Part 9

Drain off the liquor from the clams and put it over the fire in a large farina-kettle, with a pint of water, the peppers, mace, celery, and salt. When it has boiled ten minutes, strain and put back into the kettle with the clams. Shut the lid down closely, and boil, fast, thirty minutes. Heat the milk in another vessel, stir into it the rice-flour, wet up with cold water, and the butter. Pour into the kettle with the clams, take at once from the fire, pour into the tureen, in the bottom of which you have laid four or five Boston crackers, split. Cover, and wait five minutes before serving.

RAGOÛT OF VEAL.

5 lbs. of knuckle of veal. 1 onion. 2 stalks of celery. Bunch of sweet herbs. Juice of tomatoes set aside yesterday. Juice of half a lemon. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 2 tablespoonfuls of browned flour. ¼ lb. of streaked fat pork. Pepper and salt.

Crack the bones, when you have taken the meat off, and put them into a saucepan with the minced onion, celery, and herbs, with a quart of water. Stew slowly until the liquor has boiled down to a pint. Meanwhile, cut the veal into neat slices, and fry until they begin to brown, in some good dripping. Strain the gravy made from the bones and vegetables over this, and put all on to stew, adding the tomato-juice, pepper, and pork, the last cut up fine. Simmer, with the lid on, for two hours. Then add the browned flour, wet up in cold water, salt, if needed, the butter and lemon-juice. Boil up once, and dish.

RICE AND CHEESE.

Boil a cup of rice in a quart of water, slightly salted, and when half-done add two tablespoonfuls of butter. By the time the rice is soft, the water should have been soaked up entirely, and each grain stand out whole in the mass. Never stir boiling rice, but shake up the saucepan instead. Stir into the rice, at this point, three tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, salt and pepper to taste. Toss up with a fork until the cheese is dissolved, and pour into a deep dish.

POTATO PUFF.

Mash the potatoes while hot. Beat in butter, milk, and two whipped eggs, with salt to your liking, until you have a light, soft paste. Bake in a buttered pudding-dish in a quick oven.

CELERY SALAD.

Cut up blanched stalks of celery into short pieces. Mix a dressing of one tablespoonful of oil to one teaspoonful of sugar, one of salt, half as much pepper, and four tablespoonfuls of vinegar with half a teaspoonful of made mustard. Heat the vinegar to scalding, and pour over a beaten egg, a little at a time, and beating it in well. To this add the oil and other ingredients, whipping up the mixture with an egg-beater. When cold, pour over the salad, toss up with a silver fork, and put into a glass bowl.

A MERE TRIFLE.

1 quart of fresh milk. 5 eggs. 6 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Vanilla, or other essence, 2 teaspoonfuls.

Heat the milk to boiling, and pour, gradually, upon the beaten yolks and sugar. Put again over the fire, stir steadily for about ten minutes, or until it begins to thicken. Take it off, and while still very hot, stir in with a few light strokes half of the frothed whites. Let it get cold before flavoring it. Pour into a glass bowl. Whip the remaining whites to a _méringue_ with a little powdered sugar. Heap upon the custard. Put bits of bright jelly, or preserved strawberries, here and there upon the snowy mass.

Second Week. Wednesday. —— Hotch-Potch. Stewed Pigeons. Potatoes à la Lyonnaise. Kidney Beans. Mixed Pickles. —— English Tapioca Pudding. ——

HOTCH-POTCH.

2 lbs. of lean beef, without bones, and cut into mince-meat. 2 onions. 2 carrots. 2 turnips. 2 stalks of celery. ½ small cabbage, cut fine. 2 potatoes. 1 cup of corn. Half a can of tomatoes. Bunch of sweet herbs, chopped. Pepper and salt. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Wash, scrape, and slice the vegetables, and put all except the tomatoes into a pot; cover with hot water and boil gently ten minutes. Drain off the water, put a handful of the mixed vegetables, including now the tomatoes, in the bottom of a stone jar. Pepper and salt, strew thickly with the minced raw beef, repeat the order until your materials are all in the jar. Fit a top or a small plate over the mouth; tie down with stout greased paper, set it within the oven, and let it alone for five or six hours, except that you must look, now and then, to see that the paper does not take fire. Prevent this by greasing it abundantly. At the end of this time, turn out the hotch-potch; stir in the butter, and, if needed, additional seasoning through it, and serve in a tureen.

STEWED PIGEONS.

Pick, clean, and wash the pigeons, and put into a pot with a cupful of water to keep them from burning, and a tablespoonful of butter for each one. Shut the lid down tightly, and subject to a slow heat until they are of a nice brown—about nut-color. Once in a great while turn them, and see that each is well wet with the liquor. Take them out and cover in a warm place—a colander set over a pot of hot water is best—while you make the gravy. Chop the giblets of the pigeon “exceeding small” with a little onion and parsley. Put into the gravy, pepper and salt, boil up and thicken with browned flour. Return the pigeons to the pot, cover again tightly, and cook slowly until tender. If there should not be liquor enough in the pot to make the gravy, add boiling water before the giblets go in.

This is an admirable receipt.

POTATOES À LA LYONNAISE.

Cut parboiled potatoes into dice. Chop an onion and fry it, with a little minced parsley, in good dripping or butter, for one minute. Then put in the potatoes. Stir briskly until they have fried slowly for five minutes. They must never stick to the bottom, nor brown. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, drain free of fat by shaking them in a heated colander, and send up hot.

KIDNEY BEANS.

Soak over night in soft water; next morning cover with lukewarm, and cook slowly for one hour. Salt slightly and boil until tender, but not to actual breaking. Drain very well, stir in a liberal spoonful of butter, pepper, and serve.

ENGLISH TAPIOCA PUDDING.

1 cup of tapioca. 5 eggs. 3 pints of milk. 1 cup of sugar. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. ½ lb. of raisins. Half the grated peel of a lemon. A _little_ salt.

Soak the tapioca for one hour in a pint of the milk; pour into a farina-kettle, surround with warm water, salt very slightly, and bring to a boil. When soft throughout, turn out to cool, while you make the custard. Heat a quart of milk to scalding; pour over the beaten eggs and sugar, this last having been rubbed to a cream with the butter. Mix with the tapioca—lemon-peel and raisins last. Dredge the fruit lightly with flour, and beat all up hard. Bake in a buttered dish one hour—at first covered.

Eat warm, with powdered sugar. It is better for not being too hot.

Second Week. Thursday. —— Celery Soup. Mutton Cutlets—Fried. Stewed Corn and Tomatoes. Brussels Sprouts. Mashed Potatoes. —— Apple Méringue Pie. ——

CELERY SOUP.

2 lbs. of veal. 1 slice of corned ham, or a ham-bone. 2 bunches of celery. 2 cups of milk. 2 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch wet up in water. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 1 teaspoonful of sugar. 1 onion. Dice of fried bread. Pepper and salt. 3 quarts of water.

Chop the meat, onion, and herbs; cover with the water and put on to stew early in the day. When the meat has boiled to rags and the liquid reduced one-half, strain, and put in the celery, cut into small pieces. Use the best parts only. Stew soft; rub through a colander and return with the broth to the saucepan. Season, add the sugar, boil up and skim, and put in the milk. Heat, and add corn starch. When it again boils, you stirring all the while, put in the butter.

Take off so soon as this has melted, and pour over the fried bread in the tureen.

MUTTON CUTLETS—FRIED.

Beat them flat with the broad side of a hatchet; season with pepper and salt, dip first in beaten egg, then in bread-crumbs, and fry in lard or dripping. Drain perfectly free from the fat, and arrange them, standing on end and touching one another, around a mound of mashed potatoes.

MASHED POTATOES.

Prepare as usual, and shape with a knife into a smooth mound, with a hedge of cutlets about the base.

STEWED CORN AND TOMATOES.

Take a half-can of tomatoes and the same of corn, the rest of that which was opened for your “hotch-potch” yesterday, and, after mixing them up well, season with pepper, salt, and a little sugar. Set on where they will cook slowly. At the end of twenty-five minutes, stir in a great spoonful of butter. Put on the lid and stew _very_ gently ten minutes more. Serve in a deep dish.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS.

Pick over, trim, and lay in cold water for half an hour cook quickly in boiling water, a little salt, for fifteen minutes. Drain carefully, put upon a flat dish, and pour drawn butter over them.

APPLE MÉRINGUE PIE.

1 quart of flour. ½ lb. of butter. ¼ lb. of lard. Ice-water.

Chop the lard in flour, wet up with ice-water to a stiff paste. Roll thin, and baste with one-third of the butter, sprinkle lightly with flour, and roll up. Again roll out, even thinner than before, baste again with half the remaining butter, sprinkle with flour, and make a second roll. Repeat this process yet a third time, and set in a cold place for one hour.

Cut the roll of paste into two pieces, reserving one for to-morrow’s oyster-pie. With the other, line two pie-dishes and fill with good apple-sauce, well sweetened, and seasoned with nutmeg. Bake until just done. Draw to the oven door, and spread with a méringue made by whipping stiff the whites of three eggs for each pie, sweetening with a tablespoonful of sugar for each egg. Flavor with a little rose-water or lemon-essence, beat until you can make a clean cut in it, and spread three-quarters of an inch thick upon each pie. Shut the oven door until the méringue is well set. Do not let it scorch. Eat cold.

Second Week. Friday. —— Friars’ Soup. Oyster Pie. Calf’s Liver à l’Anglaise. Apple Sauce. Stewed Parsnips. Potatoes au gratin. Picklette. —— Chocolate Custard. ——

FRIARS’ SOUP.

4 onions. 3 stalks of celery. ¼ of a small cabbage. 2 turnips. 4 tablespoonfuls of butter. ½ cup raw rice. 2 eggs. Pepper and salt to taste. 1 tablespoonful of chopped parsley. 3 quarts of water.

Boil the vegetables, all chopped fine (reserving the parsley for seasoning), in three quarts of water until they can be pulped through a colander. Return them, with the water in which they were cooked, to the fire. Boil the rice, meantime, in a little water until it swells and absorbs it all. Stir into the vegetable porridge, season, and simmer for fifteen minutes. Add the butter, simmer ten minutes, dip out a cupful and beat into the eggs. Stir this into the broth, and before it begins to boil, take from the fire and pour out, lest the eggs should curdle.

OYSTER PIE.

Roll out the raw paste made yesterday into a pretty thick sheet. Fill a pudding-dish with crusts of stale bread, or light crackers. Butter the edges of the dish that the crust may be easily removed. Cover the mockpie with the pastry; lay a strip cut in scallops or points, around the edge, to keep it in place, and bake.

To each pint of oyster-liquor allow a cup of milk, but heat them in separate vessels. So soon as the liquor boils, put in the oysters and cook five minutes more. Stir a tablespoonful of corn-starch into the pint of hot milk, having, of course, first wet it up with cold water, and, when it thickens, pour over the oysters and liquor. Season with pepper and salt, and add two tablespoonfuls of butter, if there be a quart of oysters. Lift the hot crust from the pudding-dish with great care. Remove the stale bread, wipe out the inside; pour in the stewed oysters with enough of the soup to cover them well; replace the pastry and set in the oven for two or three minutes.

CALF’S LIVER À L’ANGLAISE.

2 lbs. of fresh liver. ½ lb. fat salt pork. 1 tablespoonful of butter. ½ of a small onion. 1 teaspoonful of chopped parsley. Pepper. The pork should salt it sufficiently.

Put the butter into a warm—not hot saucepan. Cut the liver into slices half an inch thick, and lay upon the butter. Mince the pork and cover the liver. Sprinkle the parsley and onion, with pepper, on top. Cover the saucepan closely and set in a kettle of hot water. Keep this water below the boiling-point for an hour. Then let it boil another hour. The liver should by this time be very tender and juicy, if the heat has been properly managed. Take it out, and put it upon a chafing-dish to keep warm. Boil up, and thicken the gravy with browned flour; pour over the liver and serve. The inner saucepan should be made of tin.

POTATOES AU GRATIN.

Mash your potatoes soft with butter and milk; mould in a round pan or tin jelly-mould, made very wet with cold water. Turn out upon a flat plate—a sheet of tin is better—well-greased, strew with fine, dry bread-crumbs; set upon the upper grating of the oven to brown quickly. Slip dexterously from the plate to a hot dish.

STEWED PARSNIPS.

Boil tender and cut in long slices. Heat in a saucepan a cup of milk, thicken it with a tablespoonful of butter cut into bits and rolled in flour, season with pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg. Put in the parsnips, boil up once gently, take from the fire, and leave covered in the saucepan for five minutes before you serve.

PICKLETTE AND APPLE SAUCE.

Pass the first with the oyster pie, which is a course of itself; the apple sauce with the meat.

CHOCOLATE CUSTARD.

1 quart of milk. 5 eggs. 1 cup of sugar. 4 heaping tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate. 2 teaspoonfuls vanilla extract.

Scald the milk, rub the chocolate to a smooth paste in a little cold milk. Stir into the milk and cook two minutes in it. Beat up the yolks of the five eggs with the whites of two, and the sugar. Pour the hot mixture, gradually, upon them, stirring deeply. Turn into a buttered pudding-dish, and set in a dripping-pan of boiling water. Bake until firm. When “set” in the middle, spread quickly, without taking from the oven, with a _méringue_ made by whipping the reserved whites stiff with a very little sugar. Bake until this is done. Eat cold.

Second Week. Saturday. —— Macaroni Soup. Baked Ham. Cheese Fondu. Stewed Potatoes. Spinach with Eggs. —— Seymour Pudding. ——

MACARONI SOUP.

3 lbs. knuckle of veal. 2 lbs. of lean beef. 1 lb. lean ham. 2 onions. 1 carrot. 2 turnips. Bunch of sweet herbs. ¼ lb. of macaroni cut into fancy shapes, usually known as “Italian Paste.” 6 cloves. 3 tablespoonfuls of butter. 6 quarts of water. 3 stalks of celery.

Mince the meat, crack the bones, and slice the vegetables. Mix all together. Put the butter in the bottom of a soup-pot, next the meat, then the vegetables and herbs; fit on a tight lid, and set the pot where it will warm very slowly. At the end of an hour, open it, pour off the gravy; increase the heat until the meat begins to brown on the sides of the pot. Return the gravy to the rest of the ingredients; cover with six quarts of cold water, and boil until the liquor has fallen to four quarts. This should be in four hours. Strain the soup; pressing out all the nourishment, and rubbing the vegetables through the sieve. Add the paste, or, if you cannot obtain it, the same quantity of pipe macaroni, boiled a few minutes in hot water, and left to get cool. Then, with a sharp knife or scissors, clip it into very short bits, and put into the soup. Season, boil up, skim well, and let all cook gently together for ten minutes. Half of the above quantity of stock will be enough for Saturday’s dinner. Therefore, before adding the macaroni, take out about two quarts, season well, and set aside for Sunday’s soup.

BAKED HAM.

Soak overnight in warm water. In the morning, scrub it hard; trim away the rusty part of the under side and edges; wipe dry; cover the bottom with a stiff paste of flour and water, and lay, upside down, in the dripping-pan, with enough water to keep it from burning. Allow, in baking, twenty-five minutes to the pound. Baste a few times, to prevent the skin from cracking, and keep hot water in the pan. When a skewer will pierce the thickest part, take it up, plunge for one minute into cold water; skin carefully, brush all over with beaten egg, then strew very thickly with cracker-crumbs, and set in a hot oven to brown. Eat hot or cold, garnished with sprigs of celery or parsley.

CHEESE FONDU.

1 pint of boiling milk. 1 cup _very_ dry bread-crumbs. (Crush the crusts baked in yesterday’s oyster pie.) ½ lb. dry cheese, grated. 3 eggs. Pepper and salt.

Soak the crumbs in the hot milk; beat in the cheese; then the yolks of the eggs, pepper and salt. Have a buttered pudding-dish ready, and just before the _fondu_ goes into the oven whip in the whites of the eggs, already frothed. Pour into the dish, bake in a brisk oven, and send at once to table, as it soon falls. This is a delightful accompaniment to ham.

SPINACH WITH EGGS.

Pick the leaves from the stems, wash well, and boil in hot water, a little salted, for twenty minutes. Chop and drain. Return to the saucepan with a tablespoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, a little pepper and salt. Have ready the yolks of three eggs, rubbed to powder, then wet up with a little cream or milk. Stir all together in the saucepan, beating with a wire spoon, until they are smooth and thick. Turn into a deep dish and garnish with the whites of the eggs cut into rings.

STEWED POTATOES.

Pare the potatoes; cut into quarters, and these into long, even strips. Lay in cold water half an hour, and cook in boiling water until tender, with half a minced onion. Drain off nearly all the water; pepper and salt, and add a cup of cold milk with a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. When it thickens, stir in a little chopped parsley. Simmer five minutes and serve. The potatoes should not be allowed to break so much as to lose their shape.

SEYMOUR PUDDING.

½ cup of molasses. 1 scant cup of milk. ½ cup of raisins, seeded and cut in half. ½ cup of currants. ½ cup of suet, powdered. ½ teaspoonful of soda dissolved in hot water. 1 egg. 1 teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace. A little salt. 1½ cups of Graham flour.

Stir molasses, suet, and milk together, add the egg, spice, flour, fruit, well dredged with flour—at last, the soda. Beat hard five minutes before putting it into a buttered pudding-mould. Boil two hours and a half. Eat with butter and sugar.

Third Week. Sunday. —— Beef and Barley Soup. Steamed Turkey. Naples Rice Pudding. Cranberry Sauce. Boiled Sweet Potatoes. —— Pumpkin Pie. ——

BEEF AND BARLEY SOUP.

Use the two quarts of stock set aside yesterday. Soak five or six tablespoonfuls of barley in cold water two hours. Boil half an hour or until tender, in a little salted water. When you have taken the cake of cold fat from the top of the soup, put in the barley and simmer all together half an hour. Then stir in two tablespoonfuls of shred gelatine previously soaked one hour in cold water. When this has dissolved, the soup is ready for use.

STEAMED TURKEY.

Prepare the turkey as for roasting, and, if you have no steamer, put a gridiron upon the top of a pot of boiling water; lay the fowl upon it, invert a deep pan, as nearly as possible the size of the mouth of the pot, over it, stuff wet cloths into whatever space may be left between the pot and the pan, and keep the water at a hard boil, allowing twenty minutes for each pound of turkey. Two or three times, replenish the water by pulling away one of the cloths so as to leave an aperture large enough to admit the nose of the boiling tea-kettle. When the turkey is half done, lift the pan and turn it; replace the cloths and steam again. When it is done, lay upon a hot dish and baste with a mixture of melted butter and chopped parsley, anointing all parts of it well. Serve drawn butter in a boat, with a couple of boiled eggs chopped fine, stirred up in it. Save the giblets of the turkey for Monday’s soup.

CRANBERRY SAUCE

In a mould, as strained jelly, or the plainer dish of stewed cranberries, well-sweetened, must accompany this dish.

NAPLES RICE PUDDING.

Take a few tablespoonfuls of the meat boiled in yesterday’s soup, mince fine, add half a chopped onion, a tablespoonful of dripping from the top of the soup, and put on to warm with a very little hot water. Simmer, but do not boil, fifteen minutes. Boil one cup of rice in enough water, slightly salt, to cover it well. Shake up from time to time, but do not stir. When the rice is soft and has soaked up the water, add a cup of cold milk in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of corn-starch, one raw egg, and a tablespoonful of butter. Take from the fire before you do this and turn into a bowl. Stir in now the minced meat and gravy (there should be very little of the latter), season to taste, mix all up well, and put into a buttered cake-mould. Set this in a dripping-pan of hot water and bake one hour, closely covered. Turn out upon a hot dish. It is a very good _entrée_, and easily made.

BOILED SWEET POTATOES.

Boil in their skins until soft to the touch; pare quickly, lay upon a flat dish, butter each, and serve hot.

PUMPKIN PIE.

1 quart of stewed pumpkin, rubbed through a fine colander. 6 eggs. 2 quarts of milk. 1 teaspoonful of mace. 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon and the same of nutmeg. 1½ cups of sugar.

Beat the eggs light and whip in the sugar, then the pumpkin and spice. At last, mix in the milk, stirring up well from the bottom.

Bake in open shells of paste made according to the receipt given last Thursday. Eat cold, and send around a plate of cheese with it.

Third Week. Monday. —— Giblet Soup. Turkey and Ham. Corn Puddings. Peach Pickles. Baked Potatoes. —— Farina Custard. ——

GIBLET SOUP.

Cut the giblets of your turkey into six pieces each, and stew, closely covered, in a pint of water until tender. Strain out the barley from the remains of yesterday’s soup and if you have any of Saturday’s in the pantry, strain out the vermicelli and add that. Warm this to a boil with the liquor in which the giblets were cooked. Boil up sharply and skim; add the giblets, and while they simmer together, put two tablespoonfuls of butter cut into bits, and rolled in _browned_ flour, into a frying-pan. Stir until it is hissing hot. Add to the soup with a handful of chopped parsley, and a tablespoonful of walnut or mushroom catsup. Boil up once and serve.

TURKEY AND HAM.

Cover the uncarved side of your steamed turkey with rather thick and fat slices of cooked ham. Three or four large ones will suffice. Bind them to the body with greased packthread. Lay the turkey, cut side downward, and the ham up, in the dripping-pan with a little boiling water in the bottom. Bake about three-quarters of an hour, basting the ham, when it begins to drip, with its own grease. Ten minutes before taking it up, clip the strings, and remove the ham to a hot dish. Dredge the upper side of the turkey with flour, and baste with butter to make a brown froth. Dish, with the ham laid around it.

CORN PUDDINGS.

Add to a can of sweet corn, 1 cup of milk. 3 eggs. 2 tablespoonfuls of butter. 1 of sugar. 2 tablespoonfuls of flour. 1 teaspoonful of salt.

Beat up the eggs, add the sugar and butter, the milk, corn, and, lastly, the flour. Bake in earthenware cups well buttered, or in neat patty-pans. Turn out upon a dish, or eat from the cups. They are very nice when hot.

BAKED POTATOES.