Part 6
Put the beef, cut into strips, the “carcasses” of the chickens broken to pieces, and three quarts of cold water, into a large soup-pot, and heat gradually. When it boils, skim well, and add the fried onion and other vegetables, cut fine, and three quarts more of _cold_ water. Stew, with the pot-lid on, five hours, after it again boils, giving it no attention save to see that it never boils fast, and that the liquid has not diminished to less than three-quarters of the original quantity. Strain at the end of this time, first taking out the meat that has not boiled to shreds, and the bones. Rub the vegetables through the colander; afterwards strain the soup again through your wire strainer or sieve, into the kettle when you have washed it out. Season, and simmer ten minutes after the boil recommences, skimming often. Break the vermicelli into short lengths, put into the soup when you have taken out two quarts for Sunday’s “stock.” Cook gently twelve minutes after the vermicelli goes in.
At first glance, the quantity of meat prescribed for this soup may seem extravagant; but, apart from the fact that the coarser and cheaper quality is used, you must note that you have now the foundation of three days’ soups, and that you have saved time, no less than money, by making this as I have directed. It is by the long, intelligent look ahead that the mistress proves her right to the title.
MUTTON CHOPS—BROILED.
Next to beef, good mutton, properly cooked, deserves the most prominent place among the meats upon your weekly bill of fare. It is digestible, nutritious, and, as a rule, popular. I therefore offer no apology for the regular and frequent appearance of these two standard articles of diet upon these pages. They may well be named the two staves of healthful existence—for civilized humanity, at least.
Trim your mutton chops, if your butcher has neglected to do it, leaving a naked end of bone as a “handle” upon each. Lay them for fifteen minutes in a little melted butter, turning them several times. Then hold each up for a moment, to let all the butter drip off that will, and broil over a clear fire, watching constantly and turning them often when the falling fat threatens a blaze from below. If your gridiron is beneath the grate, they can be cooked far more satisfactorily, and with one-tenth of the trouble. Pepper and salt when they are laid upon a hot dish, and put a bit of butter upon each.
SWEET PICKLES
“Go” well with broiled chops. For receipts for these and other pickles, with preserves and fruit jellies, the reader is respectfully referred to “COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD, NO. 1, GENERAL RECEIPTS.”
BROWNED POTATO.
Mash your potatoes with milk, butter, and salt; heap as irregularly as possible in a vegetable dish, and hold a red-hot shovel close to them. They will brown more quickly if you glaze them with butter so soon as a crust is formed by the hot shovel, then heat it again and repeat the browning.
STEWED TOMATOES.
To one can of tomatoes allow a saltspoonful of salt, half as much pepper, a teaspoonful of sugar, and a great tablespoonful of butter. Drain off half the liquor, season thus, and stew _fast_ for twenty minutes, in a vessel set within another filled with water on the hard boil. This receipt was given to me by a notable housewife. It is worth trying for her sake—and variety’s.
ORANGE FRITTERS.
3 cups of milk. 2 cups of prepared flour. 4 eggs. A little salt. Lard for frying. 6 or 8 sweet oranges. A little powdered sugar.
Take the peel and thick white skin from the oranges. Slice, and take out the seeds. Make a batter of the ingredients given above, taking care not to get it too thin. Dip each slice in this dexterously and fry in boiling lard. Drain in a hot colander, and eat with the sauce given below.
BEEHIVE SAUCE.
½ cup of butter. 2 cups of sugar. Juice and peel of a lemon. ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg. ¼ cup of currant jelly, or cranberry syrup.
Make hard sauce in the usual way by creaming the butter and sugar. Before beating in the lemon-juice and nutmeg, set aside three tablespoonfuls to be colored. Having added lemon and spice to the larger quantity, color the less by whipping in currant jelly or cranberry syrup, until it is of a rich pink. Shape the white sauce into a conical mound. Roll a sheet of note paper into a long, narrow funnel, tie a string about it to keep it in shape, and fill with colored sauce. Squeeze it gently through the aperture at the small end, beginning at the base, and winding round the cone to the top, guiding it so that the white will show prettily between the pink ridges.
The effect is pleasing and costs little trouble to produce.
COFFEE
Is believed by some to aid digestion, and, since fritters are not generally classed among very wholesome dainties, it may be as well to give John and John’s wife—_not_ the children—a cup of the fragrant elixir as a possible preventive against an attack of dyspepsia. It always lends grace even to a homely dinner.
Fourth Week. Sunday. —— German Sago Soup. Boiled Turkey with Oyster Sauce. Savory Rice Pudding. Potatoes au Maître d’hôtel. Celery. Grape Jelly. —— Mince Pie. Bananas and Oranges. ——
GERMAN SAGO SOUP.
Soak half a cup of German sago in enough water to cover it entirely for two hours. Heat yesterday’s soup to boiling, with a little of the reserved “stock,” should the supply be too small; stir in the sago with a little salt, until dissolved, and serve.
BOILED TURKEY AND OYSTER SAUCE.
15 oysters. A little milk, bread-crumbs, butter and seasoning. Wheat flour.
Chop about fifteen oysters and work up with them bread-crumbs, a spoonful of butter, with pepper and salt. Stuff the turkey as for roasting; sew it up, neatly, in a thin cloth fitted to every part, having dredged the cloth well inside with flour. Boil slowly, especially at first, allowing fifteen minutes to a pound. The water should be lukewarm when the turkey goes in. Salt and save the liquor in which the fowl was boiled.
OYSTER SAUCE.
12 oysters, cut into thirds. 1 cupful of milk. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 2 teaspoonfuls rice, or wheat flour. Flavoring to taste. Chopped parsley.
Drain the liquor from the oysters before you cut them up. Boil the liquor two minutes, and add the milk. When this is scalding hot, strain and return to the saucepan. Wet the flour with cold water and stir into the sauce. As it thickens, put in the butter, then pepper and salt, with a very little parsley. The juice of a half a lemon is a pleasant flavoring. Stir it in after taking the sauce from the fire. Before this, and so soon as the flour is well incorporated with the other ingredients, add the oysters, each cut into three pieces. Simmer five minutes and pour into a gravy-tureen. Some also pour a little over the turkey on the dish. Garnish with slices of boiled egg and celery tops.
SAVORY RICE PUDDING.
1 teacupful of rice. Giblets of the turkey. A slice of fat salt pork, chopped very fine. Half a _small_ onion, also minced. 1 small cup of milk. 1 tablespoonful of butter. Pepper and salt.
Wash the rice thoroughly; clean the giblets; soak them an hour in salted water, cut each into several pieces, and put on to stew with the pork and rice in nearly a quart of cold water. Cook slowly until the giblets are tender and the rice soft. The grains should be kept as whole as possible, so do not use a spoon in stirring, but shake up the saucepan, which should be set in another of boiling water. The rice should, by this time, be nearly dry. Take out the giblets and chop fine. Pour on the rice the milk, previously heated with the minced onions, and then strained. When this is again scalding, stir in the giblets, then the butter and seasoning. Cover and simmer for ten minutes. Wet a round or oval pan with cold water; press the rice firmly into it, so that it may take the shape, and turn out carefully upon a flat dish. Set in the oven for two minutes before sending to table. It should be stiff enough to take the mould, yet not dry.
POTATOES AU MAÎTRE D’HÔTEL.
Slice cold boiled potatoes a quarter of an inch thick, and put into a saucepan containing enough milk, already heated, to cover them—barely. When all are smoking hot, add a tablespoonful or more of butter, pepper, salt, and minced parsley. Add a teaspoonful of flour wet in cold water; heat quickly to a boil; put in the juice of half a lemon; pour into a deep dish without further cooking.
CELERY AND GRAPE JELLY
Should flank the castor, or _épergne_, or whatever may be your centre-piece.
MINCE PIE.
A receipt for mince-meat will be found in the proper order in the _menu_ for next December. I take it for granted that, like the wise woman you are, you have laid up in the store-room enough from your Christmas supply to last for some weeks to come. If not, let me advise you to get a box of “ATMORE’S CELEBRATED MINCE-MEAT,” and fill your pastry-crusts, instead of repeating so soon the tedious operation so lately performed. It comes in neat, wooden cans, and is really _good_. If you like, you can add more sugar and brandy. N. B.—_My_ John has a sweet tooth. Has yours?
Make the paste by rubbing into a quart of your best flour one-third of a pound of sweet lard. Chop it in with a broad knife, if you have plenty of time. Wet up with ice-water, roll out very thin, and cover with “dabs” of butter, also of the best. Fold into a tight roll, flatten with a few strokes of the rolling-pin, and roll out into a sheet as thin as the first; baste again with the butter; roll up and out into a third sheet hardly thicker than drawing-paper; a third time dot with butter, and fold up closely. Having used as much butter for this purpose as you have lard, set aside your last roll for an hour in a very cold place. Then roll out, line your pie-plates with the paste, fill with mince-meat; put strips, cut with a jagging-iron, across them in squares or triangles, and bake in a steady, never a dull, heat.
These pies, like all others, must be made on Saturday, and warmed up for Sabbath—unless you prefer to line your plates on Saturday, and set them aside until next day, then fill the raw, crisp paste with the mince-meat, and bake. The paste will be the better, instead of worse, for standing overnight, and the trouble of baking scarcely exceed that of warming over.
BANANAS AND ORANGES
May solace the disappointment of the dyspeptic or very juvenile members of the family party, who “dare not touch mince pie.”
Fourth week. Monday. —— Combination Soup. Mince of Fowl. Turkey Salad. Sweet Potatoes, Baked. Brussels Sprouts. —— Sweet Macaroni, with Brandied Fruit. Chocolate. ——
COMBINATION SOUP.
Put the remains of yesterday’s soup and of the stock reserved on Saturday together, and heat almost to boiling. Split and toast crisp half a dozen Boston crackers; butter while hot, set in the oven until the butter has soaked in, when put on more. Lay in the bottom of your soup-tureen, wet with a little boiling milk, and when they have soaked this up, pour on the soup.
MINCE OF FOWL.
Set what was left of yesterday’s oyster-sauce over the fire to heat, thinning, if necessary, with a little milk. Or, if you have no sauce, substitute a cupful of drawn butter, made from the liquor in which the turkey was boiled on Sunday, reserving the rest for another day’s soup. Cut the meat closely from the bones of the turkey (saving these, also). Set aside the white flesh for a nice little dish of salad. Cut the rest, freed from skin and gristle, into pieces of nearly uniform length, not more than an inch long. When your sauce boils, put in the meat, simmer until smoking hot, then take off the saucepan, and pour gradually over two beaten eggs. Cover the bottom of a pudding-dish with bread-crumbs, when you have greased it well; season the mince to taste; fill up the dish with it; put another layer of bread-crumbs, on top, and stick bits of butter over these. Bake covered, until bubbling hot, then brown lightly. This will be found very delightful.
TURKEY SALAD.
The white meat of the turkey cut up in small pieces. An equal quantity of blanched celery, also cut into lengths. Salt slightly, and when dinner is nearly ready pour over them a dressing made of the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs rubbed to a powder with a teaspoonful of sugar, half as much salt, pepper and made mustard, when worked into a paste with two tablespoonfuls of oil, and six of vinegar. Toss up the salad well with a silver fork, and garnish with white of egg cut into rings.
SWEET POTATOES—BAKED.
Select those which are nearly of a size, and not too large, or so small as to shrivel into dry husks. Wash, wipe, and bake in a moderate oven until, by pinching, you find that they are soft at heart.
BRUSSELS SPROUTS.
Wash carefully, cut off the lower part of the stems, and lay in cold water, slightly salted, for half an hour. Cook quickly, in boiling water, with a very little salt, for fifteen minutes, or until tender. Drain thoroughly, heap neatly upon a dish, and put a few spoonfuls of melted butter, peppered to taste, upon them. Eat hot.
SWEET MACARONI.
½ lb. of macaroni. 1 pint of milk. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 4 tablespoonfuls of cream. 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Nutmeg and vanilla. A little salt.
Break the macaroni into short pieces, put into a farina-kettle, cover with the milk, put on the lid of the kettle, and cook with boiling water in the outer vessel, until the milk is soaked up and the macaroni looks clear, but has not begun to break. Add the butter, sugar, and flavoring, and, if you have it, a few spoonfuls of cream. If you have not, thicken a little milk slightly with corn-starch, and use instead. Cover, and set in the boiling water for ten minutes longer. Serve in a deep dish, and send around canned or brandied peaches with it.
CHOCOLATE.
To one pint of boiling water allow six tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate wet up to a paste in cold water. Boil twenty minutes, put in one pint of milk and boil ten minutes more. Stir often. It saves time, if you know the tastes of those who are to drink it, if you sweeten it in the saucepan.
Fourth Week. Tuesday. —— Mother’s Soup. Beefsteak and Onions. Sweet and Irish Potatoes, Chopped. Mixed Pickles. Corn and Tomatoes, Stewed. —— Crème du Thé, Café et Chocolat. ——
MOTHER’S SOUP.
Bones of yesterday’s turkey, with the stuffing. A slice of lean ham. The bone from your steak, and half a can of sweet corn. 1 onion, small. 1 stalk of celery. Bunch of sweet herbs. Pepper and salt. 3 quarts of water.
Put on bones, ham (chopped), and the vegetables, cut up with the sweet herbs, but not the corn, in a soup-kettle; cover well with the liquor in which the turkey was cooked, and boil slowly, untouched, two hours. Take out the bones, and strain the soup, rubbing the vegetables through the strainer, into a bowl. Return this to the fire and with it the corn and turkey dressing. Bring to a gentle boil and keep it steady, for fully half an hour. Season, and simmer a quarter of an hour longer. The corn and dressing will thicken it sufficiently.
BEEFSTEAK WITH ONIONS.
While your steak is broiling, watched by some one else, fry three or four sliced onions in a pan with some beef dripping or butter. Stir and shake them until they begin to brown. Dish your steak, salt and pepper, and lay the onions on top. Cover, and let all stand where they will keep hot, for five minutes. Do not help onions to any one unless you are sure that he likes them.
There is no dish so good for keeping a steak hot, yet juicy, as a hot-water chafing-dish. No household can afford to be without one, if no more.
MIXED PICKLES
Give the needed piquancy to steak. Home-made ones are best.
SWEET AND IRISH POTATOES—CHOPPED.
Chop cold boiled Irish potatoes and mix with them the cold sweet ones left from Monday—in equal parts, if convenient—or, if you have but two or three, make them do. There is philosophy, and religion, too, sometimes, in “making things do.” Heating a little butter in a saucepan, stir in the potatoes when it begins to “fizzle.” Shake and toss them up with a wooden fork until they are very hot; season with pepper and salt, and dish.
CORN AND TOMATOES STEWED.
To a can of tomatoes add the half can of corn left from your soup. Stew together half an hour, with a little minced onion; then pepper and salt to taste, and stir in a great spoonful of butter with a very little sugar. Simmer ten minutes before turning out.
CRÈME DU THÉ, CAFÉ ET CHOCOLAT.
1 quart of milk. 1 package of Cooper’s gelatine. 1 cup of sugar. 2 tablespoonfuls grated chocolate. 1 cup _strong_ tea. 1 cup of strong coffee.
Soak the gelatine for an hour in a cup of cold water. Heat the milk to boiling and add the gelatine. So soon as this is dissolved, put in the sugar, stir until melted, and take the saucepan from the fire. Strain through thin muslin and divide into three parts. Into the largest stir the chocolate, rubbed smooth in cold water; into another the tea, and into a third equal to the second, the coffee. Return that containing the chocolate to the farina-kettle, and heat scalding hot, stirring all the while. Rinse out the kettle well with boiling water, and put in, successively, those portions flavored with the tea and the coffee, scalding the vessel between each. Wet several small cups or glasses with cold water. Pour the chocolate into some, the tea into others, and the coffee blanc-mange into the rest. When cold, turn out upon a flat dish, and eat with sugar and sweet cream. It will “form” in about six hours. This is a dessert by no means tedious or difficult of preparation, and is worth trying, being both dainty and wholesome.
Fourth Week. Wednesday. —— Lexington Soup. Boiled Chickens and Macaroni. Whipped Potatoes. Chow-chow. Parsnip Cakes. —— Jam Roley-Poley with Wine Sauce. Apples and Nuts. ——
LEXINGTON SOUP.
2 lbs. of veal. 1 lb. of mutton, with some bones. 1 onion. 1 carrot. ½ cup of rice. 1 cup of split peas. 4 quarts of water. Sweet herbs, pepper and salt.
Mince the meat and vegetables and crack the bones. The peas should have been soaked overnight in soft water, the rice washed and picked over. Put all together in your soup-kettle, pour in the water and stew gently, covered, five hours. Should the water waste too much, put in more from the tea-kettle. At the end of this time, strain, rubbing the vegetables through a colander. Return to the fire, season, and boil slowly ten minutes, skimming carefully. Put sliced lemon, from which the yellow rind has been pared, into the tureen, and pour the soup upon it. Serve a slice in each plateful.
BOILED CHICKENS AND MACARONI.
Clean, wash, and stuff your chickens as for roasting; sew each up in a piece of new tarlatan, fitted snugly to the shape. Boil, putting them down in pretty hot, but not scalding water, allowing twelve minutes to the number of pounds in _one_ of the pair, and that the larger. About half an hour before they are to be served take out a large cupful of the liquor from the pot and put into a saucepan. Season it, and boil for five minutes with a small chopped onion. Strain, and when again hot, drop in a double handful of macaroni, broken into short lengths. Cook until tender, by which time the liquor should be absorbed by the macaroni. The saucepan should be set in another, holding boiling water, that there may be no danger of scorching while stewing. Make a flattened mound of the macaroni upon a hot dish; lay the chickens upon it, and anoint them well with melted butter, made more salt than usual. Serve them out together, and have grated cheese for such as wish it.
CHOW-CHOW,
Or “picklette,” in American store-rooms—is a keen appetizer and especially harmonious with boiled fowls. For receipt for making in winter or summer, see “General Receipts, No. 1, Common Sense Series,” page 491.
PARSNIP CAKES.
Scrape, wash, boil, and mash the parsnips. When cold, season with salt and pepper, and, flouring your hands, make them into small, flat cakes. Roll in flour and fry in boiling dripping. Drain dry and send up on a hot dish.
WHIPPED POTATOES.
Instead of mashing the potatoes in the ordinary way, whip with a fork until light and dry. Then whip in a little melted butter and some milk with salt to taste, beating up fast until you have a creamy compound, almost like a _méringue_. Pile as lightly and irregularly as you can upon a hot dish.
JAM ROLEY-POLEY.
1 quart of _prepared_ flour. 1 tablespoonful of butter and the same of lard. 2 cups of milk, or enough to make soft dough. 1 large cup of fruit or berry jam.
Rub lard and butter into the flour, with a little salt, and wet with cold milk into a soft paste. Roll out into a pretty thick crust—say about a quarter of an inch—and trim into an oblong sheet. Spread this generously with jam, leaving a margin at each end. Roll up closely, the fruit inside. Pinch the open ends together, and baste neatly in a floured bag fitted to the roll, but not so tightly as to interfere with the swelling of the pudding. Boil an hour and a half in hot water that, from first to last, is not once off the boil. Dip the cloth into cold water before attempting to turn the roley-poley out—but for one hasty second only.
WINE SAUCE.
3 tablespoonfuls of butter. 2 cupfuls of powdered sugar. ½ cup of wine. Grated peel of half a lemon. ½ cupful of boiling water. 1 teaspoonful of corn-starch. Nutmeg.
Cream the butter and sugar, adding the boiling water, a little at a time, until you have used the half cupful. Put on in a saucepan, and stir in the corn-starch wet up with cold milk. When it has thickened, put in the lemon-peel and nutmeg. Simmer one minute, add the wine, put on the lid of the saucepan and set in hot water to keep warm until wanted.
APPLES AND NUTS,
Being cheap and abundant at this season, should form the sequel of many dinners.
Fourth Week. Thursday. —— White Soup. Langue de Bœuf, or Beef’s Tongue. Fried Brains and Green Peas. Sauce Piquante. Hominy Croquettes. Cold Slaw. —— Brown Betty. ——
WHITE SOUP.
Skeletons of yesterday’s chickens. 3 or 4 lbs. of veal bones, cracked to pieces. 1 lb. of lean veal, cut small. 1 pint of milk. 1 egg. 1 small cup of _boiled_ farina. Salt, pepper, minced onion and parsley for seasoning. 1 quart of water, and liquor in which chickens were boiled.
Cover the broken chicken and veal bones, the minced veal, parsley, and onion with the cold water and chicken liquor and simmer three hours, until the three quarts are reduced to two. Strain the liquor; put back into the pot; salt and pepper; boil gently and skim for ten minutes before adding the milk and boiled farina. Simmer another ten minutes; take out a cupful and pour over the beaten egg. Mix well, and put with the soup; let all stand covered, off the fire, two minutes, and serve.
LANGUE DE BŒUF, OR BEEF’S TONGUE.
Get your butcher to save you a fresh, large beef’s tongue, the finest he can get. Soak, in cold water, a little salt, six hours—overnight, if you choose—changing the water before you go to bed. Wipe it, trim and scrape it, and plunging into boiling water, keep it at a slow boil for an hour and a half. Take it up, pepper and salt; brush over with beaten egg and coat thickly with bread-crumbs; lay in your dripping-pan and bake, basting often with butter melted in a _little_ water. Half an hour in a good oven should suffice. Put on a hot dish and cover while you prepare the sauce.
SAUCE PIQUANTE.
1 cupful of the liquor in which the tongue was boiled. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 1 teaspoonful of made mustard. A little salt and pepper. 1 heaping tablespoonful of browned flour. 1 teaspoonful mixed parsley and sweet marjoram. 1 tablespoonful of onion vinegar.