Part 37
Have a small round of beef, or a piece weighing six or seven pounds cut from the round, bound into a compact shape by a broad strip of muslin, as wide as it is high. Make holes clear through it by passing a keen knife perpendicularly through the round—about an inch apart. Fill one-third of these with chopped fat bacon; one-third with a mixture of crumbs, onion, and herbs; the other with minced oysters. Rub the top of the round with allspice, nutmeg, salt, and pepper, working the mixture well into the incisions, as well as into the flesh. Set the stuffed round in a dripping-pan; pour over it a cup of your soup-stock (before the beans are added), mixed with a glass of claret. Dredge the top with flour when the gravy has soaked in, and cook, in a moderate oven, two hours or more, basting very often. Undo the bandage; dish the beef; strain the gravy; thicken with browned flour, and serve in a boat.
PURÉE OF TURNIPS.
Peel, slice, and boil in hot salted water. Rub through a colander; return to the fire; mix in a great spoonful of butter rolled in a little flour, two tablespoonfuls of cream, and season with pepper and salt. Stir ten minutes, and pour out.
POTATO CAKES.
Stir into a cup of mashed potatoes a tablespoonful of butter (heaping), a beaten egg, two tablespoonfuls of milk, salt, and a tablespoonful of prepared flour. Roll out, half an inch thick; cut round or square; prick with a fork, and bake to a nice brown. Eat hot.
LETTUCE SALAD.
Pull the best leaves to pieces; heap in a salad-bowl, and pour over it a dressing made according to the receipt given on Thursday of First Week in October, but leaving out the raw egg.
CUSTARD BREAD PUDDING.
2 cups fine dry crumbs; 1 quart of milk; 5 eggs, beaten light; 1 tablespoonful corn-starch; 1 teaspoonful of salt, and ½ teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in the milk; flavor to taste.
Soak the crumbs in the milk, and heat in a custard-kettle to a boil. Add the corn-starch wet with cold milk, cook one minute, turn out and beat hard. When smooth and almost cold, whip in the yolks, the flavoring, lastly, the whites. Boil in a buttered mould an hour and a half. Eat hot with sweet sauce. It is excellent.
Second Week. Wednesday. —— A Cheap Soup. Cannelon of Beef. Browned Sweet Potatoes. Hominy Croquettes. Cauliflower. —— Claret Jelly and Mrs. M.’s Sponge-Cake. ——
A CHEAP SOUP.
1 lb. of lean beef, cut into strips; 2 onions; 2 turnips; ½ cup of rice; 6 tomatoes; 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar; pepper, salt; 2 teaspoonfuls essence of celery; dripping for frying; 3 quarts of water; bunch of herbs.
Put dripping and sugar into a soup-pot; when they heat, add the meat and sliced onions. Stir until nicely browned. Add the water, the turnips, and herbs. Cook one hour; take off the fat; put in tomatoes and rice, and simmer two hours. Season to taste, cook ten minutes, and pour out.
CANNELON OF BEEF.
Chop the remains of yesterday’s beef; mix with quarter of a pound of minced ham; season with pepper, salt grated lemon-peel, and a little onion. Moisten with yesterday’s gravy, with a little flour stirred in, and bind with a beaten egg or two. Make some pie-paste, or such as you would use for dumplings; roll into an oblong sheet; put the beef-mince in the middle, and make the pastry into a long roll, enclosing the meat. Close at the ends with round caps of pastry, the edges pinched well together. Lay in a dripping-pan—the joined side of the roll downward, and bake to a good brown.
BROWNED SWEET POTATOES.
Boil, and peel neatly. Lay in a dripping-pan, and baste often with good dripping, or butter, until glossy and delicately browned.
HOMINY CROQUETTES.
2 cups of boiled, fine-grained hominy; 2 beaten eggs; 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter; salt to taste.
Work the hominy smooth with the butter; beat in the eggs with a wooden spoon; salt, and make into long balls, with floured hands. Flatten at the ends, roll in flour, and fry to a golden brown in lard or dripping. Drain, and pile upon a flat dish.
CAULIFLOWER.
Boil a fine cauliflower in hot salted water. Drain, put into a deep dish, blossom upward, and pour over it a cup of rich drawn butter, with the juice of half a lemon stirred in.
CLARET JELLY.
1 package Coxe’s gelatine, soaked one hour in a large cup of water; 2 cups of sugar; 2 cups of claret; 1 pint of boiling water; juice of 1 lemon; a pinch of mace.
Put gelatine, lemon, sugar, and mace together, and cover half an hour. Pour on the boiling water; stir until the gelatine is melted, and strain through a flannel bag. Add the wine, and strain through double flannel into a wet mould. Set in ice.
MRS. M.’S SPONGE-CAKE.
See “GENERAL RECEIPTS NO. 1, COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD SERIES,” page 326.
Second Week. Thursday. —— Egg Soup. Larded Steak, Broiled. Purée of Potatoes. Baked Macaroni. Bavarian Salad. —— Lemon Cream Pie. ——
EGG SOUP.
2 lbs. lean ham; 1 lb. lean veal, cut into dice; 1 carrot; 1 onion; 1 grated turnip; 1 boiled potato, mashed; chopped parsley; 3 quarts of water; 6 or 8 eggs.
Cut up the meat, onion, and carrot, and put on with herbs and water to come to a slow boil. Keep this up for three hours and a half. The water should not lose more than one-third. Strain off the liquor; cool and skim. Put over the fire, with the grated turnip and mashed potato. Season, and simmer half an hour. Pour into the tureen, and lay upon the top of the soup as many poached eggs, trimmed round, as there are persons to be served.
LARDED STEAK, BROILED.
Flatten a large steak, and lard it with thin strips of fat salt pork, bringing all the ends out on one side of the steak. You can do this with a knife and your fingers, by making two holes for each lardoon, and making a loop of it under the steak; but it is better to have a larding-needle. Broil upon a greased gridiron; lay upon a hot dish; put upon it a little warmed butter, seasoned with pepper, salt, and French mustard.
PURÉE OF POTATOES.
Mash boiled potatoes; rub through a colander; add a few spoonfuls of milk, one of butter rolled in flour, and stir over the fire five minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Pour into a deep dish.
BAKED MACARONI.
Break half a pound of macaroni into inch lengths, and cook twenty minutes in boiling salt water. Drain; cover the bottom of a buttered dish with it; strew with grated cheese and butter-bits, pepper and salt lightly, and put in another layer of macaroni. Fill the dish in this way; strew cheese and butter on top; pour in half a cup of milk, and bake, covered, half an hour—then, brown quickly.
BAVARIAN SALAD.
2 _small_ onions; 2 heads of lettuce, pulled to pieces; 1 boiled beet, cold and sliced; 3 tablespoonfuls salad-oil; 2 of vinegar; yolk of 1 raw egg; 1 saltspoonful of salt, and same of made mustard.
Chop the onions exceedingly small, and beat into the whipped egg the salt, mustard, the oil, last of all, the vinegar. Put the lettuce into a dish; cover with the beet-root, and pour on the dressing.
LEMON CREAM PIE.
1 cup of sugar; 1 tablespoonful of butter; 1 egg; 1 lemon, pared carefully, even to the white rind, and the seeds removed; 1 tablespoonful corn-starch, wet in cold water; 1 cup of boiling water.
Stir the corn-starch into the water, and pour over the creamed butter and sugar. When cold, add the minced lemon and grated peel, with the egg. Beat hard and bake in open shells of paste. Eat cold.
Second Week. Friday. —— Turnip Soup. Oyster Patés. Rissoles of Sweetbreads. Chopped Cabbage. Mashed Potatoes Browned. —— Quince Soufflé. ——
TURNIP SOUP.
12 turnips; 4 tablespoonfuls of butter; 2 tablespoonfuls of flour; 1 quart of milk; 2 quarts of water; 1 onion; chopped parsley; salt and cayenne.
Pare, slice, and put the turnips on with the onion in the water. Cook soft, pulp through a colander, and return, with the water, to the fire. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, and cook ten minutes, stirring all the time in one direction. Add the milk, stirring it in gradually; take from the fire. Simmer the turnip _purée_ five minutes after adding seasoning and chopped parsley; pour in the thickened milk, boil up once, and serve.
OYSTER PATÉS.
1 quart of oysters, minced fine with a sharp knife; 1 cup of rich drawn butter, based upon milk; cayenne and pepper to taste.
Stir the minced oysters into the drawn butter and cook five minutes in a farina-kettle. Have ready some shapes of pastry, baked in _paté_-pans, then slipped out. Fill these with the mixture; set in the oven two minutes to heat, and send to table.
RISSOLES OF SWEETBREADS.
Boil and blanch three fine sweetbreads. Mince, and add one-third the quantity of fine crumbs. Season with pepper and salt, a little nutmeg, and two beaten eggs. Work and beat smooth; roll into long balls; flour these well. Have ready a little gravy in a saucepan, well-seasoned; add as much drawn butter. When it boils, put in the rissoles, a few at a time, and cook ten minutes. Drain off the gravy; transfer the sweetbreads carefully to a hot dish; pour the gravy upon a beaten egg; heat to thickening, and pour over the rissoles.
CHOPPED CABBAGE.
Boil a firm cabbage in two waters—having taken off the outer leaves and quartered it. Chop very fine; put into a saucepan two tablespoonfuls of butter and the same of vinegar, with pepper and salt. Stir in the cabbage, and when very hot, dish.
MASHED POTATOES—BROWNED.
Mash in the usual way; heap roughly upon a greased pie-plate; set in a quick oven, and when delicately browned, slip to another dish.
QUINCE SOUFFLÉ.
Pare, slice, and stew the fruit soft. Sweeten well, and rub through a colander. Put into a glass dish. Make a custard of 1 pint of milk, 3 yolks, and half a cup of sugar. When cold, pour, two inches deep, upon the quince. Whip the whites of the eggs light with sugar and lemon-juice, and heap upon the custard.
Second Week. Saturday. —— Mock Turtle Soup. Hot Pot. Cauliflower à la Crême. Mashed Parsnips. Lima Beans. —— Cocoanut Pudding. ——
MOCK TURTLE SOUP.
Please consult receipt for Wednesday, Third Week in March. There should be enough for two days at least.
HOT POT.
2 lbs. of lean veal; calf’s brains from your boiled head; 1 pint of oysters; pepper—cayenne is best; a _little_ minced onion; salt; a tablespoonful of butter; ¼ lb. of oyster crackers, buttered and split; minced parsley and lemon-peel.
Cut the veal into squares, and parboil for twenty minutes. Put a layer in the bottom of a buttered bake-dish; season well; sprinkle on a little onion, and put a layer of split crackers next. The brains should be beaten up with a raw egg, and seasoned. Drop in small spoonfuls upon the crackers; next, put a few oysters, strewed with pepper, salt and butter-bits; more veal, and so on to the top, which should be crackers. Fill the dish with the water in which the veal was boiled, seasoned, and an equal quantity of oyster liquor. Cover closely, and bake in a moderate oven an hour and a half. Serve in the dish. It should not be uncovered for browning.
CAULIFLOWER À LA CRÊME.
Boil a fine cauliflower in plenty of hot salted water, having tied it up in a bit of mosquito-net. When done, put into a deep dish, blossom upward, and pour over it a cupful of drawn butter in which has been beaten, and then cooked, a raw egg.
MASHED PARSNIPS.
Scrape, slice lengthwise, and put on to boil in hot salted water. They will take more than an hour to cook. When tender, drain and press in a colander. Mash smooth; put into a clean saucepan with a little butter, pepper and salt. Stir until very hot, then dish.
LIMA BEANS.
See Thursday of First Week in October.
COCOANUT PUDDING.
1 heaping cup _fine_ crumbs; ½ cup of butter; 1 cup powdered sugar; 1 grated cocoanut; 2 cups milk; tablespoonful corn-starch wet with cold water; 5 eggs, nutmeg and rose-water to taste.
Soak the crumbs in the milk, and add to the creamed butter and sugar, and the beaten yolks. Beat well; put in the corn-starch; the whisked white; at last the grated cocoanut. Beat one minute; pour into a buttered pudding dish, and bake in a moderate oven forty-five minutes. Eat cold, with sugar sifted on top.
Third Week. Sunday. —— Yesterday’s Soup. Roast Leg of Lamb. Potato Croquettes. Sweet Potatoes. Fried Egg-plant. Currant Jelly. —— Rice Snow. White Mountain Cake. ——
YESTERDAY’S SOUP.
Your mock-turtle soup will be even better the second day than on the first. Take off the fat; dip out enough of the stock for your family, and bring slowly to a boil. You can make a little variety in it by serving the force-meat balls the first day; the meat dice the second, or _vice versa_.
ROAST LEG OF LAMB.
Lay in the dripping-pan; pour a cup of boiling water over it, and roast steadily, twelve minutes to the pound, basting very often. Ten minutes before taking it up, dredge with flour, and baste well with butter to make a brown froth. Lay on a dish, and keep hot. Pour the gravy into a basin set in very cold water. This will send the grease to the top. Remove it all; pour the brown gravy into a saucepan; thicken with browned flour; season, boil once, and serve in a boat. Pass currant-jelly with lamb.
POTATO CROQUETTES.
2 cups mashed potatoes, free from lumps; 2 beaten eggs; 1 tablespoonful melted butter; salt and pepper to taste; a little flour.
Mix all well together; heat, and stir over the fire until smoking hot. Let it get cold, and make into small rolls flattened at the ends. Roll in flour and fry to a good brown. Drain off upon paper and eat hot.
SWEET POTATOES.
Boil until a fork will go easily into the largest. Skin, and lay in a bake-pan in the oven a few minutes to dry—then serve.
FRIED EGG-PLANT.
See Wednesday, First Week in October.
RICE SNOW.
1 quart of milk; 5 tablespoonfuls of rice flour; the whites of 4 eggs; 1 great spoonful of butter; 1 cup of powdered sugar; a pinch of cinnamon, and same of nutmeg; vanilla, or other extract; a little salt.
Scald the milk, and stir in the flour wet up to a thin paste with cold milk. Cook until it begins to thicken; add sugar and spice; simmer five minutes, stirring all the while; pour out, and beat in the butter. Let it get cold; flavor, and whip, a spoonful at a time, into the whisked whites. Set to form in a wet mould. Prepare on Saturday. Turn out on Sunday, and eat with sweet cream. If more convenient, you can substitute corn-starch for the rice flour.
WHITE MOUNTAIN CAKE.
See “GENERAL RECEIPTS NO. 1, COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD SERIES,” page 319.
Third Week. Monday. —— Sago Soup. Lamb Pudding. Stewed Corn. Potatoes au Naturel. Cabbage Salad. —— Grapes, Pears, and Bananas. Tea à la Russe, Crackers and Cheese. ——
SAGO SOUP.
Cut all the meat from your cold leg of lamb; crack the bone to splinters; put on, with gristly bits of meat, skin, etc., in three quarts of water, with an onion, and boil slowly, at the back of the range, down to one quart. Strain, cool, and skim. Add to what has been saved from the mock-turtle stock made on Saturday. Heat, and stir in half a cup of pearl sago, previously soaked three hours in a very little water. Season, and simmer half an hour.
LAMB PUDDING.
The cold meat from yesterday’s joint; bread-crumbs; 1 tablespoonful of butter; 2 eggs; a little gravy; pepper, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg.
Chop the cold lamb fine, season, and wet up with a little good gravy. Mix in one-fourth as much crumbs as you have meat; beat in the melted butter, the eggs, and pour into a buttered mould. Set in a pan of hot water, and cook, covered, in a good oven for one hour. Turn out, and pour a little gravy over it.
STEWED CORN.
Green corn, even in city markets, is both indifferent and dear at this season. We do better, therefore, to fall back upon the invaluable canned vegetables that have made American housewives almost independent of changing seasons. Open a can of corn one hour before it is to be cooked. When ready for it turn into a farina-kettle; pour on just enough hot water to cover it, and cook half an hour. Then, add a little milk, a good lump of butter cut up in flour, pepper and salt to taste, and cook fifteen minutes longer.
POTATOES AU NATUREL.
Put over the fire in cold water; bring to a boil, and, fifteen minutes thereafter, pour in a cup of cold water to arrest the boil suddenly. After the beginning of the second bubble, cook quite fast until a fork will enter the largest potato without forcing. Turn off the water, set the uncovered pot upon the fire for a minute; strip off the skins quickly, and serve.
CABBAGE SALAD.
Shred a white cabbage fine; and pour over it a dressing such as you made on Thursday, Second Week in October, but without the chopped onion.
GRAPES, PEARS, AND BANANAS.
Heap the grapes in one salver or basket, with a spray of some climbing or clinging vine thrown around it. Group pears and bananas together, and garnish with autumn leaves.
TEA À LA RUSSE.
Slice a fresh lemon; take off all the skin; lay the slices, with powdered sugar strewed over them, in a plate, pour out the tea, hot and strong, with plenty of sugar, and pass the lemon with it. _Serve without cream._ I shall never forget a surprise that was startling as well as a disappointment, that came to me one day, when, sinking under the depression of an incipient headache, brought on by miles of picture galleries, I called for a cup of hot tea in a foreign restaurant, and was served with what I instantly pronounced to be “poison!” “_Molto buono_,” protested the waiter, opening the tea-urn to show me a whole lemon, skin and all, swimming upon the steaming decoction of leaves. The combination of rind and the cream with which I had “trimmed” my share of the too-fragrant beverage, was indescribable. Still, I—rather—like tea _à la Russe_ without lemon-peel and cream.
Third Week. Tuesday. —— Soup and Bouilli. Stewed Potatoes. Mixed Pickles. —— Alice’s Pudding. ——
SOUP AND BOUILLI.
6 lbs. brisket of beef, all in one neat cut, with as little bone as possible; 3 carrots; 1 small head of cauliflower cut into clusters; 4 turnips; 6 _small_ onions; bunch of sweet herbs; 2 blades of mace; 1 tablespoonful of butter cut up in flour; dice of fried bread; pepper, salt, and French mustard.
Cover the meat well with water; bring to a very slow boil, and continue this for four hours, skimming often and filling up with boiling water as that in the pot sinks. At the end of that time, put in the vegetables, cut into neat squares. Season, and simmer about forty-five minutes, or until the carrots are tender. Take up the meat; rub over with butter and cover upon a heated dish. Strain the soup from the vegetables without breaking them, and set the colander in which they are left over boiling water until after the soup is served. Strain this again through a soup-sieve, and pour upon plenty of fried bread in the tureen. If you like a thicker soup, return it after the second straining, to the fire with a handful of tapioca, or of German sago, ready-soaked, and simmer until clear. When the soup is out of the way, arrange the vegetables in little heaps around the beef, all of a kind together. Put a cupful of the soup over the fire, stir in the floured butter, mustard, pepper, and salt, to your liking; boil up and pour over the beef.
STEWED POTATOES.
See Wednesday, First Week in October.
ALICE’S PUDDING.
1 quart of milk; 5 eggs; 1 cup dry crumbs; ½ cup strawberry, or other sweet jam; ½ cup of sugar.
Butter a pudding-dish; strew crumbs on the bottom; pour in the jam; cover this with the rest of the crumbs, wet with milk. Heat the quart of milk to scalding; take from the fire and pour upon the beaten yolks and sugar. Then, whip in the frothed whites. Heat this three minutes, and put upon the layer of crumbs in the dish, spoonful by spoonful, letting each soak in well before adding more. Bake in a steady oven until “set,” and slightly colored. Eat cold with cream.
Third Week. Wednesday. —— Poor Roger’s Soup. Beefsteak and Onions. Canned Succotash. Potatoes à la Parisienne. Spinach. —— Baked Apple Dumpling. ——
POOR ROGER’S SOUP.
The bones of yesterday’s roast boiled down in 3 pints of water to 1 pint; 1 pint of stock left from yesterday’s soup; 6 parboiled potatoes sliced thin; ¼ cabbage sliced small; 1 tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour; 1 sliced and fried onion; 1 quart of hot water.
Parboil the cabbage; then put it on, with the potatoes and fried onion, in the hot water; cook until the cabbage is tender, and the potatoes broken to pieces. Take the fat from the top of your stock; add the latter to the cabbage-soup; season to taste; stir in the floured butter; cook five minutes, and pour out.
BEEFSTEAK AND ONIONS.
Flatten the steak with the broad side of a hatchet; broil over clear coals; lay upon a chafing-dish, and pour over it a little melted butter in which has been stewed a quarter of an onion sliced. Strain out the onion; pepper and salt the butter; squeeze in the juice of half a lemon. After it is poured over the steak, put a hot cover over it, and let it stand five minutes before serving. Steak thus treated has a delicious flavor.
CANNED SUCCOTASH.
Put on in enough boiling water to cover it. Salt slightly; stew half an hour; turn off most of the water, and put in as much cold milk. Heat to boiling; stir in a good lump of butter rolled in flour; pepper and salt; simmer ten minutes, and pour out.
POTATOES À LA PARISIENNE.
Pare, and cut into small balls with your potato-gouge. (The scraps should be boiled and mashed.) Boil in hot salted water, until tender; drain, and drop into a saucepan containing a cupful of drawn butter seasoned with pepper and parsley. Stew three minutes.
SPINACH.
Pick off the leaves, and boil in plenty of hot salted water. Drain; chop upon a board, or in a tray; put into a saucepan, with a tablespoonful of butter, a little sugar, pepper and salt, nutmeg, and a few spoonfuls of milk or cream. Stir, and heat until bubbling hot; pour out upon small squares of fried bread.
BAKED APPLE DUMPLINGS.
1 quart of prepared flour; 2 tablespoonfuls of lard, and 1 of butter; 1 saltspoonful of salt; 2 cups of milk.
Mix into a paste, rubbing shortening and salt into the flour, then wetting with the milk. Roll out less than half an inch thick; cut into squares; lay a pared and cored apple in the centre of each; bring the corners together, and join neatly. Lay in a buttered baking-pan, the joined edges down, and bake to a nice brown. Glaze with white of egg just before you take them up. Sift powdered sugar over them, and eat with hot, sweet sauce.
Third Week. Thursday. —— Dieppe Soup. Stewed Chickens. Boiled Beans. Browned Potatoes. Stewed Tomatoes. —— Tapioca Pudding. ——
DIEPPE SOUP.
2 lbs. of beef, cut from the shin, and sliced; 2 sliced onions; 2 carrots; 1 teaspoonful of sugar; dripping for frying; 3 stalks of celery; 5 quarts of water; ½ cup of farina, soaked two hours in a little milk. Pepper and salt.
Flour, and fry the beef with the onion, sugar, pepper, and salt, to a good brown in the dripping. Put into a soup-pot, with five quarts of water, the carrots, and celery, and cook slowly four hours, _at least_. Strain, cool, and skim; season; add the farina, and simmer half an hour longer, stirring faithfully.
STEWED CHICKENS.