Part 30

Cook the beef and bones in the water down to two quarts of liquid. Strain, cool, and skim. Meanwhile cut carrots and turnips into neat dice or strips, and parboil with the onions five minutes in boiling water. Return your skimmed and seasoned stock to the fire, and when almost on the boil, put in the parboiled and drained vegetables, with peas and corn. Simmer half an hour, add the tomato sauce, and cook ten minutes more, then pour out.

VEAL COLLOPS.

3 lbs. of lean veal, cut into square bits, two inches across, and more than half an inch thick; ¼ lb. fat salt pork, cut into lardoons; 1 cup of gravy taken from your soup before adding the vegetables; 1 cup of drawn butter; yolks of 2 eggs; juice of half a lemon; pepper, salt, nutmeg, and a pinch of mace.

Lard the veal with the pork, and lay in a pan of boiling water three minutes. Have ready a cup of gravy seasoned with nutmeg, pepper, salt, and lemon-peel. Put in the meat, and simmer half an hour very gently. Beat the yolks into the drawn butter; stir in the lemon-juice; add to the contents of the saucepan, and stir, carefully, not to break the lardoons, five minutes. Heap the collops into a block upon a dish, and pour on the gravy.

TOMATO SAUCE.

Peel, slice, and stew twenty minutes; then season with pepper, salt, butter rolled in flour, and sugar. Simmer five minutes, and pour out.

STRING-BEANS.

Cut off the ends; “string” well, paring both sides with a keen knife; cut into short pieces, and cook in boiling salt water forty minutes. Drain; salt, pepper, and stir in a tablespoonful of butter, heated with a teaspoonful of vinegar.

RAW CUCUMBERS.

Pare, lay in ice-water one hour; slice, and mix with pounded ice, in a glass bowl. Pass vinegar, salt, pepper, and oil with them.

APPLE COMPOTE AU GRATIN.

Make a quart of good apple sauce; rubbing it very smooth, and beating in, while hot, sugar to make it quite sweet, nutmeg, and a great spoonful of butter. Make a heap of it (it should be rather stiff when cold) upon a deep plate, or pie-dish. Wash all over with beaten egg, and sift rolled cracker thickly upon it. Bake half an hour, and eat hot with butter and sugar.

First Week. Wednesday. —— Beef Noodle Soup. Boiled Chickens and Tongue. Fried Egg-plant. Lima Beans. Potato Puffs. —— Peaches and Cream. ——

BEEF NOODLE SOUP.

First—to borrow an idea from worthy Mrs. Glass—make the noodles.

Take 4 eggs, beaten one minute; 3 tablespoonfuls of water; enough flour (prepared) for stiff dough, and a saltspoonful of salt. Make up, and knead fifteen minutes. Roll into a thin sheet, and cut half of it into long strips, less than half an inch wide, and these, again, across at intervals of four inches. Now, roll the other half of the sheet up very closely, making a long scroll like a quill. Cut this across, with a keen knife, into little wheels less than a quarter of an inch wide. Lay all in a sunny window to dry. Those intended for to-day will be fit to use in two hours. The rest will keep in a dry, cool place several days, and can be used as a vegetable, or in soups.

Make a stock of 2 lbs. of beef bones, the same of mutton bones and a slice of lean ham boiled in three quarts of water, with 1 onion, 1 carrot, and a bunch of herbs chopped. Boil down to two quarts, strain; cool, skim and season, and put in a good handful of the noodles—a few at a time—so soon as it boils. Simmer twenty minutes.

BOILED CHICKENS AND TONGUE.

Clean, wash, and truss the chickens; bind legs and wings down closely by tying up the fowls in white, perfectly clean bobbinet lace, or mosquito net. Put on in plenty of boiling salted water and cook one hour, unless they are large and tough. In that case cook _very_ slowly and long. Have ready a tongue, which has soaked several hours in warm water—boiled, skimmed, and trimmed. Lay upon a dish with a chicken on each side. Pour a few spoonfuls of melted butter, heated, with a little chopped parsley, over all three; set in a quick oven three minutes; anoint again with the butter and parsley, and send to table upon a hot, clean dish. Pass a boat of drawn butter with them. Save the chicken liquor, well seasoned, for to-morrow’s soup, also the water in which the tongue was boiled. If it is a smoked tongue, you can use the fat from the top for dripping. If corned, the liquor can be added to soups and gravies.

FRIED EGG-PLANT.

Please refer to Sunday of this week.

LIMA BEANS.

Shell and cook in boiling salted water about thirty minutes. Drain, dish, and stir in salt, pepper, and a good lump of butter.

POTATO PUFFS.

6 boiled potatoes, mashed soft, with a tablespoonful of milk, and as much butter; 3 beaten eggs; 6 tablespoonfuls of prepared flour, or enough to enable you to make into soft dough. Make into balls like doughnuts; roll these in flour, and fry to a fine brown in hot lard.

PEACHES AND CREAM.

Pare and slice the peaches just before dinner, and cover the glass dish containing them to exclude the air as much as may be, since they soon change color. Do not sugar them in the dish. They then become preserves—not fresh fruit. Pass “fruit sugar” and cream with them.

First Week. Thursday. —— Chickens and Corn Soup. Game Mutton. Green Peas. Beets. Mashed Potatoes. —— Huckleberry Shortcake. ——

CHICKEN AND CORN SOUP.

The pot-liquor from yesterday’s chickens; 12 ears of corn, grated from the cob; 1 cup of milk; 1 tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour; pepper, salt, and parsley.

Take the fat from the top of your liquor, and save in the dripping-pot. Heat the broth to a boil; put in the cobs from which the corn has been cut, and cook half an hour. Strain the soup; put again over the fire and put in the cut corn. N. B.—It is well to split each row of grains before cutting them off. Cook forty minutes, stir in butter and flour, with the parsley. Simmer five minutes, and serve.

GAME MUTTON.

Cut away the under-side of a nice leg of mutton, to make it as flat as may be without exposing the bone. Put the pieces thus trimmed off over the fire, with a quart of water, and stew down one-half. Cool, skim, season, and re-heat. Meantime, lard the upper side of the meat with slender lardoons. If you have not a larding-needle—which is a pity—use a long-bladed jack-knife to make diagonal incisions in the mutton; then thrust in the lardoons with your fingers, bringing both ends to the surface. Now rub the meat all over with hot butter and vinegar, letting the surplus trickle into the dripping-pan. Pour the boiling pint of gravy over the leg, and roast twelve minutes to the pound, basting every ten minutes, copiously. Just before taking it up, pour off the fat from the gravy; dip up a few spoonfuls of the brown juice, and, mixing with as much currant jelly, beat in a little browned flour, wet up with cold water. Baste the meat with this until a fine brown glaze covers it. Serve the gravy, well skimmed, in a boat. This is a delightful dish. Carve judiciously, so as to leave a seemly joint cold for to-morrow.

GREEN PEAS.

See Sunday of this week.

BEETS.

See Tuesday, Fourth Week in July.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual, and serve without browning.

HUCKLEBERRY SHORTCAKE.

Please see Wednesday, Second Week in June.

First Week. Friday. —— Sister Anne’s Soup. Boiled Bass. Cold Mutton. Boiled Potatoes. Tomato Salad. Green Corn Pudding. —— Apple Custard Pie. ——

SISTER ANNE’S SOUP.

12 potatoes, pared and quartered; 1 onion, sliced; tablespoonful of minced parsley; 1 cup of unskimmed milk (cream is still better); 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch, wet with cold milk; 1 teaspoonful of sugar; 2 quarts of boiling water; pinch of soda in the milk.

Parboil the potatoes ten minutes; throw off the water, and put on two quarts of boiling water. Cook in this one hour with the onion, replenishing from the kettle as it boils away. Then rub through a fine colander, season with pepper, salt, and parsley, and re-heat. When it bubbles up, stir in the butter and corn-starch; boil up, add the hot milk, and serve.

BOILED BASS.

Put enough water in the pot for the fish to swim in, easily. Add half a cup of vinegar, a teaspoonful of salt, an onion, a dozen black peppers, and a blade of mace. Sew up the fish in a piece of clean net, fitted to its shape. Heat slowly for the first half hour, then boil eight minutes, at least, to the pound, quite fast. Unwrap, and pour over it a cup of drawn butter, based upon the liquor in which the fish was boiled, with the juice of half a lemon stirred into it. Garnish with sliced lemon.

COLD MUTTON.

Put on the larded joint, cold, garnished with nasturtium flowers and curled parsley.

BOILED POTATOES.

Pass with the fish. Please see Monday of Fourth Week in July.

TOMATO SALAD.

Peel with a sharp knife. Slice, arrange in a salad-dish, and pour over it a dressing such as you made for potato salad on Sunday of this week.

GREEN CORN PUDDING.

12 ears of sweet corn, each row of grains split lengthwise, then cut close to the cob; 4 eggs; 2 cups of milk; 1 tablespoonful of sugar, rubbed up with one of butter; 1 teaspoonful of salt; 2 tablespoonfuls of flour.

Mix as you would a rice pudding, and bake one hour in a buttered dish. Serve in the bake-dish, hot.

APPLE CUSTARD PIE.

Make a _very_ sweet apple sauce in which not a lump remains. To each cupful add two eggs beaten light and half a cupful of perfectly fresh milk. Have ready some paste-shells in pie-plates, fill with the custard and bake at once without an upper crust.

First Week. Saturday. —— Pot au Feu. Ham and Eggs. Casserole of Potato. String-Beans. Cream Squash. —— Jelly Omelette. ——

POT AU FEU.

5 lbs. of brisket of beef—bones cracked, and meat sliced; the broken bones of your cold mutton, after you have sliced off the meat; 2 grated carrots; 2 grated turnips; 1 large fried onion; bunch of sweet herbs; 1 whole carrot; 1 whole turnip, cut into dice; 1 very small cauliflower, the bunches clipped apart; 6 quarts of water; pepper and salt.

Put on the meat, bones, onion, grated vegetables and herbs in the soup-pot with the water; cover closely and cook slowly five hours. Then strain; take out the meat and set aside with half the stock, well seasoned, for Sunday. Put on the ice when cold. Cool and skim the rest; season; put back in the pot with a parboiled turnip, carrot, and cauliflower, the latter clipped into small clusters; the others cut into dice. Simmer half an hour, and serve.

BROILED HAM AND EGGS.

Cut slices of cooked ham of equal size; broil upon a gridiron over a clear fire. Lay upon a hot dish; pepper, and spread each slice with a mixture of melted butter and a very little made mustard. Lay on each a poached egg, trimmed neatly.

CASSEROLE OF POTATO.

Mash eight or ten potatoes smooth with butter, salt, and work in the beaten whites of two eggs. Then fill a greased jelly-mould with it, pressing down firmly. Set aside to harden. When cold, scoop out about a teacupful, or less, from the middle, leaving firm, thick walls. Fill the cavity with a mince of cold mutton, highly seasoned, mixed with crumbs and moistened with gravy, and not too soft. Fit a piece of fried bread in the mouth of the filled cavity; turn out the casserole carefully upon a stone-china or block-tin dish; wash all over with beaten egg and set in a hot oven ten minutes to heat and glaze. The mince should be very hot when it goes in and stiff enough to keep its shape.

STRING-BEANS.

See Tuesday of this week.

CREAM SQUASH.

Boil and mash as usual; then return to the saucepan with half a cup of milk to a quart of mashed squash; and when this simmers, stir in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour; pepper and salt to taste. Stir three minutes and pour out.

JELLY OMELETTE.

Beat six eggs light—yolks and whites separately; then mix them and stir in lightly a tablespoonful of powdered sugar. Put a tablespoonful of butter into a frying-pan, and, when it boils, pour in the omelette. Lift at the edges and bottom with your spatula, as it cooks, and when “set” in the middle, put on one side of it a few spoonfuls of fruit-jelly; fold over, and turn out upon a hot dish. Strew powdered sugar over it.

Second Week. Sunday. —— Noodle Soup. Braised Chicken. Green Corn Sauté. Fried Egg-plant. Baked Tomatoes. —— Ice Cream and Cake. ——

NOODLE SOUP.

Take the fat from the top of your cold stock; put the latter in a soup-pot; heat to a gentle boil. Strain through thin muslin; set again over the fire; boil and skim one minute; add nearly a cupful of dried noodles and simmer twenty minutes. If you have no noodles made, break a handful of vermicelli small, and cook the same length of time.

BRAISED CHICKEN.

Clean, wash, and stuff a pair of fowls. Lay slices of fat salt pork in a broad saucepan, and upon these the chickens with thin slices of pork tied over their breasts. Put two cupfuls of hot water in the pan, cover very securely and cook slowly an hour and a half—longer should the chickens be tough—and this is a good way to cook such. At the end of that time remove the chicken to the hot-water dish; cover to keep hot; strain the gravy and return half to a small saucepan. Add a little browned flour wet with cold water, and boil fast to a bright brown glaze. Put the fowls in a quick oven; take off the pork; brush all over with the glaze, and when brown, serve. Take the fat from the reserved gravy, add the water in which the giblets were boiled; the chopped giblets themselves, and a little browned flour, also pepper. Boil up and serve in a boat.

FRIED EGG-PLANT.

Please see Sunday of First Week in August.

GREEN CORN SAUTÉ.

Boil; then cut from the cob; have ready in a saucepan a little butter, seasoned with salt and pepper. Stir in the corn and shake and toss until hot and glazed with the butter.

BAKED TOMATOES.

Pare with a sharp knife; cut in thick slices. Put a layer of crumbs in the bottom of a bake-dish; wet them with a little of your soup-stock, or other gravy; cover with tomatoes, seasoned with butter, salt, pepper and sugar, more crumbs moistened with gravy, and so on, to the top of the dish, having well-moistened crumbs for the last layer. Cover, and bake half an hour; then uncover and brown quickly. Serve in the bake-dish.

ICE CREAM AND CAKE.

For directions, too full and explicit to need repetition, please see Sunday, Second Week in July.

Second Week. Monday. —— A Monday Soup. Scallop with Baked Eggs. Mashed Potatoes. Green Peas. Raw Cucumbers. —— Huckleberry Cake and Iced Coffee. ——

A MONDAY SOUP.

Strip all the meat from your chicken-bones, and set in a cool place, while you break the skeletons to pieces, and put in a soup-pot at the back of the range, with the dressing, skin, and gristly bits. Pour on three quarts of water and leave it to simmer—always covered—for three hours. Strain, rubbing the stuffing through the colander; cool and skim; return to the fire with a cupful of yesterday’s soup (there is always a _little_ left over, if it is only saved from the swill-pail), also strained. Have ready six Boston crackers split and dried in the oven for half an hour, but not scorched. Butter these; lay in the heated tureen; pour upon them two cups of boiling milk, and let soak, covered, while you salt and pepper your soup, and add a little minced parsley. Should there not be dressing enough to thicken it well, stir in a little corn-starch, wet with milk. Boil up, and pour upon the crackers. This soup need not consume fifteen minutes of your time, and is very savory.

SCALLOP AND BAKED EGGS.

Mince your chicken, but not small; cover the bottom of a pudding-dish with fine crumbs; put in the chicken, wet with gravy and seasoned to taste; strew a good coating of crumbs on top, and this with butter-bits. Set, covered, in the oven. When the gravy bubbles to the surface remove the lid and break upon the scallop enough eggs to cover it well. Pepper and salt; lay a piece of butter on each, and bake until well “set.”

MASHED POTATOES.

Boil, mash, and whip to a cream with a fork, mixing in butter, milk, salt and a dust of pepper, as you go on. Serve in a deep dish.

GREEN PEAS.

See Sunday of First Week in August.

RAW CUCUMBERS.

Pare; lay in ice-water one hour; slice and pile upon pounded ice in a glass dish, sending around condiments with them.

HUCKLEBERRY CAKE.

This cake should have been made on Saturday. It keeps well, and is much better the second day than the first.

5 eggs; 3 cups of powdered sugar; 1 cup of butter; 1 cup of sweet milk; 4 cups of prepared flour; 1 teaspoonful mixed nutmeg and cinnamon; 2 cups of huckleberries dredged with flour; ¼ teaspoonful of soda stirred in boiling water and mixed with the milk.

Cream butter and sugar; add the beaten yolks, the milk, the flour, alternately, with the whipped whites, and, lastly, the dredged berries. Bake in small loaves, or in patty-pans, in a moderate oven, covering as it begins to brown. It takes a longer time to bake than plain cake.

ICED COFFEE.

Make more coffee than needed for breakfast. Set by three or four cups of strong coffee, adding nearly one-third as much boiled milk, while both are hot. Set in ice, and, in serving, put a lump of ice in each glass.

Second Week. Tuesday. —— Tapioca Soup. Beefsteak. Tomatoes and Corn, Stewed. Potatoes in Jackets. Mashed Squash. —— Peaches and Cream. ——

TAPIOCA SOUP.

2 lbs. lean veal; 2 lbs. beef-bones, cracked; 1 slice of corned ham; 1 carrot; bunch of herbs; 1 onion; 8 large tomatoes; 1 tablespoonful of sugar; pepper and salt; ¼ cup granulated tapioca, previously soaked two hours in a little cold water; 3 quarts of water.

Slice the meat and vegetables, and put on—leaving out the tomatoes—in the water, to boil slowly four hours. At the end of the second hour, skim well, and add the tomatoes. When the time is up, strain the soup, take out the meat, and rub the vegetables through the colander. Cool and skim; season with sugar, pepper, salt, and minced herbs, and heat up anew. When it boils, add the tapioca; stir clear, and serve.

BEEFSTEAK.

Flatten with the broad side of a hatchet, and broil upon a buttered gridiron over a clear fire. Lay upon a hot dish, pepper, salt, and put a bountiful spoonful of butter, cut into bits, upon it. Cover with a hot dish or lid for five minutes before it is to be carved.

TOMATOES AND CORN, STEWED.

Slice eight large tomatoes, when you have skinned them. Add the corn cut from six ears; put into a saucepan and stew twenty minutes; season with pepper, salt, and sugar. Add a great lump of butter rolled in flour, and cook ten minutes longer.

POTATOES IN JACKETS.

Put on in boiling salt water, and cook twenty minutes; then throw in a cup of cold water. Bring rapidly to the second boil, and, when a fork pierces the largest easily, turn off the water, and set the uncovered pot upon the range, to dry off the moisture. Serve in a dish lined with a napkin.

MASHED SQUASH.

Pare, quarter, lay in cold water ten minutes, and cook soft in hot, salted water. Mash in a hot colander very quickly; season with butter, pepper, and salt, and dish very hot.

PEACHES AND CREAM.

See Wednesday of First Week in August.

Second Week. Wednesday. —— Cream Soup. Baked Calf’s Head, with Mushrooms. Spinach. Succotash. Lettuce. —— Apple Pudding. ——

CREAM SOUP.

The liquor in which your calf’s head was boiled; 1 onion; bunch of parsley; 1 blade of mace; 1 cup of milk; yolks of 2 eggs; pepper and salt; 1 teaspoonful corn-starch, rubbed in cold water.

Boil your calf’s head early in the day, until you can just handle it without breaking it to pieces. It will be firmer for baking if left to get cold at this juncture. Skim the pot-liquor, put in the sliced onion, parsley, and mace, and boil slowly two hours. Strain, cool, skim, season, and thicken slightly with the corn-starch. Beat the yolks in a bowl, add the boiling milk, and pour into the heated tureen. Add the soup, stir up well, and serve.

BAKED CALF’S HEAD, WITH MUSHROOMS.

Set the cold boiled calf’s head in the oven; pour a cup of pot-liquor, boiling hot, over it, and bake half an hour, basting very often. Then dredge well with flour and baste twice with butter. Now coat thickly with a paste made of the brains, boiled, cooled and beaten smooth with an egg, and seasoned with pepper and salt. When this has browned, dish the head. Strain the gravy, add half a cupful of mushrooms, boiled and chopped, a very little browned flour, the juice of a lemon, and, if needed, a little boiling water. Stew one minute and send up in a boat.

SPINACH.

Boil in hot water, a little salt, about twenty minutes. Drain and press; then chop very fine and return to the fire with a good lump of butter, salt, pepper, sugar, a few tablespoonfuls of cream, and beat to a smooth mixture like custard. Pour into a deep dish and serve.

SUCCOTASH.

Cut the corn from six or seven cobs; mix with it one-third the quantity of Lima beans; just cover with water, and stew gently half an hour. Turn off most of the water, add a cup of milk, and when this heats, a great lump of butter rolled in flour, with pepper and salt. Simmer half an hour longer, stirring up often.

LETTUCE.

Pick apart the heads and pile upon pounded ice, on a glass dish. Pass vinegar, pepper, salt, and powdered sugar with it.

APPLE PUDDING.

Sliced tart apples; bread-crumbs; butter; sugar; cinnamon.

Butter a pudding-dish very well, and put in a layer of crumbs; then dots of butter; next, sliced apples strewed with sugar and cinnamon—more buttered crumbs. Repeat the layers in this order until your dish is full, with crumbs on top. Bake, covered, half an hour—or forty minutes for a large dish. Turn out, pour liquid sauce over it, and eat hot with more.

Second Week. Thursday. —— Beef Bouillon. Boiled Beef and Vegetables. Mashed Potatoes. Raw Tomatoes. —— Peach Pie. ——

BEEF BOUILLON.

6 lbs. of round of beef, bound into a good shape with tape; 3 small carrots; 3 turnips; 8 very small young onions, and one large one stuck with four cloves. Bunch of herbs; 1 pint of string-beans and same of green peas; 1 small head of cauliflower; 4 quarts of water; pepper and salt; noodles, rice or sago.

Put the beef whole into the water, and heat slowly to a boil. When you have taken off the scum, dip out a pint of the liquor, and put by for cooking the vegetables. Add to the liquor left with the beef one sliced carrot, one turnip, also sliced, the large onion and the herbs. Stew slowly four hours; take out the beef and keep hot over boiling water. Strain the soup, pulping the vegetables; cool and skim, return to the fire, and, when it heats, add noodles, boiled rice or soaked German sago. Simmer five minutes and pour into the tureen.

THE BEEF AND VEGETABLES.

Pare the two turnips and two carrots; string the beans; top, tail and skin the onions, and cook these, with the cauliflower, half an hour in the pint of hot broth, slightly salted. Then add the peas, and cook twenty minutes more. Serve the beef upon a hot dish; slice the turnips and carrots and clip the cauliflower into bunches, and lay, each kind of vegetable by itself, about the meat. Make a sauce by heating and skimming a cupful of the soup-broth, stirring into it a great spoonful of butter rolled in a heaping teaspoonful of flour, and, when it has thickened, seasoning with pepper, salt, a little French mustard, and the juice of half a lemon. Serve in a boat.

MASHED POTATOES.

Treat as directed on Monday of this week.

RAW TOMATOES.

See Friday of First Week in August.

PEACH PIE.

Pare, but do not stone ripe, rich peaches. Have ready your pie-plates lined with a good paste; put in the fruit; sweeten well; cover with pastry, and bake. Eat fresh—not warm—with powdered sugar sifted over them.