Part 26

Chop fine a half cupful of the veal left after straining off the soup. Add half as much chopped ham, and one-third the quantity of bread-crumbs. Pepper (and salt, if needed). Put a few spoonfuls of gravy into a saucepan; stir in this force-meat, with a very little onion, and the pulp and seeds you have scraped carefully from six or eight fine smooth tomatoes. When all are smoking hot, add a tablespoonful of butter, and when this has melted, take from the fire. Set the tomatoes you have hollowed out in a pudding-dish. Fill with the mixture; cover with the neat slices you took from the tops; fill the interstices with what remains of the force-meat, and bake nearly an hour, or until soft and brown. Keep the dish covered for the first half hour.

STEWED PEAS AND FRENCH BEANS.

1 quart of shelled green peas. 1 pint of string-beans, carefully trimmed. 1 small onion, sliced thin. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in flour. Pepper, salt, and a tablespoonful of tomato catsup. 1 pint of boiling water.

Cover peas, beans, and onion with salted boiling water. Put on the saucepan lid, and stew for half an hour. Then stir in the floured butter, pepper, and catsup; cover again, and simmer fifteen minutes. Turn out into a deep dish. The beans should be young, and cut into small pieces.

CORN-BREAD PUDDING.

2 heaping cups of white Indian meal. 1 heaping cup of flour. 3 beaten eggs. 2½ cups of milk. 1 large tablespoonful of melted butter, and twice as much white sugar. 1 teaspoonful of soda, and two of cream of tartar, sifted _twice_ through the flour. 1 teaspoonful of salt. ½ teaspoonful mingled mace and cinnamon.

Rub butter and sugar together; beat in the yolks; then the milk; the spice; the salted meal, previously mixed with the flour, cream of tartar, and soda. Beat _hard_ for five minutes. Pour into a buttered mould, with a top. Set in a pot of boiling water—the water not quite reaching the top—and boil steadily two hours. Turn out, cut in slices, and eat with butter and sugar.

Fourth Week. Wednesday. —— A Stew Soup. Stuffed Beef’s Heart with Horseradish Sauce. Beets. Scalloped Squash. New Potatoes. —— Gooseberry Tart. ——

A STEW SOUP.

3 lbs. of lean beef. 1 lb. of lean ham. 2 lbs. of lean veal. 2 carrots. 2 turnips. 2 onions. Bunch of sweet herbs. Pepper, salt. 2 blades of mace. ½ cup Scotch barley. 6 quarts of water. 4 tablespoonfuls good dripping—beef or ham.

Cut the meat into strips, and slice the vegetables. Put the dripping into the soup-pot; next the beef; then a layer of vegetables; next one of ham; more vegetables, the veal, the rest of the vegetables, and a cup of cold water. Cover, and heat very slowly, then stew until the meat is covered with a brown glaze, but not burned. Be very careful on this latter point. Now, pour in your six quarts of water, and cook steadily _at least_ three hours. Strain, take out the scraps of meat, and pulp the vegetables into the soup. Take out two quarts of stock, season, and put by, with the meat in it, for to-morrow. Let the rest cool; take off the fat; season, boil up and skim, and put in the barley, already soaked two hours in a little cold water. Simmer half an hour, and pour out.

STUFFED BEEF’S HEART WITH HORSERADISH SAUCE.

Wash and soak the heart ten minutes in cold, salt water. Fill _full_ with a force-meat of fat salt pork, minced fine with an equal weight of bread-crumbs, a little chopped parsley, with pepper, and a small quantity of grated lemon-peel. Sew up the swollen heart trimly in coarse net or tarlatan, and put on in a saucepan with two cups of weak broth, made by taking a cupful from the soup and diluting it with water, and half a minced onion. Boil two hours, turning twice. Keep closely covered. Make ready a cup of drawn butter, and let it get almost cold. Then whip in the frothed whites of two eggs, and when stiff, two tablespoonfuls of grated horseradish. You can buy it in any market. Add the juice of a lemon, unless your horseradish is put up in vinegar. The mixture should look like whipped cream. Put into a sauce-boat. When your heart is done, remove the cloth, and lay upon a hot dish. Strain the gravy; thicken with browned flour, and pour over the heart. Pass the white sauce with it.

SCALLOPED SQUASH.

Boil and mash the squash in the customary way, and let it cool. Beat the yolks of the two eggs, the whites of which were used for the horseradish sauce, and when the squash is nearly cold, whip these into it, with three tablespoonfuls of milk, one of butter, rolled in flour and melted in the milk; pepper and salt to taste. Pour into a buttered bake-dish, cover with fine crumbs, and bake to a light brown in a quick oven. Eat hot.

BEETS.

Wash and cut off the tops. Boil more than an hour if they are of a fair size. Scrape, slice, and lay in a dish. Pour over them a tablespoonful of butter, heated with one of vinegar, and seasoned with salt and pepper. If any are left over, save them for salad, by pouring vinegar upon them.

NEW POTATOES.

Rub the skins off, and cook until tender in boiling salted water. Serve whole.

GOOSEBERRY TART.

Top and tail a quart of green gooseberries. Put into a tin or porcelain saucepan with enough water to prevent burning, and stew slowly until they break, stirring often. Sweeten abundantly, and set by to cool. When cold, pour into a pie-dish lined with puff-paste, cover with a top crust, and bake in a good oven. Eat cold, but fresh, with powdered sugar sifted over the top.

Fourth Week. Thursday. —— String-Bean Soup. Breaded Mutton Chops. Stewed Tomatoes with Onion. Green Corn Boiled Whole. Mashed Potatoes. —— Cherries. Raspberries and Cream, and Light Cakes. ——

STRING-BEAN SOUP.

Boil three cups of string-beans—rid of all the fibres and cut small—in hot salted water until very tender. Drain and chop them, rub them through a colander to a pulp. Take the fat from the stock kept in the ice-box since yesterday; pour off from the meat, and strain into a soup pot. Bring to a boil; skim, and stir in the beans, with a great spoonful of butter cut up in as much flour. Simmer fifteen minutes; add seasoning, if necessary, and pour upon dice of fried bread in the tureen.

BREADED MUTTON CHOPS.

Trim the chops well, leaving an inch of bare bone at the small end of each. Dip in beaten egg, then in rolled cracker, and fry in hot lard or dripping. Drain, and stand upon the large ends in a row about the base of your hillock of potatoes.

STEWED TOMATOES WITH ONION.

Loosen the tomato-skins with boiling water. Peel and slice them, and put into a saucepan with a sliced onion, a good piece of butter, pepper, salt, and a little sugar. Stew gently half an hour.

GREEN CORN BOILED WHOLE.

Strip off the outer husks; turn down the innermost covering, and pull off the silk with great care. Re-cover the ear with the thin inner husk; tie at the top with a bit of thread, and cook in salted boiling water from twenty-five to thirty minutes. Cut off the stalks close to the cob, and send the corn to the table wrapped in a napkin.

MASHED POTATOES.

Mash, and mould into a shapely hillock, fenced about with a _chevaux de frise_ of chops.

CHERRIES.

Wash, handling gingerly, and heap about a lump of ice in a glass bowl.

RASPBERRIES AND CREAM, WITH LIGHT CAKES.

Do not sugar the berries in the dish, but pass sugar and cream with each saucerful.

Fourth Week. Friday. —— Convent Soup. Boiled Salmon. Chicken Fried Whole. Stewed Onions. Green Peas. Potatoes à la Duchesse. —— Cherry Pie. ——

CONVENT SOUP.

3 potatoes. 2 onions. 2 carrots. 2 turnips. 1 pint of green peas. 1 cup of string-beans, cut into short lengths. ¼ of a small cabbage. 6 tomatoes, peeled and sliced. Bunch of sweet herbs. ½ cup of good dripping. 2 tablespoonfuls of flour. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, rolled in flour. 2 qts. and 1 pint of boiling water. Pepper and salt.

Parboil, and leave to cool, turnips, carrots, and potatoes, sliced; also the chopped cabbage. Slice the onions, and fry in the hot dripping for five minutes. Then stir in the flour, and simmer until well colored. Turn into a soup-kettle the contents of the frying-pan, rinsing out the latter with two cups of boiling water, and pour this, also, into the soup-pot. When it bubbles, add all the vegetables. Stir a few minutes, and put in another pint of hot water. Cover, and simmer until all are heated through and begin to boil, when put in the rest of the water. Cook slowly for two hours, or until all are soft and breaking. Strain, and pulp the vegetables through the colander. Season the _purée_ with salt, pepper, and sweet herbs, chopped; stir in your floured butter; simmer five minutes, stirring well, and serve.

BOILED SALMON.

The middle slice of salmon is the best. Sew up neatly in a mosquito-net bag, and boil a quarter of an hour to the pound in hot, salted water. When done, unwrap with care, and lay upon a hot dish, taking care not to break it. Have ready a large cupful of drawn butter, very rich, in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of minced parsley and the juice of a lemon. Pour half upon the salmon, and serve the rest in a boat. Garnish with parsley and sliced eggs.

FRIED CHICKEN—WHOLE.

Truss a young, tender chicken as for roasting, but do not stuff it. Put into a steamer, or cover closely in a colander, over a pot of fast-boiling water for half an hour. Have ready some very nice dripping, or a mixture of one-third butter, two-thirds lard, in a deep frying or saucepan. Flour the chicken all over, and put in when the fat is hot. When the lower side is of a fine brown, turn the fowl. When both are cooked, take it out, lay a few slices of onion in the bottom of a tin pail, and put in the chicken. Fit on the top, and set in a pot of water, which must be kept at a slow boil, half an hour. Rub the chicken well with melted butter, in which have been stirred pepper, salt, and chopped parsley, and serve.

STEWED ONIONS.

See Tuesday of Third Week in this month.

GREEN PEAS.

See Sunday of this week.

POTATOES À LA DUCHESSE.

Cut cold mashed potatoes, round or square, with a cake-cutter; flour well, and bake in the oven, buttering as they begin to brown. If the potatoes are too pliable to cut out well, mould by pressing firmly into your cutter, which should first be wet with cold water. Serve with the salmon.

CHERRY PIE.

Line a pie-dish with cold crust; fill with whole cherries—tart and sweet, in equal proportions; sugar plentifully; put on a top crust, and bake in a tolerably brisk oven. Eat cold, with powdered sugar sifted over the top.

Fourth Week. Saturday. —— Gravy Soup. Lemon Veal. Stewed Squash. String-Beans. Raw Cucumbers. —— Bananas and Oranges. Cherries. ——

GRAVY SOUP.

6 lbs. of lean beef. 1 lb. of ham. 1 carrot. 1 turnip. 6 tomatoes. Bunch of herbs. Pepper and salt. 2 teaspoonfuls of celery essence. 1 cucumber. 2 onions. 6 quarts of cold water. Toasted bread cut into dice. 1 tablespoonful walnut catsup. Dripping for frying.

Cut the meat into strips; pare and slice the vegetables. Fry the onions brown in dripping. Put all together into the soup-kettle, with one quart of cold water, and bring _slowly_ to a boil. Then pour in a quart of hot water. Cook an hour longer—still slowly—and pour in the rest of the water—_cold_. Boil steadily three hours after the bubbling recommences. The meat should be done to rags, the vegetables broken to pieces. Strain, pulping the vegetables through a colander; then strain a second time through a soup-sieve, or squeeze through a double tarlatan or mosquito-net bag. Season the soup, and set aside your Sunday portion, seasoning the rags of meat highly, and returning them to it. (Keep on the ice.) Put to-day’s soup back into the pot; boil and skim; add a tablespoonful of walnut catsup and pour upon dice of well-buttered toast, laid in the tureen.

LEMON VEAL.

3 lbs. of raw, lean veal, chopped fine. ½ lb. of fat salt pork, also minced. 1 small onion, minced. A pinch of lemon peel. 2 lemons peeled and sliced. 3 eggs beaten light. 1 cup well-seasoned and strained tomato sauce. Pepper and salt. Rolled cracker.

Work meat, eggs, onion and seasoning up soft with the tomato-sauce, and stir in enough cracker to enable you to mould it with your hands. Press firmly into a wet bowl, and invert upon a pie-dish, withdrawing the bowl cautiously. Now, sift cracker-dust thickly all over it, and cover the top and half-way down the sides with thin slices of lemon. Bake one hour in a good oven; pick off the lemon with care and dispatch, and brown nicely on the upper grating of the oven. Serve in the pie-dish.

STEWED SQUASH.

Pare, slice, lay in cold water fifteen minutes. Cook tender in boiling water, salted, drain well, and mash with pepper, salt and butter, pressing out all the water.

STRING-BEANS.

See Receipt for Monday of this week.

RAW CUCUMBERS.

Pare and lay them in ice-water one hour, then slice and season to taste with vinegar, pepper and salt. Never omit the soaking in ice-water.

BANANAS AND ORANGES.

Serve in the same fruit-basket or dish.

CHERRIES.

Pile upon a lump of ice in a glass dish.

JULY.

First Week. Sunday. —— Clear Sago Soup. Larded Shoulder of Mutton. Scalloped Tomatoes. Boiled Corn. New Potatoes—Stewed. —— Raspberry and Currant Jelly with Whipped Cream. Coffee and Sponge-Cake. ——

CLEAR SAGO SOUP.

Remove the fat from the surface of your cold “stock,” pour off without disturbing the sediment, and heat to a boil. Skim as long as the scum rises; then stir in the beaten white of an egg, and simmer, skimming well until it has brought up with it all the impurities, leaving the soup clear. Add half a cup of German sago, previously soaked two hours in a little water, and cook gently until this is melted; then serve.

LARDED SHOULDER OF MUTTON.

Cut half a pound of salt fat pork into narrow, long lardoons. Roll them in a mixture of pepper, allspice and vinegar. If you have no larding-needle, make incisions in the shoulder of mutton with a thin, narrow-bladed knife, and thrust in the strips of pork, leaving about a quarter of an inch projecting on the upper side. Put into a dripping-pan, pour two cupfuls of boiling water over it, in which has been mixed a glass of claret. Cover with another pan, and cook two hours, if the shoulder be of full size. Baste frequently—for an hour and a half with its own gravy—then three times with a mixture of melted butter and currant jelly, leaving off the upper pan that the meat may brown. Dish the meat; thicken the strained gravy with browned flour, and after one boil, serve in a boat. To save labor and time on Sunday, lard the meat over night.

SCALLOPED TOMATOES.

Skin and slice. Cover the bottom of a pie-dish (buttered) with dry crumbs; lay tomatoes over them. Season with pepper, salt, sugar and butter. Put alternate layers of crumbs and seasoned tomatoes until the dish is full, having crumbs on top. Bake, covered, half an hour, and brown slightly.

BOILED CORN.

Please see Thursday, Fourth Week in June.

NEW POTATOES—STEWED.

Rub or scrape off the skins; boil in hot salted water until done. Turn off the water and dry out on the range. Then crack each one by steady pressure with the back of a spoon, and drop into a saucepan containing a cup of hot milk, pepper, salt, chopped parsley, and a great spoonful of butter cut up in flour. Simmer five minutes, and pour into a vegetable dish.

RASPBERRY AND CURRANT JELLY WITH WHIPPED CREAM.

1 quart of red currants and the same of red raspberries. 2 cups of white sugar. 1 package Coxe’s gelatine, soaked in one cup of cold water. 1 cup of boiling water. 1 pint of whipped cream.

Crush the fruit and strain out every drop of juice through coarse muslin. Stir sugar, soaked gelatine, and boiling water together. When clear, strain into the fruit juice. Strain again through a flannel bag. Pour into a wet mould that has a cylinder in the centre. Do this on Saturday, and bury in the ice. On Sunday, turn out into a glass dish, fill the open centre with whipped cream, and pile more about the base.

First Week. Monday. —— Jugged Soup. Potato Batter Pudding. Mashed Squash. Chopped Corn and Potatoes. Currant Jelly. Corn-starch Custard. ——

JUGGED SOUP.

Early in the day put on the cracked bones from which you have cut the cold mutton, with refuse bits of skin, crisped meat, etc., into a soup-pot with three quarts of water, and boil at the back of the range down to two quarts. Strain; let the liquid cool to throw up the fat, and remove this. Have ready in a stone jar, with a top, six parboiled potatoes, sliced, laid upon slices of streaked pork, cut _very_ thin; upon this a sliced onion; next, three sliced tomatoes; then a sliced turnip; on this a cupful of green peas; three more tomatoes; then a quarter-cup of raw rice; cover this with a grated carrot, and this with another layer of sliced pork. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper, and a few dots of butter upon each layer of vegetables, and put upon the pork some chopped sweet herbs. Pour the cooled broth over all; put on the jar lid, with a paste of flour and water around the edge to exclude the air and keep in the steam, and set in a pan of boiling water in the oven. Leave it there as long as possible—four hours at the least. Pour into the tureen without further preparation.

POTATO BATTER PUDDING.

Mince and season your cold mutton, wet it with the remains of yesterday’s gravy and put into a bake-dish. Mash six boiled potatoes soft with butter; beat in two eggs; a heaping tablespoonful of prepared flour, and a cup of milk. Mix well, and pour over the mutton. Bake to a good brown in a moderate oven. One hour will be needed to cook it properly.

MASHED SQUASH.

See Receipt for Saturday of Third Week in June.

CHOPPED CORN AND POTATOES.

Cut the corn from the cobs left cold from yesterday and chop the cold new potatoes, also left over. Have ready in a frying pan a large spoonful of good dripping, well seasoned, and hot. Stir in corn and potatoes, and toss about until hot and glazed, but not browned. Serve in a deep dish.

CORN-STARCH CUSTARD PUDDING.

4 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch. 1 quart of milk. 4 beaten eggs. 1 cup of sugar. Nutmeg and cinnamon. 1 tablespoonful of butter.

Heat the milk; stir in the corn-starch wet up in cold milk, and cook in a farina-kettle three minutes. Take from the fire; beat in the butter, and let it cool. When cold, beat in the eggs and sugar, with the spice. Whip two minutes, and bake in a buttered dish until lightly browned and well set. Eat cold, with sugar sifted over it.

First Week. Tuesday. —— Veal Broth. Beefsteak. Boiled Onions. Mashed Potatoes Moulded. String-Beans Sautés. Raspberries, Cream, and Cake. ——

VEAL BROTH.

3 lbs. scrag of veal—the meat chopped and bones splintered. 1 onion. 1 cup of raw rice. Chopped parsley, pepper and salt. Some salt-pork bones and rind, if convenient. 1 turnip. 3 quarts of water.

Put meat, bones, and vegetables, with the water, over the fire, and cook slowly three hours. Strain the broth and pulp the vegetables. Take off the fat; season the broth, add the rice, and stew gently until this is soft.

BEEFSTEAK.

See Tuesday of Third Week in June.

BOILED ONIONS.

Top, tail, and skim. Cook fifteen minutes in boiling water. Drain this off and throw it away. Replenish the pot with boiling water, put in a little salt, and stew tender. Drain, dish, season well with pepper and salt, and butter liberally.

MASHED POTATOES—MOULDED.

Mash smooth, but not too soft, with butter and milk. Wet a jelly-mould, fill with the potatoes, pressed in firmly. Shake gently out upon a flat dish, set one minute in the hot oven, and serve.

STRING-BEANS SAUTÉS.

Trim, cut in short pieces, and cook tender in boiling salted water. Meanwhile, take half a cup of broth from your soup, season well, boil, and skim for fifteen minutes; then add a tablespoonful of butter. While these are boiling stir in the beans; shake and stir for three minutes, add a teaspoonful of vinegar, and pour out.

RASPBERRIES, CREAM, AND CAKE.

When you can give an uncooked dessert, which is more palatable and more wholesome than a cooked one, and that costs no more, it is wise policy to avail yourself of the consequent lightening of your labors, especially in hot weather. Except when it is necessary to deviate from the rule in order to secure the requisite variety, let cold desserts be the order of the day in your bills of fare, while the “heated term” lasts.

First Week. Wednesday. —— French Potage. Beef à la Mode. Macaroni with Tomato Sauce. Lima Beans. Fried Cucumbers. —— Lemon Trifle. ——

FRENCH POTAGE.

2 lbs. lean beef. 2 lbs. of lean veal. ¼ lb. of lean ham. 1 sliced onion. Chopped sweet herbs. 12 large prunes. Pepper and salt. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 2 tablespoonfuls soaked granulated tapioca. 5 quarts of water.

Put the veal, cut into strips, and the sliced onion, into a soup-pot with the butter, and simmer, stirring constantly, until they are coated with a brown glaze. _They must not scorch._ Now pour in one quart of boiling water; cover, and stew half an hour. Check the boil suddenly with a gallon of cold water, and put in beef, ham, and herbs. Cover again, and boil gently three hours. Take out the strips of veal, beef, and ham, when you have strained off the water, and pulp the onion. Set aside half the stock, highly seasoned, with the meat in it, for to-morrow. Skim the fat from the rest, season, and put back over the fire with the prunes, stoned, and cut into thirds, after being well washed. Simmer half an hour, put in the tapioca; cook until this is clear, and pour out.

BEEF À LA MODE.

For full and explicit directions concerning this dish please refer—to spare me work, time, and space—to Sunday, Second Week in May.

MACARONI WITH TOMATO SAUCE.

Break half a pound of macaroni into inch-lengths, and cook twenty minutes in boiling salted water. Meantime, take a cup of broth from your soup; strain, boil, and skim it, and slice into it four ripe tomatoes. Stew tender, and strain through net or tarlatan, into a saucepan. Season well; stir into it a great spoonful of butter rolled in flour. Simmer five minutes; put the macaroni into a deep dish, sprinkling grated cheese over each layer, and pour the hot sauce over it, opening the mass with a fork, to let it reach the lower layers.

LIMA BEANS.

Shell, lay in cold water fifteen minutes, and cook from twenty-five to thirty minutes in salt boiling water. Drain well; season with pepper, salt, and butter.

FRIED CUCUMBERS.

Pare, cut into lengthwise slices, more than a quarter of an inch thick, and lay for half an hour in ice-water. Wipe each piece dry; sprinkle with pepper and salt, and dredge with flour. Fry to a light brown in good dripping or butter. Drain well, and serve hot.

LEMON TRIFLE.

1 large sliced sponge cake. 1 quart of milk. 3 eggs. 5 heaping tablespoonfuls of sugar. 1 teaspoonful extract of lemon. 1 lemon—all the juice and half the rind _finely_ grated.

Heat the milk, stir in four tablespoonfuls of sugar into the beaten yolks and pour the hot milk upon it, by degrees, stirring well. Return to the custard-kettle, and stir until it begins to thicken. Flavor, and pour, quite hot, upon the sliced cake laid in the bottom of a deep dish. If the dish be of glass, roll it in hot water before cake and custard go in. Put a heavy saucer on the cake to keep it from rising, and let it cool. When perfectly cold, heap upon it a _méringue_ of the beaten whites, whipped up with the other tablespoonful of sugar, the lemon-juice and rind. Set on ice until wanted.