Chapter XVIII: Front Matter (18)

Peel and chop four tomatoes. Soak a cupful of bread-crumbs in a cup of milk and stir them into five beaten eggs. Add the chopped tomatoes, season to taste and turn into a frying-pan in which two tablespoonfuls of butter have been melted. Cook until set, turn upon a hot platter, pour tomato sauce about the omelet, and send at once to the table.

Curried tomatoes

Put into a frying-pan a heaping tablespoonful of butter and half a small onion, grated. Cook until the latter begins to brown—about two minutes—and stir in a scant teaspoonful of curry powder. In this fry thick slices of tomato until tender, sprinkle with salt and serve.

Another method of preparing curried tomatoes is to cook them by the recipe given for creamed tomatoes, adding a teaspoonful of curry powder to the cream sauce and pouring this over the fried tomatoes.

Curried green tomatoes

Cut large green tomatoes into very thick slices. Melt in a frying-pan three tablespoonfuls of butter and fry in this a small onion, sliced. At the end of two or three minutes stir into the melted butter a teaspoonful of curry powder. Lay the tomatoes in this mixture and fry them on both sides. When done, drain, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve.

TURNIPS

Mashed turnips

Peel, lay in cold water for an hour; boil tender in hot, salted water; throw this off and fill up the pot with boiling water, slightly salted. Cook five minutes in this, drain well and rub through a colander or vegetable-press. Beat in a lump of butter rolled in a little flour, salt and pepper to taste; return to the saucepan and cook one minute, stirring all the time.

Turnips boiled, plain

Pare and quarter. Cook tender in two waters; drain, dish; pour a little melted butter, seasoned with pepper and salt, over them, and serve _hot_.

Young turnips stewed with cream

Pare, lay in cold water one hour; cook tender in two waters; drain and cover with hot cream (heated with a pinch of soda) or hot milk, if you have no cream. Simmer gently for five minutes; stir in a white roux made by cooking together a tablespoonful of butter and one of flour, salt and pepper, and serve very hot.

Young turnips with white sauce

Peel, lay in cold water for an hour; boil for ten minutes in fresh water, cover with boiling, slightly salted water, and cook tender. Drain, dish, season and pour over them a good white sauce of drawn butter.

Fried turnips

Peel and slice young turnips, dropping them into cold water as you do so. Turn into a pot of boiling water, and cook for twenty minutes. Drain carefully, so as not to break the slices. When cold, dip each slice in beaten egg, then in salted cracker dust, and spread all upon a platter. Let them stand for an hour and fry in deep, boiling fat to a golden brown.

Turnips and carrots sautés

Peel and cut into dice of uniform size enough cold boiled turnips and carrots to make a cupful of each. Mix and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Melt two tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan and turn the vegetable dice into this. Toss and turn in the hissing butter for five or ten minutes; drain in a hot colander and dish.

Kohlrabi turnips

Separate the turnip of the vegetable from the leaves that surround it and wash thoroughly. Cut into quarters and boil for twenty minutes in salted water. Drain; sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve hot with melted butter.

Kohlrabi with leaves

Remove the outer leaves from the swelled stalk, or turnip; wash thoroughly and throw into cold water. Drain both and put them on to boil in separate vessels of salted water. When the turnips have cooked for ten minutes, drain and pour over them fresh boiling water, to which a tablespoonful of vinegar has been added. Boil for ten minutes longer; drain, scrape and slice. Dip the slices, one by one, in melted butter and lay about the edge of a hot platter. Drain the leaves which have been cooked tender, turn into a chopping-bowl and chop very fine. Return to the fire with two tablespoonfuls of butter, pepper and salt to taste. Beat to a smoking mass, and heap in the center of the heated platter, about the edge of which you have laid the sliced vegetable.

A WORD ABOUT NUTS

Nuts of all kinds are gaining in favor as articles of diet, and are at their best in the autumn and winter. They may be bought, shelled and packed in boxes, so that they are ready for immediate use. The housekeeper of moderate means, with an abundance of time at her disposal, will find that it is cheaper to buy the nuts in their shells and crack them herself. If she is so fortunate as to be able to despise the petty economies she will rejoice in the prepared nuts. They will save her much tedious labor.

If Spanish chestnuts are not to be procured when wanted, large domestic chestnuts may be boiled and used in their stead.

Chestnut croquettes

Boil a quart of Spanish chestnuts in salted water. While still hot, remove the shells and skins and rub the nuts through a colander. With a wooden spoon work to a smooth paste, adding, as you do so, a tablespoonful of butter, a saltspoonful of salt, a dash of paprika, a quarter of a teaspoonful of onion juice, a handful of fine bread-crumbs, and the unbeaten yolk of an egg. Put the paste in a double boiler over the fire and heat through. With floured hands form into croquettes, dip in beaten egg, then in cracker dust, and lay on a platter in the refrigerator for two hours. Fry in deep, boiling cottolene or other fat; drain in a colander, and serve very hot.

English walnut croquettes

Crack, extract the kernels, blanch by pouring boiling water over them, stripping off the loosened skins and dropping into cold water. Leave there for ten minutes; take out, dry between two soft towels and, when crisp and perfectly dry, proceed as with chestnuts in last recipe.

Peanut stuffing for roast duck

Prepare the ducks for roasting and make a stuffing of bread-crumbs seasoned with butter, pepper and salt. Chop a cupful of roasted and shelled peanuts to a powder and rub them into the bread-crumbs. Stuff the ducks with this mixture and roast, basting frequently.

Savory chestnuts

Boil and shell and skin large Spanish chestnuts; break each in half and cover with a thin giblet gravy. Or you may make a gravy of the legs and necks of a pair of fowls, and thicken it with browned flour rolled in butter. The gravy must be brown. Cook the chestnuts in it for ten minutes. This is a pleasing accompaniment to roast poultry of any kind, particularly roast turkey.

EVEN-THREADED LIVING

“Come what may, appearances must be kept up!” wrote a venerable gentlewoman to her daughter, with whom life had grown suddenly hard by reason of her husband’s pecuniary losses. “Show a brave front to the world although there may be an empty purse and an empty larder behind it. _Noblesse oblige!_”

The motto is grand—sometimes sublime.

There is an heroic side to the question, of which I shall treat presently.

The ignoble side, and that which forms the basis of most treatises on this subject, crops up when appearances are all in all, and make the life a continual lie, like an embroidered silk stocking drawn over an unwashed foot.

One of my childish recollections is of a rich woman, whose “pair of parlors,” as she called them, were richly carpeted, curtained and furnished, as was also a spacious dining-room on the same floor. When there was no company the family sat in a back room adjoining the kitchen. The worthy woman, visiting a sister-housewife, was scandalized at learning that she, her husband and six children actually used the parlors “every day and Sunday, too,” and ate habitually in a dining-room “where there was an elegant Brussels carpet on the floor.”

“My dear Mrs. Blank!” cried the wealthy economist, “do you expect to have all this and heaven, too?”

“I expect to enjoy heaven the more for having made the best of the Father’s gifts to me here,” answered the matron of advanced ideas.

Ideas, which I record with devout gratification, are fast relegating to a dusty and dishonored past, the “best room” of farmhouse and town mansion never opened except for visitors. With it is going the basement sitting-room, “low” in every sense of the word, which used to be thought good enough for the family. Expensive furniture, kept with real china and solid silver for “occasions”—that is, when appearances must be kept up before comparative strangers and acquaintances for whom, taken as individuals, the appearance-worshipers care less than nothing; fine clothes, worn above mean undergarments; sounding phrases aired, like the reserve of linen sheets, for company use—have more influence upon character than we are willing to believe. It is well to put the best foot foremost. It is better to have both feet decently shod and alike serviceable. Each of us knows plenty of people who have company tones, company smiles, company phraseology, company opinions—_un_wisely kept for show. One and all, singly and collectively, they mean to imply something which the wearers thereof are not. Their “appearances” are social electroplating, moral veneering. Slipshod at home and every day; well-groomed abroad and in the sight of those to whom it makes not an atom of difference how the hypocrites look or act,—“home devils and street angels,” as plain-spoken critics style them,—such is the great host of those who keep up appearances because they have not souls above shams, whose dusters and mops never visit the insides of burnished cups and platters. Verily they have their reward, but the prizes are as ignoble as the recipients and their motives.

We see, or may see, if we use our senses aright, the heroic side of the question. My heart aches with the thought of scores of examples which pass under my eyes in the lives of unknown martyrs of whom this world is not worthy, by whom the world to come will be made the worthier abiding-place of those for whom the Father has prepared it.

An old woman, who knew the Bronté sisters as children and women, told me that their body linen was darned by a thread until the original fabric hardly showed between the mending.

“But it was always whole and clean, and they made it as carefully as if it were to be trimmed with real lace. Nobody ever saw a rip in their gloves, and they cleaned them themselves. They looked like the ladies they were. Not a bit fashionable, but downright ladylike, you know. They always kept themselves up.”

I heard another “downright ladylike” girl, who is almost as poor as the Yorkshire sisters were, insist, the other day, upon dressing for the family dinner when the relative with whom she lived begged her not to change her walking costume.

“You are so tired, my dear, after teaching all day!”

“We working women can not take such liberties with ourselves,” said the spirited heroine. “If we let the forms of elegant propriety and conventionality go, we are in danger of forgetting what they represent.”

Of a like strain was the regard for appearances that led young Ellsworth, who was killed early in the Civil War, decline an invitation to dine with a business acquaintance at a restaurant when Ellsworth was so hungry that the smell of the food made him almost frantic. He was then a poor student working his way through a New York law school. In referring to the incident in more prosperous days, Colonel Ellsworth explained that he could not have accepted a courtesy he would not be able to repay in kind.

“A gentleman may starve without loss of caste,” he added. “He forfeits his right to the name in becoming a pauper, or a beggar.”

The outward appearance was the sign of the inward grace, inbred and invincible.

True refinement—the kind that does not shrink or go to pieces under the roughest processes of the mangle we know as daily living—is “even-threaded” and consistent throughout.

I called the other day upon a woman who has never been rich, but always refined. She is now poor. She can never be common. Her lunch hour was earlier than I had supposed, and my call infringed upon it. She and her daughter were at table.

“You shall not go,” she insisted; “I can give you a cup of hot tea and little else besides ‘bread and cheese and kisses.’ The welcome must make up the rest.”

TABLE FOR AN ENGAGEMENT DINNER

SUGGESTION FOR A SUNFLOWER LUNCHEON]

The cheese had been melted upon buttered toast, cut by a tin “shape” into scalloped ovals; it was golden brown in color, crisp to the teeth, savory to the palate. The tea was scalding and fresh and fragrant; for meat we had three Hamburg steaks, garnished with celery-tops. They were accompanied by an apple-and-celery salad, treated on the table to a French dressing; wafery slices of brown bread and butter went with it. Afterwards we had Albert biscuits and a second cup of tea—and nothing else. Beyond the laughing remark prefacing the frugal meal, the hostess offered no apology. She lived in this style every day, affecting nothing and hiding nothing. A gentlewoman in grain, if she had sat down to three meals a day alone, she would have breakfasted, lunched and dined—not merely “fed.” Luxury was beyond her reach—elegance never.

Simplicity need not be homely. Neatness is not a synonym for bareness. A certain degree of beauty and grace is almost a Christian duty.

The best cooks can not afford to despise the recommendation of the eye to the palate. The difference between plain and dainty housekeeping depends so much upon it that the professional caterer plays cunningly upon the desire of the eye, often bringing a good thing into disrepute. Because his garnishes and fanciful devices conceal cheap materials and indifferent manufactures is no reason why the housekeeper should not make the substantial “home fare” provided by her honest hands goodly to sight, as well as to taste.

Cooking schools and classes, chafing-dish lectures and the cuisine corner of the woman’s page have been active for more than a third of a century to bring our average American housewife to what old-time revivalists called “a realizing sense” of the deficiencies of the national kitchen, and by the rugged road of conviction to conversion from the old way to the new, which is the better. There is no dearth of missionaries, no lack of machinery.

Much of the work done by these is surface culture—scratching and smoothing over the soil, cleansing, to a polish, cup and platter. Curled parsley, beets, carrots and turnips, carved into leaves, stars and flowers, and fantastic confections of tissue paper and meringue—do not cheat veterans in gastronomics into relish of the ill-prepared dishes they adorn. Experiences of this sort have something to do with the contempt felt by many competent cooks for culinary esthetics. They class everything that looks in this direction under the head of “French cookery,” a synonym with them for flash and frippery.

I grant that to the hale appetite of the lover of “plain roast and boiled” of joints, haunches and rounds—the man who can digest mountains of fried “griddles,” and, in the bottom of his stomachic conscience, prefers corned beef and cabbage to broiled sweetbreads and mushrooms—his steak, or rare roast, or sugar-cured ham, or choice cut of cod, tastes no better for the garnish of cress, nasturtium or lemon. I once saw a millionaire “high-liver” toss aside the green sprays with the declaration that he “liked to have victuals and weeds sent in upon separate dishes.” After clearing the trou—trencher!—he proceeded to feed.

In the feeder’s very teeth I maintain that food daintily served tastes better than the same when set before us with no regard to seemliness. If slender appetites are to be coaxed into action, the study of pleasing effects becomes an obligation.

DINNER SWEETS OF ALL SORTS

PIES

Pastry

Have all ingredients very cold. Into a pound of flour chop three-quarters of a cup of firm, cold butter. When the flour is like a coarse powder stir into it a small cupful of iced water. With a spoon mix together, then turn upon a floured pastry-board, roll out quickly and lightly, fold and roll out again. Set the pastry on the ice until chilled through, roll out and line a pie-dish with it. Before filling the pastry shell with fruit, or other material of which the pie is to be made, wash over the lower crust with the unbeaten white of an egg, and, when the filling is put in, set the pie immediately in an oven that is as hot at the bottom as at the top. The oven must be hot and steady.

A good puff paste

Into a half-pound of flour chop six ounces of firm, cold butter, and, when like a coarse powder, wet with a small cupful of iced water. Stir to a paste and turn upon a chilled board. Roll out quickly and lightly, handling as little as possible. Fold and roll out three times, then set on the ice for several hours before making into pies. Always bake pastry in a very hot oven.

Family pie crust

Sift a quart of flour three times with one teaspoonful of baking-powder. Chop into it two tablespoonfuls of cottolene or other fat until it is like granulated dust. Wet with iced water into a stiff dough, handling as little as you can, using a wooden spoon until it is too stiff to manage. Turn upon a floured board and roll out thin. Have ready two tablespoonfuls of firm butter, and with this dot the paste in rows one inch apart, using one tablespoonful of butter. Roll up the sheet of paste, inclosing the butter; beat flat with the rolling-pin, and roll out as before. Use the other tablespoonful of butter in dotting this sheet, sprinkle lightly with flour, and roll up tightly. Give a blow or two of the pin to hold it in fold, and set on the ice until you are ready to use it—all night if you like. It is better for three or four hours’ chilling.

Butter the pie-plates, lay the crust lightly within them; pinch the edges to hinder it from “crawling” while baking, fill with fruit, or whatever else is to go into them. If this is to be what a witty editor designates as “the kivered pie which stands high in the royal family of Pie,” lay the paste neatly over the filling, trim off ragged edges, and press or print down the edges.

A North Carolina man thus separates the “royal family” aforesaid: “There are three varieties: kivered, unkivered and barred.”

The New York editor, just quoted, says of the “kivered” variety:

“Its triumphant composition requires of the artist higher qualities of head and heart, a more delicate touch, a higher strain of genius, a sublimer imagination, than the composition of the unkivered, or the barred. There must be magic in the upper crust of it. Ah! that delicious, finely-flaking upper crust, designed by a deep-revolving brain and fashioned by a sensitive hand, a pâté Queen Mab would be glad to nibble!”

On the other hand, a New Orleans knight of the pen boldly defines the kivered pie as “distinctively a product of New England civilization, that has no place in simpler and more democratic states. Descendants of the men who made the charge up King’s Mountain, the Majuba Hill of this continent, take their pie unkivered. They will not touch the kivered abomination!”

Mince pie

Returning to our New York editorial, the amused reader finds this eulogium upon mince pie:

“There goes much skill to the making of a mince pie. Within the fortunate inwards of the president of pies are strange dainties and spices, and Dr. Johnson’s drink of heroes. The elements are so mixed in it that nature may stand up and say to all the world: ‘This is a _pie_! A great mince pie is a masterpiece!’”

An anonymous writer upon the same subject says for the comfort of semi-dyspeptics:

“Mince-meat ought to be extremely wholesome for the same reasons that make it good to eat—its flavors of sweet and sour, of meat, apple and spice, which relieve each other, and its finely divided particles which allow the choicer blending of flavors and save the stomach much of the grinding work which reduces food to the pulp in which it enters the blood. What gives mince pie its ill repute as the very spawn of nightmare, are its overdressing with suet and butter, only fit for polar consumption, and its drugging with spices. Spice is the very food of the nerves, rightly used, growing more essential as circulation and sense dull with age. But it should be delicately, discerningly used not to lose its potency. The overdressing with fat is a relic of the old English barbarism which stewed its food in tallow, and, as the old play has it, ‘took two fat wethers to baste one capon.’”

Mince-meat

(A family recipe 150 years old.)

Boil two pounds of lean beef, and when cold, chop fine. Mince a pound of beef suet to a powder. Peel and chop five pounds of apples. Seed and halve two pounds of raisins. Wash, and pick over carefully two pounds of cleaned currants and one pound of sultana raisins. Cut into tiny bits three-quarters of a pound of citron. Mix these ingredients, adding, as you do so, two tablespoonfuls, each, of cinnamon and mace, a tablespoonful, each, of cloves and allspice, a teaspoonful of ground nutmeg, a tablespoonful of salt and two and a half pounds of brown sugar. When all is well mixed, stir in a quart of sherry and a pint of the best brandy. Mix thoroughly and pack down in a stone crock.

Mince-meat should be prepared several weeks before it is needed, that it may “ripen” and become mellow. Those whose temperance principles forbid the moistening of the mince-meat with brandy or sherry, may use cider in their place. In making mince pies have the best puff-paste. Line pie-plates with this, fill the crust shells with the mince-meat, and lay strips of pastry, lattice-wise, across the tops of the pies. Bake in a good oven, which should be as hot at the bottom as at the top. The pies may be kept for weeks, but must be reheated before serving.

Our New Orleans essayist upon the national pie, is cavalierly disdainful in throwing aside the third variety:

“The barred pie may be dismissed without discussion, being a mere compromise, a pabulum for colorless individuals who are the mugwumps of the dining-room.”

In defiance of the slur, I commend my “barred” mince pie, with its latticed cover, as the pearl of the royal race. For a century and a half, the Old Virginia housewives, from whom I proudly claim descent, laid the dainty trellis across the heaving brown breast of the masterpiece, and six generations of epicures have set thereon the seal of their approval.

Pumpkin pie (No. 1)

Belongs to the noble order of the “unkivered” pie.

Add the beaten yolks of four eggs and one cupful of white sugar to two cupfuls of pumpkin that has been stewed and put through a colander. With this mix a quart of milk, one teaspoonful of cinnamon, mace and nutmeg mixed, and the whites of the eggs, beaten stiff. Line a very deep pie-dish with a good paste, cut slashes in it here and there, stir the pumpkin custard well from the bottom and put it into the pastry. Bake in a steady oven.

Pumpkin pie (No. 2)

Into a quart of stewed and strained pumpkin stir a quart of milk, a cup of granulated sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg to taste, and, last of all, five eggs, well beaten. Mix thoroughly, and pour the mixture into a deep pie-plate lined with puff paste. Bake in a good oven until the pumpkin custard is “set.” Eat cold. Canned pumpkin is used in the same way and is almost as good as the fresh.

Lemon cream pie (No. 1)

Heat a quart of milk and stir into it one-third of a cupful of prepared flour wet with a little cold milk. Let this get hot, stirring all the while. Beat the yolks of five eggs light with five tablespoonfuls of sugar, and add the milk and flour to this. Let all cook together for one minute after they come to the simmer; take from the fire and add the juice and grated peel of a large lemon. Bake in open shells of puff paste, and, as soon as the custard is set, cover it with a meringue made of the whites of the five eggs beaten stiff with three tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Brown lightly and serve cold.

Lemon cream pie (No. 2)

Cream a tablespoonful of butter with a cupful of sugar; dissolve a heaping tablespoonful of corn-starch in a gill of cold water, and stir it into a cupful of boiling water. Stir until smooth; then pour over the sugar and butter. Mix well and when cool stir in the grated rind and the juice of a large lemon, and one beaten egg. Line a pie-plate with puff paste, fill with this mixture and bake. When done, cover with a meringue, and return to the oven just long enough to brown lightly.

Lemon pie with crust

Beat two eggs light and stir into them two cupfuls of sugar; add a pint of water, three tablespoonfuls of cracker-dust, the same quantity of flour rubbed to a paste with a little cold water, the grated rind of one, and the juice of two lemons. Beat hard, add a pinch, each, of cinnamon and nutmeg, and turn the mixture into pie-plates lined with pastry. Cover with an upper crust, cut gashes in this for the escape of the steam, and bake in a steady oven for forty minutes.

Crustless lemon pie

Soak a cupful of crumbs for an hour in a little milk. Cream together a half-cupful of sugar and half as much butter, whip into them the beaten yolks of three eggs and the white of one, reserving the other whites for the meringue. Now add the juice and grated rind of two lemons, then the soaked crumbs. Line a large pie-plate with puff paste, pour in the lemon mixture and bake to a golden brown. Make a meringue of the stiffened whites and two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. Draw the pie to the door of the oven, spread with the meringue and return it to the oven just long enough to brown it delicately. Eat cold.

Cocoanut pie

Cream a half-cupful of butter with two scant cupfuls of powdered sugar, and when very light add half a grated cocoanut and a generous tablespoonful of rose-water. Now “fold” in quickly and lightly the stiffened whites of six eggs, turn into a deep pie-dish lined with puff paste and bake in a quick oven. Eat cold with powdered sugar and whipped cream flavored with rose-water. This is delicious.

When it is possible to do so buy the fresh cocoanut and grate it. The prepared or desiccated article put up in boxes may be used as a makeshift. It can never be a worthy substitute for the fresh and juicy nut.

Chocolate pie (No. 1)

Make a custard by pouring two cupfuls of scalding milk gradually upon three eggs that have been beaten well with four tablespoonfuls of sugar. Return to the fire, stir in a half-cupful of grated sweet-chocolate, remove from the fire, add a teaspoonful of vanilla, and pour the mixture into a pie-plate lined with puff paste. Bake until “set.”

Chocolate pie (No. 2)

One pint of milk; one cupful of sugar; yolks of two eggs; two tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate. Mix, and bake in an open crust. Make a meringue of the whites of the eggs and a tablespoonful of sugar and spread on the top of the pie to brown.

Orange pie

Rub to a creamy paste a half-cupful of butter and a cupful of granulated sugar. Beat light the yolks of four eggs, whip them into the butter and sugar, add the juice and a quarter of the grated peel of a large orange, a teaspoonful of lemon juice, and the stiffened whites of two eggs. Line a pie-plate with light puff paste and turn the orange mixture into this. Bake until the filling is set and the crust lightly browned. Beat the whites of two eggs light with two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. When the pie is done, draw it to the door of the oven, spread it with this meringue, and return to the oven just long enough to color the meringue delicately. Eat cold.

Custard pie

Whip light the yolks of three eggs with four tablespoonfuls of sugar. Pour upon them two cupfuls of boiling milk, stirring this in slowly. Flavor with a teaspoonful of vanilla. Line a pie-plate with paste, brush the inside with the white of an egg, pour in the custard and bake.

Sliced apple pie

Line a deep pie-dish with good puff paste. Put into this peeled and cored and thinly-sliced apples; sprinkle thickly with sugar and squeeze a few drops of lemon juice upon them. Add more sliced apple, more sugar, a little more lemon, and proceed in this way until the dish is full. Cover with a round of puff paste, pinch together the edges of the upper and lower crusts, and cut several slits in the upper to allow the steam to escape. Bake in a steady oven to a golden brown, covering the pie with paper for the first ten minutes.

Creamed sweet apple pie

Pare, core and quarter Campfield pound sweets, or other sweet apples. Put them into a pudding-dish with a few spoonfuls of water to prevent burning, cover closely and cook until tender, but not broken. Add two tablespoonfuls of sugar to each cupful and let them get cold in the syrup. Then cut into thin slices or tiny dice. Roll out some puff paste quite thin; line a pie-plate, sprinkle with flour, lay on another crust and bake until brown. When ready to serve, open the crusts, spread the lower one with the stewed apple, cover with whipped cream, put on the top crust and sprinkle that with powdered sugar.

Creamed apple-sauce pie

Bake your crusts as directed in preceding recipe. When you separate them, spread with well-sweetened apple-sauce beaten light; cover with whipped cream; lay on the upper crust and sprinkle powdered sugar on top.

In both of these recipes you may substitute a meringue of frothed whites, slightly sweetened, for the cream, spreading the same upon the top crust.

Apple meringue pie

Slice and stew ripe, tart apples; run through the colander or vegetable press into a bowl. Sweeten plentifully, and beat in, while hot, a tablespoonful of butter. Have ready buttered pie-plates lined with puff paste; when the sauce is cold fill these shells with it and bake until very lightly browned. Cover with a meringue, slightly sweetened and flavored with vanilla or other essence; set in a hot oven and bake until the meringue begins to color. Sift powdered sugar over all. Eat cold.

Peach meringue pie

Stew and rub peaches through a colander or a vegetable press. Sweeten to taste, and when cold, proceed as directed in last recipe. They are very nice.

Whole peach pie

Line a deep pie-plate with pastry, and lay in it as many whole peeled peaches as it will hold. Strew thickly with sugar; fit on an upper crust and bake to a golden brown. Eat with powdered sugar and cream.

Creamed peach pie (No. 1)

Peel, stone and halve ripe peaches. Line a deep pie-plate with puff paste, and lay the peaches in this. Sprinkle thickly with sugar, and fit on an upper crust. Have ready and cold, a cream sauce. To make this, scald a half-pint of milk and thicken it with a tablespoonful of corn-starch rubbed smooth in a little cold milk. Add two tablespoonfuls of sugar and the frothed white of one egg. Boil together for five minutes and set aside to cool. When the pie is done carefully lift the top crust and fill the pie to overflowing with the cream sauce. Replace the crust and set in a cool place. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and eat very cold.

Creamed peach pie (No. 2)

Bake as above, stoning the peaches and cutting each in half. While hot, insinuate the blade of a knife between upper and lower crust, to loosen them. Let the pie get cold; lift the crust and spread whipped cream upon the peaches. Cover again, strew powdered sugar upon the top crust and eat.

Creamed raspberry pie

Line a pie-dish with good pastry and fill it three-quarters full of red raspberries strewed with granulated sugar. Cover with an upper crust, but rub the edges of this and of the lower crust with butter to prevent their sticking together. Make a cream of a cupful of hot milk thickened with a teaspoonful of corn-starch wet with cold milk. Stir in two tablespoonfuls of sugar, remove from the fire, and when cool whip in the stiffened whites of three eggs. When the pie is done and is cold, lift off the upper crust and cover the raspberries with the “cream.” Replace the cover and sift powdered sugar over it.

Cherry pie

Many persons make a cherry pie without stoning the cherries. That stoning them is a trouble is not to be denied, but the result is so satisfactory that it really seems worth while to take the pains to accomplish it. In stoning cherries, use a sharp knife and save all the juice. Grease a deep pie-dish and line it with good puff pastry. Fill the pastry shell with the cherries and the juice that flowed from them in the stoning process. Cover with a thin crust, cut slits in this for the escape of the steam, and bake. Eat cold.

Cranberry pie

Seed a cupful of raisins and chop them into bits. Cut into halves two cupfuls of cranberries and mix them with the minced raisins. Add two even cupfuls of sugar, a cupful of water, two tablespoonfuls of flour and a few drops of lemon juice. Line deep pie-plates with puff paste; fill each with the mixture, put on a thin upper crust and cut slits in this for the escape of the steam. Bake in a good oven to a golden brown. When cold, sprinkle with sugar.

Cranberry and raisin pie

Seed and mince one cupful of raisins; mix with two cupfuls of cranberries halved, a half cupful of water and a cupful of sugar. Stir one teaspoonful of flour with the sugar and mix all well. Fill shells of pastry laid in buttered plates with this mixture, called by some “mock cherry pie,” lay strips of crust cut with a jagging-iron over the top and bake.

Strawberry pie

Line a buttered plate with puff paste, wash with white of egg and fill with ripe strawberries capped and washed. Sweeten plentifully, cover with another crust; cut slits in this, and bake.

Currant pie (No. 1)

Mix ripe and stemmed currants with one cupful of sugar to two of currants, and bake between upper and lower crusts. Strew white sugar over the top and eat cold.

Currant pie (No. 2)

Fill a pastry shell with one cupful of ripe currants, cleaned and stemmed. Pour upon them an egg, beaten light with one-half cupful of sugar. Lay another crust over the currants and bake.

New England blueberry pie

Wash and dredge blueberries with flour; then scatter among them half a cupful of sugar for each pint of berries. Fill paste shells with this, dot with butter, cover with another crust and bake.

These are richer than huckleberry or blueberry pies, when made in the usual way, the flour thickening the juice slightly and the butter tempering the acid.

Blackberry pie

Make as directed in foregoing recipe.

Combination berry pie

Line a deep pie-plate with pastry and bake long enough to set the crust on top, but not to brown, or entirely cook it. Have ready a mixture of equal quantities of elderberries and huckleberries with one-fourth as many red currants. Dredge with flour, and sprinkle over all a generous cupful of sugar for a quart of berries; dot the surface with bits of butter,—one tablespoon in all,—cover with a crust which should be well turned under the crust of the lower one, and bake, covered, half an hour, then brown.

Sweet potato pie

Parboil, peel, and when cold, grate enough sweet potatoes to make a pound. Cream a half cupful of butter with three-quarters of a cupful of sugar and the beaten yolks of four eggs, a teaspoonful, each, of powdered cinnamon and nutmeg, the grated potato, the juice and rind of a lemon, a wineglassful of brandy and, last of all, the whites of the eggs. Line a large pie-plate with puff paste, fill with the mixture and bake.

Irish potato pie

Boil and rub through a colander or vegetable press; then proceed as with the sweet potatoes in last recipe, but using a full cupful of sugar.

This pie is even more delicious than the sweet potato compound.

Rhubarb and raisin pie

Peel the rhubarb and cut into inch pieces; pour boiling water over it and let stand for ten minutes. Drain; line the pie-plate with plain paste. Fill the pie with rhubarb, and strew over it one cupful of sugar and one-half cupful of raisins. Add small pieces of butter. Cover with a crust and bake.

Whipped cream pie

(Contributed)

Line a pie-plate with a rich crust and bake in a hot oven. When cool spread over with a layer of jelly or marmalade. Whip one cupful of thick cream, sweetened with powdered sugar, and flavored with vanilla; pour this over the marmalade. Or fill crust with whipped cream to which has been added one teacupful of blanched chopped almonds.

Turnover pies

(Contributed)

Mix a plain puff paste. Roll thin and cut into circular pieces about the size of a saucer. Put fruit over one-half of the piece. Sprinkle with sugar. Wet the edges and turn the paste over. Press the edges together and bake on tins in a quick oven twenty minutes.

Mock mince pie

(Contributed)

Mix well together one cupful of raisins chopped fine, one-half cupful of chopped currants, one-fourth teaspoonful of salt, one tablespoonful of vinegar, two-thirds of a cupful of molasses, one-half cupful of cider, one-half cup of sugar, one-half cupful of cut citron and the juice and rind of two lemons, two Boston crackers rolled and one well-beaten egg. Line a pie-pan with paste and fill with some of the mixture, cover with a puff paste and bake.

Washington pie

(Contributed)

Beat together one tablespoonful of butter, one cupful of sugar and one egg until light. Add one cupful of milk and two cupfuls of flour into which have been sifted one teaspoonful of ginger, one teaspoonful of cinnamon and one-half teaspoonful of baking-powder. Beat thoroughly until smooth. Line the Washington pie-plate with a plain paste, put the mixture into it and bake in a moderate quick oven thirty minutes. When done cover with frosting and set to cool.

Crumb pie

Soak a half cupful of bread-crumbs in enough milk to cover them until they are soft and have absorbed all the milk. Cream a third of a cupful of sugar with two ounces of butter; add two eggs, well beaten, and the juice and grated rind of two small lemons, or one very large one. Now, stir in the soaked crumbs, beat for a minute; turn into a pie-plate lined with puff paste, and bake in a hot oven until brown and very light.

Custard pie

Make a custard by pouring three cupfuls of scalding milk upon four eggs that have been beaten light with four tablespoonfuls of sugar. Flavor with vanilla, and pour into a pie-dish lined with puff paste. Bake until set. Serve cold.

Vinegar pie (No. 1)

One cupful of vinegar; one cupful of water; a tablespoonful of butter; one heaping tablespoonful of flour wet with cold water; two-thirds of a cupful of sugar. Put flour, vinegar, butter and sugar into a saucepan and stir until melted, then add the cold water. Stir until thick. Have pie-tins lined with a rich crust; fill with the mixture and bake for fifteen minutes in a hot oven.

Beat the white of an egg to a stiff meringue, adding two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar. When the pies are done, draw them to the door of the oven, spread thickly with the meringue, and return to the oven until a very light brown.

Vinegar pie (No. 2)

One egg; one heaping tablespoonful of flour; one teacupful of sugar; one cupful of cold water; one tablespoonful of vinegar; nutmeg to taste. Beat the egg, add the sugar and flour, beating hard; then add the other ingredients, and bake in an open crust.

Currant tarts

Into a quart of sifted flour chop a cupful of firm, cold butter. When the butter is like coarse sand add a cupful of iced water and work into a paste, touching with the hands as little as possible. Turn upon a pastry-board and roll out twice; then set on the ice for an hour or two. Line small buttered tart-pans with this paste.

Stem and pick over ripe red currants and wash them. Nearly fill the pastry shells with these and sweeten very generously with granulated sugar. Bake, and, when cold, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Cranberry tarts

Make a cranberry sauce according to directions already given. Line pâté-pans with puff paste; fill with the cranberry sauce, lay strips of pastry, crosswise, over the tops, and bake in a quick oven. When done, sprinkle with granulated sugar and set away to cool.

Lemon tarts

Cream together a cupful of butter and two cupfuls of sugar, stir in the beaten yolks of six eggs, the grated rind of one, and the juice of two lemons, a dash of nutmeg, a wineglassful of brandy, and the stiffened whites of the eggs. Line pâté-pans with puff paste, and fill with this mixture. Bake in a quick oven and serve cold.

Orange cheese cakes

Peel and seed four large oranges, saving all the juice. Boil half of the peels until tender, and, when cold, beat them to a paste with twice their weight in powdered sugar; add the minced pulp and the juice of the oranges with a tablespoonful of butter; beat all together; line pâté-pans with puff paste, lay in the orange mixture and bake.

There must be no fibrous skin or membrane left in the pulp. To get rid of this rub it through a colander.

Cherry tarts

Wash, stem and stone the cherries. Allow one cupful of sugar to a pint of cherries, if tart fruit be used. Put the sugar and one-half cupful of water on the fire; when boiling add the fruit and cook ten minutes. Stir in one teaspoonful of butter and, if the syrup seem thin, wet one teaspoonful of corn-starch in cold water and stir in to thicken the juice slightly.

Have ready-baked pâtés of pastry; fill with the cherry mixture when the latter is cold, sift sugar over top, and eat.

Fried tartlets

Make a rich puff paste and cut it into pieces six inches square. In the center of each square put a great spoonful of raspberry, strawberry, currant or gooseberry jam. Pinch the four corners of the square together, or fold it in half and pinch the edges tightly together that the fruit may not ooze out. Drop the tarts carefully into a kettle of deep, _boiling_ cottolene or other fat, and fry quickly to a delicate brown. Drain in a colander lined with tissue paper.

These are the celebrated “Banbury tarts” of English folk-lore.

HOT PUDDINGS

Boiled puddings

Before attempting a boiled pudding, be sure that you have a good mold with a tightly-fitting cover in which to cook it. You may use such a substitute as a bowl with a floured cloth tied over the top, but this is, at best, a “make-do” which may allow the water to enter and ruin your dough. The best substitute for a mold is a cottolene pail with a top, which may be made more secure by tying it on. Always grease your mold thoroughly,—top, bottom and sides,—and leave room for the swelling of the contents. Three hours will be, as a rule, the longest time required for the boiling of a pudding of ordinary size. All boiled puddings should be served as soon as they are cooked.

Apple pudding (No. 1)

Chop a cupful of suet to a coarse powder and stir it into three cupfuls of flour, twice sifted with a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Add enough milk to make a dough that can be rolled out. Roll into a square sheet. In the center of the sheet lay three cupfuls of peeled and minced apples, strewn with sugar. Bring the four corners of the sheet over the fruit, and pinch the corners together in the middle. Tie up firmly with a piece of broad white tape passed twice around the pudding. Lay in a steamer and cook for two and one-half hours. Remove the tape and serve the pudding with a hard sauce flavored with lemon juice and powdered cinnamon.

Apple pudding (No. 2)

Into two cupfuls of prepared flour chop a tablespoonful of butter, until it is like a coarse yellow powder. Make a batter of this buttered flour, a teacupful of milk and three beaten eggs. Have ready half a dozen peeled and sliced apples, wiped dry, then dredged with flour; stir these into the batter and turn into a greased pudding-mold. Boil for two hours. Eat with a hot lemon sauce.

Cranberry pudding

Sift three cupfuls of flour with a half teaspoonful of salt and stir in a cupful of molasses, a small cupful of sour cream, two beaten eggs and half a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little boiling water. Last of all, beat in a cupful and a half of halved cranberries, thoroughly dredged with flour. Turn into a greased mold and steam for at least two hours. Eat with a hard sauce.

Blackberry pudding

Make a batter of a pint of milk, two eggs, and a cupful of flour, sifted with a saltspoonful of salt and a small teaspoonful of baking-powder. Add more flour if the batter is too thin. Beat thoroughly and stir into the batter a pint of blackberries thoroughly dredged with flour. Pour at once into a greased mold and boil for two hours. Serve with a hard sauce.

Plum pudding (No. 1)

Rub together a cupful of granulated sugar and a half cupful of butter. Into this stir a half pound of chopped and powdered suet, then beat in five eggs, a half pint of milk and a teaspoonful of orange juice. Dredge with flour a cupful, each, of seeded raisins and cleaned currants and a half cupful of minced citron. Add this fruit to the batter and stir in a quarter of a teaspoonful, each, of powdered cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. Last of all, beat in a quart of flour, turn into a large mold and steam for six hours.

Plum pudding (No. 2)

Half a pound, each, of sugar and suet; a quarter of a pound of butter; five cupfuls of flour; one pound, each, of cleaned currants and of raisins; two tablespoonfuls of shredded citron; one cupful of milk; half a teaspoonful, each, of ground mace, cloves and nutmeg; six eggs; half a cupful of brandy.

Rub butter and sugar together and mix with them the milk and the beaten yolks of the eggs. Add the flour and the whipped whites; dredge the raisins (which should have been seeded and chopped), the currants and citron with flour, and put these in with the spices and the brandy. Mix well, pack into a greased mold, plunge at once into a pot of boiling water and boil five hours. Be careful that the water does not boil over the top of the mold and get into the pudding.

Fig pudding (No. 1)

Soak a cupful of bread-crumbs in a cupful of milk for half an hour. Chop enough suet to make a quarter of a cupful; beat three eggs light; cut into tiny bits a sufficient number of soaked figs to make a cupful of the minced fruit.

Turn the soaked crumbs into a bowl, and stir into them a half cupful of granulated sugar, the whipped eggs, the powdered suet, a pinch of salt and a dash, each, of cinnamon and nutmeg. Last of all, stir in the minced figs thickly dredged with flour, beat well and turn into a greased pudding mold with a closely-fitting top. Boil for about three hours. Turn out and eat with a hard sauce.

WHIPPED CREAM

FLOATING ISLAND

BIRTHDAY CAKE]

Fig pudding (No. 2)

Use only the best figs, soak one hour in a little warm water, and chop enough to make a generous cupful when minced. Soak two cupfuls of fine bread-crumbs in two cupfuls of milk until very soft. Into the crumbs stir five eggs, beaten light, a half cupful of sugar, a saltspoonful of salt, and the cupful of minced figs, thoroughly dredged with flour. Beat hard for several minutes, and turn into a greased pudding mold with a close top. Set in boiling water and cook for three hours. Dip the mold into cold water for an instant, then turn the pudding out upon a hot platter. Set in the oven long enough for the moisture to dry from the outside of the pudding. Three minutes in a hot oven should suffice. Send to the table and eat with a hard sauce flavored with a little nutmeg.

Fig and raisin pudding

Soak a large cupful of bread-crumbs in a cupful of milk for an hour; stir into them three eggs, beaten very light, three tablespoonfuls of powdered suet, and three tablespoonfuls of flour sifted with a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Have ready a half cupful of minced figs and the same quantity of seeded and quartered raisins. Mix the fruit together, dredge thoroughly with flour, and stir it into the pudding batter. Pour the mixture into a large pudding mold with a closely fitting top, leaving an abundance of room in the mold for the pudding to swell. Steam for fully three hours. Turn from the mold, set the pudding in the oven for five minutes, and serve with a liquid sauce.

Boiled Indian pudding (No. 1)

Heat a quart of milk to scalding, and beat into it gradually three cupfuls of Indian meal, into which you have stirred a scant teaspoonful of salt. When the meal is thoroughly beaten in and is free from lumps, add two heaping tablespoonfuls of powdered suet and remove from the fire. Turn into a bowl and set aside to cool. When the meal-mixture is very cold beat in four whipped eggs, a gill of molasses and a half teaspoonful of powdered cinnamon. Beat for five minutes and pour into a greased pudding mold with a closely fitting top. Boil for five hours, turn out upon a heated platter and set in the oven for five minutes before sending to the table. Eat with a hard or liquid sauce.

Indian pudding (No. 2)

Heat a quart of milk to scalding. Into a pint of Indian meal stir a half pound of finely chopped suet and a saltspoonful of salt. Turn this into the scalding milk. Stir all together and remove from the fire. When cold add three well-beaten eggs, a small cupful of molasses and half a teaspoonful of baking-soda dissolved in a tablespoonful of boiling water. Dredge a pound of seeded raisins with a cup of flour, and stir in last of all. Boil for three hours. Serve with hard sauce.

Batter pudding

Into four eggs, beaten very light, stir three cupfuls of milk and a pint of flour that has been twice sifted with a teaspoonful of baking-powder and a saltspoonful of salt. Turn into a greased pudding mold and steam for two hours. Eat with hot brandy sauce.

Boiled prune pudding

Stew a pound and a half of prunes; when cold remove the stones and cut each prune into four pieces. Into a half cupful of powdered suet stir a half cupful of powdered sugar, two beaten eggs, a gill of milk, a gill of the prune liquor and a scant pint of flour, sifted with a half teaspoonful of baking-powder and a saltspoonful of salt. Beat all thoroughly together, and, last of all, add the quartered prunes, thoroughly dredged with flour. Turn into a greased pudding mold with a closely fitting top and boil for two and a half hours. Eat hot with hard sauce.

Boiled huckleberry pudding