Part 3

Clean, scrape, and mince the vegetables, and put on to cook in cold water, enough to cover them well. When they are scalding hot, drain, and cover them with three pints of boiling water. Stew slowly in this until they are reduced to pulp. Rub through a colander, season, and heat again to boiling. Stir in the bread-crumbs; then the butter, very gradually. Have the milk ready, heated in another vessel, and pour into the soup-kettle at this juncture. Let the soup get very hot, but not boil. Set upon the side of the range, and, dipping out a cupful, add it, a little at a time, to the beaten eggs. When well mixed, return eggs and liquor to the rest of the soup; stir over the fire for an instant, but never to boiling, and serve in a hot tureen.

The eggs should not be allowed to curdle in the liquor; hence the need of carefulness in following the directions above given. A little grated cheese is a pleasant accompaniment to this soup, each person adding it as pleases him.

BOILED COD.

Lay the fish in cold water, a little salt, for half an hour. Wipe dry, and sew up in a linen cloth, coarse and clean, fitted to the shape of the piece of cod. Have but one fold over each part. Lay in the fish-kettle, cover with boiling water, salted at discretion. Allow nearly an hour for a piece weighing four pounds.

SAUCE.

To one gill of boiling water allow as much milk; stir into this, while boiling, two tablespoonfuls of butter, added gradually, a tablespoonful of flour wet up with cold water, and, as it thickens, the chopped yolk of a boiled egg and one raw egg, beaten light. Take directly from the fire, season with pepper, salt, a little chopped parsley and the juice of a lemon, and set, covered, in boiling water, but not over the fire, for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour part of the sauce over the fish when dished; the rest in a boat. Send around mashed potatoes with it.

ROAST DUCK.

Clean the duck very carefully, rinsing it out with a little soda and water, and afterwards with fresh water. Lay in cold, salted water for an hour. Wipe dry, inside and out, and stuff with a dressing of bread-crumbs, seasoned with pepper and salt, a _very_ little powdered sage and a “suspicion” of minced onion. Sew up; dash a cup of boiling water over them, as they lie in the dripping-pan, and roast, covered, for the first half-hour. Remove the cover, and baste freely—three times with butter and water, four or five times with the gravy from the pan. Stew the giblets in a little salted water, and reserve to piece out to-morrow’s salmi. Dish the ducks upon a hot platter.

BREAD SAUCE.

Skim the fat well from the gravy left in the dripping-pan; have ready a handful of bread-crumbs (stale), wet up with hot water. Thicken the gravy with these when it has come to a boil; season with pepper, salt, and a pinch of mace. Boil all together once and serve.

MASHED POTATOES.

See receipt for _Sunday_.

While I would spare you all waste of time and pains in looking up receipts in other parts of this volume, I yet deem it hardly worth while to write out in full the same directions twice for the same week—or month.

RICE CROQUETTES.

1 cup of cold boiled rice. 1 teaspoonful of sugar, and half as much salt. 1 teaspoonful of melted butter. 1 egg, beaten light. Enough milk to make the rice into stiff paste. Sweet lard for frying.

Work rice, butter, egg, etc., into an adhesive paste, beating each ingredient thoroughly into the mixture. Flour your hands and make the rice into oval balls. Dip each in beaten egg, then in flour, or cracker-dust, and fry in boiling lard, a few at a time, turning each with great care. When the croquettes are of a fine yellow-brown, take out with a wire spoon and lay within a heated colander to drain off every drop of fat. Serve hot, with sprigs of parsley laid about them, in an uncovered dish.

STEWED CELERY.

Cut the celery into inch lengths; cover with cold water and stew until tender. Turn off the water and supply its place with enough milk to cover the celery. When this begins to boil stir in a good lump of butter rolled in flour; pepper and salt to taste, and stew gently five minutes.

You will like this vegetable thus prepared. Eat, if you like, with a little lemon-juice or vinegar.

APPLE PIE.

1 quart of flour, dried and sifted. ½ lb. of lard. ¼ lb. of butter. Ice-water to make stiff paste.

Chop the lard into the dry flour. Wet with ice-water into stiff paste, touching as little as may be with your hands. Roll out very thin, always _from_ you. Stick bits of butter all over the sheet; roll up tightly as you would a sheet of paper. Beat flat with your rolling-pin, roll out again, and again baste with butter. Repeat the operations of rolling up, rolling out, and basting until your butter is used up. Set the roll of pastry in a cold, dry place for at least one hour. All night would not be too long. When it is crisp and firm, roll out and line your buttered pie-plates. The bottom crust should be thinner than the upper. And, as a rule, you would do well to give the roll of pastry intended for the latter a “baste” or two more than that meant for the lower.

Pare, core and slice juicy, tart apples; put a layer upon the inner crust, sprinkle with sugar thickly—scatter a few cloves upon the sugar; then another layer of apples, and so on, until the dish is full. Cover with crust, pressed down firmly at the edges, and bake. Eat warm, or cold, with white sugar sifted over the top.

Apple pie is very good with cream poured over each slice.

First Week. Saturday. —— Macaroni Soup. Ham and Eggs. Salmi of Duck. Fried Parsnips. Stewed Salsify. Sweet Potatoes—in Jackets. —— Rosie’s Rice Custard. ——

MACARONI SOUP.

4 quarts of cold water. 3 lbs. of coarse, lean beef, cut into thin strips. 2 or 3 lbs. of bones, broken small. 4 onions, sliced. 1 bunch of sweet herbs, chopped. Tomato juice or catsup. ¼ lb. of macaroni. A few salt pork bones.

Fry the meat until half done, in a very little dripping. Take it out and fry the onions and bones in the same gravy. Put all into a soup-kettle with the herbs, and cover with 4 quarts of water (cold). Bring to a slow boil, and, at the end of four hours, strain into a great bowl to cool, in order that the fat may rise and be taken off. Meanwhile, make ready your macaroni by breaking it into short bits, covering well with boiling water, a little salted, and stewing slowly twenty minutes, or until tender. Add a lump of butter the size of a walnut; let it stand, covered, for a few minutes, while you season the soup, adding the tomato-juice or catsup. Boil, skim, and thicken with a tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water. When it is again on the boil, turn in the macaroni, taking care not to break it. Heat to scalding, but do not boil; pour out, and serve.

HAM AND EGGS.

Cut your slices of ham of a uniform size and shape, cutting off the rind. Fry quickly in their own fat. Remove from the pan with a wire spoon so soon as they are done, and arrange upon a hot dish, setting this within the open oven, or upon a pot of boiling water to keep warm. Drop the eggs, as you break them, into the hot fat left in the frying-pan. Do not put so many in as to crowd one another. Each egg should preserve its individuality. Cook about three minutes, without turning. Take up with a spatula, or cake-turner, and lay one upon each slice of ham. Do not send the gravy to table. Strain, and use for dripping.

SALMI OF DUCK.

From the cold ducks left after yesterday’s dinner cut all the meat in as neat slices as you can, leaving the joints of legs and wings whole. Take off the skin; break the carcass into pieces, and put these, with the stuffing, into a saucepan with a fried onion, some sweet herbs, pepper, salt, and a pinch of allspice. Cover with cold water and stew gently, after it reaches the boil, for one hour. Cool, that the fat may rise and be taken off. Strain the gravy when you have skimmed it; return to the saucepan, boil and skim again, and stir in two tablespoonfuls of browned flour, wet with cold water; lastly, stir in a great spoonful of butter. Stew five minutes longer, and put in the meat. Draw to one side of the range, and set, closely covered, in a pot of boiling water for ten minutes. The meat must be thoroughly heated and steeped in the gravy, _but not boil_. Take the meat out with a perforated spoon, pile neatly upon a dish and pour the gravy over it. Garnish with triangles of stale bread fried crisp, and send a piece to each person who is helped to salmi.

FRIED PARSNIPS.

Boil, until tender, in hot water slightly salted; let them get almost cold, scrape off the skin, and cut in thick, long slices. Dredge with flour and fry in hot dripping, turning as they brown. Drain very dry in a hot colander; pepper and salt and serve.

STEWED SALSIFY.

Scrape the roots, dropping each into cold water as you do this, that they may not change color. Cut in pieces an inch long; cover with hot water and stew until tender. Drain off two-thirds of the water and add enough milk to cover the salsify. Stew ten minutes in this; put in a good lump of butter rolled thickly in flour. Pepper and salt. Boil up for one minute.

SWEET POTATOES—IN JACKETS.

Parboil in their skins when you have washed them, selecting such as are of like size. Then put in a moderate oven and bake until soft all through. You can ascertain this by pinching the largest. Wipe off and serve in their skins.

ROSIE’S RICE CUSTARD.

1 quart of milk. 3 eggs, well beaten. 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 cup _boiled_ rice. A little salt. Half the grated rind of a lemon.

Boil the rice, drain, and stir, while hot, into the milk. Beat the eggs well; rub butter and sugar to a cream with lemon-peel and a little salt, and stir into the warm milk. Mix well and bake in a buttered dish in a brisk oven. Eat warm or cold. _We_ like it better warm, with a little cream poured over it when served in saucers.

Second Week. Sunday. —— Soupe au Julienne. Roast Turkey. Cranberry Sauce. Mashed Potatoes, Browned. Stewed Corn. Celery. —— Tropical Snow. Light Cakes and Coffee. ——

SOUPE AU JULIENNE.

6 lbs. of lean beef. If possible, get it from the shin and have the accompanying bones cracked to bits. 6 quarts of water—cold.

Prepare the stock on Saturday. Put meat and bones into a pot with a close cover, pour on the water, and set it where it will heat very slowly. Boil, also very slowly, six hours, at the back of the range. Should the water sink fast in the pot, replenish from the boiling tea-kettle. At the end of six hours, turn the soup, meat, bones and all, into an earthenware vessel; pepper and salt it and set on the cellar floor, covered, until next day. Take off, then, the cake of excellent dripping from the top; strain the soup and set over the fire, about an hour before dinner, and heat gradually.

The vegetables should be—

2 carrots. 3 turnips. Half a head of cabbage. 1 pint Shaker corn, soaked overnight. 6 stalks of celery. 1 quart of tomatoes. 1 large onion.

Clean, scrape, and mince all these, except the corn and tomatoes. Cut the carrot into dice and stew, by itself, in a little cold water. Boil the corn in enough water to cover it, and add more hot water as it swells. Cover the minced vegetables with cold water, and so soon as it boils, turn it off, and replenish with boiling, from the kettle. This will take away the rank taste from cabbage and onion. When they are soft enough to pulp, strain well, but _without pressing_, into the soup. It is needless to add the vegetables, as the strength is in the liquor. Boil up and skim the soup before putting in the boiled corn and the canned tomatoes, which should be cut up small, and the unripe parts removed. Boil fifteen minutes, add the carrot, season to taste, and serve.[B]

ROAST TURKEY.

Rinse out the turkey well with soda and water; then with salt, lastly with fair water. Stuff with a dressing made of bread-crumbs, wet up with butter and water and seasoned to your taste. Stuff the craw and tie up the neck. Fill the body and sew up the vent. I need hardly say that these strings are to be clipped and removed after the fowl is roasted. Tie the legs to the lower part of the body that they may not “sprawl,” as the sinews shrink. Put into the dripping-pan, pour a teacupful of boiling water over it, and roast, basting often, allowing about ten minutes’ time for every pound. Be careful not to have your oven too hot—especially during the first half-hour or so. The turkey would, otherwise, be dry and blackened on the outside and raw within. And remember how much of the perfection of roasting meats and poultry depends upon basting faithfully. Boil the giblets tender in a little water. When the turkey is done, set it where it will keep warm; skim the gravy left in the pan; add a little boiling water; thicken slightly with browned flour; boil up once and add the giblets minced fine. Season to taste; give another boil, and send to table in a gravy-boat.

CRANBERRY SAUCE.

Wash and pick over the cranberries; put on to cook in a tin or porcelain vessel, allowing a teacupful of water to each quart. Stew slowly, stirring often until they are as thick as marmalade. Take from the fire in little over an hour, if they have cooked steadily, sweeten plentifully with white sugar, and strain through coarse tarlatan, or mosquito-net, into a mould wet with cold water.

Do this on Saturday. On Sunday, turn out into a glass dish.

MASHED POTATOES—BROWNED.

Having mashed them in the usual manner, mound them smoothly upon a shallow earthenware dish and set them in a quick oven, glazing them with butter as they color. They should be of a light brown. Slip the mound from a coarser to a finer platter by the help of your cake-turner. It is still better if you have one of the pretty “enamelled” bake-dishes lined with porcelain, with silver stands for the table. They are invaluable for puddings, scallops, etc.

STEWED CORN.

Stew one quart of canned corn in its own liquor, setting the vessel containing it in an outer, of hot water. Should the corn be exceptionally dry, add a little cold water. When tender, pour in enough milk to cover the corn, bring to a boil, and put in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour, and salt to taste. Stew gently, stirring well, three or four minutes, and turn into a deep dish. Keep the vessel containing the corn closely covered while it is cooking. The steam facilitates the process and preserves the color of the corn.

CELERY

Is the usual accompaniment of roast turkey. Prepare by selecting the blanched stalks, scraping off the rust, cutting off all but the youngest and tenderest tops, and laying these in cold water to crisp until wanted for the table. Garnish your turkey with alternate light and dark green sprigs of celery.

TROPICAL SNOW.

8 sweet oranges. 1 grated cocoanut. 1 glass of pale sherry. 1 cup of powdered sugar. 5 red bananas.

Peel and cut the oranges into small pieces by dividing each lobe crosswise into thirds. Extract the seeds and put a layer of the fruit in the bottom of a glass dish. Pour a little wine upon it, and strew with powdered sugar. The cocoanut must have been prepared by removing the rind and throwing it into cold water for some time before grating it. Over the layer of oranges spread one of cocoanut; cut the bananas into very thin, round slices, and lay these, one deep, upon the cocoanut. Repeat the order just given until your dish is full and the oranges and bananas used up. The top layer must be of cocoanut, heaped high, sprinkled with powdered sugar and garnished about the base with slices of banana. Eat soon, as the oranges toughen in the wine.

* * * * *

Supplement this pretty, but not substantial dessert by a salver of lady’s-fingers, and macaroons, and a good cup of coffee.

Second Week. Monday. —— Next Day’s Soup. Turkey Scallop. Panned Oysters. Roast Potatoes. Tomato Sauce. —— Floating Island. Tea. ——

NEXT DAY’S SOUP.

Julienne soup, like most other soups the base of which is meat, is better when warmed over the second day. Set it over the fire where it will heat, not too quickly, _almost_ to a boil. It will not “put back” the business of the day twenty minutes, and be a welcome addition to your dinner.

TURKEY SCALLOP.

Cut the meat from yesterday’s turkey. Crack the carcass to pieces, and put, with bits of skin, fat, and gristle, into a saucepan; cover with cold water, and set on to stew slowly into gravy. Chop the meat very fine; strew the bottom of a greased bake-dish with crumbs, and cover this with a thick stratum of minced turkey, stuffing, and tiny bits of butter. Pepper and salt, and put on more crumbs, then meat, and so on. Stale bread is better for this scallop than cracker-dust. Having used up all your meat and reserved enough crumbs for a thick upper crust, cover the dish and put aside in a cool place until your gravy is ready. It is economy of time, on Monday, to slip in such work as this between the many “must be’s” of the season. Your scallop will be none the worse for waiting some hours before, or after, the gravy is added, provided you keep it covered. When the gravy has drawn all the substance from bones, etc., strain it and return to the saucepan with what was left in yesterday’s gravy-boat, having first skimmed the latter. Boil up, thicken with browned flour wet up with cold water; bring to another boil; pour over the scallop, saving a little to wet the top. Now comes your layer of _fine_ bread-crumbs. Wet these with the gravy in a bowl, season to taste, beat to a soft paste with a couple of eggs and spread evenly over the scallop. Invert a plate over the bake-dish and set in the oven. When, at the end of half an hour or so, the gravy bubbles up at the sides, remove the cover and brown. Serve in the pudding-dish.

PANNED OYSTERS.

A four-course dinner is hardly in order in most households on Monday. You can, if you like, and have an efficient table-waiter, bring on oysters, as usual, between soup and meat. But there will be no violation of the “unities of the drama” of a family dinner, if you send around your oysters, scallop, and vegetables together.

1 quart of oysters. Some thin slices of toast. Butter, salt, and pepper.

Have ready some “patty pans”—the more nearly upright the sides the better. Cut stale bread in rounds to fit the bottoms of these. Toast, and lay a piece in each. Wet with oyster liquor and put into each pan as many oysters as it will conveniently hold. Pepper and salt; put a bit of butter upon each; arrange all in a large dripping-pan; invert another of the same size over it, and bake eight minutes, or until the oysters “ruffle.” Send hot to table in the pans.

You can toast the bread at breakfast-time if you choose. The oysters can go into the oven when the soup is poured out, and be in good season on the table. By this arrangement they will not interfere with the other “baked meats.” Panned oysters are always popular, and there is no more simple manner of cooking this favorite shell-fish.

ROAST POTATOES.

Choose large, fair potatoes, wash and wipe, and bake until soft to the grasp. Three-quarters of an hour should suffice. Take out, before the oysters go in; wipe off dust and ashes, and serve in a heated napkin. This will keep them hot a long time, yet prevent them from “sweating.”

TOMATO SAUCE.

Open a can of tomatoes at least one hour before it is to be used, and empty into an earthenware basin, that no close or metallic taste may linger about them. Cook in tin or porcelain. Stew half an hour, gently; add salt, pepper, a teaspoonful of sugar, and three of butter, a handful of dry bread-crumbs—or, if you have any stewed corn left from yesterday, use that instead of bread. Cook ten minutes longer, and turn out.

FLOATING ISLAND.

1 quart of milk. 4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately. 4 tablespoonfuls (great ones) of sugar. 2 teaspoonfuls extract of bitter almond or vanilla. (COLGATE’S extracts are the best in market, and _do not spoil_ within a few days after they are uncorked, as the manner of some is.) ½ cup of currant jelly.

Heat the milk to scalding, but not boiling. Beat the yolks, stir into them the sugar, and pour upon them, gradually and mixing well, a cupful of the hot milk. Return to the saucepan and boil until it begins to thicken. You can do this while breakfast is cooking, before the Moloch clothes-boiler goes on. When cool, flavor and pour into a glass dish. Heap upon the top a _méringue_ of the whites whipped until you can cut it, into which you have beaten the jelly, a teaspoonful at a time.

TEA.

“A comfortable cup of tea” never comes amiss to a fagged housewife, be it served at breakfast, luncheon, or dinner. The best way to insure its goodness—that is, that it be strong, hot and fresh—is to have your own tea-urn or kettle on the table, with a spirit-lamp burning under it. Scald the tea-pot, put in the tea; cover with boiling water; put a “cosey” or a thick napkin about it, and let it stand five minutes before filling with more _boiling_ water. Wait a minute longer and pour out.

Second Week. Tuesday. —— Mutton Soup with Tapioca. Salmon Pudding. Beefsteak. Potatoes à la Lyonnaise. Macaroni with Cheese. —— Susie’s Bread Pudding. ——

MUTTON SOUP WITH TAPIOCA.

3 lbs. perfectly lean mutton. The scrag makes good soup and costs little. 2 or 3 lbs. of bones, well pounded. 1 onion. 2 turnips. 2 carrots. 2 stalks of celery. A few sprigs of parsley. If you have any tomatoes left from yesterday, add them. 4 tablespoonfuls of pearl or granulated tapioca (not heaping spoonfuls). 4 quarts of water.

Put on the meat, cut in small pieces, with the bones, in two quarts of cold water. Heat very slowly, and when it boils pour in two quarts of hot water from the kettle. Chop the vegetables; cover with cold water. So soon as they begin to simmer, throw off the first water, replenishing with hot, and stew until they are boiled to pieces. The meat should cook steadily, never fast, five hours, keeping the pot-lid on. Strain into a great bowl; let it cool to throw the fat to the surface; skim and return to the fire. Season with pepper and salt, boil up, take off the scum; add the vegetables with their liquor. Heat together ten minutes, strain again, and bring to a slow boil before the tapioca goes in. This should have been soaked one hour in cold water, then cooked in the same within another vessel of boiling water until each grain is clear. It is necessary to stir up often from the bottom while cooking. Stir gradually into the soup until the tapioca is dissolved.

Send around grated cheese with this soup.

SALMON PUDDING.

1 can preserved salmon. 3 eggs. 4 tablespoonfuls melted butter. ½ cup fine bread-crumbs. Pepper, salt, and minced parsley.

Mince the fish, draining off the liquor for the sauce. Rub in the butter until thoroughly incorporated. Work in the crumbs, the seasoning, at last the beaten eggs. Put into a buttered pudding-mould, set in a dripping-pan full of hot water. Cover the mould, and steam in the oven, keeping the water in the pan at a fast boil, filling up as it evaporates, for one hour. Set it in cold water one minute when you have taken it from the oven. This will make it shrink from the sides and turn out easily upon a flat dish.

SAUCE FOR THE ABOVE.

1 cupful of milk heated to a boil and thickened with a tablespoonful of corn-starch, previously wet up with cold water. The liquor from the salmon. 1 great spoonful of butter. 1 raw egg, beaten light. Juice of half a lemon. Mace and cayenne pepper to taste.