Part 8

Chapter 84,278 wordsPublic domain

1 firm white cabbage, boiled and left to get cold. 2 beaten eggs. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 3 tablespoonfuls of rich milk. Pepper and salt.

Boil the cabbage in two waters. When it is cold, chop fine, and mix with it the beaten eggs, butter, milk, pepper and salt to your liking. Beat up well and bake in a buttered pudding-dish until brown. Serve in the dish in which it was cooked, and eat hot.

BAKED POTATOES.

Select large, fair potatoes of equal size, wash, wipe and put into the oven to bake until soft all through. Send to table wrapped in a napkin.

STEWED SALSIFY.

Scrape and drop into cold water as fast as you clean them. Cut into inch lengths; cover with hot water and stew tender. Turn off the water; put in a cupful of cold milk. Stew in this ten minutes after the boil begins; add a lump of butter rolled thickly in flour; pepper and salt as you fancy. Boil up once and pour into a deep dish.

SOFT GINGERBREAD.

1 cup of butter. 1 cup of molasses. 1 cup of sugar. 1 cup of sour or butter milk. ½ lb. of raisins, seeded and cut in half. 1 teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in boiling water. 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon. 2 eggs. Nearly 5 cups of sifted flour, enough for tolerably thick batter.

Cream butter, sugar, molasses, and spice; set the mixture on the range until lukewarm. Add the milk, then the beaten eggs, the soda, and at last the flour. Beat _hard_ five minutes; put in the fruit dredged with flour; beat three minutes, and bake in small round tins.

Eat warm all that is needed for dessert. The rest will keep well. This gingerbread is uncommonly fine.

CAFÉ AU LAIT.

2 cups strong _made_ coffee—fresh and hot. 2 cups of boiling milk.

Strain the coffee from the boiler into the table coffee-pot, through thin muslin. Add the boiling milk and set in a vessel of hot water, a “cozey,” or a thick cloth wrapped about it, for five minutes. Then it is ready for use. Pass with the gingerbread.

First week. Thursday. —— Dundee Broth. Baked Calf’s Head. French Beans and Fried Brains. Stewed Tomatoes. Potatoes in cases. —— Snowballs. Sweet Cream. ——

DUNDEE BROTH.

3 lbs. of mutton cut into strips. 2 lbs. of bones cracked. 1 carrot. 2 turnips. 2 onions. Bunch of herbs. Handful of chopped cabbage. Pepper and salt. ¼ lb. of barley. 4 quarts of cold water.

Put on the meat, bones, and sweet herbs, to stew in four quarts of water. Do not disturb for four hours. Meanwhile, pare and cut the vegetables into dice, and boil until tender in just enough water to cover them. Drain this off and throw it away. Cover the vegetables with cold water, a little salt, and let them stand until you have strained the soup. This should be allowed to cool to throw up the fat. Skim it with care; put back over the fire. Salt and pepper, boil up, and skim again before putting in the vegetables, _without_ the water in which they have been standing. The barley should, all this time, be soaking in warm water, just deep enough to cover it. Turn it now, with the water in which it has lain, into the soup. Let all simmer together one hour, and serve the vegetables in the soup.

BAKED CALF’S HEAD.

Take out the brains and set aside. Wash the head carefully. It should, of course, be cleaned with the skin on. Soak it in cold, salted water, one hour, then in hot water ten minutes. Boil in three quarts of cold water for about an hour after the water begins to bubble. Take it out, saving the liquor when you have salted it, as stock for to-morrow’s soup. Plunge the head into cold water for five minutes. Wipe carefully, put into your dripping-pan, brush it over with beaten egg, sprinkle with bread-crumbs, and bake until nicely browned, basting three times with butter. Make a gravy of a cupful of the liquor, seasoned and thickened. Fry strips of ham, about an inch wide by four inches long, almost crisp in their own fat, and having laid the head upon a flat dish, dispose these about it. Serve a piece with each plate of the head.

FRENCH BEANS AND FRIED BRAINS.

Open a can of string-beans one hour at least before they are to be cooked. Cut into short pieces, cover with hot water, and stew thirty minutes, but not until they break. Drain well; stir into them two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, in which have been mixed salt, pepper, and a tablespoonful of lemon-juice. Heap within a deep dish, and garnish with the brains.

Wash the brains and lay in cold salt and water for an hour, then boil ten minutes. Leave in very cold water until firm—say a quarter of an hour. Wipe, and chop fine, add a little parsley, pepper and salt; make into small cakes by flouring your hands; dip in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry in hot dripping. Drain thoroughly.

STEWED TOMATOES.

Season a can of tomatoes with salt, pepper, sugar, and a little chopped onion. Stew for twenty-five minutes and stir in a large tablespoonful of butter. Simmer ten minutes, and serve.

POTATOES IN CASES.

Roast large potatoes. Cut off a piece from the top of each, and lay it aside. Empty the insides carefully by the help of a small spoon—not tearing the skins. To this potato, when mashed, add butter, grated cheese, pepper and salt, as suits your taste. Bind the mixture with a beaten egg; heat in a saucepan, stirring to prevent scorching; refill the cases, fit on the top of each, and set in a hot oven three minutes before sending to table in a warm napkin.

SNOWBALLS.

¼ lb. raw rice. 1 quart fresh milk. 5 tablespoonfuls of sugar. A little nutmeg.

Wash the rice in several waters, and boil in the milk (always in a farina-kettle), adding a little salt and five tablespoonfuls of sugar, with a pinch of nutmeg. Stew gently until the rice is soft and has soaked up the milk. Fill small cups with the rice, pressing it down firmly, and let it get cold. At dinner-time, turn it out upon a large flat dish, or pile within a glass bowl. Eat with sweetened cream.

SWEET CREAM.

2 cups of cream. 3 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. 2 teaspoonfuls of rose-water.

Stir the sugar into the cream until it is dissolved; then the rose-water.

First Week. Friday. —— Calf’s Feet Soup. Salt Mackerel with Cream Sauce. Larded Sweetbreads, Stewed. Mashed Potatoes. Stewed Celery. —— Omelette Soufflé. Tea and Toasted Crackers. ——

CALF’S FEET SOUP.

4 calf’s feet. 1 onion. Bunch of sweet herbs. 2 stalks of celery. 4 cloves. 2 eggs. 1 cup of milk. Pepper and salt. 1 quart of cold water, and the liquor in which the calf’s head was boiled, yesterday.

In bespeaking your calf’s head from your butcher, ask also for four nice feet, already cleaned. (You can secure your sweetbreads at the same time.) Put on the feet in a quart of cold water. Cover closely and heat gradually to a very gentle boil. Keep this up until the feet begin to shrink from the bones—about two hours. Should the water fall perceptibly, fill up from the tea-kettle. Have ready the vegetables, herbs, and spice, the former cut up small. Put them into the liquor left from yesterday’s head, and when you have heated this to a boil, add the feet with the water in which they are cooking. Boil for another hour, still slowly. Strain the soup, cool to make the grease rise. Skim, season, and return to the fire. When again boiling, stir in the milk, and the meat from the feet, cut into dice. Take out a cupful of the soup and pour, by degrees, over the beaten eggs. Return to the pot, stir two minutes, and serve.

A very nice soup, and nutritious. If you cannot get calf’s feet, use those of a pig instead, cooking exactly in the same way.

SALT MACKEREL, WITH CREAM SAUCE.

Soak overnight in lukewarm water, changing this in the morning for ice-cold. Rub all the salt off, and wipe dry. Grease your gridiron with butter, and rub the fish on both sides with the same, melted. Then broil quickly over a clear fire, turning with a cake-turner so as not to break it. Lay upon a hot-water dish, and cover until the sauce is ready.

Heat a small cup of milk to scalding. Stir into it a teaspoonful of corn-starch, wet up with a little water. When this thickens, add two tablespoonfuls of butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Beat an egg light, pour the sauce gradually over it, put the mixture again over the fire, and stir one minute, not more. Pour upon the fish, and let all stand, covered, over the hot water in the chafing-dish. Put fresh boiling water under the dish before sending to table.

MASHED POTATOES,

Beaten light with milk and butter, and smoothed into a mound, should be served with the fish. If you have a pretty butter-print, wet it, and stamp the top of the mound.

Remember that _everything tastes better for looking well_.

LARDED SWEETBREADS, STEWED.

3 or 4 fine sweetbreads. ¼ lb. fat salt pork, cut into “lardoons,” or long narrow strips. 1 cup of gravy (saved from the roast calf’s head of yesterday). 1 tablespoonful of tomato or other catsup. Juice of half a lemon. Season with pepper.

Parboil the sweetbreads for five minutes. The water should boil when they are dropped in. Take out and lay at once in ice-cold water. This makes them firm. Leave in this five minutes, wipe dry, and set aside to get cold. Then lard with the strips of pork, passing them quite through, so as to project on both sides. If you have no larding-needle, use a long-bladed penknife. Put them into a saucepan; cover with the gravy. If there is not enough, put in a few spoonfuls from the boiling soup. The gravy should be cold, however, when poured over the sweetbreads. Stew about twenty-five minutes after the boil begins. Take out the sweetbreads; thicken the gravy with browned flour, add catsup, lemon, and pepper, the lardoons having salted it sufficiently. Lay the sweetbreads upon a hot dish, pour the gravy over them, and serve; in carving, cut perpendicularly.

STEWED CELERY.

2 bunches of celery, the white stalks only, scraped and cut into short pieces. 2 beaten eggs. 1 cup of milk. 1 tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Pepper, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg.

Stew the celery in a little salted hot water until quite tender. Drain off the water and put in the milk, cold. So soon as it boils, stir in the butter, rolled in flour, pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Add a few spoonfuls of the hot milk to the beaten eggs that they may not curdle in the saucepan; put with the celery and sauce over the fire; boil up once, and dish.

OMELETTE SOUFFLÉ.

8 eggs. 5 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. 1 tablespoonful of butter. Vanilla or rose-water flavoring.

Whip the whites to a very stiff froth, thick enough to be cut with a knife. Beat the yolks smooth and long; add to these the sugar, whip up well, and flavor. Grease a neat pudding-dish _abundantly_ with the tablespoonful of butter. The last thing before you take your seat at the table, do all this; stir whites and yolks together, and put into a steady, not _too_ hot, oven. If you have a teachable cook, let her learn how to put the prepared ingredients together after dinner has gone in. The oven-door should be opened as seldom as possible, certainly not under fifteen minutes. By this time the omelette should have risen high, and be of a golden brown. Partly close the oven-door, to keep it hot, and let it be served as soon as possible in the bake-dish.

Never attempt this or any other nerve-trying dish, for the first time, for others than a family party. Yet it is easy enough when you have once learned for yourself how long to cook it, and how soon it will fall.

TEA AND TOASTED CRACKERS.

Split Boston crackers, toast, butter; put where they will keep hot, and pass with an after-dinner cup of tea.

First Week. Saturday. —— Gravy and Sago Soup. Boiled Corned Beef. Baked Macaroni. Cauliflower, with Sauce. Mashed Turnips. —— Jelly Tartlets. Apples and Nuts. ——

GRAVY AND SAGO SOUP.

4 lbs. coarse beef, cut into strips. 3 lbs. of bones. 1 slice of lean corned ham. 4 onions. 4 cloves. 1 bunch of sweet herbs. ¼ lb. of German sago. Pepper and salt. 5 quarts of water. 2 stalks of celery, cut small.

Cut the beef into narrow strips, the onions into slices. Fry the latter brown in dripping, strain them out, and set aside. Return the dripping to the pan, and fry the meat until it is nicely browned, but not crisp. Lastly, fry the bones in the same fat. They should be broken up small. Put meat, bones, celery, spice, and onions into a pot with a quart of cold water; cover closely, and put where it will not boil under an hour, but will heat all the time. This is to draw out color and open the pores (so to speak) of the meat. So soon as it boils add four quarts more of cold water. Set where it will boil steadily, but never fast, for five hours. Strain, and cool sufficiently to make the fat rise. Take it off, put back over the fire, season, boil up and skim; put in the sago, which should have been soaked two hours in a little water, simmer fifteen minutes and serve.

Save all that is left from dinner, for Monday.

BOILED CORNED BEEF.

Wash well, and put over the fire in hot water—plenty of it—and boil twenty minutes for each pound of meat. Turn three times while cooking. Drain dry, and serve with drawn butter in a boat. “Draw” the butter in liquor taken from the pot. Keep the rest of the liquor for the base of Sunday’s soup.

MASHED TURNIPS.

Pare, quarter, and lay in cold water half an hour. Put on in boiling water, and cook until tender. Drain, mash, and press to get out the water, work in pepper, salt, and a generous lump of butter. Do all this quickly not to cool the turnips, and pile smoothly in a hot, deep dish.

CAULIFLOWER, WITH SAUCE.

Pick off the leaves and cut the stem close. Do not cut the cauliflower unless very large. Lay in cold water for thirty minutes, tie in coarse bobbinet lace or mosquito net, and cook in boiling water, slightly salted, until tender. Lay the cauliflower, flower upward, within a hot dish, and pour the sauce over it.

SAUCE FOR THE ABOVE.

Stir into a cup of boiling water a tablespoonful of flour, wet up with cold. When it has boiled two minutes, add two tablespoonfuls of butter, the white of an egg whipped stiff, pepper and salt, and the juice of a lemon. Boil one minute, and pour over the cauliflower.

BAKED MACARONI.

Break half a pound of macaroni into pieces an inch long, and cook in boiling water, slightly salted, twenty minutes. Drain, and put a layer in the bottom of a greased bake-dish, upon this some grated cheese—Parmesan, if you can get it—and tiny bits of butter. Then more macaroni, and so on, filling the dish, with grated cheese on top. Wet with a little milk, and salt lightly. Bake, covered half an hour, then brown. Serve in the bake-dish.

JELLY TARTLETS.

1 lb. of flour. ½ lb. of butter. ¼ lb. of lard. Yolk of an egg. Ice-water.

Wash the butter in three waters, working it over well to get out the salt. Melt it in a tin cup set in boiling water, take the scum from the top, and let it get almost cold, when beat, little by little, into the whipped egg. Work these into the flour, adding just enough ice-water to make the paste soft enough to roll out. When you have rolled it into a thin sheet, spread all over with the lard, put on with a knife. Sprinkle lightly with flour, roll up, and flatten with three or four strokes of the rolling-pin. Roll again into a yet thinner sheet; again lubricate with the lard and sprinkle with flour, and, once more, make into a tight roll. Set for an hour in a cold place. Cut in two. Set aside enough for your Monday’s dessert; line small “patty-pans” with the rest, pricking the paste on the bottom to keep it from puffing too high. Bake in a quick oven, and when cold put a tablespoonful of sweet jelly or jam in each.

APPLES AND NUTS,

Especially the former, are better for very young stomachs than pastry.

Second Week. Sunday. —— Mock Turtle Bean Soup. Haunch of Venison. Moulded Potatoes. Lima Beans. Sweet Potatoes, Browned. —— Wine Jelly with Whipped Cream. Coffee and Fancy Cakes. ——

MOCK TURTLE BEAN SOUP.

1 quart of mock turtle soup beans. 2 onions, chopped. 4 stalks of celery, cut small. Liquor in which the corned beef of yesterday was boiled. Pepper. Dice of fried bread. 1 quart of cold water. 1 tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour.

Soak the beans overnight. In the morning, pour on a quart of cold water, and set them where they will heat for an hour, without burning. Stir up often from the bottom. At the end of this time add the beef liquor (after taking off the fat), the onions, and celery. Cook gently three hours, until the beans are boiled to pieces. Strain, season, put back into the kettle, boil up, season with pepper, stir in the butter rolled in flour. Simmer five minutes, and pour upon the fried bread in the tureen.

If you cannot get the purple “mock turtle soup beans,” use the common white ones.

HAUNCH OF VENISON.

Wash all over with lukewarm vinegar and water; then rub well with butter or lard to soften the skin. Cover the top and sides with foolscap paper, well greased, and coat it with a paste of flour and water, half an inch thick. Lay over this a large sheet of thin wrapping-paper, and over this another of stout foolscap. Tie all down in place by greased pack-thread. The papers should also be thoroughly greased.

Thus much on Saturday—and set the venison in a very cold place. Next day, about three hours before it will be needed, put into the dripping-pan, with two cups of boiling water in the bottom. Invert another pan over it to keep in the steam; be sure that the fire is good, and leave it to itself for an hour. Then see that the paper is not scorching; wet it all over with hot water and a ladleful of gravy; cover and let it alone for an hour and a half more. Remove the papers and paste, and test with a skewer in the thickest part. If it goes in readily, close the oven, and let it brown for half an hour. Baste freely four times with claret and butter; at last dredge with flour and rub over with butter to make a froth. Take it up, put upon a hot dish. Skim the gravy left in the dripping pan, strain it, thicken with browned flour; add two teaspoonfuls of currant-jelly, a glass of claret, pepper and salt. Boil up for an instant, and serve in a gravy-boat. Allow a quarter of an hour to the pound in roasting venison. The neck can be roasted in the same way as the haunch.

MASHED POTATOES—MOULDED.

Having mashed and seasoned them as usual, grease _well_ the inside of a fluted pudding or cake mould, put in the potato, cover, and set for half an hour in a dripping-pan half full of boiling water, within a moderate oven. Then remove the lid, dip, for a moment, the mould in cold water, and turn the potato out upon a flat dish.

LIMA BEANS.

You can get them canned, but they are nearly, if not quite as good dried. In this case soak them overnight in soft water. Change this in the morning for fresh, and put them on to boil in hot water, a little salted. Cook slowly until soft. Do not boil so fast as to break the skins. Drain well, stir in a good piece of butter, a little pepper and salt, and eat very hot.

SWEET POTATOES—BROWNED.

Boil in their skins, peel while hot, and set them in a quick oven. Glaze presently with butter, repeating the process, several times, as they brown.

WINE JELLY WITH WHIPPED CREAM.

1 package of Coxe’s gelatine, soaked for two hours in a large cup of cold water. 2 cups of white wine, or pale sherry. 1 lemon, all the juice and half the grated peel. 1 teaspoonful of bitter almond extract. 2 cups of white sugar. 2 cups of _boiling_ water.

Put soaked gelatine, lemon, sugar, and flavoring extract together, and cover closely for half an hour. Pour on boiling water, stir and strain. Add the wine, strain again through a flannel bag, without squeezing, and leave in a mould wet with cold water, until just before the Sunday dinner.

Whip a cup of rich cream to a thick froth in a syllabub-churn. The jelly should have been formed in an open mould—one with cylinder in the middle. Fill the hollow left by this with the whipped cream; or, if your jelly be a solid mass, heap the cream about the base.

COFFEE AND MACAROONS

Should be the final course. I make no apology for hot and good Sunday dinners. There is a vast deal of straining out infinitesimal gnats and swallowing gigantic camels upon this, as upon most other questions of conscience. We have neither time nor space for their discussion. I have simply tried to deal with the fact that most husbands, brothers, and fathers expect a better dinner on Sabbath, and enjoy it more, than upon other days, by showing, to the best of my ability, how they can be gratified without imposing heavy duties upon mistress and servants at a season when both mind and body need comparative rest.

Second Week. Monday. —— “Second Thoughts” Soup. Larded Venison. Scalloped Tomatoes. Grape Jelly. Fried Sweet Potatoes. —— Raspberry and Currant Jelly Tart. ——

“SECOND THOUGHTS” SOUP.

Heat Saturday’s soup to a boil; add two cups of milk, and when this heats, pour a little of it upon two beaten eggs. Return these to the soup, add whatever seasoning is necessary; simmer all together for one minute, and pour upon three or four tablespoonfuls of grated cheese placed in the bottom of the tureen. Stir up well, and it is ready.

LARDED VENISON.

Trim the remains of the roast haunch into a neat shape, and lard with strips of fat pork, making incisions to receive it with a thin, sharp-edged knife. Pour what gravy you have over it, or should there be none, use butter and water instead. Put into a dripping-pan, turn another over it and roast—or steam—for one hour. Meantime, make a gravy of the trimmings, bits of bone, etc., by covering them well with cold water, and adding half an onion, sliced. Stew until the gravy is reduced one-half. Strain, season with pepper; a tablespoonful of currant-jelly, one of catsup and two of claret. Thicken slightly with browned flour, boil up to mix well, and pour gradually over the meat. Baste abundantly with this for half an hour if the piece of meat be large. Less time may suffice for a small roast. Never let it dry for an instant. When done, it should seem to have been stewed rather than roasted. Serve the gravy in a sauce-boat.

Like some other “second thoughts,” this dish will be even better than at its first appearance.

SCALLOPED TOMATOES.

Turn nearly all the juice off from a can of tomatoes. Salt and pepper this, by the way, and put aside in a cool place for some other day’s soup. Put a layer of bread-crumbs in the bottom of a buttered pie-dish; on them one of tomatoes; sprinkle with salt, pepper, and some bits of butter, also a little sugar. Another layer of crumbs, another of tomatoes—seasoned—then a top layer of very fine, dry crumbs. Bake covered until bubbling hot, and brown quickly.

FRIED SWEET POTATOES.

Slice cold ones left from yesterday, or boiled this fore-noon; roll in flour and fry in dripping. Drain well.

RASPBERRY AND CURRANT JELLY TART.

Roll out the raw paste reserved for to-day from Saturday, and line two pie-dishes. Fill them nearly full of canned raspberries, sweetened to your liking. Spread a coating of currant jelly over the top, and cover with a lattice-work of pastry, cut with a jagging-iron. Watch your chance of putting them into the oven, as they are better when not hot.