Part 33

Cut the kidneys into thin slices, and cook ten minutes in a little dripping in a frying-pan. Take out and lay upon a hot-water dish, covering closely. Add to the dripping in the pan a little gravy—beef will do, or a little of your soup; season with a chopped onion, parsley, salt and pepper, and thicken with browned flour. Boil up; add a glass of good wine and the juice of half a lemon. Pour upon the kidneys, and set in boiling water five minutes. If kidneys are cooked too long they toughen.

BAKED OMELETTE AUX FINES HERBES.

7 eggs; ½ cup of milk in which has been dissolved a quarter teaspoonful of corn-starch; 1 tablespoonful minced herbs; pepper and salt; butter and onion.

Beat the yolks very smooth, and whip in the milk; then stir in the frothed whites. Put a tablespoonful of butter in a round, rather shallow bake-pan; add the chopped herbs and a little finely minced onion. Set upon the upper grating of the oven until it begins to simmer. Pour in the omelette and bake quickly until high, and delicately browned. Run a sharp knife quickly around the edge and invert the dish upon a hot platter. Or, if your bake-dish is presentable, serve in it. Eat at once, as it soon falls.

STRING-BEANS.

Cut off both ends, and pare the strings from both sides. Cut into short pieces, and cook thirty minutes, or until tender, in boiling salt water. Drain, season with pepper, salt and butter, and serve in a deep dish.

CAULIFLOWER AU GRATIN.

Cook a cauliflower—tied up in a net—in boiling salt water, fifteen minutes. Drain, clip into small clusters, and lay in a stone-china or block-tin dish. Pour a cup of drawn butter over it; strew thickly with fine crumbs, and brown upon the upper grating of a brisk oven.

SYLLABUB AND MAY’S CAKE.

Whip a pint of cream to a stiff froth in your syllabub-churn, sweetening as you go on, with half a cup of powdered sugar. When it is a snowy mass upon the sieve upon which you have laid it as it rises, beat in a glass of wine. Set upon ice until wanted, then fill into glasses.

MAY’S CAKE.

Please consult “BREAKFAST, LUNCHEON AND TEA,” page 338.

First Week. Wednesday. —— Ayrshire Broth. Chickens à la Française. Succotash. Sweet Potatoes. Apple Sauce. —— Blackberry Shortcake, Hot. ——

AYRSHIRE BROTH.

Knuckle of veal—well cracked—about 4 lbs.; 3 onions; ½ lb. of lean ham; 2 turnips; bunch of parsley; 1 scant cup of barley soaked two hours in a little milk.

Put on meat, bones, and barley, and stew slowly in a gallon of water three hours. Then add the vegetables, cut into neat dice, parboiled, and left to cool. Cook gently one hour and a half. Strain without pressing. Pick out the meat and bones, and return to the soup-pot with three pints of broth. Add a quart of cold water; cook, covered, one hour more, and season well. Turn into a jar or bowl, and when cold, set on ice for to-morrow’s soup. Cool that meant for to-day; skim, season, and put over the fire with the barley and vegetables. When it begins to boil, pour into the tureen.

CHICKENS À LA FRANÇAISE.

Boil, and then blanch a sweetbread by dropping it into cold water. Then chop, mix with the pounded boiled livers of the chickens, and one-sixth as much bread-crumbs as you have meat. Season. Have ready, cleaned and washed, a pair of nice chickens. Fill with this force-meat. Cover the breasts and sides with thin slices of fat salt pork; put into a dripping-pan; pour about them a large cupful of boiling water, and roast—basting often—one hour. Take off the pork; lay it in the gravy, and dredge the fowls with flour. As this browns, baste well, with butter once, three times with gravy. Take up and keep hot while you strain; cool, skim and thicken the gravy. Have ready cooked a cup of rice measured when raw—which has been boiled in the water used for cooking the sweetbread and livers, then seasoned. Make a broad, flat-topped mound of it upon a dish; lay the chickens on it, and pour a little of the gravy over them. Serve the rest in a boat.

SUCCOTASH.

Cut the corn from eight or ten cobs; mix this with one third the quantity of Lima beans, and cook one hour in just enough water to cover them. Drain off most of the water; add a cupful of milk, with a pinch of soda stirred in. When this boils, stir in a great spoonful of butter rolled in flour; season with pepper and salt, and simmer ten minutes longer.

SWEET POTATOES.

Select those of uniform size; parboil them, with the skins on. Peel and lay in a baking-pan. Bake until soft to the grasp, glazing with butter just before you take them up.

APPLE SAUCE.

Peel and slice juicy tart apples, and stew with just enough water to keep them from burning, until broken to pieces. Stir deeply and well, often. Beat a good lump of butter into them while hot, sweeten abundantly, and season with nutmeg. Mash and beat all the lumps to smoothness, or take them out.

BLACKBERRY SHORTCAKE—HOT.

2 quarts of sifted flour; 3 tablespoonfuls of butter, and 2 of lard; 2½ cups of buttermilk, or sour, thick milk; yolks of 2 eggs, beaten light; 1 teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in hot water, and the same quantity of salt.

Rub the shortening into the salted flour. Add beaten yolks and soda to the milk, and make out the paste quickly. Roll into two sheets—that intended for the upper crust half an inch thick, the lower, rather thinner. Lay the batter in a well greased baking-pan; cover _thickly_ with the berries; sugar them; put on the top crust, and bake about twenty-five minutes to a nice brown. Cut into squares and eat—splitting these open—with sugar and butter.

First Week. Thursday. —— Tomato Soup. Boiled Leg of Mutton with Caper Sauce. Mashed Potatoes. Stewed Egg-plant. Lima Beans. —— Peach Fritters. ——

TOMATO SOUP.

Peel and slice twelve large tomatoes, and stew twenty minutes. Rub through a colander to a pulp; season this with pepper, salt, and sugar. Take the fat from the top of your cold soup-stock, and put the latter over the fire. Simmer half an hour; strain out meat and bones. Boil and skim three minutes, and add the tomato sauce. Cook gently ten minutes; stir in a tablespoonful (even) of corn-starch wet with cold water. Boil up and pour out.

BOILED LEG OF MUTTON.

Cook in plenty of hot salted water, allowing twelve minutes to the pound. Take out when done, wipe carefully; dish, and rub all over with butter. Serve with caper sauce.

CAPER SAUCE.

Take a cupful of the liquor in which the meat has been boiled. Put on in a saucepan; boil and skim for a moment; stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter rubbed into a heaping teaspoonful of flour. Stir over the fire five minutes, add the juice of a lemon, pepper, and two dozen pickled capers—or, if you have not these, pickled nasturtium seed. Send to table in a boat. Save the rest of the pot-liquor for soup.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual, whipping light with a fork, and heaping upon a hot dish.

STEWED EGG-PLANT.

Soak and stuff as directed on Thursday, Fourth Week in August, but instead of baking it, put on in a cupful of your soup-stock, and stew, closely covered, one hour, or until very tender. Take up and keep hot in a deep dish. Stir a lump of butter rolled in flour into the gravy; boil up and pour over the egg-plant.

LIMA BEANS.

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

PEACH FRITTERS.

1 quart of flour; 1 cup of milk; ⅓ cup of yeast; 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar; 4 eggs; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; a little salt; ripe, freestone peaches, pared and stoned.

Sift the flour into a bowl; work in milk and yeast, and let it rise five or six hours. Then, beat eggs and sugar light with butter, salt, and stir into the risen dough. Knead faithfully with your hands. Pull off bits nearly as large as an egg. Flatten and put in the centre of each a peach (pared), from which the stone has been slipped out through a slit in one side. Close the dough over it; make into a round ball, and lay upon a floured pan for the second rising. The balls must not touch each other. In an hour they should be light. Fry as you would doughnuts, but more slowly. Drain in a colander, and eat hot with brandy-sauce.

First Week. Friday. —— Fish Soup. Mutton Batter Pudding. Stewed Tomatoes and Corn. Cream Potatoes. Picklette. —— Apple Cake with Cream. Iced Coffee. ——

FISH SOUP.

2 quarts of broth; 2 lbs. of halibut, rock, or other white fish; 2 onions; salt and cayenne; juice of half a lemon; dripping for frying.

Cut the fish into neat strips; take out the bones. Remove the fat from the cold pot-liquor set by yesterday, put in the fish-bones, and put on to stew down. Fry the sliced onions; drain from the fat; lay in the bottom of your soup-pot; put the fish upon them; put in a little broth, and simmer gently one hour. Take out the fish, dredge each piece with flour, and return to the kettle. Cover with two quarts of the strained stock, and cook, slowly, half an hour. Add cayenne and lemon, and pour out.

MUTTON BATTER PUDDING.

2 cups of milk; 1 large cupful of flour; 2 eggs; neat squares of cold mutton, freed from skin and fat; pepper and salt; some melted butter, heated with tomato catsup.

Make a batter of the milk, eggs and flour. Lay the meat in the melted butter, pepper and salt; butter a pudding-dish; pour in a little of the batter; then add the meat soaked well in the butter; pour in the rest of the batter, and bake one hour in a steady oven. Serve at once.

STEWED TOMATOES AND CORN.

Pare and slice six large tomatoes and one small onion. Cut the corn from four cobs, mix up well together, and stew half an hour. Season with pepper, salt and butter, stew again ten minutes, and pour out.

CREAM POTATOES.

Pare and cut the potatoes into small squares or rounds. Cook twenty minutes in boiling water, a little salt. Turn this off; add a cupful of milk; and when this bubbles up a tablespoonful of butter with a teaspoonful of water wet up with cold milk, also, a little chopped parsley. Simmer five minutes and pour out.

APPLE CAKE WITH CREAM.

2 cups of powdered sugar; 3 cups of prepared flour; ½ cup of corn-starch, wet with a little milk; ½ cup of butter creamed with the sugar; ½ cup of sweet milk; the whites of six eggs, whipped stiff.

Add the milk to the creamed butter and sugar; the corn-starch, then the flour and whites alternately. Bake in jelly-cake tins.

FILLING.

3 tart, well-flavored apples, grated; yolks of 2 beaten eggs; 1 cup of sugar; 1 lemon, juice, and half the grated rind.

Beat yolks, sugar, and lemon together. Grate the apples directly into this mixture. Put into a custard-kettle, with boiling water outside of it, and stir to a boil. When cold, put between the cakes. Eat fresh with cream.

ICED COFFEE.

See Sunday of this Week.

First Week. Saturday. —— White Stock Soup. Mock Quails. Kidney-Beans. Corn Fritters. Potatoes à la Lyonnaise. —— Cabinet Pudding. ——

WHITE STOCK SOUP.

6 lbs. knuckle of veal; ½ lb. lean bacon; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter rubbed in 1 of flour; 2 onions; 2 carrots; 2 turnips; 3 cloves stuck in an onion; 1 blade of mace; bunch of herbs; 6 quarts of water; pepper and salt; 1 cup of boiling milk.

Cut up the meat and crack the bones. Slice carrots, turnips, and one onion, leaving that with the cloves whole. Put on with mace, and all the herbs except the parsley, in two quarts of cold water. Bring to a slow boil; take off the scum, as it rises, and at the end of an hour’s stewing, add the rest of the cold water—one gallon. Cover and cook steadily, always gently, four hours. Strain off the liquor, of which there should be about five quarts; rub the vegetables through the colander, and pick out bones and meat. Season these highly, and put, as is your Saturday custom, into a wide-mouthed jar, or a large bowl. Add to them three quarts of stock, well salted, and, when cold, keep on ice. Cool to-day’s stock; remove the fat; season, put in chopped parsley, and put over the fire. Heat in a saucepan a cup of milk, stir in the floured butter; cook three minutes. When the soup has simmered ten minutes after the last boil, and been carefully skimmed, pour into the tureen, and stir in the hot, thickened milk.

MOCK QUAILS.

Cut slices about four inches square, and half an inch thick, from a leg of veal; flatten with the side of a hatchet, and dip in beaten egg. Make a force-meat of a cold boiled sweetbread, chopped fine, a little minced fat pork or ham, a few oysters, also minced, and a seasoning of pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and a pinch of grated lemon-peel. Wet with oyster-liquor, and the juice of half a lemon. Spread the slices with this, and roll each up tightly. Bind with soft thread, and lay in a broad saucepan. Half cover with broth borrowed from your soup, cooled and skimmed. Cover and stew slowly nearly one hour. Make the remnants of the force-meat—adding a few bread crumbs—into small balls. Roll in flour and set in the oven until browned. Five minutes before you take up the meat, roll these in beaten yolk of egg, once and again, until thickly coated. Let them stand to cool while you take up the “quails.” Lay them upon a hot dish; clip and gently withdraw the threads. Strain the gravy; add a little boiling water; thicken with browned flour; stir in a spoonful of butter, and when it boils, drop in the “quail eggs.” Simmer just one minute, and pour over the meat.

KIDNEY-BEANS.

Shell; cook in boiling salted water thirty minutes, or until tender; drain, dish, and season with pepper, butter and salt.

CORN FRITTERS.

2 cups of grated corn; 2 eggs; 1 cup of milk; flour for thin batter; a pinch of soda; salt; 1 tablespoonful melted butter.

Mix and fry as you would griddle-cakes.

POTATOES À LA LYONNAISE.

Parboil and chop some potatoes; heat a little good dripping or butter in a frying-pan. Stir in half a minced onion, for every eight potatoes, with a teaspoonful of chopped parsley. When they have cooked one minute, add the potatoes, and stir until all are tender, but not browned. Drain, pepper, salt and dish.

CABINET PUDDING.

2 cups of prepared flour; 3 tablespoonfuls of butter, creamed with the sugar; 5 eggs; 1 cup of sugar; ½ lb. raisins, seeded, and cut in three pieces each; ½ cup of milk; ½ lemon—juice and grated peel.

Add the beaten yolks to the creamed butter and sugar; then the milk and flour, alternately with the whites. Lastly, stir in the fruit, dredged with flour; pour into a buttered mould, and boil two hours and a half.

Eat hot with liquid sauce.

Second Week. Sunday. —— Tapioca Soup. Roast Ducks. Stuffed Tomatoes. Cauliflower with Sauce Tartare. Sweet Potatoes. —— Melons, Peaches, and Pears. Black Coffee, Crackers and Cheese. ——

TAPIOCA SOUP.

Take the fat from your soup-stock. Dip out two quarts, add one large cup of boiling water, and strain into the soup-kettle. Heat to a slow boil; skim carefully; add half a cup of grained tapioca, soaked two hours in a little cold water; cook until this is clear; put in what additional seasoning your taste demands, with a glass of wine, and a teaspoonful of celery essence, and pour out.

ROAST DUCKS.

Put sage and onion in the stuffing for one; make that intended for the other, of bread-crumbs, seasoned with pepper and salt, and wet up slightly with milk. Lay the ducks in the dripping-pan; pour boiling water over them, and roast, basting often, until tender and brown. Dish; take the fat from the gravy; season, thicken with browned flour and boil up. Serve in a gravy-boat.

STUFFED TOMATOES.

Choose enough large, smooth tomatoes to fill a shallow pudding-dish. Cut a slice from the top of each, scoop out the inside. Chop the pulp with a little cold meat, taken from your soup, a sprinkling of minced onion, and the grated corn from two cobs. Season with pepper, salt and butter; fill the tomatoes, put on the top slices; fill the interstices with the force-meat, pour on a little gravy, cover and bake forty minutes—then brown.

CAULIFLOWER WITH SAUCE TARTARE.

Boil a large cauliflower—tied in netting—in hot salted water, from twenty-five to thirty minutes. Drain; serve in a deep dish with the flower upwards, and pour over it a cup of drawn butter, in which has been stirred the juice of a lemon, and a half teaspoonful of French mustard, mixed up well with the sauce.

SWEET POTATOES.

Please see Wednesday of First Week in September.

MELONS, PEACHES, AND PEARS.

Serve the melons upon a flat dish; the other fruit in baskets, or upon fruit-stands, garnished with leaves.

BLACK COFFEE, CRACKERS AND CHEESE.

Pass very strong hot coffee without cream, in small cups of clear china, and fancy crackers with grated cheese.

Second Week. Monday. —— Vegetable Consommé. Stewed Lamb à la Jardinière. French Beans, Sautés. Mashed Potatoes au Gratin. Currant Jelly. —— Peaches, Cream, and Cake. ——

VEGETABLE CONSOMMÉ.

Cut into thin, short strips, 1 carrot, 1 turnip, and 1 onion; peel and slice 6 fine tomatoes; corn cut from 2 cobs; ½ cup boiled rice; 3 pints of soup-stock; 1 pint of boiling water; seasoning at discretion.

Boil the vegetables tender in a little hot salted water. Drain, butter, and keep them hot. The tomatoes and corn should be stewed in another vessel, twenty-five minutes, and seasoned. Add to your soup-stock a pint of boiling water, and simmer half an hour, then strain. Return to the fire with the cooked vegetables and the boiled rice. Stew gently ten minutes and turn out.

STEWED LAMB À LA JARDINIÈRE.

Lay a breast of lamb, or two scrags, in a broad pot, meat downward. Scatter over this a sliced turnip, a sliced onion, and two sliced tomatoes, with a little pepper and salt. Add less than a cupful of broth from your soup; cover, and cook slowly one hour. Turn the meat then, and cook one hour longer, very slowly. When tender, but not ragged, dish, and keep hot. Strain the gravy; thicken with browned flour; season; boil up, and pour over the meat.

FRENCH BEANS SAUTÉS.

Cut off the fibres from both sides of the (string) beans, and clip into short pieces. Boil tender in hot salted water; drain dry, and put into a saucepan in which you have melted a great spoonful of butter, seasoned with pepper, a little French mustard, and a tablespoonful of vinegar. Toss and stir until the beans are very hot, and glazed with the butter. Serve in a deep dish.

MASHED POTATOES AU GRATIN.

Mash in the customary manner, and heap upon a greased pie-dish. Strew thickly with dry crumbs, and brown upon the upper grating of the oven. Slip carefully to a hot, flat dish.

PEACHES, CREAM, AND CAKE.

See Monday of First Week in September.

Second Week. Tuesday. —— Beef Gravy Soup. Paté de Foie de Veau. Stuffed Squash. Succotash. Baked Potatoes. —— Baked Blackberry Pudding. ——

BEEF GRAVY SOUP.

4 lbs. of lean, coarse beef, cut into strips; 2 lbs. mutton or beef bones, broken small; 2 onions, sliced and fried; bunch of sweet herbs; 3 carrots; 2 turnips; 5 quarts of cold water; pepper and salt; dripping.

Fry the meat and onions in the dripping to a light brown. Put on in two quarts of water, and having cooked one hour, add the other vegetables chopped, and the remaining three quarts of water, cold. Boil slowly four hours, skimming often. Strain, pulping the vegetables. Put meat and bones into the stock-pot, season well; divide the broth into two portions; salt one, and pour into the stock-pot. When cold, set on ice for to-morrow. Cool and skim the rest; heat and skim until quite clear. Put dice of fried bread into the tureen.

PATÉ DE FOIE DE VEAU.

3 lbs. of calf’s liver—parboiled and cold; ½ lb. of cold cooked ham; 3 eggs; 1 tablespoonful of butter, and same of fine crumbs; 1 scant cup of milk; a little minced onion and parsley; nutmeg, cayenne, and a pinch of grated lemon-peel; some good pie-paste.

Mince the ham, and pound the boiled liver. Make into a sort of paste with the butter, beaten eggs, bread-crumbs, milk, and seasoning. It should be just soft enough to pour. Butter a bake-dish profusely; line with a good paste, rolled out thicker than for most pies. Fill this with the liver mixture; cover with crust, which must not overlap the edge of the dish, but be pinched down firmly upon the lower crust; set in a pan, containing a cupful of boiling water, just enough to keep the bottom crust from burning, and bake one hour and a quarter in a moderate oven. Pass a knife around the edges of the crust to detach the paté; invert upon a deep dish. Pass with it drawn butter in which have been beaten two raw eggs, and these thickened by two minutes’ boiling.

STUFFED SQUASH.

Pare a “turban” squash, and cut off a slice from the top. Extract the seeds, and lay one hour in salt water. Then fill with a good stuffing of crumbs, chopped fat salt pork, parsley, etc., wet with gravy. Put on the top slice; set the squash in a pudding-dish. Put a few spoonfuls of melted butter and twice as much hot water in the bottom; cover the dish _very_ closely, and set in the oven two hours, or until tender. Lay within a deep dish, and pour the gravy over it.

SUCCOTASH.

See Wednesday, First Week in September.

BAKED POTATOES.

Wash, wipe, and lay in a moderate oven. Bake until soft to the grasp. Send to table in their skins, wrapped in a napkin.

BAKED BLACKBERRY PUDDING.

1 pint of milk; 2 eggs; 1 quart flour, or enough for thick batter; 1 gill bakers’ yeast; 1 saltspoonful of salt; 1 teaspoonful of soda dissolved in boiling water; nearly a quart of berries, dredged with flour.

Make the batter and let it rise in a warm place four hours. When very light, stir in the dredged fruit lightly and quickly; pour into a buttered dish and bake one hour, covering with white paper should it “crust” over too fast. Turn out, and eat with sweet sauce.

Second Week. Wednesday. —— Soup à la Bonne Femme. Roast Tenderloin of Beef. Beets Sautés. Lima Beans. Fried Egg-plant. —— Velvet Blanc-Mange. ——

SOUP À LA BONNE FEMME.

3 lbs. of lean veal; ½ lb. lean ham; 2 carrots, grated; 1 chopped onion; thyme and parsley; 1 cup of chopped mushrooms; pepper and salt; 1 cup of milk; floured butter; 4 quarts water.

Cut the meat small and put on with herbs and vegetables in the water. Bring to a slow boil, and keep at this, taking off the scum as it rises, for three hours, or until the liquid is reduced one-half. Strain, cool, skim, season and return to the fire with the chopped mushrooms. Stew slowly half an hour; stir in a tablespoonful of butter cut up in one of flour. Boil two minutes and pour into the tureen. Add the boiling milk, and pour out.

ROAST TENDERLOIN OF BEEF.

See Sunday of First Week in September.

BEETS SAUTÉS.

Wash and cut off the tops, but do not touch the roots with a knife. Boil one hour; scrape and slice them, and stew ten minutes in a little butter, mixed with pepper, and a good spoonful of vinegar. Toss and stir lest they should brown.

LIMA BEANS.

See Thursday, First Week in September.

FRIED EGG-PLANT.

See Sunday, First Week in September.

VELVET BLANC-MANGE.

1 pint sweet cream, whipped stiff; ½ package Cooper’s gelatine soaked in 2 cups of cold water; 2 glasses white wine; juice of one large lemon; bitter almond flavoring; 1 cup sugar.

Put sugar, soaked gelatine, lemon and wine into a covered vessel for one hour. Stir well, and set the covered jar or bowl into a saucepan of boiling water until the gelatine is dissolved. Strain and cool before flavoring it. When it begins to congeal, beat gradually into the whipped cream. Put into a wet mould, and bury in the ice until wanted. Pass cake with it.

Second Week. Thursday. —— Egg Soup. Smothered Chickens with Mushrooms. Stewed Tomatoes. Scalloped Cauliflower. Beet-root Salad. —— Peaches and Cream. ——

EGG SOUP.