Part 29

Pare, boil, and dry out the potatoes, and whip, first into powder, then, adding milk and butter, to a cream; at last, beat in the stiffened white of an egg. Pile roughly in a deep dish, and set in the oven to warm up, but not to “crust” or brown, and send to table.

CREAM SQUASH.

Pare, quarter, boil in hot, salted water, and mash. Put into a saucepan a half-cup of hot milk, a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour, and a little salt and pepper. Stir in the squash until well mixed and ready to boil. Turn out into a deep dish.

TOMATO SALAD.

Refer to Friday, Second Week in July.

CLARET JELLY AND CAKE.

1 package Coxe’s gelatine, soaked in a large cup of water; 2 cups of sugar; 2 cups fine claret; 1 pint of boiling water; the juice of one lemon; a pinch of mace.

Put soaked gelatine, sugar, and lemon together, and cover for half an hour. Pour on the boiling water; stir until melted, and strain through a flannel bag. Add the wine, and strain, without squeezing, through double flannel. Put in a wet mould, and set in ice. Turn out upon a cold glass dish, and pass cake with it. Make it on Saturday.

Fourth Week. Monday. —— A Baked Soup. Chicken Scallop. Green Peas. New Potatoes. Lettuce. —— Huckleberries, Cream, and Cake. ——

A BAKED SOUP.

3 lbs. of lean mutton, boneless, and cut into strips, 1 carrot; 1 turnip; 1 onion—all cut into dice; 6 ripe tomatoes, sliced thin; 1 pint young green peas; 1 cup of green corn cut from the cob; bunch of sweet herbs, chopped; 2 quarts of cold water; pepper and salt; 1 tablespoonful of sugar; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour.

Put all these into a stout stone jar early in the day. Fit on a tight top, putting a paste of flour and water over the crack between the mouth of the jar and the cover, and set within a dripping-pan of boiling water in the oven. Do nothing more to it until dinner-time, except to add more boiling water as that in the pan evaporates. When ready for the soup, pour into the tureen without straining.

CHICKEN SCALLOP.

Cut cold boiled chicken into pieces less than an inch long. Have ready a cup of yesterday’s soup in a saucepan—or some drawn butter—and, when hot, stir in the meat. Just boil, and pour upon a beaten egg. Cover the bottom of a bake-dish with fine crumbs; pour in the mixture, rather highly seasoned; strew with more crumbs; put drops of butter over the surface, and bake, covered, half an hour; then brown quickly.

GREEN PEAS.

Shell, and boil in hot salted water from twenty to twenty-five minutes, adding a lump of sugar, if they are not freshly gathered. Drain well; dish, and season with pepper, salt, and butter.

NEW POTATOES.

Scrape off the skins, and cook in boiling salted water, until a fork will go in easily. Turn off all the water. Set the uncovered pot for a moment upon the range, throwing in a little fine salt. Then send up in a dish, with a napkin thrown lightly over it.

LETTUCE.

Do not trouble yourself to-day with making salad-dressing. Pick apart the lettuce leaves, put into a salad-bowl with cracked ice below and among them, and pass the oil, pepper, salt, and vinegar with it.

HUCKLEBERRIES, CREAM, AND CAKE.

Pick over and wash the berries. Drain, and serve in a glass dish. Send around sugar and cream with them, and follow with the cake-basket.

Fourth Week. Tuesday. —— Potage aux Croûtons. Devilled Crab. Corned Beef and Turnips. Lima Beans. Beets. —— Plain Boiled Pudding. ——

POTAGE AUX CROÛTONS.

3 lbs. of lean beef; fried bread; 1 onion, sliced; 3 quarts of water; chopped herbs; 1 carrot, cut up; pepper, salt, and 1 great spoonful of clear catsup—walnut or mushroom; dripping.

Fry meat and vegetables ten minutes in plenty of hot dripping. Drain this off, and set by in the pan while you put meat, vegetables, and herbs on in the water, and set where they will heat slowly to a boil. Prepare the _croûtons_ by cutting out, with the top of a pepper-box, small rounds of stale bread, and frying them in the dripping used for the beef, etc. Drain, and set these in an open oven, that they may get very dry. Boil the soup three hours. Strain; cool, skim, season; boil and skim five minutes, and put in the _croûtons_. Heat three minutes, but do not boil, and pour out.

DEVILLED CRAB.

1 cup of crab-meat, picked from the shells of well-boiled crabs; 2 tablespoonfuls of fine bread-crumbs or rolled cracker; yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, chopped; juice of a lemon; ½ teaspoonful of made mustard; a little Cayenne pepper and salt; 1 cup of good drawn butter.

Mix one spoonful of the crumbs with the chopped crab-meat, yolks, seasoning, and drawn butter. Fill scallop-shells—large clam-shells will do, or small paté-pans—with the mixture; sift crumbs over the top, and heat to slight browning in a quick oven.

CORNED BEEF AND TURNIPS.

Cook the beef in plenty of cold water, bringing slowly to the boil. Cook fifteen minutes to the pound after it begins to simmer. When about three-quarters done put in a dozen turnips, peeled and quartered. When you dish the beef, lay these—unmashed—about it. Serve the meat with drawn butter, having as a base the pot-liquor. Save the rest of the liquor for to-morrow’s soup.

LIMA BEANS.

Shell, and cook in boiling salted water about twenty-five minutes. Then drain, pour over them a little drawn butter, well peppered, and serve.

BEETS.

Be careful, in cutting off the tops and washing them, not to break the skins, or they will bleed away their color in the water. Cook in boiling water one hour. Scrape; slice; salt, pepper, and butter, and pour a few spoonfuls of boiling vinegar upon them after they are dished.

PLAIN BOILED PUDDING.

3 heaping cups of flour; 2 cups of buttermilk or “loppered” milk; 1 _full_ teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in boiling water; ½ cupful of powdered suet; 1 teaspoonful of salt.

Stir the sour milk into the flour gradually until it is free from lumps. Put in salt and suet; lastly, beat in the soda water quickly and faithfully. Put into a buttered mould, and boil an hour and a half. Eat hot with sauce.

Fourth Week. Wednesday. —— Butter (or Lima) Bean Soup. Breaded Veal Cutlets. Mashed Potatoes. Succotash. Devilled Tomatoes. —— Baked Huckleberry Pudding. ——

BUTTER (OR LIMA) BEAN SOUP.

The pot-liquor from your beef; 1 quart of butter (or Lima) beans; ½ cup corn-meal, scalded and left to cool; 1 onion; bunch of parsley; 2 teaspoonfuls essence of celery; 2 beaten eggs; pepper.

Take the fat from the pot-liquor and put over the fire with the beans, onion, and scalded meal. The latter should be soft as thin mush. Stir until this is well mixed with the soup, and boil gently, stirring now and then, until the beans are broken to pieces. Rub to a _purée_ through a colander; put in pepper and chopped parsley. Simmer five minutes, and pour a cupful upon the beaten eggs. Stir this back into the soup; cook one minute, without quite boiling, and serve. Pass sliced lemon with it.

BREADED VEAL CUTLETS.

Trim and flatten the cutlets; pepper and salt, and roll in beaten egg; then in pounded cracker. Fry rather slowly in good dripping; turning when the lower side is brown. Drain off the fat; squeeze a little lemon-juice upon each, and serve in a hot, flat dish.

MASHED POTATOES.

Mash very soft with butter and milk; season and heap irregularly upon a dish.

SUCCOTASH.

6 ears of corn; 1 pint of string-beans, trimmed and cut into short pieces; 1 tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour; 1 cup of milk; pepper and salt.

Cut the corn from the cob, bruising as little as possible. Put over the fire with the beans in enough hot water, salted, to cover them, and stew gently half an hour. Turn off nearly all the water, and add a cupful of milk. Simmer in this, stirring to prevent burning, twenty minutes; add the floured butter, the pepper and salt, and stew ten minutes. Serve in a deep dish.

DEVILLED TOMATOES.

12 fine, firm tomatoes, pared and sliced nearly half an inch thick; yolks of 3 hard-boiled eggs, pounded; 3 tablespoonfuls of melted butter, and same of vinegar; 2 raw eggs, beaten light; 1 teaspoonful sugar, and half as much, each, of made mustard and salt; a pinch of Cayenne.

Rub butter, pounded yolks, pepper, salt, mustard and sugar together. Beat hard, add vinegar, and heat to a boil. Put this upon the beaten eggs and whip to a smooth cream. Set in hot water while you broil the tomatoes in an oyster-broiler, over clear coals. Lay this upon a hot chafing-dish, and pour the scalding dressing upon them.

BAKED HUCKLEBERRY PUDDING.

1 pint of milk; 2 eggs; 1 quart of flour (sifted); 1 gill yeast; 1 saltspoonful of salt; 1 teaspoonful of boiling water; nearly a quart of berries, dredged with flour.

Make a batter of these ingredients—leaving out the berries—and set in a warm place to rise, for about four hours. If light then, stir in the dredged berries; pour into a buttered cake-mould, and bake one hour in a moderate oven. Turn out, and eat with hard sauce.

Fourth Week. Thursday. —— Bean and Tomato Soup. Fricasseed Chickens. Boiled Onions with Sauce. Green Pea Cakes. Potatoes à la Lyonnaise. —— Baked Cup Custards. ——

BEAN AND TOMATO SOUP.

Cut up a quart of ripe tomatoes; season with pepper, salt and sugar, and stew until broken to pieces. Rub through a colander; add what was left of yesterday’s bean soup; heat together almost to boiling, and pour upon dice of fried bread in the tureen.

FRICASSEED CHICKEN.

Clean, wash, and cut the fowls into joints. Put a layer of fat salt pork in the bottom of a pot; lay the chicken upon this; pepper and salt. Cover with more pork, and pour in three tablespoonfuls of hot water mixed with as much butter. Finally, drop in a little minced onion. Cover tightly, and heat very slowly. After the chickens begin to stew, cook steadily one hour, if they are tender. If not, increase the time at discretion. When they are done, take up and keep hot. Add a little boiling water to the gravy; strain, thicken with browned flour, boil up and pour upon the fowls.

BOILED ONIONS WITH SAUCE.

Boil fifteen minutes in hot salted water. Throw this off; add a little gravy (made, if you have none ready, by boiling a chicken-scrag and feet in a pint of water, until there is less than a cupful of broth, then seasoning and thickening this), with chopped parsley. Stew five minutes longer, or until tender, and dish.

GREEN PEA CAKES.

2 cups of boiled green peas, mashed hot with pepper, salt, and butter; 2 beaten eggs; 1 cup of milk; ½ cup of prepared flour.

Mix and beat hard. Fry as you would griddle-cakes.

POTATOES À LA LYONNAISE.

Chop cold parboiled potatoes into coarse dice. Put some butter in a frying-pan, and, when hot, throw in a tablespoonful of chopped onion and a little parsley. Cook one minute; add the potatoes, and stir until very hot and glazed with the butter, but not until colored. Serve hot.

BAKED CUP CUSTARDS.

1 quart of milk; 5 eggs; 1 cup of sugar; lemon flavoring for custard, and lemon-juice for the _méringue_.

Heat the milk, add all but two tablespoonfuls of sugar to the beaten yolks of all the eggs and the whites of two, and pour the scalding milk upon them, mixing in well. Fill buttered stone-china cups with this custard; set in a dripping-pan of hot water, and bake until “set.” Then pile upon them roughly a _méringue_ made of the reserved whites, whipped stiff with the rest of the powdered sugar and the lemon-juice. Shut the oven until these begin to be tinged. Eat cold from the cups.

Fourth Week. Friday. —— Corn Soup. Mayonnaise of Lobster. Beefsteak au Maître d’Hôtel. Stewed Lima Beans. Fried Cucumbers. Boiled Potatoes. —— Blackberry Pie. Iced Tea. ——

CORN SOUP.

1 pint of grated corn just from the cob; 3 pints of boiling water; 1 pint of hot milk; 3 tablespoonfuls of butter; 1 heaping tablespoonful of flour; pepper; salt; yolks of 2 eggs.

Put on the cobs, after you have grated off the corn, in the boiling water, and cook half an hour. Take them out and put in the corn. Boil one hour or until very soft. Pulp through the colander back into the water. Season, and set over the fire to simmer. Put the butter into a saucepan, and, when hot, stir in the flour. Cook ten minutes, stirring all the while. Add a little of the soup to thin it, and empty the saucepan into the soup-pot, stirring the contents until smooth. Heat the milk in another saucepan, pour upon the beaten yolks, cook one minute, and pour into the tureen. Season with pepper and salt, and stir the soup into it. This is a remarkably nice soup.

MAYONNAISE OF LOBSTER.

Meat of one large boiled lobster, cold and cut into dice. Lay aside the coral for the dressing. Make this of these ingredients: 4 hard boiled eggs; 2 tablespoonfuls best salad-oil; 1 teaspoonful, each, of made mustard, salt, white sugar, and anchovy sauce; vinegar and cayenne to taste.

Pound the yolks perfectly smooth, and rub in the coral and other ingredients with great care, moistening with vinegar as they stiffen, until a smooth cream is the result. Pour this over the minced lobster, and toss up well with a silver fork. Heap in the centre of your salad-bowl, and lay cool, white lettuce-hearts around it, helping out these with the lobster. Inside of the lettuce lay a chain of the sliced boiled whites.

BEEFSTEAK AU MAÎTRE D’HÔTEL.

Broil your beefsteak in the usual manner. Lay upon the chafing-dish and pour upon it a sauce made of 1 great spoonful of butter; 1 teaspoonful very finely minced parsley; pepper, salt and the juice of a lemon—heated _almost_ to boiling in a clean saucepan. Put a hot cover over the steak, and let it stand five minutes before serving.

STEWED LIMA BEANS.

Boil in hot salted water fifteen minutes. Drain half of this off and stir in—for a quart of beans—a tablespoonful of _very_ finely chopped sweet salt pork—the whitest fat slice you can get—a teaspoonful of minced onion, a little chopped parsley; pepper and a cupful of hot milk, with a pinch of soda stirred in to prevent curdling. Stew slowly fifteen minutes more; stir in a scant tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour; cook ten minutes and pour out.

FRIED CUCUMBERS.

See Wednesday, First Week in July.

BOILED POTATOES.

See Monday of this week.

BLACKBERRY PIE.

Line a pie-dish with good crust, and fill with ripe berries, sweetening plentifully. Cover with another crust and bake in a moderate oven. Eat cold with white sugar sifted over it.

ICED TEA.

See Sunday, Third Week in July.

Fourth Week. Saturday. —— Kilkenny Soup. Mutton Chops. Ragoût of Vegetables. Stewed Tomatoes. —— Indian Pudding. ——

KILKENNY SOUP.

3 lbs. of lean beef; 2 lbs. scrag of mutton, cut up small; 1 lb. lean ham; 3 sliced onions; 3 carrots; 2 turnips; bunch of sweet herbs; ⅔ of a cup of Irish oatmeal, previously soaked four hours in a little tepid water; 6 quarts of cold water; pepper and salt; 6 parboiled potatoes, sliced.

Crack the bones, and cut the meat into strips. Cover with the water, and bring slowly to the boil. When this has lasted one hour, skim off the top of the pot, and put in the onions fried brown in dripping, the other vegetables sliced, and the herbs; cook three hours longer, and strain the soup. Season the meat pretty highly and pour upon it—in a jar or bowl—half the clear stock. Set upon the ice for Sunday, when cold. Rub the vegetables through the colander into the rest of the stock; cool, take off the fat, season, add the sliced potatoes and the oatmeal, and cook one hour more. Strain into the tureen.

MUTTON CHOPS.

Trim, leaving a bit of bare bone at the end of each. Pepper, and broil over a clear fire. Lay upon a hot dish; salt and butter both sides of each chop, and lay outside of your stewed tomatoes.

RAGOÛT OF VEGETABLES.

Parboil 1 carrot, 1 turnip, 2 potatoes, 2 ears of corn, 1 cup of Lima beans, and the same of peas, 1 onion, and with them ¼ lb. of fat salt pork. Drain off the water, and lay aside the pork. Slice carrots, turnips, potatoes and onion. Put into a saucepan with a cup of your soup taken out before thickening; season well; cut the corn from the cob and add with the peas, beans, and a sliced tomato as soon as the rest are hot. Stew all together half an hour. Stir in a great lump of butter rolled in flour; stew five minutes and pour into a deep dish.

STEWED TOMATOES.

Loosen the skins with hot water, peel and slice. Stew until broken to pieces. Pulp through a coarse sieve, rubbing out all that will pass. Return to the fire with a little sugar, pepper and salt, and boil briskly fifteen minutes. Stir in, then, enough fine crumbs to make it like a tolerably thick batter; add a great spoonful of butter; stew, stirring well, five minutes; pour in the middle of a flat dish, and arrange the chops around it.

INDIAN PUDDING.

1 quart of milk; 4 cups white Indian meal; 3 eggs; 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar; 1 teaspoonful of salt; ¼ lb. powdered suet; 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon; ¼ teaspoonful of soda in the milk.

Scald the milk, and, while hot, stir in meal, suet, and salt. When cold, beat in the yolks and sugar, the spice—at last the whites. Beat long and hard; pour into a buttered mould, leaving room for swelling—and plenty of it—put into a pot of boiling water almost up to the top, and boil _four_ hours. Turn out, and eat hot with sauce.

AUGUST.

First Week. Sunday. —— Macaroni Soup. Stewed Ducks. Green Peas. Boiled Corn. Fried Egg-plant. Potato Salad. —— Almond Custard with Cocoanut Frost. ——

MACARONI SOUP.

Take the fat from your cold soup; pour the latter carefully from the meat, and heat to a slow boil. Having removed all the scum that will rise, add a quarter pound of macaroni, broken into short pieces, boiled twenty minutes in hot salted water, and left to get cold. Simmer fifteen minutes, and serve.

STEWED DUCKS.

Clean, wash, and truss neatly, but do not stuff the ducks. Put into a broad saucepan, such as is generally known as a braising-pan. Strew with a little onion; pour over them a cupful of weak broth made by boiling the giblets in a pint of water and reducing one-half. Season this well, and when you have poured it upon the ducks, cover the saucepan and cook gently an hour and a half or until the ducks are tender. Turn them when half done. Take up when ready; keep hot while you strain and thicken the gravy with browned flour. Pour a little over the ducks, the rest into a boat.

GREEN PEAS.

See Monday, Fourth Week in July.

BOILED CORN.

Strip off all except the inner thin husk. Turn this down, and pick off the silk. Put back the husk, tie with a bit of thread, and cook in boiling water from twenty-five to thirty minutes. Break off the stalks and husks, and send to table wrapped in a napkin.

FRIED EGG-PLANT.

Cut in slices half an inch thick; pare each carefully, and lay for one hour in salt and water, to remove the bitter taste. Then slightly salt and pepper each piece, and dip in a batter made of two eggs, half a cup of milk, and _about_ a cup of flour, or enough for thin batter. Fry in hot lard or dripping to a fine brown; drain well, and serve hot.

POTATO SALAD.

Slice six or eight cold boiled potatoes; put them into a salad-dish, and season as follows: To two tablespoonfuls of salad-oil add one teaspoonful of sugar, half as much, each, of made mustard, salt, and pepper, and nearly as much essence of celery. Rub to a smooth paste, and whip in, a teaspoonful at a time, five tablespoonfuls of vinegar. When well mixed, pour upon the salad.

ALMOND CUSTARD, WITH COCOANUT FROST.

2 cups fresh milk, with a pinch of soda stirred in; ½ lb. almonds, blanched, dried, and pounded; 3 beaten eggs; ½ cup powdered sugar; rose-water; 1 cocoanut, pared, thrown into cold water, and grated.

Scald the milk; stir in the almond-paste, which should have been mixed with rose-water, to prevent oiling. Boil one minute, and pour upon the beaten eggs and sugar. Return to the fire, and stir until the mixture begins to thicken. Take off, and pour into a bowl. When cold, put on ice until Sunday. Then turn the custard into a glass dish, and heap high with the grated cocoanut. Strew powdered sugar over all.

First Week. Monday. —— Clam Soup. Ragoût of Duck and Green Peas. Onions. Potatoes, with Cheese Sauce. Raw Tomatoes. —— Blackberries, Huckleberries, and Cream. Sliced Cake. ——

CLAM SOUP.

50 clams; 1 quart of hot water; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; 1 tablespoonful of flour; 1 teaspoonful chopped onion, and same of mixed thyme and parsley; 2 cups of hot milk; salt and cayenne; 2 blades of mace.

Cut the hard parts off from the clams, putting the soft halves on ice. Strain off all the liquor, and put with the hard bits over the fire, with a quart of hot water, the onion, herbs, and mace. Simmer forty minutes. Heat the milk in another vessel—not forgetting the pinch of soda; stir in the butter, cut up in the flour, and set in hot water until the soup is ready. At the end of the forty minutes, strain the clam broth, leaving out the hard parts. Put in the soft, season with salt and cayenne, and let them _just_ boil. Pour into the tureen, add the milk and butter, and set the tureen in hot water five minutes before serving.

RAGOÛT OF DUCK AND GREEN PEAS.

Cut the meat from the carcasses left since yesterday, making the slices as neat as you can. If you have not a _large_ cupful of gravy left, make it by stewing down the bones and stuffing in a quart of water, cooling, skimming, and seasoning it. Put this in a saucepan with the pieces of duck, and set where it will get very hot, but _not_ boil. Cook a quart of tender green peas in boiling water twenty minutes; drain, and season them with pepper, salt, and butter. Take out the duck and pile in the centre of a dish; put the peas around it like a green hedge. Boil up the gravy once when you have stirred in a little browned flour, wet with cold water, and pour upon the meat.

ONIONS.

Boil in two waters, and after draining off the last, cover, barely, with boiling milk; stir in a good piece of butter rolled in flour; season with salt and pepper; boil once, and pour into a deep dish.

POTATOES, WITH CHEESE SAUCE.

12 boiled potatoes, mashed soft with milk and butter; 4 tablespoonfuls of dry, grated cheese; 1 cup of rich drawn butter; 2 beaten eggs; pepper, salt, and nutmeg; triangles of fried bread; cracker-dust.

Stir into the hot drawn butter the pepper, salt, nutmeg, beaten eggs, and half the cheese, and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. Put a layer of potato upon a flat stone-china dish—or a block-tin one—round it to suit the shape of the dish, and cover with the sauce; this, in turn, with a narrowing round of potatoes, but of equal thickness, and this with sauce, and so on, until you have a mound rounded on top. Coat with sauce, then with the rest of the cheese and some pounded cracker. Lay the sippets of fried bread up against it at the base, and heat to browning in a quick oven.

BLACKBERRIES, HUCKLEBERRIES, AND CREAM.

CAKE.

Put the blackberries in a dish of their own. Some persons like them with cream, but more prefer to eat them simply strewed with sugar. Wash the huckleberries, and pass cream and sugar with them; then a basket of simple cake.

First Week. Tuesday. —— A Summer Soup. Veal Collops. Tomato Sauce. Raw Cucumbers. String Beans. —— Apple Compote au Gratin. ——

A SUMMER SOUP.

3 lbs. coarse, lean beef, cut into strips; 1 lb. ham or salt-pork bones; 4 quarts of water; 2 carrots; 2 turnips; 12 very small and young onions, minus the stalks; 1 cup of strained tomato sauce; 1 cup of green peas; ½ cup of green corn, cut from the cob; pepper and salt.