Part 38

Truss and stuff the fowls as for roasting. Cover the bottom of the pot with thin slices of salt pork or corned ham; strew a little onion, a bunch of sweet herbs, chopped, three blades of mace, a pinch of lemon-peel, a little salt and pepper, upon this. Put in the chickens; cover with weak broth—water will do, but is not so good—cover closely and stew tender. The time will depend upon the size and age of the chickens. When done, take up and keep hot. Strain and skim the gravy; thicken with browned flour, and pour over the fowls.

BOILED BEANS.

If you use dried beans, soak over night. Put on in cold water, and cook slowly until soft. Drain, pepper, salt, and butter; then dish hot.

BROWNED POTATOES.

Work cold mashed potatoes soft with milk and butter; season with pepper and salt. Make into round, flat cakes; flour well, and bake brown in a quick oven.

STEWED TOMATOES.

Pare, slice, and stew twenty minutes. Season with pepper, salt, sugar, a lump of butter rolled in flour; put in a tablespoonful of fine bread-crumbs, and simmer ten minutes longer.

TAPIOCA PUDDING.

1 cup tapioca, soaked six hours in a little cold water; 1 quart of milk; 1 large cup of sugar; 5 eggs; grated peel of ½ lemon; a little salt.

Scald the milk, and pour upon the yolks and sugar; beat the soaked tapioca into this custard; salt; whip in the frothed whites. Pour into a buttered mould; put on the top, and set in a pan of boiling water, and this into a moderate oven. Cook three-quarters of an hour, or until firm. Turn out carefully, and eat with sauce.

Third Week. Friday. —— Clam Soup. Boiled Cod. Purée of Eggs. Mashed Potatoes. Cauliflower au Gratin. —— Coffee Méringue Custard. ——

CLAM SOUP.

50 clams; 1 quart of milk; 1 pint of water; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; 12 whole peppers; a few bits of cayenne-pods; 6 blades of mace; salt to taste; 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch.

Cut the hard parts from the clams, and set by the soft portions. Put the hard bits into the soup-pot, with the clam-liquor, the water, and spices. Boil half an hour; strain, salt, and return to the fire, with the soft parts. When the soup begins to simmer, stir in the butter and corn-starch. Stew five minutes, and pour into the tureen. Stir in the boiling milk, and serve. Send oyster-crackers and sliced lemon around with it.

BOILED COD.

Sew up the fish in a clean bit of mosquito-net, and cook in boiling salted water, fifteen minutes to the pound. Unwrap, and pour over it a few spoonfuls of sauce, putting the rest into a boat.

SAUCE.

A cupful of the liquor in which your fish is cooking, strained and skimmed. Put into a saucepan; heat, and stir in a great spoonful of butter rolled in a teaspoonful of flour. When this boils, add the pounded yolks of two boiled eggs, and a tablespoonful of minced cucumber pickle. Boil once, and serve. Garnish the fish with rings of whites of eggs, and pickles, sliced.

PURÉE OF EGGS.

8 hard-boiled eggs; 3 raw eggs; 1 cup of gravy saved from yesterday’s chickens; 1 tablespoonful of butter; chopped parsley; pepper, salt, and nutmeg; some fine crumbs; fried bread.

Pound the boiled yolks, and work in butter, parsley, seasoning, and the raw eggs. Beat stiff, and rub through a colander. Mince the whites until they are like coarse snow, and stir over the fire in the hot gravy five minutes, with a tablespoonful of crumbs. Make a mound of the yolks in the middle of a stone-china dish; form a ring of the whites around them, with an outer wall of triangles of fried bread. Sift fine crumbs over all, and brown nicely upon the upper grating of the oven.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual, and send in with the fish-course.

CAULIFLOWER AU GRATIN.

Boil, tied up in a net, in plenty of hot salted water, forty minutes, if large. Put into a buttered bake-dish, blossom upward; cover with drawn butter; sift fine crumbs over it, and set in the oven ten minutes to color the crumbs.

COFFEE CUSTARD MÉRINGUE.

6 eggs—whites and yolks separated; 1 quart of milk; 1 cup of sugar; 1 cup of strong made coffee.

Whip the whites to a stiff froth with a little powdered sugar. Heat the milk—with a pinch of soda in it; lay the _méringue_ upon it in great spoonfuls, turning when the lower side is poached. Lift with a skimmer, as each spoonful is done, and lay upon a sieve to cool and drain. When all are out of the milk, pour it upon the beaten yolks and sugar. Return to the farina-kettle, and stir until it begins to thicken. Take from the fire, and stir in the hot coffee. When all are cold put the _méringues_ into a glass bowl, and pour the custard over them. The _méringues_ will at once rise to the surface, coated with the custard.

Third Week. Saturday. —— Excellent Stock Soup. Veal Collops with Tomato Sauce. Rice Croquettes à la Princesse. Boiled Potatoes. Squash. —— Lausanne Pudding. ——

EXCELLENT STOCK SOUP.

1 knuckle of veal, all the bones well cracked, and all the meat, except what is taken off your collops; 4 pig’s feet, cleaned and cracked; 3 lbs. of beef marrow-bones; bunch of herbs; 3 onions; 3 carrots, sliced; 6 blades of mace; 4 stalks of celery; 9 quarts of water; pepper and salt; ½ cup of rice.

Put the meat, bones, and feet on in the water overnight, cooking two hours before the fire goes down, and leaving on the range in the pot (which must be scrupulously clean) all night, salting it a little. In the morning, add the herbs and vegetables, and simmer gently six hours. Take from the fire, and strain, picking out the meat and bones, and rubbing the vegetables through the colander. Put meat and bones into the stock-pot; salt and pepper highly, and pour on them all the soup, except two quarts. There should be at least six quarts of strong broth, the extra waste in boiling having been made up by adding hot water from time to time. Season the stock well, and put away in a cold place. Cool and skim to-day’s soup, season, and put over the fire with the rice. Simmer until the rice is tender.

VEAL COLLOPS WITH TOMATO SAUCE.

Cut three pounds of meat from your veal knuckle, and this into pieces two inches long and one wide. Flatten with the side of a hatchet; flour well, and fry in dripping, with half of a sliced onion. Put a cup of your soup-stock into a saucepan, season well, and lay in the collops. Have ready a cup of tomato sauce, rubbed smooth through a colander, and seasoned. When the collops have stewed ten minutes in the broth, add a tablespoonful of the sauce, and the same quantity, at intervals of five minutes, until all is used up. Be careful to follow these directions implicitly. When the sauce is all in, put in a tablespoonful of butter rolled thickly in browned flour. Simmer five minutes, and serve in a deep dish.

RICE CROQUETTES À LA PRINCESSE.

2 cups boiled rice; 2 eggs; ½ cup of milk; pepper and salt; a boiled sweetbread, minced fine, or boiled fowl-giblets, or any cold meat minced, and worked to a paste with the pounded yolks of two boiled eggs, and well seasoned with butter, salt, cayenne and a pinch of lemon; lard for frying.

Mix beaten eggs and milk with salt into the hot rice, and stir in a saucepan until stiff. Let it get cold; make into thin round cakes; enclose a spoonful of the meat-paste in the centre of each, and roll the rice-ball round. Dip in beaten egg, then in cracker-dust, and fry carefully in plenty of hot lard. Drain and serve hot.

BOILED POTATOES.

See Monday of this week.

SQUASH.

Pare, slice and cook soft in boiling water. Drain, mash, and press in a hot colander; season with pepper, salt, and butter, and smooth in a mound within a deep dish.

LAUSANNE PUDDING.

1 pint of milk; 3 eggs; 2 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch; ½ cup of sugar; 1 teaspoonful of vanilla or other essence; sweet jam or jelly.

Heat the milk, and stir in the corn-starch wet up with cold milk. Stir until thick. Take from the fire, and beat in sugar and egg, with flavoring. Melt a tablespoonful of butter in a square, shallow baking-pan; pour in the pudding and bake half an hour. Take it up; spread, while hot, with the sweetmeats; roll up closely, lay upon a dish, and sift sugar over it. Cut in slices an inch and a half wide.

Fourth Week. Sunday. —— White Broth. Roast Beef. Yorkshire Pudding. Browned Sweet Potatoes. Fried Parsnips. Made Mustard. —— Potato Pudding. Grated Cheese. ——

WHITE BROTH.

Remove the fat from your jelly-stock. Take out enough for to-day’s use; also, two of the pig’s feet. Cut the best part of the meat from these into as neat squares as you can contrive, and lay aside. Heat the stock, with the addition of a cup of boiling water, and put, meantime, two tablespoonfuls of butter into a clean saucepan. When it heats, stir in two tablespoonfuls of flour. Stir fast, and, to keep it from browning, put in, now and then, a few spoonfuls of soup. Cook five minutes; add gradually to the soup; put in the pieces of meat, with more seasoning, if required; boil once, pour into the tureen, and add a cup of boiling milk.

ROAST BEEF.

Lay in a dripping-pan, pour a cupful of boiling water over it, and cook, basting often, _about_ ten minutes per pound. If there is much fat on it, cover these parts with a paste of flour and water, until the meat is nearly done. Ten minutes before taking it up, dredge with flour, then baste once with butter. If you like made gravy with beef, pour off the fat from the top; thicken with browned flour, season and boil once.

YORKSHIRE PUDDING.

10 tablespoonfuls prepared flour; 1 cup of cold water; 2 cups of milk; 3 eggs; salt.

Rub the flour smooth in the water and milk; salt, beat in the yolks, and, just before putting into the oven, whip in the beaten whites. Put two tablespoonfuls from the fat “top” of your beef gravy into a square baking-pan; pour in the batter, and put into the other oven until “set.” Baste then, every few minutes, with the hot dripping until it is of a rich brown. Cut in squares, and lay about the meat. Some much prefer this Yorkshire Pudding to that cooked with the meat.

BROWNED SWEET POTATOES.

Boil with their skins on about twenty minutes. Peel carefully. Pour off nearly all the fat from the top of the beef-dripping. Lay the potatoes in the pan around the meat, and baste when you baste the beef. Drain well in a colander.

FRIED PARSNIPS.

Boil tender in hot, salted water; scrape, slice lengthwise when they are nearly cold; flour all over, and fry in salted lard or dripping. Drain well.

POTATO PUDDING.

1 lb. mashed potato, rubbed through a colander; ½ lb. butter, creamed with the sugar; 6 eggs—whites and yolks beaten separately; 1 lemon, squeezed into the hot potato; 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg, and the same of mace; 2 cups white sugar.

Beat the yolks into the creamed butter and sugar; add the potato. Beat very hard, and whip in the whisked whites, with the spice. Bake in open shells of paste on Saturday. Send grated cheese around with it.

Fourth Week. Monday. —— Macaroni Soup. Réchauffée of Beef. Potatoes au Gratin. Kidney Beans, Fricasseed. Grated Horseradish. —— Grapes, Boiled Chestnuts, Apples. ——

MACARONI SOUP.

Heat the contents of your stock-pot to boiling, after adding a pint of hot water. Cook a few minutes; strain off as much broth as you want for to-day, and return the rest to the jar when you have scalded it well. Put in more pepper and salt, and put by for future soups.

Heat and season the soup left out for to-day; add a handful of macaroni, broken short, and cooked twenty minutes in hot, salted water. Simmer five minutes.

RÉCHAUFFÉE OF BEEF.

Trim your cold roast neatly. Make incisions at short distances apart, and thrust strips of fat salt pork quite through it. Set in a round, deep baking-pan. Sprinkle with minced onion, and pour over it a pint of gravy—the remains of that which accompanied the roast, mixed with some from the stock-pot. Season the gravy well with pepper, salt, minced herbs, and a suspicion of French mustard. It should be cold, and the oven slow, for the first hour—never fast. Cover _very_ tightly; open the dish at the end of one hour, and turn the meat, but pay it no further attention until two hours have passed. Then dish it; strain the gravy; thicken as much as you want for your meat with browned flour; boil up, and pour over the beef. The rest can be set by for other uses. If the beef has been cooked slowly and steadily, it will be tender and most savory.

POTATOES AU GRATIN.

Boil and mash the potatoes; press firmly in a greased bowl; turn out upon a shallow pie-plate, also greased; wash all over with raw egg; sift fine crumbs upon it, and brown in a quick oven. Slip to a hot, flat dish.

KIDNEY BEANS—FRICASSEED.

Soak all night. Next day, put on in cold water, at the back of the range, and cook tender. When you turn your beef, after an hour’s cooking, dip out half a cupful of the gravy. Cool and skim it; add a little minced parsley and onion, and, when your beans are soft, pour off nearly all the water, and add this gravy. There should be just enough to keep them from getting dry. Simmer ten minutes, and dish without draining.

GRAPES, BOILED CHESTNUTS, APPLES.

Arrange the grapes in a fruit-dish, ornamented with leaves. Put on the chestnuts in warm (not hot) water, slightly salted. Bring to a boil, and cook fast fifteen minutes. Drain in a colander; stir a spoonful of butter into the chestnuts, tossing in the colander until dry. Serve in a deep dish, lined with a napkin.

Polish the apples, and lay a fruit-knife at each place.

Fourth Week. Tuesday. —— Beef-olives Soup. Mutton Stew, with Dumplings. Baked Potatoes. Stewed Tomatoes. Beets Sautés. —— Omelette Méringue. ——

BEEF-OLIVES SOUP.

Chop a few slices of the twice-served cold beef very fine; mix with one-third as much cold mashed potato, wet with gravy; season well; bind with a beaten egg, and stir in a greased saucepan until quite stiff. Let it get cold; make into small olive-shaped balls; flour, and lay aside. Strain off the liquid from your stock-pot; bring to a boil, adding hot water or seasoning, as the case may require; boil, and skim for five minutes, and drop in the beef-olives carefully. Simmer one minute—fast boiling would break them—and pour out. If you have any pickled olives in the house, add a dozen to the soup when you put in the beef-balls.

MUTTON STEW, WITH DUMPLINGS.

3 lbs. of lean mutton, cut into short strips; ½ lb. of salt pork, chopped; ½ onion, minced; chopped parsley and thyme; 1 cup of milk; 1 tablespoonful of flour wet up with the milk; pepper and salt.

Put on the mutton in enough cold water to cover it, and cook very slowly one hour. Then add the pork, onion, pepper, and herbs, and stew an hour longer. Make out a little paste, in the proportion used for the apple dumplings on Wednesday, Third Week in October; cut into strips, and drop into the stew. Cook ten minutes; take out meat and dumplings with a skimmer; lay upon a dish; add milk and flour to the gravy; stir until thickened, and pour over the contents of the dish.

BAKED POTATOES.

Wash well; lay in a good oven, and bake until soft. Wrap in a napkin, and dish.

STEWED TOMATOES.

Open the can an hour before cooking, and pour out. Put into a saucepan with a little minced onion, and stew twenty minutes. Season with sugar, pepper, salt, and a good piece of butter rolled in flour, and cook ten minutes more.

BEETS SAUTÉS.

Wash, cut off the tops, and boil more than an hour. Scrape, cut into round slices, and put into a saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of butter, one of vinegar, and pepper and salt to taste. Heat, toss, and stir ten minutes.

OMELETTE MÉRINGUE.

8 eggs; juice of a lemon, and half the grated peel; 4 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar; a little sweet jam or jelly; a pinch of salt; butter.

Beat eight yolks and four whites light; add salt, lemon-juice, and a tablespoonful of powdered sugar. Put a tablespoonful of butter in a frying-pan, and when it heats, run it all over the bottom. Pour in the omelette, shaking and loosening from the sides with a spatula. So soon as it is done at the edges sufficiently to be folded, lay a great spoonful of jam or jelly upon it; fold over, and turn out upon a stone-china dish. The _méringue_, made of the remaining whites and sugar, should be ready—beaten with the lemon-peel. Heap upon the omelette, and set upon the upper grating of the oven to “set” and brown.

Fourth Week. Wednesday. —— Barley Cream Soup. Boiled Ham. Chopped Cabbage. Corn Pudding. Beet-root Salad. —— Drunken Dominie. ——

BARLEY CREAM SOUP.

3 lbs. lean veal; 1 onion; ½ lb. pearl barley; 4 quarts of water; salt, pepper, and a cup of milk.

Cut the veal and onion very small; put on with the barley. Boil slowly until reduced to two quarts. Strain, rubbing the barley through a sieve. Season with pepper and salt; simmer three minutes. It should be white and thick as cream, when you have added the cup of boiling milk, after which it must not boil.

BOILED HAM.

Soak a ham four or five hours. Scrub it well, and put on to boil in plenty of cold water. Cook eighteen or twenty minutes to the pound. When done, leave in the water one hour in the open air, or where it will cool rapidly. Take off the skin carefully; rub all over with flour; sift fine crumbs over the top and sides, and set ten minutes in a quick oven. Wind frilled paper about the shank, and where the paper joins the body of the ham, twine a wreath of parsley.

CHOPPED CABBAGE.

Cut off stalks and green leaves, and quarter a cabbage. Boil fifteen minutes in hot salted water; pour this off, and cover the cabbage with pot-liquor, taken from the ham-kettle, and the fat skimmed off. Cook tender; drain, pressing hard; chop, and again drain; season with pepper, salt, and a little vinegar, and dish very hot.

CORN PUDDING.

Drain a can of corn. Chop the grains fine with a chopping-knife. Add a cup of milk, three eggs, a tablespoonful of melted butter, pepper and salt to taste. Beat all together, and bake, covered, forty-five minutes, in a good oven; then brown.

BEET-ROOT SALAD.

Chop the cold beets left from yesterday into rather coarse dice. Mix with an equal quantity of cold chopped potatoes, and pour over them such a dressing as was used for Bavarian Salad, Thursday, Second Week in October.

DRUNKEN DOMINIE.

1 long or square stale sponge-cake; ¼ lb. of citron; 1 glass of brandy; 1 cup of sherry wine; 1 pint of milk; 3 eggs; ½ cup of sugar.

Cut the citron into strips, and stick in regular rows in the top of the cake. Six hours before you will want to use it, pour over it, a little at a time, the liquor. It should absorb it all, and hold it with Dutch perseverance. Heat the milk; pour upon the beaten yolks and sugar. Stir and cook until it thickens. When cold, pour around the cake, as it lies upon a long dish, and cover the dominie and his bed with a _méringue_ of the whites, beaten up with a little sugar. The citron spikes should be just visible through the snowy blanket.

Fourth Week. Thursday. —— A Western Soup. Roast Chickens and Cresses. Polenta. Stewed Salsify. Mashed Potatoes. —— Apricot Trifle. ——

A WESTERN SOUP.

1 sheep’s head, cleaned, with the skin on; 4 cleaned pig’s feet; 2 onions; 2 carrots; 2 turnips; bunch of sweet herbs; 6 quarts of water; 12 whole peppers; salt to taste.

Put the head and feet into the soup-pot, and pour over them the water. When they have boiled slowly two hours, and been often skimmed, put in the sliced vegetables and herbs, and cook three hours longer, replenishing with boiling water as the liquid sinks. There should be five quarts of soup. Strain; lay aside the sheep’s tongue to cool, with the meat from one of the feet. Season the rest of the meat and bones; put into the stock-pot; pour over it all the soup not needed for to-day, also the skimmed pot-liquor from your ham, if it was corned—not smoked. Season, and set in a cold place. Cool and skim the soup meant for to-day; season, and put in the sliced tongue and dice of pig’s feet. Boil one minute.

ROAST CHICKENS AND CRESSES.

Roast as directed on Thursday, First Week in October, and lay a thick border of fresh water-cresses around them on the dish, with a bunch under—or over—each wing.

POLENTA.

1 pint of boiling water; 1 cup of coarse yellow meal, or enough for thick mush; a little salt.

Put the water over the fire; add the salted meal, and stir constantly until it has cooked twenty minutes, and bubbles up in the middle. Turn upon a flat dish, and, when cold and stiff, cut into squares; dip these into flour, and fry to a yellow-brown. Drain off the fat. This is a favorite dish with the Italian peasantry, who generally, however, eat it without frying.

STEWED SALSIFY.

Scrape; clean, without cutting the roots; drop into cold water as you clean them. Put on in boiling water, a little salt; when tender, take out a cupful of the water, thicken with two tablespoonfuls of butter rolled thickly in flour; boil up and pepper. Dish the salsify, pour the sauce over it, and cover over hot water five minutes, to let it soak in.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual.

APRICOT TRIFLE.

1 can of California apricots; 1 quart of milk; 4 eggs; 1 cup of sugar; ½ package of Cooper’s gelatine; 2 tablespoonfuls—even ones—of corn-starch, wet up with milk.

Sweeten the apricots with half the sugar, and set aside in a bowl. Heat the milk; stir in the corn-starch; pour over the beaten eggs and sugar. Cook until it begins to thicken, and pour hot upon the gelatine, which should have been soaked in a little cold water, and then dissolved in a very little hot milk. Beat all up well, and let them get cold. Wet a mould; put in a cupful of the custard; cover with apricots, drained from the syrup; wait fifteen minutes, and pour on more cream; in a few minutes, more apricots, and so on until all are used up. Set in ice to form, and, when firm, turn out, and pour the apricot-syrup over the trifle. If the apricots are large, you would do well to cut them up.

Fourth Week. Friday. —— Peas Porridge. Fried Pickerel. Chicken Croquettes. Purée of Potatoes. Baked Squash. —— Apple Fritters. ——

PEAS PORRIDGE.

Soak a quart of split peas overnight. Next morning put them on to boil in enough cold water to cover them well. When this has fairly begun to boil, pour it off, and add stock from your store in the stock-jar. Cook slowly, taking care it does not burn, until the peas are very soft. Rub through a colander and serve. Save a pint as a foundation for to-morrow’s soup—more than a pint, if you can. Never forget that soup makes soup.

FRIED PICKEREL.

Clean and wash the fish. Wipe carefully inside and out. Dredge with flour all over the outside, and fry to a nice brown—_never_ to a crisp—in lard or dripping. Drain off the fat; lay upon a hot dish—the head of one fish to the tail of the other—and garnish with curled parsley and quartered lemon.

CHICKEN CROQUETTES.

Chop the meat from your roast chickens, and mix with one-third as much mashed potato. Season; moisten well with a gravy made by boiling down the bones and stuffing in water, then straining and seasoning it. Beat into the mixture one or two whipped eggs; heat and stir over the fire until quite stiff. Turn out and cool; then roll into croquettes, dip in egg and pounded cracker, and fry to a golden brown.

PURÉE OF POTATOES.

Mash the potatoes with butter and milk, working them smooth and soft. Season, put over the fire and stir until almost stiff. Mound upon a flat dish, and strain over them a little of yesterday’s gravy, skimmed and heated.

BAKED SQUASH.

Pare, quarter, boil, and mash the squash. Season with pepper, salt, butter, and whip in two beaten eggs. When you have a light cream, turn into a buttered pudding-dish, and bake in a quick oven.

APPLE FRITTERS.