Part 39

About 10 fine apples, pared, cored, and sliced half an inch thick; juice of 1 lemon; sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg; 3 cups of prepared flour; nearly 4 cups of milk; 5 eggs; a little salt.

Spread the slices of apple upon a dish, and sprinkle with lemon-juice and sugar. Beat the yolks light; add milk, then the whisked whites and salted flour by turns. Dip the slices of apple into the batter, turning over and over until thoroughly coated, and fry in hot lard, a few at a time. Drain upon a hot sieve, and sift powdered sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg upon them. Eat with wine sauce.

Fourth Week. Saturday. —— Tomato and Pea Soup. Calf’s Liver and Bacon. Parsnip Fritters. Spinach. Sweet Potatoes. —— Bread-and-Raisin Pudding. ——

TOMATO AND PEA SOUP.

Empty a can of tomatoes. Put them over the fire with three pints of stock and stew one hour. Strain, rubbing the pulp through the colander; add what was left yesterday of the pea porridge; season to taste, simmer fifteen minutes, and pour upon dice of fried bread into the tureen.

CALF’S LIVER AND BACON.

Wash a fresh liver well, and, when quite ready to cook it, cut into long, narrow slices. Dip each in flour highly seasoned with pepper and salt. Melt a tablespoonful of good dripping in a saucepan; lay in the liver, the slices fitting neatly to one another; strew with sliced onion, and cover entirely with very thin slices of fat salt pork, or bacon. Fit a close top on the saucepan; cook _very_ slowly, never allowing it to bubble, for one hour. The liver should be steamed, not stewed, much less fried. When very tender, take it out and lay upon a dish. Add a tablespoonful of tomato sauce to the gravy, thicken with browned flour wet with water; boil once, and pour over the liver.

PARSNIP FRITTERS.

Scrape, and boil in hot salted water until tender. Mash them very smooth, picking out all the fibres. Add to four large parsnips one beaten egg, a teaspoonful of prepared flour, with pepper and salt, and a teaspoonful of milk. Make into cakes; flour, and fry in dripping. Drain well.

SPINACH.

See Wednesday, Third Week in October.

SWEET POTATOES.

See Sunday, Third Week in October.

BREAD-AND-RAISIN PUDDING.

1 quart of milk; loaf of stale baker’s bread, the crust all pared off, and cut into slices half an inch thick; butter to spread the bread; 4 eggs; ½ cup of sugar; ½ lb. of raisins, seeded and cut into thirds.

Make a raw custard of eggs, sugar, and milk. Fit slices of buttered bread into the bottom of a buttered bake-dish. Pour on custard, and strew with raisins. Lay in more buttered slices, and so on, until the dish is full. The last layer should be well-soaked bread. Cover closely; set in a baking-pan of hot water, and bake an hour and a quarter. Turn out; pour hot, sweet sauce over it, and send more around with it.

NOVEMBER.

First Week. Sunday. —— Baked Soup. Fillet of Veal. Cannelon of Potatoes. French Beans à la Crême. Tomato Sauce. —— Neapolitainoes. Coffee and Whipped Cream. ——

BAKED SOUP.

3 lbs. of beef; 2 lbs. of veal; ½ lb. of lean ham; 1 onion; 2 carrots; 2 tablespoonfuls of farina; 1 can of corn, drained and chopped; 2 stalks of celery; pepper and salt; 6 quarts of water.

Cut the meat into long strips, the vegetables into dice, and pack, in alternate layers, in a broad, low jar, that will go into the oven. Strew the layers with farina and corn, fill up with the water; cover the jar closely, putting a paste of flour and water over the top or about the edges, to exclude the air and keep in the steam. Do this on Saturday night. At bed-time, set in the oven in a pan of cold water, that it may heat gradually as the range warms in the morning. Let it bake until dinner-time. Pour into a bowl, take out the meat, season, and put it into the stock-pot. Pour over it as much as you can spare of the soup, season, and set by for to-morrow. Add pepper and salt to that left for to-day, and serve.

FILLET OF VEAL.

Take out the bone of the joint (you can add it on Saturday to your baked soup); make a deep incision between the meat and the “flap,” which your butcher will skewer around the fillet. Fill this and the hole left by taking out the bone with a force-meat of crumbs, chopped salt pork, chopped thyme and parsley, grated lemon-peel, pepper, salt, and the juice of a lemon. Bind the fillet into shape with tapes; cover the top with a paste of flour and water, and bake twelve minutes to the pound, putting a cup of boiling water into the pan. When done, pull off the paste; dredge with flour, and baste well with butter. The meat should have been very freely basted while cooking. Dish the meat when browned; season, and thicken the gravy; boil up, and pour into a boat.

CANNELON OF POTATOES.

Mash the potatoes thoroughly; beat light with butter, milk, and two raw eggs. Heat in a greased frying pan, stirring constantly, until stiff enough to handle. Make into a long roll; brush over with beaten eggs, and sift crumbs over it. Lay in a buttered baking-pan, and brown nicely in a quick oven. Dish, and pour over it a cup of good drawn butter.

FRENCH BEANS À LA CRÊME.

Open a can of string-beans; clip them into short pieces, and cook twenty minutes in hot salted water. Drain. Have ready, in a saucepan, two tablespoonfuls of cream, and as much butter, heated together; pour upon a beaten egg; return to the saucepan; season with pepper and salt; stir in a tablespoonful of hot vinegar; take from the fire; dish the beans, and pour the sauce over them.

TOMATO SAUCE.

Stew the contents of a can of tomatoes twenty minutes. Strain and pulp through a colander. Add butter, rolled in flour; a little sugar; salt and pepper; cook ten minutes and pour out.

NEAPOLITAINOES.

Make enough puff-paste for a pie; roll out into a sheet half an inch thick, and cut into strips three inches long and half as wide. Bake in a quick oven. When cold, spread half of them with sweet jam or jelly, and stick the others over them in pairs—the jelly being, of course, in the middle. Ice with a frosting made of the whites of two eggs, whipped stiff with half a pound of sugar.

Make these on Saturday. Pass with them strong, hot coffee, with a great spoonful of whipped cream on the surface of each cupful.

First Week. Monday. —— Sago Soup. Veal and Oyster Pie. Boiled Potatoes. Cold Slaw. Stewed Celery. —— Dessert of Fruit and Nuts. ——

SAGO SOUP.

Strain off two quarts of soup from your stock-pot, when you have removed the cake of fat from the top; heat, and stir into it half a cup of German sago previously soaked in a little cold water. Simmer until the sago is dissolved.

VEAL AND OYSTER PIE.

Cut the best parts of your cold roast fillet into thin dominoes. Put a layer in the bottom of a pudding-dish; sprinkle with the dressing, chopped fine, or with minced ham; cover with oysters; strew these with pepper, salt, butter-bits, a pinch of grated lemon-peel, and squeeze a few drops of lemon-juice over them. More veal, etc., and, when the dish is full, pour in yesterday’s gravy, skimmed, and mixed with as much oyster-liquor. Cover with a good paste, and bake one hour. Wash over with white of egg just before you take it up. The pastry can, in cold weather, be made on Saturday, and kept in a cool place.

BOILED POTATOES.

Put on in cold water and bring to a boil. At the end of twenty minutes throw in a cup of cold water to arrest the boil. Heat up again quickly, and when a fork will pierce the large potatoes easily, pour off the water. Put in a little salt, and set the uncovered pot upon the range for one minute. Take each potato in a towel, and hold in your hand while you strip off the peel. The fashion of sticking a fork through them, in order to pare them, breaks and cools them.

COLD SLAW.

Shred a white cabbage and pour over it the following

_Dressing._

2 beaten eggs; 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar; 6 tablespoonfuls of vinegar; ½ teaspoonful of made mustard and same of pepper and salt; ½ teaspoonful of celery essence; 1 tablespoonful of butter.

Mix well, stir over the fire until scalding hot. When cold, add to the cabbage. Toss and stir, and set in a cold place until wanted.

STEWED CELERY.

Scrape and cut the blanched stalks into short pieces. Cook tender in boiling water, a little salt. Drain this off, add a cup of drawn butter; simmer five minutes, and serve.

DESSERT OF FRUIT AND NUTS.

Arrange in accordance with your taste and convenience. You may add dried figs to the dish of nuts.

First Week. Tuesday. —— Strong Broth. Beefsteak. Omelette with Tomatoes. Mashed Potatoes. French Mustard. —— Lemon Puffs. ——

STRONG BROTH.

Heat the contents of your stock-pot, adding a quart or more of boiling water. Let all simmer together one hour. Strain and press out the nourishment from the meat. Cool; skim, add seasoning, and half a cup of soaked rice. Cook gently until this is soft.

N. B.—Whenever the stock-pot is empty, scald it with soda and water, and set in the sun.

BEEFSTEAK.

Flatten a steak; broil upon a greased gridiron over a clear fire. Lay upon a hot dish; pepper and salt; lay bits of butter over it, and cover three or four times before sending to table.

OMELETTE, WITH TOMATOES.

Beat seven eggs just enough to break up the yolks. Put a piece of butter as large as an egg in the frying-pan, and, when it heats, pour in the eggs. Loosen from the sides and bottom of the pan, from the first, by shaking the pan, and using your cake-turner. When “set” in the middle, cover one half with hot stewed tomatoes; fold over the other half so as to enclose it, and invert the pan upon a hot dish.

MASHED POTATOES.

Whip up soft with butter, milk, and salt, and heap roughly upon a deep dish.

LEMON PUFFS.

1 cup of prepared flour; ½ cup of powdered sugar; 1 tablespoonful of butter; 3 beaten eggs; juice and grated peel of half a lemon; 3 tablespoonfuls of milk, with a _tiny_ pinch of soda.

Rub butter and sugar together; beat in the yolks, the milk, whites, flour; at last, and quickly, the lemon. Bake in buttered corn-bread pans, or in paté-pans. The oven should be quick. Turn out, and eat hot with sauce.

First Week. Wednesday. —— Beef Tea, with Noodles. Smothered Chickens. Salsify Sauté. Macaroni au Gratin. Brussels Sprouts. —— English Tapioca Pudding. ——

BEEF TEA, WITH NOODLES.

3 lbs. of lean beef; 2 onions; 2 turnips; 2 carrots; 2 cloves; 2 quarts and 1 pint of water; a good handful of noodles (made according to receipt given on Wednesday, First Week in August).

Mince the vegetables. Put on in the water, and boil down to two quarts. Drain off, and pour upon the beef, minced _very_ fine. Simmer one hour; strain, season, and put in the noodles. Cook gently twenty minutes.

SMOTHERED CHICKENS.

Split a pair of tender chickens down the back, as for broiling. Lay in a dripping-pan; pour over them a cup of boiling water, in which has been dissolved a great spoonful of butter. Invert another pan over this one, to keep in the steam, and cook, basting often, until the chickens are russet-colored all over, and very tender. Baste twice with butter at the last. Dish the chickens; thicken, season, and boil up; then pour part over the chickens, the rest into a boat.

SALSIFY SAUTÉ.

Scrape and cut the salsify-roots into pieces two inches long; cook tender in boiling water, slightly salt. Shake and drain in a colander, to get rid of all the water. Have in a frying- or saucepan two or three spoonfuls of butter, with a little pepper. When hot, put in the salsify. Heat and toss five minutes, but do not let it brown. Serve very hot. It is exceedingly nice.

MACARONI AU GRATIN.

Break half a pound of macaroni into inch lengths. Make a weak broth by diluting the remains of yesterday’s soup with hot water, and straining it. When it boils, season well, and put in the macaroni. Cook until tender, but not broken. Drain off the liquor; put the hot macaroni upon a stone-china dish; stir a good piece of butter through it; sift over it a mixture of grated cheese and fine bread-crumbs. Set upon the upper grating of the oven to brown.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS.

Cook about twenty-five minutes in boiling salt water. Drain; season with pepper, salt, and butter; stir these in well, and dish.

ENGLISH TAPIOCA PUDDING.

1 cup of tapioca, soaked two hours in a pint of the milk; 3 pints of milk; 5 eggs; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; 1 cup of sugar; ½ lb. raisins, seeded, and cut in half; grated peel of half a lemon.

Put the soaked tapioca in a farina-kettle, and surround with lukewarm water. Bring to a boil, and, when soft all through, add the creamed butter and sugar; then the eggs; next, the tapioca; finally, the fruit. Bake one hour in a buttered dish. Eat hot, with sauce.

First Week. Thursday. —— Mutton Soup. Roast Rabbits. Cheese Custards. Stewed Corn. Lima Beans. —— Cocoa Pudding. ——

MUTTON SOUP.

3 lbs. scrag of mutton—bones cracked and meat chopped; 2 turnips; 2 onions; chopped parsley; pepper and salt; 3 quarts of water; ½ cup of barley, soaked two hours in a little water.

Put on meat and vegetables with the bones in the water, and simmer three hours and a half. There should be two quarts of soup. Strain, cool, and season; add the barley, and cook gently until this is soft.

ROAST RABBITS.

Skin, clean with great care, and wash a pair of fat rabbits—or hares—stuff with a force-meat of crumbs and chopped fat salt pork, seasoned with onion, thyme, pepper and salt. Sew up with fine thread; bind the legs to the body in a kneeling posture, and lay in the dripping-pan. Pour over them a cupful of boiling water, and cover as you did the chickens yesterday. Baste with butter twice, with their own gravy twice, and twice, at last, with butter. Just before you take them up, dredge with flour and give a final baste with butter. Dish when you have clipped and drawn out the threads. Thicken and season the gravy, and pour into a gravy-boat.

CHEESE CUSTARDS.

6 tablespoonfuls of finely grated cheese; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; 4 eggs; 1 cup of milk, with a teaspoonful of corn-starch stirred in it; salt and pepper; soda.

Beat the eggs very light, and pour upon them the milk heated (with a pinch of soda) and thickened with the corn-starch. While still warm, add pepper, salt, butter, and cheese. Beat up well and pour into greased custard-cups. Bake in a quick oven about fifteen minutes, or until high and brown. Serve at once, as a separate course, passing bread and butter with them. They should follow the soup directly, or be served just before the dessert.

STEWED CORN.

Empty a can of corn into a saucepan and cover with hot-salted water. Cook half an hour, drain off the water, add a cup of milk, and, when this boils, a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Pepper and salt to taste; simmer five minutes and serve.

LIMA BEANS.

Soak the dried beans overnight, changing the water twice. In the morning put on to cook in cold water, with a clean piece of streaked fat pork or bacon, an inch or so square. When the beans are soft, drain; take out the pork and dish; seasoning with butter, pepper and salt.

COCOA PUDDING.

1 cup of fine crumbs; 1 quart of milk; 4 eggs; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; 1 scant cup of sugar; 2 tablespoonfuls of grated cocoa, or of cocoatina; 1 teaspoonful of Colgate’s vanilla.

Soak the bread in the milk; put over the fire in a farina-kettle, and stir to a boil. When thick and smooth, stir in the butter, the sugar, and the cocoa. Take from the fire, pour out; beat two minutes and whip in the beaten yolks, then the whites, which should have been beaten stiff. Put into a buttered mould, set in a pan of hot water and bake forty-five minutes in a moderate oven. Turn out and eat with powdered sugar.

First Week. Friday. —— Milk Soup. Ragoût of Duck. Canned Green Peas. Mashed Potatoes. Celery Salad. —— Sponge Gingerbread, with Chocolate. ——

MILK SOUP.

1 quart of milk and the same of water; 2 onions; 2 turnips; 2 stalks of celery; 1 teaspoonful of sugar—a pinch of soda in the milk; 2 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch wet up in cold water; pepper and salt; dice of fried bread; two tablespoonfuls of butter.

Boil chopped onions, turnips and celery in the water until soft enough to be pulped through the colander. Do this, season, add the water in which they were cooked, the milk, and when the soup boils, the corn-starch. At last, stir in the butter a little at a time, to prevent oiling. Simmer five minutes, and pour upon the fried bread in the tureen.

RAGOÛT OF DUCK.

Clean and wash a duck; put into the dripping-pan, with a large cupful of boiling water, and roast, basting often, half an hour. Meanwhile, boil the giblets in a pint of water. Take up the duck and joint as for fricassee. Put into a saucepan with the gravy from the dripping-pan and the water in which the giblets were boiled; add an onion stuck with cloves; a little salt and pepper. Cover and stew gently an hour and a half. Take up the duck and keep hot upon a chafing-dish. Strain the gravy; stir in a tablespoonful of butter rubbed in one of browned flour, the juice of a lemon, and a glass of wine. Boil up and pour over the duck.

CANNED GREEN PEAS.

Turn the peas into a saucepan; cover with boiling water, and cook twenty-five minutes. Drain well; add pepper, salt and butter, and dish.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as on Tuesday of this Week.

CELERY SALAD.

Scrape and cut the best stalks into short lengths. Put into a salad-bowl, and season with a dressing of two tablespoonfuls of oil to five of vinegar, one teaspoonful of sugar, and a saltspoonful, each, of salt and pepper.

SPONGE GINGERBREAD AND CHOCOLATE.

5 cups of flour; 1 heaping tablespoonful of butter; 1 cup of molasses; 1 cup of sugar; 1 cup of sour milk; 2 tablespoonfuls of saleratus, dissolved in hot water; 2 teaspoonfuls of ginger; 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon.

Mix molasses, sugar, butter, and spice together. Warm slightly, and beat five minutes. Add milk, saleratus, lastly the flour. Beat hard five minutes, and bake in a broad, shallow pan; or in small tins. Eat warm with a cup of good chocolate, made by stirring six tablespoonfuls of chocolate, wet with cold water, into a pint of boiling water, boiling twenty minutes, adding the milk, and cooking ten minutes longer, stirring often.

First Week. Saturday. —— Family Soup. Killarney Stew. Baked Tomatoes. Fried Sweet Potatoes. Stewed Carrots. —— Boiled Pudding. ——

FAMILY SOUP.

4 lbs. of lean beef; 2 lbs. of cracked bones, of any kind; 4 turnips; 3 carrots; 2 onions; 4 stalks of celery; 7 quarts of water; pepper and salt.

Cut the meat into strips, and fry with a sliced onion, in dripping, until brown, but not dry. Slice the carrots, turnips, and onion; chop the celery, and put these with meat, fried onion, bones, and gravy from the frying-pan, into the soup-pot. Add the water, and cook slowly four hours after the boil begins. Pour off the liquor—there should be at least five quarts; take out meat and bones, season highly, and consign to the stock-pot, with all of the liquor except that needed for to-day. Salt and pepper, and set away in a cold place. Pulp the vegetables into the soup kept out for to-day; cool, skim, season, and bring to a gentle boil; then pour out.

KILLARNEY STEW.

3 lbs. of lean mutton—that from the scrag is best, and you can use the bones for your soup; 8 sliced potatoes; 1 sliced onion; salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.

Put on the mutton, cut into small pieces, with the sliced onion, and enough cold water to cover it, and stew very slowly two hours, or until tender. Strain the gravy into a bowl, and set in cold water to throw up the fat. Put a layer of potatoes, sliced thin, in the bottom of a saucepan; cover with meat, peppered and salted; sprinkle with parsley—more potatoes, and more meat until all are in. Take all the fat from the top of the gravy and strain it over the meat. Cover closely, and simmer until the potatoes are broken to pieces. Half an hour after the boil begins should suffice.

BAKED TOMATOES.

Drain the superfluous juice from a can of tomatoes into your boiling soup. Lay the tomatoes in a buttered pie-dish; season with pepper, salt, butter and sugar; strew bread-crumbs over the top; add a little gravy saved from yesterday’s ragoût; cover, and bake half an hour; then brown.

FRIED SWEET POTATOES.

Boil, and, when cold, scrape off the skins; slice lengthwise, and fry to a light brown in nice dripping, or butter. Drain, salt, pepper, and serve hot.

STEWED CARROTS.

Scrape, and boil whole forty-five minutes. Drain, and cut into round slices a quarter of an inch thick. Put on in a cupful of weak broth—a little of your soup will do—and cook gently half an hour. Then add three or four tablespoonfuls of milk, a lump of butter rolled in flour, with seasoning to taste. Boil up and dish.

BOILED PUDDING.

3 cupfuls of flour; 2 cupfuls of sour milk; 1 teaspoonful of soda dissolved in hot water; ½ cupful powdered suet; a little salt.

Stir the milk gradually into the flour until a smooth batter is the result. Put in suet and salt; lastly, beat in the soda-water thoroughly and quickly. Pour into a buttered mould and boil one hour and a half. Turn out and eat hot with sauce.

Second Week. Sunday. —— Tapioca Soup. Roast Saddle of Mutton. Potato Puff. Salsify Fritters. Kidney Beans à l’Anglaise. Currant Jelly. —— Almond Blanc-Mange. Cream Rose Cake. ——

TAPIOCA SOUP.

Take the fat from the top of your stock-pot, dip out as much as you need for to-day; add a large cupful of boiling water and strain into the soup-kettle. Bring to a boil, skim, and put in half a cup of grained tapioca, which has been soaked for two hours in a little water. Simmer until clear.

ROAST SADDLE OF MUTTON.

Lay in the dripping-pan, pour a large cup of boiling water over it, and roast twelve minutes to the pound, basting often. As it begins to brown, cover with white paper, lifting this when you baste the meat. Ten minutes before serving, take off the paper, dredge the mutton with flour; baste with butter, and brown. Skim the fat from the gravy; thicken with browned flour, season, and boil once, then serve in a boat. Pass currant jelly with the mutton.

POTATO PUFF.

Whip boiled potatoes light with a fork; beat in butter, salt, and milk, at last, two frothed eggs. Whisk to a cream; make into a smooth mound in a greased bake-dish, and set in a quick oven to brown.

SALSIFY FRITTERS.

1 bunch of salsify; 2 beaten eggs; ½ cup of milk; flour for thin batter; salt.

Wash, scrape, and grate the salsify into the batter, made of the ingredients given above. It should be as thick when the salsify is in, as pound-cake batter. Drop by the spoonful into hot fat. Fry quickly, drain in a hot colander, and serve dry and hot.

KIDNEY BEANS À L’ANGLAISE.

Soak dried white beans all night in cold water. Exchange in the morning for tepid, and finally put on to boil in cold. Heat and cook slowly, and when, after two hours, the skin begins to crack, strain off the water, adding it to your soup-stock if you like, after salting it sufficiently to warrant its keeping. Put a folded towel upon the beans left in the saucepan, and set at the side of the range, where they will keep hot, without scorching, for half an hour. Sprinkle with salt and pepper; stir in a small bit of butter, and dish. Beans thus cooked will be very mealy.

ALMOND BLANC-MANGE.

1 quart of milk; 1 package Cooper’s gelatine, soaked one hour in a little cold water; 3 oz. of almonds, blanched, dried, and pounded in a mortar, with a little rose-water to prevent oiling; ¾ cup of sugar; extract bitter almonds.