Part 7

Brown the butter by shaking it over a clear fire in a saucepan. Heat the cupful of liquor to a boil, skim and season it with salt and pepper. Skim again before stirring in the flour wet up with cold water. As it thickens, put in the butter, herbs, mustard, and vinegar. Boil up, pour half over the tongue, the rest into a sauce-boat.

FRIED BRAINS AND GREEN PEAS.

Open a can of green peas an hour before cooking them, and turn into a bowl. If there is not liquor in the can to cover them, add a little water, slightly salted, and cook over twenty minutes after they boil. Drain, pepper and salt; stir in a lump of butter nearly as large as an egg, and put into a vegetable dish, the fried brains arranged along the base of the mound.

Wash a calf’s brains in several waters; scald in boiling, then lay in ice-cold water, for half an hour. Wipe, and beat them into a paste; season, work in a little butter, a beaten egg, and enough flour to hold the paste together. Fry upon a griddle in small cakes. Drain off every drop of fat. Eat hot.

A nice and savory garnish.

HOMINY CROQUETTES.

2 cups fine hominy, boiled and cold. 2 beaten eggs. 1 tablespoonful of melted butter. Salt to taste. 1 teaspoonful of sugar.

Work the butter into the hominy until the latter is smooth; then the eggs, salt and sugar. Beat hard with a wooden spoon to get out lumps and mix well. Make into oval balls with floured hands. Roll each in flour, and fry in sweet dripping or lard, putting in a few at a time and turning over with care as they brown. Drain in a hot colander.

COLD SLAW.

Chop or shred a small white cabbage. Prepare a dressing in the proportion of one tablespoonful of oil to four of vinegar, a teaspoonful of made mustard, the same quantity of salt and sugar, and half as much pepper. Pour over the salad, adding, if you choose, three tablespoonfuls of minced celery; toss up well and put into a glass bowl.

BROWN BETTY.

2 cups chopped apples, tart ones. ½ cup of sugar. 1 cup of bread-crumbs. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg.

Put a layer of chopped apple in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Sprinkle well with sugar, stick bits of butter here and there and add a pinch or two of nutmeg. Cover with bread-crumbs, then more apple. In this order of alternation fill the dish, spreading the surface with bread-crumbs. Cover, steam nearly an hour in a moderate oven; then brown quickly.

For sauce, mix a teaspoonful of cinnamon with a cup of powdered sugar. Butter the hot “Betty” as you fill each saucer, and strew with this mixture. Or it is excellent, eaten warm, not hot, with cream and sugar.

Fourth Week. Friday. —— Potato Soup. Fried Oysters. Roast Mutton. Spinach à la Crème. Potatoes Stewed Whole. —— French Tapioca Custard. ——

POTATO SOUP.

1 dozen mealy potatoes. 1 can of tomatoes. 2 onions. 3 stalks of celery. 4 tablespoonfuls of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour. 1 bunch of sweet herbs. 1 lump of white sugar. Salt and pepper to taste. 3 quarts of water. Fried bread.

Parboil the potatoes; then slice and put them into the soup-pot with the tomatoes, the onions, minced, and the celery and herbs chopped small. Pour on three quarts of water, and stew for one hour, or until the vegetables can be rubbed easily through the colander. Strain, return to the pot, drop in the sugar, pepper and salt judiciously, boil up and skim. Stir in the butter, and simmer, covered, for ten minutes. Have dice of fried bread in the tureen, upon which pour the soup.

FRIED OYSTERS.

Select for this the finest oysters. Drain, and wipe them by spreading them upon a cloth, laying another over them, and pressing lightly. Roll each in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs with which have been mixed a little salt and less pepper, and fry in a mixture of equal parts of lard and butter.

Drain each in a wire spoon, and eat them hot, with bread and butter.

ROAST MUTTON.

Wash the meat well and wipe with a clean cloth. Put into the dripping-pan, pour a cup of boiling water over it, and roast, basting often, for a while, with salt and water, afterwards with its own gravy. Allow twelve minutes to each pound of meat, and keep the fire at a steady, moderate heat. Should it brown too fast, cover with a sheet of paper. Take up the meat, put it on a hot dish; thicken the gravy with browned flour, having first taken off _all_ the fat you can—season with pepper and salt, boil up, skim and serve. Pass currant jelly with it.

SPINACH À LA CRÈME.

Pick over and wash the spinach, and cut the leaves from the stalks. Boil in hot water, a little salted, about twenty minutes. Drain, put into a wooden tray, or upon a board; chop _very_ fine, and rub through a colander. Put into a saucepan; stir until it begins to smoke throughout. Add then two tablespoonfuls of butter for a good-sized dish, a teaspoonful of white sugar, three tablespoonfuls of milk, salt and pepper to liking. _Beat_, as it heats, with a silver fork or wire spoon. Some put in a little nutmeg, and most people like it. Cook thus until it begins to bubble up as you beat it. Pour into a deep dish, surround with sliced egg, and serve.

POTATOES STEWED WHOLE.

Pare the potatoes and boil in water which was cold when they went in. When they are done, as is proved by piercing the largest with a fork, turn off the water, and cover them barely with milk already heated. Stew in this five minutes; take the potatoes out, and put into a covered deep dish. Add to the milk in the saucepan a good lump of butter, rolled in flour, some chopped parsley, pepper and salt. Boil up once. Crack each potato as it lies in the dish, by pressing with the back of a spoon; pour the hot milk over them; let them stand three minutes in it, and send to table.

FRENCH TAPIOCA CUSTARD.

5 dessertspoonfuls of tapioca. 1 quart of milk. 1 pint of cold water. 3 eggs. 1 teaspoonful of vanilla. 1 heaping cup of sugar. A pinch of salt.

Soak the tapioca in the water five hours. Heat the milk to scalding; add the tapioca, the water in which it was soaked, and the salt. Stir to boiling, and pour gradually upon the yolks and sugar, which should have been beaten together. Boil again, stirring constantly, about five minutes, or until it begins to thicken well. Turn into a bowl and stir gently into the custard the frothed whites and the flavoring. Eat cold.

Fourth Week. Saturday. —— Old Hare Soup. Hot Pot. Turnips with White Sauce. Boiled Rice, au Genève. Cucumber Pickle. —— Cabinet Pudding. Cabinet Pudding Sauce. ——

OLD HARE SOUP.

1 hare, or rabbit, full grown. The bones from yesterday’s mutton broken up well. A slice of corned ham, or some bones of salt pork. 1 onion. Chopped parsley. Pepper and salt. 1 tablespoonful of mushroom or walnut catsup. 3 quarts of water.

Clean the hare carefully and cut to pieces, cracking all the bones. Put into the soup-kettle with the mutton bones, the bacon, onion, and parsley. Pour on three quarts of cold water; put on the lid tightly, and stew four hours very slowly. By this time the meat should be in shreds. Strain it, return to the fire, season it, stew and skim five minutes. Slice three boiled eggs and put into the tureen and pour the soup over them.

HOT POT.

Put into a deep bake-dish a layer of cold mutton left from your roast, freed from fat and skin and cut into strips two inches long by one wide. Overlay these with slices of _parboiled_ potatoes, a little minced onion, an oyster or two chopped, some tiny bits of butter, with salt and pepper. Repeat this process until your meat is used up. The top layer should be potatoes. Add a cupful of gravy from Friday’s dinner (or elsewhere), cover very closely and bake one hour before lifting the lid. Peep in to see if the contents are done—they will be if your fire is tolerably strong. Turn out into a deep dish.

CUCUMBER PICKLES

Are a better condiment for this dish than any others.

TURNIPS WITH WHITE SAUCE.

Peel and quarter your turnips. Leave in cold water half an hour. Put on in hot water, and boil until tender. Drain and cover with a sauce prepared by heating a cup of milk, thickening it with a heaping teaspoonful of corn-starch, and stirring in a great spoonful of butter with pepper and salt to season it well. Put this, when you have added the turnips, into a vessel set within another of boiling water, and let them stand covered, without cooking, ten minutes before serving.

BOILED RICE AU GENÈVE.

Pick over and wash the rice, and boil in a farina-kettle, with enough cold water, a little salted, to cover it an inch deep. Shake now and then as the rice swells. Take from your hare soup, when you have strained it, a cupful of the liquor and about half as much of the boiled shreds of meat. Chop these extremely fine, season with salt and pepper. Heat the cup of liquor to a boil, stir into it a scant tablespoonful of browned flour, then the chopped meat and a tablespoonful of butter, and stew gently five minutes. Pile the boiled rice, which should be almost dry, in a dish, and pour the gravy over it. It is very savory, and makes a pleasant variety in the list of winter vegetables.

CABINET PUDDING.

½ lb. of prepared flour. ¼ lb. of butter. 5 eggs. ½ lb. of sugar. ¼ lb. of raisins seeded and cut into three pieces each. ¼ lb. of currants, washed and dried. ½ cup of milk. ½ lemon, grated peel and juice.

Cream the butter and sugar; add the beaten yolks; the milk and the flour alternately with the whites. Lastly, stir in the fruit, well dredged with flour; beat up thoroughly, pour into a buttered mould; put into a pot of boiling water and do not let it relax its boil for two hours and a half. Dip the mould into cold water for one moment before turning it out.

CABINET PUDDING SAUCE.

Yolks of 2 eggs, whipped very light. 1 lemon, juice and half the grated peel. 1 glass of wine. 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon. 1 cup of sugar. 1 tablespoonful of butter.

Rub the butter into the sugar; add the yolks, lemon, and spice. Beat five minutes and put in the wine, stirring hard. Set within a saucepan of boiling water, and stir until it is scalding hot. Do not let it boil. Pour over the pudding.

FEBRUARY.

First Week. Sunday. —— Clear Vermicelli Soup. Stewed Ducks. Fried Apples and Bacon. Mashed Carrots. Potatoes à la Reine. Potato Pie. —— Oranges and Bananas. ——

CLEAR VERMICELLI SOUP.

6 lbs. of veal—the knuckle is best. 1 lb. of lean ham, cut fine. 1 bunch of sweet herbs. ¼ lb. of vermicelli. 5 quarts of water. Pepper and salt with half a teaspoonful ground mace.

Cut the meat from the bones in thin shreds, and crack the bones to splinters. Mince the ham and herbs. Put into a soup-kettle, add the water, cover very tightly with a weight upon the lid, and stand where it will slowly boil, for five hours. Then turn into a jar, salt and pepper, and shut up while hot. Leave the jar all Saturday night upon the side of the range, where it will keep warm until morning. Pour into a bowl before breakfast and let it get cold. Take off the cake of fat two hours before dinner, turn the soup-jelly, bones and all, into the soup-pot, and when it is melted strain through your wire sieve. Put in the mace, boil for an hour and a half, and skim. Put the vermicelli, already broken into short bits and boiled tender, into the tureen (but not the water in which it was boiled) and strain the soup over it through double tarlatan. Let it stand ten minutes before serving. This is a showy soup, and easily made, really requiring little attention.

STEWED DUCKS.

On Saturday, draw, wash, and stuff your ducks, adding a touch of onion and sage to the dressing. On Saturday, also, make a gravy of the giblets, cut small, an onion, sliced, with a pint of water. Stew, closely covered, for two hours; take off, season, and set away with the giblets in it still. Next day—on Sunday—lay the ducks in the dripping-pan, put in the gravy, adding water if there is not enough to half cover the fowls, at least. Invert another pan of the same size over them, and let them stew, at a moderate heat, for two hours. Or, you can put them into a large saucepan, pour in the gravy, fit on the lid, and cook upon the range for the same time. In either case they will take care of themselves, as will the soup, if Bridget be reasonably obedient to orders, while you go to church. When the ducks are done, lay them upon a hot dish, thicken the gravy with browned flour, add a glass of brown sherry and the juice of a lemon. Lay three-cornered bits of fried bread around the inside of the dish, and pour the gravy over all.

FRIED APPLES AND BACON.

Pare, core, and slice round, some well-flavored pippins, or greenings. Cut into thin slices some streaked middling of excellent bacon, and fry in their own fat almost to crispness. Take out the meat and arrange it upon a hot chafing-dish, while you fry the apples in the fat left in the pan from the bacon. Drain and lay upon the slices of meat.

This is a Southern dish, and not so homely as it would seem from the mere reading.

POTATOES À LA REINE.

Mash as usual, beating up light with butter and milk, but not so soft as not to take any shape you like to give them. Make a rounded hillock, or a four-sided pyramid of them upon a flat dish. Brush this all over with beaten yolk of egg, set in the oven a few minutes to harden the coating, and send to table.

MASHED CARROTS.

Scrape, wash, lay in cold water half an hour; then cook tender in boiling water. Drain well, mash with a wooden spoon, or beetle, work in a good piece of butter, and season with pepper and salt. Heap up in a vegetable dish, and serve very hot.

POTATO PIE.

1 lb. mashed potato, rubbed through a colander. ¼ lb. of butter, creamed with the sugar. 6 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately. 1 lemon, squeezed into the potato while hot. 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg and the same of mace. 2 cups of white sugar.

Cream the butter and sugar; add the yolks, the spice, and beat in the potato gradually until it is very light. At last, whip in the whites. Bake in open shells of paste. Eat cold.

When making these pies on Saturday—forecasting Monday’s needs and superabundance of cares—prepare more pastry than you need for the two large pies which the above quantity of potato mixture will fill, and set aside a trim roll of raw crust to be rolled out in due time—we shall see to what end. I take it for granted (once more) that all of Sunday’s receipts will be diligently conned on the day when the old distich tells us, even “lazy people work the best.”

This potato pie will be pronounced delicious.

ORANGES AND BANANAS.

These will make a pretty finish to what I flatter myself with the hope that you will find a good, and not inelegant repast.

First Week. Monday. —— Blanche’s Soup. Duck Paté. Succotash. Sweet Potatoes, Boiled. Crab-apple Jelly. —— Cup Custard, Boiled. Cut or Fancy Cake. ——

BLANCHE’S SOUP.

Strain out the vermicelli left in yesterday’s “stock.” Heat very hot, and add two cups of milk in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of rice-flour, or, if you cannot get that, corn-starch. Stir until it thickens; take out a cupful and pour it over two beaten eggs. Return to the soup, taste, and supply what seasoning is needed; lift from the fire and leave covered five minutes before pouring into the tureen.

DUCK PATÉ.

Cut the meat from the bones of yesterday’s ducks, in season to make gravy. Do this by breaking the skeletons to pieces, and putting them, with the stuffing, into a saucepan, pouring in a quart of cold water, and letting it in two hours boil down to half as much, or even one-third. Boil slowly, with the lid slightly lifted after the boiling begins. Let this get cold; skim and season. In the bottom of a pudding-dish put some neat slices of duck; on this a layer of boiled egg sliced thin; then, a few slices of corned tongue. (That of a calf will do as well as beef, and be cheaper. It should be boiled and cold.) Sprinkle each layer with pepper and a little salt, with a tiny pinch of mace upon the tongue. When your materials are used up, pour in the gravy, and, just before it goes into the oven, cover with a crust of pastry kept over from Saturday. Bake about three-quarters of an hour for a large dish—half an hour for one of medium size. There must be a slit in the centre of the crust to let out the steam.

By proper foresight, the manufacture of this very palatable pie will consume but little of a busy woman’s time on Monday. Do not forget that with gravies and soups, after you have placed them over the fire in a well-chosen location, they will need nothing more than a hasty glance for, perhaps, several hours, during which much work in other parts of the household can be done.

SWEET POTATOES, BOILED.

It is poor economy, in buying sweet or Irish potatoes, to get either very large or very small ones. So, in cooking, select those of uniform size. Put on in hot water; boil until a fork will go easily into the largest. Peel quickly and set in the oven for a few minutes to dry. Eat hot, with butter.

SUCCOTASH.

1 can of sweet corn. 1 can of string beans. 1 great spoonful of butter. Pepper and salt. 1 cup of milk. A little flour.

Cut the beans into inch lengths; put them into a saucepan with the corn, and cover with cold water. Stew half an hour, after they begin to cook, turn off most of the water and put in the milk—cold. When it is hot, stir in the butter, rolled in flour. Season, simmer for five minutes, and pour into a deep dish.

This will make a large quantity of succotash for a small family, but what is not eaten will be nice warmed over for breakfast.

CUP CUSTARDS—BOILED.

1 quart of milk. Yolks of 5 eggs and whites of 3 (reserving 2 for the _méringue_). 6 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Vanilla flavoring, 1 teaspoonful to the pint.

Heat the milk almost to boiling. Take out a cupful and add, slowly, to the beaten yolks and sugar, whipped up with three of the whites. Return to the fire and stir until it begins to thicken, but not until it curdles. Pour into a bowl and, when cold, flavor. Fill glass, or china cups with it. Whip the reserved whites to a _méringue_ with a little powdered sugar, and heap a spoonful upon the top of each cup.

Watch your opportunity for boiling the custard. I have often slipped into the kitchen and made it while the coffee was boiling for breakfast. This once off the fire, no more cooking is needed.

CUT, OR FANCY CAKE,

Of which every housewife keeps a supply in her pantry, for luncheon and tea, makes, with these custards, a nice dessert, to which you need never be ashamed to seat John and his friends.

First Week. Tuesday. —— Family Soup. Rolled Beef. Baked Tomatoes. Browned Potatoes Whole. Apple Sauce. —— Unity Pudding. Cream Sauce. ——

FAMILY SOUP.

2 lbs. fresh beef bones, broken small. 1 lb. calf’s liver, sliced. 1 slice of ham, minced. 1 lb. of coarse mutton, also minced. 1 turnip. 3 stalks of celery. 1 onion. Bunch sweet herbs. ¼ cup of raw rice. Pepper and salt. 4 quarts of cold water.

Put the cracked bones, the meat, and the chopped vegetables into the soup-pot, and cover with the water. The liver should lie in salted water one hour before it is sliced. Stew very slowly five hours. Then strain, rubbing hard; cool enough to bring the fat to the top. Take it off, season the soup, put over the fire, and when it boils stir in the rice, previously cooked soft in a little salted water. Simmer together half an hour, and pour out.

ROLLED BEEF.

Get a fillet of beef—that is, the tenderloin of several steaks cut in one piece. It will not be cheap, but there will be no waste. Therefore, as one weighing four or five pounds will make a roast for one day, your dinner will not be really expensive. Roll it up round; pin tightly with skewers not to be removed, except by the carver, and roast with care, basting often that it may not dry up. Carve horizontally.

BROWNED POTATOES—WHOLE.

Peel and parboil some fine potatoes, and half an hour before your beef is taken up, lay them in the dripping-pan. Baste with the meat and turn several times. Drain off the grease when they are done to a fine brown, and lay about the meat in the dish when it goes to table.

BAKED TOMATOES.

Open a can of tomatoes, and turn into a bowl. After an hour, season them with a teaspoonful of sugar, half as much salt, a little pepper and a tablespoonful of butter cut into bits, each bit rolled in flour and all distributed evenly throughout the tomatoes. Cover with very dry bread-crumbs. Bake in a pudding-dish, covered, about thirty minutes, then brown on the upper grating of the oven.

APPLE SAUCE.

Make this on Saturday, by stewing sliced tart apples in a little water until soft, draining and mashing them, adding a bit of butter while doing this. Sweeten abundantly and season with nutmeg.

UNITY PUDDING.

1 cup of milk. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 egg. 1 _generous_ pint of prepared flour. 1 cup of sugar. 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Rub butter and sugar together; beat in the egg, and whip up very light. Then, milk and salt, finally the flour. Bake in a buttered mould, until a straw thrust into the thickest part comes out clean. Turn out upon a plate. Cut in slices and eat hot.

If for this and other receipts which prescribe prepared flour, you cannot conveniently procure it, add one teaspoonful of soda and two of cream of tartar to each quart of flour. Sift all several times through a sieve. You can keep this for a week or two in a dry place.

CREAM SAUCE.

2 cups rich milk—half cream, if you can get it. 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Whites of 2 eggs whipped stiff. 1 teaspoonful extract of bitter almonds. ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg. 1 _even_ tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water.

Heat the milk to scalding; add the sugar, stir in the corn-starch. When it thickens beat in the stiffened whites, then the seasoning. Take from the fire, and set in boiling water to keep warm—but not cook—until wanted.

First Week. Wednesday. —— Split Pea Soup. Fricasseed Chicken, Brown. Ladies’ Cabbage. Baked Potatoes. Stewed Salsify. —— Soft Gingerbread. Café au Lait. ——

SPLIT PEA SOUP.

1 quart of split peas, soaked in soft water all night. 1 lb. streaked salt pork, cut into thin strips. 2 lbs. of beef bones, cracked well. 3 stalks of celery, and 1 onion, chopped. Salt and pepper to taste. 4 quarts of cold water. A sliced lemon.

Put soaked peas, pork, bones and vegetables over the fire, with the water, and boil slowly for three hours, until the liquid is reduced nearly one half. Strain through a colander, rubbing the peas into a tolerably thick _purée_ into the vessel below. Season, simmer ten minutes over the fire, and pour over the lemon, sliced and pared and laid in the tureen.

FRICASSEED CHICKEN—BROWN.

1 pair of chickens. ½ lb. salt pork, minced. 1 small onion. Tablespoonful of chopped parsley. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. Browned flour. Pepper, and a little salt.

Joint the chickens, cutting them with a sharp knife. Put, with the pork, into a pot with a quart of water, and stew until tender. Do not boil fast, especially at first. Strain off the liquor and cover the chickens while you prepare the gravy. Put it into a large frying-pan. There will not be too much after the chickens are taken out of it. Add to it the parsley and chopped onion, with seasoning. Boil up, thicken with browned flour; stir in the butter and cook rapidly, stirring often, ten minutes. Arrange the chickens upon a hot dish and pour the gravy over it. Let all stand for five minutes before sending to the table.

LADIES’ CABBAGE.