Part 43

For Snowdrift Cake, please refer to BREAKFAST, LUNCHEON AND TEA, page 340.

Second Week. Monday. —— Brown Giblet Soup. Minced Turkey and Eggs. Baked Tomatoes. Stewed Potatoes. Raw Celery. —— Plain Rice Pudding. A “Comfortable Cup of Tea.” ——

BROWN GIBLET SOUP.

Cut each giblet into three pieces, and put on to boil in stock made of the remnant of your mock turtle soup, diluted with water and strained. Simmer all together one hour.

Chop the gizzard fine, pound the liver. Make what is called technically a _roux_, by putting two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan, and when it bubbles, stirring in a teaspoonful of browned flour, and continuing to stir until they are well mixed and smooth. Add, spoonful by spoonful, half a cup of boiling soup, then the pounded liver; the gizzard, juice of half a lemon, and half a glass of brown sherry. Stir all this into the soup, and boil up once. Have in the tureen the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, each quartered with a keen knife, and pour the soup upon them.

MINCED TURKEY AND EGGS.

Cut all the meat from the skeleton of the turkey. Put the bones, sinews, skin, and stuffing into a pot with three quarts of cold water. Set at the back of the range and let it simmer down to two quarts. Season, and set away in your stock-pot.

Divide the meat intended for to-day into inch long pieces, tearing rather than cutting it. Heat the skimmed gravy; add as much drawn butter; two beaten eggs; pepper and salt; put in the minced turkey; set back over the fire, and stir until very hot. Cover the bottom of a pudding-dish with fine crumbs; pour in the mixture; strew crumbs on top, and bake to a light brown in a quick oven. Serve in the bake-dish.

BAKED TOMATOES.

Please see Thursday of last week—the First Week in December. Add the surplus juice to your turkey-bone “stock.”

STEWED POTATOES.

Pare and cut into small squares. Lay in cold water half an hour; cook tender in hot water, a little salt. When done—or nearly—pour this off, add a cup of cold milk, and when this begins to simmer, a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour, pepper, salt, and a little minced parsley. Boil gently one minute, and pour into a deep dish.

CELERY.

Wash, scrape, and cut off the green leaves. Arrange the best stalks in a celery-glass. Put two or three green pieces into to-morrow’s soup-stock while boiling; and if you have time cut up the rest into short bits, and put in a jar or wide-mouthed bottle of vinegar to keep for salad-dressing.

A PLAIN RICE PUDDING.

1 large cup of rice; 2 quarts of milk; 8 tablespoonfuls of sugar; 1 teaspoonful of salt; 1 great spoonful of butter, melted; nutmeg and cinnamon to taste.

Soak the rice two hours in a pint of the milk. Add, then, the rest of the milk and the other ingredients. Bake, covered, two hours; brown, and eat cold.

Second Week. Tuesday. —— Simple White Soup. Stewed Fillet of Veal. Spinach. Boiled Beans. Mashed Potatoes. —— Queen’s Toast. ——

SIMPLE WHITE SOUP.

Take the fat from the top of your turkey soup-stock; strain, rubbing the dressing through the colander. Simmer one hour, with half a sliced onion and four tablespoonfuls of soaked rice in it, or until the rice is soft. Be careful that it does not scorch. Strain through the soup-sieve into the tureen, add pepper and salt, if needed—finally a cup of hot milk in which has been stirred and cooked for one minute two beaten eggs.

STEWED FILLET OF VEAL.

Lard the fillet on top with strips of fat salt pork; lay a few slices of corned ham in the bottom of a saucepan; on these the veal; cover with sliced ham; season with pepper, salt, and a pinch of mace; pour in a cup of yesterday’s soup, weakened with water. Cover closely and stew two hours, turning the meat at the end of the first hour; take up and keep the meat hot over boiling water; add some browned flour and a tablespoonful of soaked gelatine to the gravy when you have strained it, boil fast and hard until it is thick, and of a glassy brown. Pour on the veal, set in the oven, the larded side upward, and shut the door for a few minutes to “glaze” it. Garnish with light and dark green celery-tops. Lay the ham about it.

SPINACH.

Boil in plenty of hot salted water, for twenty-five minutes. Drain, chop very fine, put back in the saucepan with a teaspoonful of sugar, a little pepper, salt, and mace, and a few spoonfuls of milk or cream. Beat and toss until it is like a thick green custard, and pour out upon slices of fried bread.

BOILED BEANS.

Soak all night. In the morning, put on in cold water, and cook gently until soft. Drain, pepper and salt, and pour over them, when dished, a little good drawn butter.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual—without browning.

QUEEN’S TOAST.

Cut thick slices of stale baker’s bread into rounds with a cake-cutter and fry to a nice brown in hot lard. Dip each slice into boiling water to remove the grease; sprinkle with a mixture of powdered sugar and cinnamon, and pile one upon the other. Serve a sauce made of powdered sugar, dissolved in the strained juice of a lemon and thinned with a glass of wine. Put a very little upon each round. Butter sauces are too rich for queen’s toast.

Second Week. Wednesday. —— Beef Gravy Soup. Cannelon of Veal, Oysters, and Sweetbreads. Potatoes Sautés. Succotash. Cranberry Sauce. —— Impromptu Plum Pudding. ——

BEEF GRAVY SOUP.

4 lbs. of coarse lean beef; 3 lbs. of bones; 2 sliced onions; 2 turnips; 2 carrots; bunch of sweet herbs; 3 stalks of celery; pepper and salt; 1 tablespoonful corn-starch, wet up in cold water; 5 quarts of water.

Cut the beef in small strips and fry to a good brown, in plenty of dripping. Take out the meat and lightly fry the bones. Remove these and put with the meat into the soup-pot. Now fry in the same fat the sliced onions; add these, when brown, to the meat and bones, and pour on them the five quarts of water. Cook slowly one hour; take off the scum, and put in the sliced carrots, turnips, the celery and herbs. Boil gently four hours. Strain; pick out the meat and bones, and put, well-seasoned, into the stock-jar. Pulp the vegetables into the soup; season; pour all but two quarts into the stock-jar, and set aside. Cool that left out for to-day, skim and re-heat; add the corn-starch, boil up and serve.

CANNELON OF VEAL, OYSTERS, AND SWEETBREADS.

Chop the remains of your stewed fillet; boil, blanch, and cool two sweetbreads, and mince _very_ fine. Chop, also, twelve oysters. Mix all these together with a cup of fine bread-crumbs; add plenty of seasoning and two beaten eggs. Work to a paste; flour your hands and make into a roll seven or eight inches long, and three or four inches in diameter. Envelope this in a crust of good pie-paste, closing the open ends with rounds of paste. Lay in a floured baking-pan, the joined edges downward, and bake in a steady oven. Just before taking it up glaze with butter.

POTATOES SAUTÉS.

Boil and slice while hot. Put into a frying-pan with a large spoonful of butter, pepper, salt, and powdered parsley. Stir constantly until very hot, and dish. They must not be at all brown or even dry. Serve very hot.

SUCCOTASH.

Empty a can of succotash into a saucepan; cover with boiling water, a little salt, and cook half an hour. Turn off the water; pour in a cup of milk, and when this boils, stir in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour; season with pepper and salt; boil once, and dish.

CRANBERRY SAUCE.

If you have none ready made, prepare according to receipt given for Sunday of this week. It is well to make a good supply at a time, since it keeps well in cold weather.

IMPROMPTU PLUM PUDDING.

2 cups of made mince-meat—“Atmore’s” is very good; 1½ cups prepared flour; 6 beaten eggs.

Whip the yolks and stir (with additional sugar, if needed,) into the mince-meat. Beat hard for two or three minutes. Put in whisked whites and the flour alternately. Butter a large mould; put in the mixture, leaving room for the swelling of the pudding, and boil, without the intermission of a moment, for five hours. Turn out upon a hot dish; pour brandy over it, and light just as it goes into the dining-room. Eat with rich sauce.

Second Week. Thursday. —— Tomato Soup. Glazed Ham. Potato Puff. Chopped Cabbage, with Sauce. Celery Salad. —— Corn-Starch Cup-Cake. Chocolate. ——

TOMATO SOUP.

Skim the fat from your soup-stock, and put it, meat bones and all, over the fire with a can of tomatoes. Simmer one hour and strain, rubbing the tomatoes through the colander. Season to taste; return to the fire, and when it boils, put in a lump of sugar, and a tablespoonful of butter cut up in half as much flour. Boil up once.

GLAZED HAM.

Put into cold water about ten o’clock on Wednesday night, and let it soak until the fire is made next morning. Put on then in plenty of cold water, and cook eighteen or twenty minutes per pound. Set out of doors when done, in a large, shallow pan, and cover with the pot-liquor. You should have made, meanwhile, the “glaze,” by boiling down a cup of yesterday’s soup, with an equal quantity of strained pot-liquor, until the result was a thick brown broth. Add a tablespoonful of soaked gelatine, and set the mixture in boiling water. When the ham is nearly, or quite cold, skim carefully; wash all over with the glaze, and set in the oven to harden. If not quite thick enough, apply a second coat when the first is dry. Twist frilled paper about the shank.

POTATO PUFF.

Whip hot boiled potatoes light and soft with milk, butter, and salt. Beat in two whisked eggs, and heap irregularly within a buttered bake-dish. Brown quickly, and serve in the dish in which it was baked.

CHOPPED CABBAGE WITH SAUCE.

Quarter a cabbage, and boil tender in hot salted water. Chop when you have drained it; season with pepper and salt. Drain again, pressing out the water; put into a hot dish and pour over it a cup of drawn butter, having for a base some of the strained ham-liquor, into which have been stirred a tablespoonful of celery vinegar and a little made mustard. Send up hot.

CELERY SALAD.

Scrape and cut into short pieces. Put into a salad-bowl, and pour over it a dressing such as was made for cold-slaw on Saturday, First Week in December.

CORN-STARCH CUP-CAKE.

5 eggs; 1 cup of butter; 2 cups of sugar; 1 cup sweet milk; 1 cup of corn-starch; 2 cups of prepared flour; vanilla flavoring.

Cream butter and sugar; beat in the yolks, the milk, the corn-starch and flour mixed together, alternately with the whites—lastly, the vanilla. Bake in small loaves, and eat while fresh. Pass hot chocolate with them.

Second Week. Friday. —— Oyster Soup. Boiled Chickens. Browned Potatoes. Baked Sweet Potatoes. Scalloped Squash. —— Baked Custards. ——

OYSTER SOUP.

2 quarts of oysters; 1 quart of milk; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; 1 teacupful hot water; pepper, salt and a blade of mace.

Strain all the liquor from the oysters; add the water, and heat. When near the boil, add the seasoning, then, the oysters. Cook about five minutes from the time they begin to simmer, until they “ruffle.” Stir in the butter, cook one minute and pour into the tureen. Stir in the boiling milk, and send to table.

BOILED CHICKENS.

Clean and truss the chickens, but do not stuff them. Sew up each in a piece of mosquito-netting, and boil in plenty of hot salted water. Allow about twelve minutes to the pound. Undo the netting; wipe the chickens, and rub all over with butter. Send up in a boat a cup of melted butter in which have been stirred the pounded yolks of two hard boiled eggs, and some powdered or minced parsley. Pour a few spoonfuls over the chickens.

BROWNED POTATOES.

Boil with their skins on. Throw off the water; take each potato in a clean towel, and hold it while you strip off the skin. Lay them, when peeled, in a greased baking-pan, and set this in a hot oven. Roast, with good dripping, until they are well colored.

BAKED SWEET POTATOES.

Wash, and bake soft in a moderate oven. Serve in their “jackets.”

SCALLOPED SQUASH.

Pare, slice, and mash. Stir in, while it is hot, a good spoonful of butter, pepper and salt to taste, and two beaten eggs. Pour into a buttered dish; strew fine crumbs on the top, and bake, covered, half an hour—then brown slightly.

BAKED CUSTARDS.

1 quart of milk; 4 beaten eggs; 5 tablespoonfuls of sugar, beaten with the eggs; nutmeg, and 2 teaspoonfuls of flavoring extract.

Scald the milk; pour upon the other ingredients; stir together well; flavor, and pour into stone-china cups. Set these in a pan of hot water; grate nutmeg upon each, and bake until firm. Eat cold from the cups.

Second Week. Saturday. —— Chicken and Sago Soup. Beefsteak Pudding. Boiled Onions. Mashed Potatoes. Fried Hominy. —— Sweet Potato Pie. ——

CHICKEN AND SAGO SOUP.

Take the top from your chicken pot-liquor; add the cracked bones of the chickens, from which you cut the meat for “breakfast, luncheon, _or_ tea;” boil gently one hour. Strain, and season to taste; add a cup of soaked sago, and simmer until it is soft and clear.

BEEFSTEAK PUDDING.

3 lbs. of rump steak; 3 eggs; 2 cups of milk; 5 tablespoonfuls of prepared flour; pepper and salt; melted butter; parsley; French mustard.

Cut the steaks into pieces rather more than an inch wide and long. Beat with a rolling-pin; pepper and salt, and dip each in a mixture of melted butter and minced parsley, with a little French mustard. Lay in the bottom of a greased bake-dish; pour over them a batter made of the eggs, flour, and milk, bake an hour and a quarter. Serve in the bake-dish.

BOILED ONIONS.

Cook and boil in salted water fifteen minutes; throw this off, and cover with milk and water. Cook tender; drain; pepper and salt, and pour in a cupful of drawn butter. Simmer five minutes, and turn out.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare in the usual manner, taking care not to get them too stiff.

FRIED HOMINY.

Boil hominy—the fine-grained—the day before you want to use it. When perfectly cold and stiff, remove the skin from the top, and cut the hominy into neat squares. Flour and salt these, and fry to a nice brown in hot lard or dripping. Drain well, and eat hot.

SWEET POTATO PIE.

Parboil; skin; cool, and slice crosswise firm sweet potatoes. Line a pie-dish with a good crust; put in a layer of sliced potatoes; sprinkle abundantly with sugar; scatter in four or five whole cloves, and cover with more slices. Fill the dish thus: put in a liberal tablespoonful of melted butter; pour in a little water and a teaspoonful of lemon-juice; cover with puff-paste, and bake. Eat cold. This is a Virginia dish, and very nice.

Third Week. Sunday. —— Ox-tail Soup. Ducks à la Mode. Canned Green Peas. Mashed Turnips. Scalloped Cauliflower. —— Sponge Cake Soufflé Pudding. ——

OX-TAIL SOUP.

2 ox-tails; 1 onion; 2 turnips; 2 carrots; bunch of sweet herbs; 6 whole cloves; 2 tablespoonfuls of catsup; 1 glass of wine; pepper and salt; ½ lb. of lean ham; butter; water.

Joint the tails, and slice the vegetables and ham. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into the soup kettle, with the tails, ham, vegetables, herbs, and a pint of water. Cover closely, and simmer half an hour after they begin to smoke. Add, then, six quarts of water, if the tails are of a fair size, and simmer four hours, or until the vegetables are boiled to pieces and the tails very tender. Do this on Saturday; season the soup, and turn all into the stock-jar. On Sunday take off the fat, and strain the soup, pulping the vegetables, and taking out the pieces of tail. Put these into the stock-jar, with all the soup you do not need for to-day; also the bits of ham. Heat the portion left out for to-day; stir in a good spoonful of browned flour wet in water, the catsup and wine, and boil up fairly before serving.

DUCKS À LA MODE.

Joint the ducks; pepper, salt, and flour them. Fry to a light brown in a little butter. Put into a saucepan with a cup of your soup-stock—strained off before pulping the vegetables—a tablespoonful of minced onion, pepper and salt to taste. Cover, and stew tender; say about forty minutes from the commencement of the boil. Keep hot over boiling water while you strain the gravy; add a glass of wine, and thicken with browned flour. Boil until thick, and pour over the ducks.

CANNED GREEN PEAS.

Drain, cover with boiling water, and cook tender. Pour off the water; dish, and stir in a little hot butter, mixed with pepper, salt, and a dust of powdered sugar. Toss and mix well, and serve hot.

MASHED TURNIPS.

See Sunday, Second Week in December.

SCALLOPED CAULIFLOWER.

Boil twenty minutes—tied up in netting—in hot salted water. Cut into small clusters, rejecting the main stalk altogether. Set these closely together in a buttered bake-dish; pour drawn butter over them, and sift fine crumbs thickly upon the top. Bake in a good oven until browned.

SPONGE-CAKE SOUFFLÉ PUDDING.

12 square (penny) stale sponge-cakes; 5 eggs; 1 cup of milk; 2 glasses of sherry; ½ cup of sugar.

Lay the cakes in a buttered pudding-dish; pour the wine over them, and cover for half an hour. Heat the milk; pour upon the beaten yolks and half the sugar. Stir over the fire until quite thick. Pour, gradually, upon the cakes, letting it soak in well before adding more. Put into the oven, and, when very hot, cover with the whites, whisked stiff with the rest of the sugar, and shut the oven-door until the _méringue_ is colored. Make on Saturday, and eat cold on Sunday.

Third Week. Monday. —— Second Edition Soup. Boiled Corned Beef. Roast Potatoes. Scalloped Cabbage. Horseradish Sauce. —— Farina Pudding. ——

SECOND EDITION SOUP.

Strain off the soup from the meat in your stock-jar; heat slowly to a boil; put in a cupful of the best parts of the meat, cut neatly from the joints, and divided into square bits. Boil one minute, and pour out.

BOILED CORNED BEEF.

Put a piece of brisket, weighing six or eight pounds, in plenty of cold water. Set at the back of the range out of everybody’s way, and cook slowly, allowing eighteen minutes per pound. Take up; wipe carefully; rub all over with butter, and dish. Serve horseradish sauce with it. Pour the pot-liquor into the stock-jar.

ROAST POTATOES.

Select those of uniform size, and roast in a moderate oven until soft. Wipe, and wrap in a napkin, spread upon a flat dish.

SCALLOPED CABBAGE.

When your beef has begun to boil fairly, put in a firm white cabbage, from which you have stripped the outer leaves. Cook in the boiling pot-liquor until tender. Take out, quarter, and let it cool rapidly. When quite cold, chop; stir in pepper and salt, and put into a greased bake-dish. Pour over it half a cupful of soup-stock; sift crumbs thickly on the top, and bake, covered, half an hour, or until very hot throughout; then brown.

HORSERADISH SAUCE.

Stir two tablespoonfuls of grated horseradish and a tablespoonful of vinegar into a cup of drawn butter until it is like white cream. If the horseradish be put up in vinegar, omit the tablespoonful of that condiment.

FARINA PUDDING.

1 quart new milk; 4 tablespoonfuls of farina; 4 eggs; 5 tablespoonfuls of sugar; nutmeg.

Soak the farina two hours in a little water. Scald the milk; stir in the farina, and cook ten minutes, using the spoon constantly. Pour upon the beaten eggs and sugar. Beat all together well. Put in nutmeg to taste, and pour into a buttered pudding-dish. Bake half an hour, or until firm and well colored. Eat warm—not hot.

Third Week. Tuesday. —— Split Pea Soup. Larded Mutton Chops. Tomato Sauce. Lima Beans. Macaroni à la Crême. —— Apple and Tapioca Pudding. ——

SPLIT PEA SOUP.

Soak a quart of split peas overnight. Next day, put on in the pot-liquor from your corned beef—having removed the fat from the latter. Add an onion, sliced, and three stalks of celery, with a few sprigs of parsley, cut fine. Boil gently—adding boiling water should the liquid sink too much—three hours. Rub through a colander; return to the fire; pepper, and stir in a cup of milk, in which has been cooked for one minute a tablespoonful of butter, cut up in a teaspoonful of flour. Pour out at once upon dice of fried bread laid in the tureen.

LARDED MUTTON CHOPS.

Cut off the skin and fat. Lard the chops thickly with strips of fat pork. Season them with a mixture of pepper, salt, and mace. Put into a saucepan; cover with a little of yesterday’s soup, if you have no other gravy, and a spoonful of tomato catsup. If you have a spoonful or two of green peas left from Sunday, put them in, and a little minced onion. Cover, and cook slowly half an hour. Turn the chops, and cook twenty minutes longer. Take out, and keep warm. Strain the gravy; thicken with browned flour and a tablespoonful of chopped cucumber pickle; boil two minutes. Put in the chops, and simmer three minutes. Arrange the chops upon a hot dish, and cover with the gravy.

TOMATO SAUCE.

Stew a can of tomatoes twenty minutes. Pulp through a colander, and put back into the saucepan, with pepper, salt, sugar, and a great spoonful of butter rolled in flour. Simmer twenty minutes more, or until the sauce is of the consistency of boiled custard.

LIMA BEANS.

Soak the dried beans all night. Next day, cook soft, putting them on in cold water, and boiling slowly. Drain; season with pepper, salt, and butter, and dish.

MACARONI À LA CRÊME.

Cook—having broken it into short pieces—half a pound of macaroni ten minutes in boiling water. Pour this off, and add a cupful of milk, with a little salt. Stew tender in this. In another saucepan heat a cup of milk, thicken with a teaspoonful of flour, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and, at last, a beaten egg. Drain the macaroni; dish; stir through it two heaping tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, with a little cayenne. Pour on the sauce, and serve.

APPLE AND TAPIOCA PUDDING.

1 teacupful tapioca; 6 pippins, pared and cored; 1 quart of water; 1 teaspoonful of salt; a little grated lemon-peel; sugar; cloves.

Cover the tapioca with three cups of tepid water, and set in a warm place for five hours, stirring once in a while. Pack the apples in a pudding-dish, with a pinch of lemon-peel in each. Add a cup of warm water; cover closely, and cook in a moderate oven, turning as they cook at the bottom. When soft, drain off the water, fill the centre of each apple with sugar, put a clove in each, and pour over them the tapioca. Cover, and bake one hour. Eat warm, with hard sauce.

Third Week. Wednesday. —— Rabbit Soup. Venison Steaks. Oyster Salad. Stewed Celery. Potatoes à la Lyonnaise. —— Cottage Pudding. ——

RABBIT SOUP.

1 large rabbit; 2 lbs. of beef-bones; 2 slices lean corned ham; 1 large onion; bunch of sweet herbs; 2 tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce; 3 quarts of water; raw egg; crumbs.

Put the rabbit, jointed, the cracked bones, sliced ham and onion, and chopped herbs on in the water. Fit a tight cover upon the pot; set a weight on top, and stew four hours. The meat should be in rags. Strain, rubbing the vegetables through the colander. Season, cool, and take off the fat. Put over the fire, add some tomato sauce left from yesterday, boil up, and pour out. Chop a little of the soup-meat fine while the soup is cooling; season; work in some fine crumbs and a beaten egg. Make into balls, flour well, and fry in dripping. Put these into the tureen before the soup goes in.

VENISON STEAKS.