Part 31

Second Week. Friday. —— Eel Soup. Broiled Chickens. Broiled Tomatoes. Scalloped Squash. Grape Jelly. —— Watermelons and Nutmeg Melons. ——

EEL SOUP.

4 lbs. of eels; 3 quarts of water; 1 chopped onion; minced parsley; a blade of mace; pepper, salt, and lemon-juice; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in flour; dripping.

Clean the eels, removing all the fat, and cut into short pieces. Fry a chopped onion brown in plenty of dripping; wipe the eels dry and fry them in the same. Put into a pot with the onion and mace; cover with three quarts of cold water, and stew slowly two hours. Then season; stir in the floured butter; simmer three minutes, add the lemon-juice, and pour out.

BROILED CHICKENS.

Clean, wash off the blood, but do not soak; split down the backs, and lay upon a gridiron, or sticks laid over a dripping-pan of boiling water. Cover with another pan and steam half an hour, in the oven or upon the range. Wipe off the moisture lightly, and cook upon a buttered gridiron over hot coals, turning when it drips. Let it get tender and brown without scorching. When done, lay upon a hot dish; butter well, pepper and salt, and send up at once.

BROILED TOMATOES.

Slice fine ripe tomatoes without peeling them, and cook, held between the wires of an oyster-broiler, until hissing hot and slightly browned. Lay upon a hot dish, and dress with a mixture of butter heated almost to boiling, with a little vinegar, salt, pepper, and mustard.

SCALLOPED SQUASH.

Mash in the usual way; put upon a layer of crumbs laid in the bottom of a pudding-dish, having seasoned the squash with butter, pepper, and salt. Pour a little cream on top, and strew with buttered crumbs. Bake, covered, half an hour, then brown.

NUTMEG AND WATER MELONS.

Keep both on ice for several hours. Serve, by wiping the watermelon and laying it whole upon a long dish, to be carved at table. If cut up too long before it is to be eaten, it becomes insipid. Cut the nutmeg melons in two; take out the seeds, and put a lump of ice in each half.

Second Week. Saturday. —— Vegetable Soup with Eggs. Larded Mutton Chops. Green Peas. Boiled Green Corn. Whole Boiled Potatoes. —— Blackberry Roley-Poley. ——

VEGETABLE SOUP WITH EGGS.

3 lbs. of beef—coarse and cut into strips; 2 lbs. veal, from the scrag; 2 lbs. marrow-bones of any kind; 2 carrots; 1 turnip; 1 large onion; 6 tomatoes; corn from three ears, _grated_ off; 1 pint of green peas; sweet herbs; pepper and salt; 6 quarts of water; 6 or 8 eggs.

Put the meat, bones, and all the vegetables on in the water, early in the day, and boil slowly five or six hours. Should the liquid sink more than one-third, add boiling water. The meat should be in rags, and the vegetables broken to pieces. Strain; pulp the vegetables through the colander; cool, and skim the stock, and season well. Divide, and set aside a goodly portion for Sunday, keeping it on ice. Boil up, skim again, pour into the tureen, and lay on the surface the poached _yolks_ of as many eggs as there are people to be served. Use the whites for white, silver, or lady cake.

LARDED MUTTON CHOPS.

Trim off all the fat and skin, leaving a bare piece of bone at the end of each. Lard closely with fat salt pork, passing the lardoons quite through the meat. Put on in a saucepan, with enough gravy to cover them, and what remains of your can of mushrooms from day before yesterday. They will have kept well on ice. Cut each mushroom in two. Cover, and simmer gently until the chops are tender. (The gravy should be cold when it is poured upon them.) Take up the chops; arrange upon a dish. Add a heaping teaspoonful of currant jelly and a little browned flour to the gravy, boil once, and pour over the meat. Garnish with sliced lemon.

GREEN PEAS.

See Sunday of First Week in August.

BOILED GREEN CORN.

See Sunday of First Week in August.

POTATOES BOILED WHOLE.

Treat as directed on Tuesday of this week, only stripping off the skins after they are boiled, and, when they are dished, dressing them with hot butter mixed with minced parsley and pepper and salt. Serve very hot.

BLACKBERRY ROLEY POLEY.

1 quart of prepared flour; 1 heaping tablespoonful of lard; and the same of butter, rubbed with a little salt, into the flour; enough milk—about two cups—to make soft dough.

Roll out into a sheet a quarter of an inch thick. Strew, leaving a narrow margin at the sides, with sound blackberries, sprinkled with sugar. Roll tightly. Sew up with a “felled” seam, in a cloth, leaving room for swelling. Put into a pot of boiling water, and keep at the boil an hour and a quarter. Dip the cloth in cold water to loosen it, and turn out. Eat cold with hard sauce.

Third Week. Sunday. —— Tomato Soup. Fillet of Veal. Chopped Potatoes. Green Corn Pudding. String-Beans. —— Peach Lèche-Crêma. Marbled Cake. ——

TOMATO SOUP.

Take the fat from the top of your soup-stock; heat, and add a pint of strained tomato sauce well seasoned. Simmer ten minutes, and it is ready.

FILLET OF VEAL.

Boil, blanch, and chop two sweetbreads; mix with them a slice of cooked corned ham, minced, and some fine bread-crumbs; season with pepper, salt, a pinch of lemon-peel, and bind with a beaten egg. Stuff a fillet of veal with this mixture. Bind a broad strip of muslin about it, as wide as the meat is high; set in a dripping-pan, and pour a cup of hot water around it. Cover the top with milk in which has been mixed a tablespoonful of melted butter. Pour on carefully so as not to run down the sides. Bake, basting for one hour with milk and butter, for another hour with _cream_, in which has been stirred a pinch of soda. Unbind the muslin from the fillet, dish it; add to the gravy a little hot water and a teaspoonful of corn-starch wet in cold water; boil up, and pour half upon the veal, the rest into a boat.

CHOPPED POTATOES.

Chop cold, boiled potatoes into rather coarse dice; cover with warm milk in which a pinch of soda has been dropped; when very hot, stir in a lump of floured butter and a little minced parsley and onion. Simmer five minutes and serve.

GREEN CORN PUDDING.

See Friday of First Week in August.

STRING-BEANS.

See Tuesday of First Week in August.

PEACH LÈCHE-CRÊMA.

12 ripe peaches, pared, stoned and cut in halves; 3 eggs, and the whites of 2 more; ½ cup of powdered sugar; 2 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch wet in cold milk; 1 tablespoonful melted butter; 1 pint of milk.

Scald the milk, stir in the corn-starch, and, when it begins to thicken, take from the fire and put in the butter. When lukewarm, whip in the beaten yolks until all are very light. Put a thick substratum of peaches into a dish; strew with sugar, and pour the creamy compound over them. Bake in a quick oven ten minutes and spread with a _méringue_ made of five whites whipped stiff with a little powdered sugar. Shut the oven-door until this is firm. Eat cold with cream.

Third Week. Monday. —— Quick Soup. Dijon Paté. Lima Beans. Mashed Potatoes. Raw Tomatoes. —— Pears, Peaches, and Bananas. Iced Coffee, Crackers and Cheese. ——

QUICK SOUP.

2 lbs. of raw lean beef, chopped _very_ fine; 3 pints of boiling water in which an onion, a turnip, and a carrot—all pared and sliced—have been boiled twenty minutes; pepper, salt, and a tablespoonful of tomato catsup.

Put the beef into a tin pail and set in cold water. Bring this slowly to a boil, then pour in the boiling water upon the smoking hot meat inside. Cover closely, boil for half an hour in the hot water; turn into a saucepan; season, simmer ten minutes, strain, pressing and wringing the meat, and pour into the tureen.

DIJON PATÉ.

1 large cup of cold boiled rice; 2 raw eggs; ½ cup of milk; 2 cups of minced veal; ½ cupful of gravy or drawn butter; 4 hard boiled eggs, sliced; pepper and salt.

Butter a pudding-mould—one without a cylinder—and line it with a thick coating of the rice worked to a paste with the milk and beaten eggs, and seasoned with pepper and salt. The paste should be quite stiff. Line the inside of this in turn with the sliced eggs, and within this pack the minced veal, wet with gravy and seasoned to taste. The stuffing of the fillet of veal should be chopped with the meat. Cover with rice; put on the lid of the mould; set it in boiling water and cook one hour. Turn out carefully, and serve with a good gravy in a boat. The gravy, if you have no other, can be made of odds-and-ends of the veal boiled down in water. Or a cup of your tomato soup of yesterday will make a good sauce.

LIMA BEANS.

See Wednesday, First Week in August.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual, and do not brown.

RAW TOMATOES.

See Friday of First Week in August.

PEARS, PEACHES, AND BANANAS.

Arrange tastefully in fruit dishes or baskets, with green leaves about them.

ICED COFFEE, CRACKERS, AND CHEESE.

See Monday of Second Week in August.

Third Week. Tuesday. —— Mutton Broth. Brunswick Stew. Onions Stewed Brown. Potatoes à la Duchesse. Cucumbers. —— Peaches and Cream. Sponge-Cake. ——

MUTTON BROTH.

3 lbs. of lean mutton; 2 turnips; 1 carrot; 2 onions; bunch of parsley; 1 cup of milk; 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch; 3 quarts of water.

Boil meat, cut into strips, and the vegetables, sliced, in the water two hours and a half. The water should be reduced one-third. Strain, taking out the meat, and rubbing the vegetables to a pulp through the colander. Cool, skim, season, and return to the fire. Heat, stir in the corn-starch wet up with water, and pour into the tureen. Add the milk, boiling hot, stir well, and serve.

BRUNSWICK STEW.

3 fine gray squirrels, skinned and cleaned—joint as you would chickens for a fricassee; ½ lb. of fat salt pork; 1 onion, sliced; 12 ears of corn cut from the cob; 6 large tomatoes, pared and sliced; 3 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in flour; parsley; enough water to cover the squirrels.

Put on squirrels, pork—cut up small—onion, and parsley in the water, and bring to a boil. When this has lasted ten minutes, put in the corn, and stew until the squirrels are tender. Then add the tomatoes, cut up thin. Twenty minutes later, stir in the butter and flour. Simmer ten minutes, and pour into a large, deep dish.

ONIONS STEWED BROWN.

10 or 12 small onions; 1 cup of gravy from your soup, before it is strained; seasoning.

Top, tail, and skin the onions. Parboil for ten minutes; throw off the water, and cover with the cooled and skimmed gravy. Season, and stew until the onions are tender. Then stir in a tablespoonful of butter rubbed up with browned flour. Simmer five minutes.

POTATOES À LA DUCHESSE.

Work a beaten egg and a little butter into each cup of mashed potatoes; put a tablespoonful of butter into a saucepan, and stir and turn the potato in it until very hot. Do not let it “catch” on the sides. Turn out, and mould in greased muffin-rings. Leave it to cool in these; then loosen gently upon a greased baking-pan, and bake until delicately browned.

CUCUMBERS.

See Monday of Second Week in August.

PEACHES AND CREAM, WITH SPONGE-CAKE.

See Wednesday of First Week in August.

Third Week. Wednesday. —— Ox-cheek Soup. Roast Beef. Mashed Squash. Green Corn cut from the Cob. Fried Egg-plant. —— Open Apple Custard Tart. ——

OX-CHEEK SOUP.

The meat from the cheeks of an ox-head; 2 sliced onions, fried brown; sweet herbs; 1 small cup of rice; 1 teaspoonful of curry-powder; 3 quarts of water; pepper and salt; bones of the head.

Cut the meat very small; put with the fried onions and bones into a pot, and pour on the water. Stew slowly three hours. Strain, cool, skim; put in seasoning, herbs, and the rice, previously soaked two hours. Stew half an hour; add the curry-powder, wet in cold water; boil up, and pour out.

ROAST BEEF.

Lay a neat cut of rib-roast, trimmed and skewered, in a dripping-pan; dash a cupful of boiling water all over it, and roast ten minutes to the pound, if you like it rare. Just before taking it up, baste it with butter—the previous and abundant bastings should have been with its own gravy—dredge with flour, and, as it browns, again with butter. Pour off the fat from the gravy before thickening and seasoning it. Much of the so-called beef gravy is only fit for the dripping-pot.

MASHED SQUASH.

Pare, quarter, seed, and boil in hot, salted water. Drain, and mash in a hot colander; season with pepper, salt, and butter, and dish hot.

GREEN CORN CUT FROM THE COB.

After boiling, cut the corn, with a sharp knife, from the cob, into a hot dish; stir in butter, pepper, and salt, and cover to keep hot until eaten.

FRIED EGG-PLANT.

Please see Sunday, First Week in August.

OPEN APPLE CUSTARD TART.

12 juicy, tart apples; 1 cup of sugar; grated peel of a lemon; 1 pint of milk; 3 eggs, and 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar, for the custard; good pie-paste.

Put a border of pie-crust around the flat brim of a pie-plate, without lining the bottom. Fill the plate with sliced apple, sugared, with lemon-peel scattered here and there. Put in a _little_ water. Cover with a crust, in the centre of which you have marked a circle with a cake-cutter, or large tumbler. Bake the pie; with a sharp knife, cut out the marked circle, lift the centre-piece, and fill the inside of the pie with a warm custard made of the milk, eggs, and sugar, boiled until it begins to thicken. Eat cold.

Third Week. Thursday. —— Mrs. B.’s Corn Soup. Smothered Chicken. Stuffed Tomatoes. Scalloped Potatoes. Beets. —— Cottage Pudding. ——

MRS. B.’S CORN SOUP.

15 ears of corn, grated from the cob as close as the grater will take off the grains; the bones and other “trimmings” of yesterday’s roast beef, both raw and cooked; 1 onion; 1 cup of milk; 2 great spoonfuls of butter, rolled in flour; pepper and salt; 3 quarts of water.

Put the empty cobs, the bones, etc., with the onion, on in the water, and stew two hours. Strain off the water, and put the grated corn into it with pepper and salt. Stew gently one hour; add the floured butter; simmer ten minutes, and pour into the tureen. Add the milk, boiling hot; stir up and serve.

SMOTHERED CHICKEN.

Split a pair of young, but well-grown chickens down the back, as for broiling. Lay flat in a dripping-pan; pour a cup of boiling water over them, and invert another pan over them so as to cover closely. Roast half an hour, and baste very freely with butter and water. Ten minutes later baste with gravy from the pan. In five more, with melted butter, profusely. Bake until the fowls are tender and well colored. Dish, salt and pepper them; thicken and season the gravy; pour some over the chickens and send up the rest in a boat.

STUFFED TOMATOES.

Choose large, smooth tomatoes; cut a piece from the top of each; take out the inside, taking care not to cut the skin. Chop up the tomato-pulp with a little cold beef; add one-fourth as much bread-crumbs as you have pulp, and wet all with beef-gravy, seasoning with a little sugar, pepper, and salt. Fill the tomatoes with this force-meat; put on the top slices; pack the stuffing that remains between the tomatoes, and pour gravy upon this; cover and bake from forty to forty-five minutes.

SCALLOPED POTATOES.

2 cups of mashed potatoes; 3 tablespoonfuls of cream; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; yolks of 4 hard-boiled eggs, 1 raw beaten egg; handful fine crumbs; pepper and salt.

Beat up the hot potatoes light with butter, cream, raw egg and seasoning. Put a layer in the bottom of a bake-dish; cover with thin slices of yolk; salt and pepper; put on more potato, and go on thus until the dish is full. Cover the top layer of potato with crumbs, and bake, covered, half an hour, then brown quickly. Serve in the bake-dish.

BEETS.

Cut off the tops, taking care not to scratch the skins. Boil at least one hour in hot salted water; scrape and slice. Put into a deep dish and season with a few spoonfuls of hot water mixed with as much vinegar and a little pepper and salt.

COTTAGE PUDDING.

1 cup of milk; 1 tablespoonful of butter rubbed in a cup of sugar; 2 eggs; 3 cups of prepared flour; a little salt.

Beat the yolks into the butter and sugar; add the milk, then the flour, alternately with the whisked whites. Bake in a cake-mould; turn out hot upon a plate, cut in slices, and eat with sweet sauce.

Third Week. Friday. —— Fish Chowder. Omelette with Gravy. Boiled Corn. Potato Salad. —— Peach Batter Pudding. ——

FISH CHOWDER.

3 lbs. of cod, or halibut, or any other firm white fish; 8 potatoes, sliced and parboiled; 1 sliced onion, large; ½ lb. fat salt pork, cut into dice; 2 cups of boiling milk, with a pinch of soda stirred in; 6 Boston crackers, split and buttered thickly; chopped parsley, pepper, and salt to taste; 1 lemon, pared and cut into thin slices; claret.

Fry the pork in its own fat; add the onions, and, when they are brown, drain from the fat. Put a layer of pork into the soup pot; then, one of potatoes, peppered; next, fish, onions, more pork, and so on. Pour in a glass of claret, then just enough boiling water to cover all. Stew gently half an hour. Line the tureen with buttered crackers; pour on the boiling milk, and set the tureen in boiling water until the chowder is done. Just before taking it up add the parsley. Boil one minute, and pour out.

OMELETTE WITH GRAVY.

6 or 8 eggs; 1 tablespoonful of cream; 1 scant cup of gravy left from or made of the remains of yesterday’s chickens; butter for frying.

Put a good piece of butter in a frying-pan, and when it hisses, pour in the beaten eggs. Shake and loosen them as they form; fold over in the middle; invert the pan over a hot dish, and pour hot, savory gravy around it.

BOILED CORN.

See Sunday of First Week in August.

POTATO SALAD.

See Sunday of First Week in August.

PEACH BATTER PUDDING.

12 rich ripe peaches, pared, but not stoned; 1 quart of milk; about 10 tablespoonfuls of prepared flour; 5 beaten eggs; 1 tablespoonful melted butter; 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Set the peaches closely together in a buttered pudding-dish; strew with sugar, and pour over them a batter made of the ingredients above named.

Third Week. Saturday. —— White Mock Turtle Soup. Calf’s Liver and Bacon. Breaded Egg-plant. Corn and Tomatoes. Made Mustard. String-Beans. —— Nutmeg Melons and Peaches. ——

WHITE MOCK TURTLE SOUP.

1 calf’s head, cleaned with the skin on; ½ lb. lean ham, cut into strips; 1 carrot; 1 onion; 1 turnip; bunch of sweet herbs; 4 tablespoonfuls of flour and the same of butter; 1 cup of milk; 6 quarts of water; pepper and salt.

Boil the head in the water with the ham, onion, turnip, and carrot sliced, and the chopped herbs. Cover, and stew slowly until the bones fall from the meat. Take out the head; return the bones to the soup. Divide the meat into two portions; set by one to cool for present use; put the other, highly seasoned, into a large bowl, and strain half the stock over it. When cool, set on the ice for to-morrow. Chop the calf’s ears, and the less desirable parts of the meat reserved for to-day, fine, and put back upon the bones in the soup. Boil gently half an hour. Meantime, put the butter into a frying-pan, and when hot, stir in the flour. It must not get at all brown. When it is again bubbling hot, stir in a cupful of the soup; boil one minute, and pour it out to cool. Strain your soup; stir in the cooled mixture; boil up and skim, when you have seasoned quite highly; put in three or four handfuls of meat-dice cut up from the fat, gelatinous parts of the cold head; simmer to a boil; pour into the tureen, add the milk, boiling hot, and send to table.

CALF’S LIVER AND BACON.

3 lbs. of fresh liver; 1 lb. of streaked bacon; juice of a lemon; 1 tablespoonful of flour, and same of butter; pepper, salt, and onion.

Soak the liver in cold water fifteen minutes; wipe dry, and cut in strips an inch wide, and three long. Cut as many thinner strips of bacon, and fry these three minutes in their own fat; take out and keep hot while you fry an onion—sliced—with the liver in the same fat. Salt, pepper, and dredge the liver in flour before it goes in. When it is done lay in two rows, the length of the dish, with a strip of bacon between each piece and the next. Strain the fat, and return to the pan with a cupful of hot water, the butter rubbed into the flour, and, when it has boiled up, the juice of a lemon. Pour over the liver. Pass mustard with this dish.

BREADED EGG-PLANT.

Slice half an inch thick, and lay in salt and water one hour, with a heavy plate on top to keep them under. Then wipe dry, dip in beaten egg, roll in cracker-crumbs, and fry in hot lard or dripping. Drain, pepper and salt them, and serve.

STRING-BEANS.

Be doubly careful, as the season advances, to pare off the toughening fibres on both sides. Cut in short pieces; boil in hot salted water forty minutes, drain, pepper, salt, and butter.

CORN AND TOMATOES.

8 large tomatoes, pared and sliced thin; 6 ears of corn, the grains _shaved_ from the cob by successive strokes of a keen knife; sugar, pepper, salt, and butter.

Put corn and tomatoes together, and cook forty minutes. Season, and simmer ten minutes more. Pour out.

NUTMEG MELONS AND PEACHES.

Halve the melons, take out the seeds, and put a piece of ice in each half. Pile the peaches in a fruit-dish, or basket, with green leaves between.

Fourth Week. Sunday. —— Clear Soup. Larded Ducks. Succotash. Stewed Squash. Boiled Potatoes. —— Peach Ice-Cream. Cake. ——

CLEAR SOUP.

Take the fat from your soup-jelly; pour into a pot and heat until you can strain it off from the meat. Cut up the latter; season with salt and a little spice, and put back on the ice. There is still gelatine enough in it to make it valuable. Boil and skim your soup two or three minutes, and add a small cup of German sago which has been soaked in a little water one hour. When clear, serve.

LARDED DUCKS.

After cleaning and washing, lard the breasts of a pair of ducks with narrow strips of bacon. You _must_ have a larding-needle for this, since both ends of the lardoons must project upon the same surface. Half roast the ducks; put on in a saucepan, with two cups of broth made by abstracting a cup of jelly from your soup-stock, thinning it with boiling water and seasoning it. Add a chopped onion and a glass of claret. Stew half an hour, or until tender; dish; take the fat from the gravy, thicken, boil and pour half over the ducks, the rest into a boat.

SUCCOTASH.

8 ears of corn—the grains cut off; about a pint of Lima beans; 1 tablespoonful of floured butter; pepper and salt; 1 cup of milk.

Boil corn and beans for nearly an hour in enough boiling water to cover them. Turn this off, add the milk; when this heats, butter, pepper and salt. Simmer ten minutes.

STEWED SQUASH.

Pare, seed, quarter, and cook soft in boiling salted water. Pour this off, and add a few tablespoonfuls of strained gravy from your ducks—or any other you may have. Beat the squash to pieces in this, in the saucepan; season well and stir until as stiff and smooth as apple sauce; then dish upon crustless slices of fried bread.

BOILED POTATOES.

See Saturday, Second Week in August.

PEACH ICE-CREAM.

1 quart of rich milk and as much sweet cream; 4 cups of sugar; 6 eggs; 1 quart of very ripe peaches pared and cut small.

Make as directed in full on Sunday of Second Week in July; but stir in the peaches just before closing the freezer for the second time, beating them well into the congealing cream. Unless they are very sweet, you would do well to dredge them in sugar before they go in.

Fourth Week. Monday. —— A Medley Soup. Casserole of Ducks, and Macaroni. Broiled Ham. Stewed Onions. Chopped Potatoes. —— Watermelons and Pears. ——

A MEDLEY SOUP.