarlet, flavorous beauties last.

TEA,

Hot and strong, will be the better for a little cream borrowed from the supply meant for your shortcake.

First Week. Saturday. —— Marlowe Soup. Beefs Tongue (Langue du Bœuf). Squeezed Potatoes. French Beans, Sautés. Young Beets. —— Cherry Pie. ——

MARLOWE SOUP.

2 lbs. of lean veal and the same of lean beef. 1 lb. of lean ham. 2 onions. 1 carrot. 1 turnip. ¼ of a head of cabbage, chopped and parboiled. Bunch of sweet herbs. 6 tomatoes, peeled and sliced. ½ cup of rice. Pepper and salt. 5 quarts of cold water.

Cut up meat and vegetables fine, and put with the water into the soup-kettle. Cook slowly four hours. Strain the soup, rubbing the vegetables through the colander. Divide the liquor into two parts. Put with the meat—all highly seasoned—into a stoneware vessel and set by in the refrigerator. Let the other portion cool; take off the fat; season; put over the fire; boil and skim for a few minutes, and put in the rice. Simmer very gently half an hour, or until the rice is very soft.

BEEF’S TONGUE—(LANGUE DU BŒUF).