Part 6

Make a nice paste, and lay into two medium-sized plates; then prepare the following mixture. To the juice, and grated rind of one lemon, made very sweet with white sugar, add three well-beaten eggs, and a piece of butter half the size of an egg, melted. Stir these ingredients together, then add a pint of rich milk, or thin cream, stirring very fast. Fill the plates and bake immediately.

=Another.=

An egg, a lemon, and a cup of sugar prepared as directed in the last receipt; then add half a cup of water, and two small crackers, pounded and sifted. Bake in a plate, with a paste.

=Rich Mince.=

To one beef's tongue, allow a pound of suet, a pound of currants, another of raisins, a pound and a quarter of sugar, half a pound of citron, eight large apples, a quart of wine or boiled cider, salt, a nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, the juice and pulp of a lemon, and the rind chopped fine. Let the meat be chopped very fine, then add the apples and chop them fine also. Put the sugar into the cider or wine, and just boil it up so as to skim off the top; let it stand a few minutes, and then pour it off into a pan containing all the other ingredients. Be careful, in pouring it, not to disturb any sediment there may be from the sugar. Use loaf sugar if you choose.

=Another (not as rich).=

Chop the meat, apples, and suet separately, and then measure the ingredients thus: three bowls of meat, three of apple, one of suet, one of citron cut small, two of raisins, four of sugar, one of molasses, one of vinegar, one of some kind of syrup (quince or peach), or wine instead, if you prefer. Add powdered clove, nutmeg and cinnamon to suit the taste.

=Temperance.=

Boil five pounds of meat in water enough to have one quart when it is done; chop the meat very fine when it is cold, and add a quarter of a pound of suet, or salt pork, three pounds and a half of sugar, three of chopped apple, two and a half of box raisins and one of Sultana raisins, one of citron, and a pint of syrup of preserved peach, quince, or both; or any other syrup you may have; add salt, nutmeg, and powdered clove. To mix the ingredients, remove the fat from the juice of the meat and put it into a kettle with the apple, sugar, raisins, and citron, and let them boil a few minutes; if froth rises, take it off; have the meat ready in a pan mixed with the spices, pour the mixture boiling hot upon it, and stir it together; add, if you choose, the juice and pulp of three lemons. This process cooks the ingredients so thoroughly that, if you prefer, you can bake the paste first and then fill the dishes; and if you choose to reserve part of it, it will keep in a cool place several weeks.

=Very Plain.=

These may be made of almost any cheap pieces of meat, boiled till tender; add suet or salt pork chopped very fine, half or two thirds as much apple as meat; sugar and spices to your taste. If mince pies are eaten cold it is better to use salt pork than suet. A lemon, and a little syrup of sweetmeats will greatly improve them. Clove is the most important spice.

=Without Suet.=

Boil up a quart of good brown sugar in three pints of cider; set it off, and after a few minutes take off the scum; then put in a pint of chopped meat, a quart of chopped apple, and four large crackers pounded and sifted. Add a grated nutmeg, a large teaspoonful of powdered clove, and any other spice you prefer. Make the mixture more sweet if you choose. Boil it again four or five minutes. This will not keep so long as mince which contains no cracker.

=Without Meat.=

To twelve apples chopped fine, add six beaten eggs, and a half pint of cream. Put in spice, sugar, raisins or currants just as you would for meat mince pies.

=Another.=

A cup of molasses, a cup of sugar, half a cup of vinegar, and half a cup of butter, boiled up together for a minute. Then add three crackers pounded and sifted, a half a pint of chopped raisins, two beaten eggs, and spice to suit the taste.

=Peach.=

If the peaches are dried, stew them first in a little water; if fresh, pare them, but do not take out the stones. Make the pie in a large deep dish, and close the edge well, to prevent the escape of the syrup. The free-stones are best, because most tender; the cling-stones require long cooking.

=Rhubarb.=

Peel the stalks, and cut them into pieces about an inch long; lay them in a soft cloth in order to absorb some of the juice, as the quantity is very great. Put them in a sauce-pan and stew gently; add sugar enough to make it sweet as you wish, but no water; cover close. Be careful not to stew it so long as to break the pieces. Lay it into dishes for the table, and having baked your paste of the right size, lay it over. Some persons prefer the rhubarb without spice. If any is used, it should be the rind of a lemon.

Rhubarb tarts are good made, like the gooseberry, with a lower crust, and strips laid across the top.

=Squash or Pumpkin.=

To a pint and a gill of strained squash, put three gills of sugar, three eggs, two crackers, pounded and sifted (or four eggs without the crackers), a teaspoonful of salt, one nutmeg, a dessert spoonful of powdered cinnamon, or some essence of lemon, a teaspoonful of ginger, and a table-spoonful of butter, melted in a quart of milk. Boil the milk. To mix it, stir the spice and salt into the strained squash first, then add the cracker, and sugar, and when these are mixed, pour in half the milk, and when this is well stirred, add the remainder, and lastly the eggs, which should be thoroughly beaten. If you make up two quarts of milk, use five eggs, and five pounded crackers, and double the other ingredients.

=Another.=

Six eggs, eight table-spoonfuls of strained squash, one quart of boiled milk, a little salt, two table-spoonfuls of rose-water, a lemon (juice and rind), sugar to your taste, a spoonful of butter melted. Grate nutmeg over the top. Mix the ingredients as directed in the last receipt. The mode of making pumpkin puddings or pies, may be almost endlessly varied. They are very good without eggs, substituting a little more pumpkin and three crackers pounded and sifted, to a quart of milk; omitting rose-water, use cinnamon and a very little ginger. When you have only one or two eggs to a quart, use two crackers.

=Puffs.=

Make a rich paste of a quart of flour; after you have rubbed in part of the butter, cut the white of an egg to a stiff froth; reserve half a spoonful of it, and stir the rest, and the water into the flour with a knife; then proceed to roll in the remainder of the butter in the usual way. Cut rounds in the paste of the size you wish to have them, and twice as many as you intend to have of puffs. Then cut out of half of them, a small round in the centre, so as to leave a circular rim of crust. Take up these rims with a wide-bladed knife, and lay them upon the large rounds so as to form a raised edge, and with the knife lay them, thus prepared, on tin sheets, or a nice sheet-iron pan. Take a feather, and lightly brush the edges with a little of the reserved white of egg. This will make them brown handsomely. Bake them in a quick oven. Bake also the small rounds which were cut out from the rims. When all are baked, put raspberry jam, quince, currant, or lemon jelly in the puffs and lay the small rounds over it. Some people like them best, without covering the jelly.

To make lemon jelly for the purpose, beat one egg and a cup of sugar together; when well mixed, add the juice of a lemon, and then two table-spoonfuls of cold water. Put the mixture in a shallow dish, set it on the stove, and stir it steadily, until it thickens, then take it off immediately. Be careful it does not boil. When it is cool, put it into the puffs.

DIRECTIONS ABOUT PUDDINGS.

The eggs for all sorts of puddings in which they are used, should be well beaten, and then strained. If hot milk is used, the eggs should be added after all the other ingredients. Milk for pumpkin, squash, cocoanut, tapioca, ground rice, sago, arrow-root, and sweet potato puddings, should be boiled; for bread and plum puddings also, unless the bread is soaked in milk over night. When suet is used in puddings, it should be chopped fine as possible.

In making batter puddings, but a small portion of the milk should be put to the flour at first, as it will be difficult to stir out the little lumps, if the whole quantity is mixed together at once. After the flour is stirred smooth, in a part of the milk, add the eggs not beaten, and beat the mixture well; then add the remainder of the milk, and stir all together till equally mixed. A flour pudding is much lighter, when the materials are all beaten together, than if the eggs are done separately. When berries or cherries are to be used, put them in last. A batter pudding, with berries, requires at least a third more flour than one without. For cherry pudding but a small addition of flour is needed.

A buttered earthen bowl, with a cloth tied up close over it, is a very good thing in which to boil a pudding or dumpling; but some persons think they are lighter boiled in a cloth. A large square of thick tow or hemp cloth does very well; but if a bag is preferred, it should be so cut that the bottom will be several inches narrower than the top, and the corners rounded. The seam should be stitched close with a coarse thread on one side, and then turned and stitched again on the other, in order to secure the pudding from the water. When used, let the seam be outside. A strong twine, a yard long, should be sewed at the middle to the seam, about three inches from the top of the bag. When the bag is to be used, wring it in cold water, and sprinkle the inside thick with flour,[7] and lay it in a dish; pour in the batter and tie up the bag quickly, drawing the string as tight as possible. Allow a little room for the pudding to swell. (An Indian pudding made with cold milk, swells more than any other.) Lay it immediately into the boiling pot, and after ten minutes, turn it over to prevent the flour from settling on one side. If there is fruit in the pudding, it should be turned three or four times during the first half hour. Keep it covered by adding water from the tea-kettle if necessary, and be careful that it boils steadily. If it does not, the pudding will be watery. When you take it up, plunge it for a moment in a pan of cold water; then pour off the water, untie the twine, and gently lay back the top of the bag. Have a dish ready, and turn the pudding out upon it. A batter pudding without berries cooks very nicely in a tin pudding pan, set upright in a kettle of boiling water.

[7] Some persons prefer to spread the inside with butter and then flour it. Perhaps this method excludes the water most effectually. Either way does well. Always butter the dish in which a pudding is to be baked.

To cut a boiled pudding without making it heavy, lay the knife, first one side and then the other, upon it, long enough to warm the blade.

If these directions seem needlessly minute, it should be remembered that those things which seem perfectly obvious to the experienced, are often very perplexing to the uninitiated.

=Elegant Pudding Sauce.=

To four large spoonfuls of fine white sugar, put two of butter, one of flour, and stir them together to a cream in an earthen dish. Cut the white of an egg to a stiff froth, and add it; then pour into the dish a gill of boiling water, stirring the mixture very fast. Put it into the sauce tureen and add essence of lemon, or rose, or grate nutmeg over the top as you prefer.

=A Plainer Sauce.=

To three large spoonfuls of clean brown sugar, put rather more than one spoonful of butter, and half a one of flour; stir all together in an earthen dish until white, then add a gill of boiling water, and stir it steadily till it is all melted, then set it upon the coals long enough just to boil up. Add rose-water, a few drops of lemon juice, or a spoonful of boiled cider.

=Cold Sauce.=

Take the same measure of butter and sugar as given in either of the above receipts, and stir them to a cream. Omit the flour; but add the white of egg.

=Sour Cream Sauce.=

Put together a cup of sugar and a cup and a half of thick sour cream. Stir the mixture five or six minutes, then put it into a sauce tureen and grate nutmeg over it.

This sauce is specially appropriate for Indian puddings, baked or boiled, and for the boiled suet puddings.

=Apple Pudding.=

To a quart of stewed sour apple, put while it is hot, a piece of butter the size of an egg, and sugar enough to make it quite sweet. Beat it several minutes in order to mix it thoroughly. Beat four eggs and stir into it, add lemon or any essence you choose. Butter a cold dish thick, with cold[8] butter, and strew the bottom and sides with cracker crumbs, or very fine bread crumbs; then pour in the mixture, sift plenty of the cracker crumbs on the top, grate a little nutmeg upon it, and sprinkle it with sifted sugar. Bake forty or fifty minutes in one dish, or half an hour in two. It is as good cold, the second day, as when first baked. It is an improvement to eat it with cream.

[8] In all cases, where the sides of a dish are to be strewed with crumbs, both the dish and the butter should be cold.

=Another (Marlborough).=

Make a nice paste and lay into your dishes. Take one quart of strained apple, one quart of sugar, eight eggs, three nutmegs, a pint of cream, a quarter of a pound of butter, a fresh lemon, pulp and juice, and the rind grated. If you have no cream, milk will do, but it should be boiled, and half a pound of butter, instead of one quarter, melted into it. The apples should be very sour. This will fill six deep dishes or soup plates. Bake three quarters of an hour.

=Another (Pemberton).=

To six large, sour apples, put a pint of cream, an ounce of butter, six eggs, one lemon, sugar to the taste.

To be prepared exactly in the same way as the Marlborough pudding.

=Almond.=

Blanch (that is, peel off the brown skin) of five bitter, and ten sweet almonds; to do this, easily, pour boiling water on them, then pound them fine in a mortar. Set a pail with a quart of rich milk into a kettle of hot water; when it boils, put in the almonds. Mix two and a half table-spoonfuls of ground rice smooth, with a large tumbler of milk, and stir it in. Boil it half an hour, stirring it often; then add the yolks of three eggs beaten with half a coffee cup of fine sugar, and in about a minute take the pail from the kettle, and stir in another half cup of sugar. Pour it into a dish and set it away to cool. Cut the whites of the eggs, and a large spoonful of fine sugar to a stiff froth, drop them on the top with a large spoon, and set the pudding into the oven till the top is brown. To be eaten cold.

=Baked Batter.=

Allow a pint of cold milk, four table-spoonfuls of flour, two eggs, and a little salt.

Stir the flour smooth in a part of the milk, then put in the eggs without first beating, and beat them well with the mixed flour. Then add the remainder of the milk, and the salt, and when well stirred together, pour it into a buttered dish, and bake it half an hour. When it is done, the whole top will have risen up. So long as there is a little sunken spot in the centre, it is not baked enough. Make a cold or melted sauce as you prefer. This makes an ample pudding for a family of four. A flour pudding will not be light unless it is put into the oven immediately on being made.

=Boiled Batter.=

Use the very same proportions; butter a tin pudding-pan having a close cover, and put in the mixture; set it immediately into a kettle of boiling water. See that the water comes up high enough around it to cook the pudding, but so that it will not boil quite up to the top. If it boils away, add more hot water.

=Another.=

To a quart of milk put six eggs, eight spoonfuls of flour, and a teaspoonful of salt. To be boiled two hours.

If you wish to make a nice addition to your dinner on short notice, prepare this batter, and butter little cups that hold about a gill, fill them three quarters full, and bake in the stove. They will bake in fifteen minutes. They should be turned out upon a dish, and be eaten with sauce. Such a pudding requires forty minutes to bake in one dish.

=Rye Batter.=

To a pint of cold milk, put three heaping spoonfuls of sifted rye meal, a little salt, and three eggs. Boil it an hour and a half in a buttered bowl with the cloth tied very tight over it. The bowl should be of a size to allow a very little for swelling.

=Bird's Nest.=

For a pint of cold milk allow three eggs, five spoonfuls of flour, six medium sized, fair apples, and a small teaspoonful of salt.

Pare the apples, and take out the cores; arrange them in a buttered dish that will just receive them (one in the centre and five around it). Wet the flour smooth in part of the milk, then add the eggs and beat all together a few minutes; then put in the salt, and the rest of the milk. Stir it well and pour it into the dish of apples. Bake it an hour, and make a melted sauce. For a large family make double measure, but bake it in two dishes, as the centre apples of a large dish will not cook as quickly, as those around the edge.

=Bread.=

Take nice pieces of light bread, break them up, and put a small pint bowl full into a quart of milk; set it in a tin pail or brown dish on the back part of the stove or range, where it will heat very gradually, and let it stand an hour or more. When the bread is soft enough to be made fine with a spoon, just boil it up; set it off, and stir in a large teaspoonful of butter, a little salt, and from two to four beaten eggs. Bake it an hour. Make a sauce for it. To be eaten without sauce, put in twice the measure of butter, beat the eggs with a cup of nice brown sugar, a teaspoonful of cinnamon, and half as much powdered clove.

=Bread and Butter.=

Cut five slices of light bread across the loaf, very thin; spread them thick with butter; cut the slices in two or four parts; butter a dish and lay them in with a few dried currants between each slice. Lay them so that the top will be even, and not quite as high as the dish; pour over them a quart of custard made with boiled milk, and five or six eggs, and flavored with peach and nutmeg. It will bake in less than an hour. Some persons prefer to toast the bread.

=Cottage.=

One teacup of sweet milk, three of flour, one coffee-cup of brown sugar, one egg, one table-spoonful of butter, half a teaspoonful of saleratus. Melt the butter. Dissolve the saleratus in a little of the milk, and stir it in after the other ingredients are mixed. Bake half an hour. To be eaten with sweet sauce.

=Another (more rich).=

One teacup of sugar, three table-spoonfuls of melted butter, one egg, one teacup of milk, two heaping cups of flour, a teaspoonful of saleratus or soda, and two of cream of tartar. If it is made with sour milk, the cream of tartar is to be left out.

=Cocoanut.=

Grate a cocoanut, and save the milk. Boil a quart of milk and pour upon it; add five eggs, with a coffee-cup of sugar beaten in them, an ounce of butter, two table-spoonfuls of rose-water, a little salt. If you have cream and plenty of eggs, make it of cream instead of milk, and add three more eggs, and any essence or spice you choose, and bake in one dish nearly an hour; or make a nice paste, and bake it in three deep plates like squash pies, forty minutes.

=Cracker.=

To a pint of boiled milk, put four crackers, pounded and sifted, three eggs, and a small teaspoonful of salt. Add whortleberries if convenient, and in that case, half of another cracker. Make a sweet sauce. Bake half an hour, or forty minutes. The same mixture made with cold milk is a nice pudding boiled an hour and a half.

=Another.=

Take the same proportions as in the previous receipt, of crackers, milk, and eggs; and add a cup of sugar, a table-spoonful of butter, cinnamon, a very little clove, and a cup of chopped raisins, and eat it with a sauce, or without. It is good cold.

=Farina.=

Two table-spoonfuls of farina, a pint of milk, two eggs, a small cup of sugar, and a half teaspoonful of salt; flavor with lemon or nutmeg. To mix it, set the milk in a pail into a kettle of hot water. When the top of the milk foams up, stir in the farina gradually, and add the salt. Let it remain in the kettle ten or fifteen minutes, and stir it repeatedly. Take the pail from the kettle, beat the eggs and sugar together, and stir them in; add the essence, and pour the mixture into a buttered dish. Bake half an hour or forty minutes. No sauce is necessary.

=Potato.=

Weigh two pounds of good potatoes, after they are pared; boil them, and when done, dry them; then pound them well in the kettle with a pestle. While they are still hot, add half a pound of sugar and half a pound of butter, which have been previously stirred together to a cream; and last, and a little at a time, seven eggs, a glass of wine, and spice to your taste. Bake with or without a paste. Omit the wine if you prefer, both in this, and the next receipt, and use lemon-juice.

=Another.=

To half a pound of boiled potato, rolled or pounded, put two ounces of butter, two eggs, half a gill of cream, one table-spoonful of white wine, sugar to your taste, and a very little salt. Beat it to a froth, and bake with or without a paste. If it is wanted more rich, add almonds and another egg.

=Sweet Potato.=

Boil the potatoes and rub them through a sieve; add eggs, milk, sugar, and spice precisely as for squash pies, only making the mixture a very little thicker with the potato. Bake in a deep dish with a paste, or without if preferred.

=Sweet Potato Pone.=

Pare and grate several sweet potatoes, and to three pounds of grated potato add two of sugar, twelve eggs, a little more than three pints of milk, the juice and grated rind of a lemon, a quarter of a pound of butter (melted), a table-spoonful of rose-water, a nutmeg, a little cinnamon and mace, a teaspoonful of salt. Mix thoroughly together and bake in deep pans two hours. It is usually eaten cold, as cake.

=Plum.=

A pound of bread or six pounded crackers, one quart of milk, six eggs, a large spoonful of flour, a teacup of sugar, one nutmeg, a teaspoonful of cinnamon, half a one of powdered clove, a piece of butter the size of an egg, the same quantity of chopped suet, and a pound of raisins. Boil the milk. It is very well to soak the bread in the milk over night; then the entire crust becomes soft, and mixes well with the other ingredients.

These puddings are served with a rich sauce, if eaten warm, but are excellent cold, cut up like cake. People that are subject to a great deal of uninvited company, find it convenient in cold weather to bake half a dozen at once. They will keep several weeks, and when one is to be used, it may be loosened from the dish by a knife passed around it, and a little hot water be poured in round the edge. It should then be covered close, and set for half an hour into the stove or oven.

=Another.=

Soak a pound of soft bread in a quart of boiled milk till it can easily be strained through a coarse hair sieve; then add seven eggs, two gills of cream, a quarter of a pound of butter (melted), a gill of rose-water, or some extract of rose, a little cinnamon or nutmeg, and a pound of raisins. For a small family, bake it in two dishes, an hour; and reserve one for another day. To warm it, see the directions in the last receipt.

=Rice.=

Boil a teacupful of rice in two teacups of water. When it has swelled so as to absorb the water, add a quart of milk and five or six peach leaves, and boil it until the rice is perfectly soft. Take it from the fire, remove the peach leaves, add a small piece of butter, a little salt, and three or four eggs, beaten with a teacup of sugar. Put it into a buttered dish, grate nutmeg over the top, and bake three quarters of an hour. Most people prefer this pudding cold.

=Another (White Top).=