Chapter II: Part 2

Work rice, butter, egg, etc., into an adhesive paste, beating each ingredient thoroughly into the mixture. Flour your hands and make the rice into oval balls. Dip each in beaten egg, then in flour, or cracker-dust, and fry in boiling lard, a few at a time, turning each with great care. When the croquettes are of a fine yellow-brown, take out with a wire spoon and lay within a heated colander to drain off every drop of fat. Serve hot, with sprigs of parsley laid about them, in an uncovered dish.

STEWED CELERY.

Cut the celery into inch lengths; cover with cold water and stew until tender. Turn off the water and supply its place with enough milk to cover the celery. When this begins to boil stir in a good lump of butter rolled in flour; pepper and salt to taste, and stew gently five minutes.

You will like this vegetable thus prepared. Eat, if you like, with a little lemon-juice or vinegar.

APPLE PIE.

1 quart of flour, dried and sifted.
½ lb. of lard.
¼ lb. of butter.
Ice-water to make stiff paste.

Chop the lard into the dry flour. Wet with ice-water into stiff paste, touching as little as may be with your hands. Roll out very thin, always _from_ you. Stick bits of butter all over the sheet; roll up tightly as you would a sheet of paper. Beat flat with your rolling-pin, roll out again, and again baste with butter. Repeat the operations of rolling up, rolling out, and basting until your butter is used up. Set the roll of pastry in a cold, dry place for at least one hour. All night would not be too long. When it is crisp and firm, roll out and line your buttered pie-plates. The bottom crust should be thinner than the upper. And, as a rule, you would do well to give the roll of pastry intended for the latter a “baste” or two more than that meant for the lower.

Pare, core and slice juicy, tart apples; put a layer upon the inner crust, sprinkle with sugar thickly—scatter a few cloves upon the sugar; then another layer of apples, and so on, until the dish is full. Cover with crust, pressed down firmly at the edges, and bake. Eat warm, or cold, with white sugar sifted over the top.

Apple pie is very good with cream poured over each slice.

First Week. Saturday.
——
Macaroni Soup.
Ham and Eggs. Salmi of Duck.
Fried Parsnips. Stewed Salsify.
Sweet Potatoes—in Jackets.
——
Rosie’s Rice Custard.
——

MACARONI SOUP.

4 quarts of cold water.
3 lbs. of coarse, lean beef, cut into thin strips.
2 or 3 lbs. of bones, broken small.
4 onions, sliced.
1 bunch of sweet herbs, chopped.
Tomato juice or catsup.
¼ lb. of macaroni.
A few salt pork bones.

Fry the meat until half done, in a very little dripping. Take it out and fry the onions and bones in the same gravy. Put all into a soup-kettle with the herbs, and cover with 4 quarts of water (cold). Bring to a slow boil, and, at the end of four hours, strain into a great bowl to cool, in order that the fat may rise and be taken off. Meanwhile, make ready your macaroni by breaking it into short bits, covering well with boiling water, a little salted, and stewing slowly twenty minutes, or until tender. Add a lump of butter the size of a walnut; let it stand, covered, for a few minutes, while you season the soup, adding the tomato-juice or catsup. Boil, skim, and thicken with a tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water. When it is again on the boil, turn in the macaroni, taking care not to break it. Heat to scalding, but do not boil; pour out, and serve.

HAM AND EGGS.

Cut your slices of ham of a uniform size and shape, cutting off the rind. Fry quickly in their own fat. Remove from the pan with a wire spoon so soon as they are done, and arrange upon a hot dish, setting this within the open oven, or upon a pot of boiling water to keep warm. Drop the eggs, as you break them, into the hot fat left in the frying-pan. Do not put so many in as to crowd one another. Each egg should preserve its individuality. Cook about three minutes, without turning. Take up with a spatula, or cake-turner, and lay one upon each slice of ham. Do not send the gravy to table. Strain, and use for dripping.

SALMI OF DUCK.

From the cold ducks left after yesterday’s dinner cut all the meat in as neat slices as you can, leaving the joints of legs and wings whole. Take off the skin; break the carcass into pieces, and put these, with the stuffing, into a saucepan with a fried onion, some sweet herbs, pepper, salt, and a pinch of allspice. Cover with cold water and stew gently, after it reaches the boil, for one hour. Cool, that the fat may rise and be taken off. Strain the gravy when you have skimmed it; return to the saucepan, boil and skim again, and stir in two tablespoonfuls of browned flour, wet with cold water; lastly, stir in a great spoonful of butter. Stew five minutes longer, and put in the meat. Draw to one side of the range, and set, closely covered, in a pot of boiling water for ten minutes. The meat must be thoroughly heated and steeped in the gravy, _but not boil_. Take the meat out with a perforated spoon, pile neatly upon a dish and pour the gravy over it. Garnish with triangles of stale bread fried crisp, and send a piece to each person who is helped to salmi.

FRIED PARSNIPS.

Boil, until tender, in hot water slightly salted; let them get almost cold, scrape off the skin, and cut in thick, long slices. Dredge with flour and fry in hot dripping, turning as they brown. Drain very dry in a hot colander; pepper and salt and serve.

STEWED SALSIFY.

Scrape the roots, dropping each into cold water as you do this, that they may not change color. Cut in pieces an inch long; cover with hot water and stew until tender. Drain off two-thirds of the water and add enough milk to cover the salsify. Stew ten minutes in this; put in a good lump of butter rolled thickly in flour. Pepper and salt. Boil up for one minute.

SWEET POTATOES—IN JACKETS.

Parboil in their skins when you have washed them, selecting such as are of like size. Then put in a moderate oven and bake until soft all through. You can ascertain this by pinching the largest. Wipe off and serve in their skins.

ROSIE’S RICE CUSTARD.

1 quart of milk.
3 eggs, well beaten.
4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
1 cup _boiled_ rice.
A little salt.
Half the grated rind of a lemon.

Boil the rice, drain, and stir, while hot, into the milk. Beat the eggs well; rub butter and sugar to a cream with lemon-peel and a little salt, and stir into the warm milk. Mix well and bake in a buttered dish in a brisk oven. Eat warm or cold. _We_ like it better warm, with a little cream poured over it when served in saucers.

Second Week. Sunday.
——
Soupe au Julienne.
Roast Turkey. Cranberry Sauce.
Mashed Potatoes, Browned. Stewed Corn.
Celery.
——
Tropical Snow.
Light Cakes and Coffee.
——

SOUPE AU JULIENNE.

6 lbs. of lean beef. If possible, get it from the shin and have
the accompanying bones cracked to bits.
6 quarts of water—cold.

Prepare the stock on Saturday. Put meat and bones into a pot with a close cover, pour on the water, and set it where it will heat very slowly. Boil, also very slowly, six hours, at the back of the range. Should the water sink fast in the pot, replenish from the boiling tea-kettle. At the end of six hours, turn the soup, meat, bones and all, into an earthenware vessel; pepper and salt it and set on the cellar floor, covered, until next day. Take off, then, the cake of excellent dripping from the top; strain the soup and set over the fire, about an hour before dinner, and heat gradually.

The vegetables should be—

2 carrots.
3 turnips.
Half a head of cabbage.
1 pint Shaker corn, soaked overnight.
6 stalks of celery.
1 quart of tomatoes.
1 large onion.

Clean, scrape, and mince all these, except the corn and tomatoes. Cut the carrot into dice and stew, by itself, in a little cold water. Boil the corn in enough water to cover it, and add more hot water as it swells. Cover the minced vegetables with cold water, and so soon as it boils, turn it off, and replenish with boiling, from the kettle. This will take away the rank taste from cabbage and onion. When they are soft enough to pulp, strain well, but _without pressing_, into the soup. It is needless to add the vegetables, as the strength is in the liquor. Boil up and skim the soup before putting in the boiled corn and the canned tomatoes, which should be cut up small, and the unripe parts removed. Boil fifteen minutes, add the carrot, season to taste, and serve.[B]

ROAST TURKEY.

Rinse out the turkey well with soda and water; then with salt, lastly with fair water. Stuff with a dressing made of bread-crumbs, wet up with butter and water and seasoned to your taste. Stuff the craw and tie up the neck. Fill the body and sew up the vent. I need hardly say that these strings are to be clipped and removed after the fowl is roasted. Tie the legs to the lower part of the body that they may not “sprawl,” as the sinews shrink. Put into the dripping-pan, pour a teacupful of boiling water over it, and roast, basting often, allowing about ten minutes’ time for every pound. Be careful not to have your oven too hot—especially during the first half-hour or so. The turkey would, otherwise, be dry and blackened on the outside and raw within. And remember how much of the perfection of roasting meats and poultry depends upon basting faithfully. Boil the giblets tender in a little water. When the turkey is done, set it where it will keep warm; skim the gravy left in the pan; add a little boiling water; thicken slightly with browned flour; boil up once and add the giblets minced fine. Season to taste; give another boil, and send to table in a gravy-boat.

CRANBERRY SAUCE.

Wash and pick over the cranberries; put on to cook in a tin or porcelain vessel, allowing a teacupful of water to each quart. Stew slowly, stirring often until they are as thick as marmalade. Take from the fire in little over an hour, if they have cooked steadily, sweeten plentifully with white sugar, and strain through coarse tarlatan, or mosquito-net, into a mould wet with cold water.

Do this on Saturday. On Sunday, turn out into a glass dish.

MASHED POTATOES—BROWNED.

Having mashed them in the usual manner, mound them smoothly upon a shallow earthenware dish and set them in a quick oven, glazing them with butter as they color. They should be of a light brown. Slip the mound from a coarser to a finer platter by the help of your cake-turner. It is still better if you have one of the pretty “enamelled” bake-dishes lined with porcelain, with silver stands for the table. They are invaluable for puddings, scallops, etc.

STEWED CORN.

Stew one quart of canned corn in its own liquor, setting the vessel containing it in an outer, of hot water. Should the corn be exceptionally dry, add a little cold water. When tender, pour in enough milk to cover the corn, bring to a boil, and put in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour, and salt to taste. Stew gently, stirring well, three or four minutes, and turn into a deep dish. Keep the vessel containing the corn closely covered while it is cooking. The steam facilitates the process and preserves the color of the corn.

CELERY

Is the usual accompaniment of roast turkey. Prepare by selecting the blanched stalks, scraping off the rust, cutting off all but the youngest and tenderest tops, and laying these in cold water to crisp until wanted for the table. Garnish your turkey with alternate light and dark green sprigs of celery.

TROPICAL SNOW.

8 sweet oranges.
1 grated cocoanut.
1 glass of pale sherry.
1 cup of powdered sugar.
5 red bananas.

Peel and cut the oranges into small pieces by dividing each lobe crosswise into thirds. Extract the seeds and put a layer of the fruit in the bottom of a glass dish. Pour a little wine upon it, and strew with powdered sugar. The cocoanut must have been prepared by removing the rind and throwing it into cold water for some time before grating it. Over the layer of oranges spread one of cocoanut; cut the bananas into very thin, round slices, and lay these, one deep, upon the cocoanut. Repeat the order just given until your dish is full and the oranges and bananas used up. The top layer must be of cocoanut, heaped high, sprinkled with powdered sugar and garnished about the base with slices of banana. Eat soon, as the oranges toughen in the wine.

* * * * *

Supplement this pretty, but not substantial dessert by a salver of lady’s-fingers, and macaroons, and a good cup of coffee.

Second Week. Monday.
——
Next Day’s Soup.
Turkey Scallop. Panned Oysters.
Roast Potatoes. Tomato Sauce.
——
Floating Island.
Tea.
——

NEXT DAY’S SOUP.

Julienne soup, like most other soups the base of which is meat, is better when warmed over the second day. Set it over the fire where it will heat, not too quickly, _almost_ to a boil. It will not “put back” the business of the day twenty minutes, and be a welcome addition to your dinner.

TURKEY SCALLOP.

Cut the meat from yesterday’s turkey. Crack the carcass to pieces, and put, with bits of skin, fat, and gristle, into a saucepan; cover with cold water, and set on to stew slowly into gravy. Chop the meat very fine; strew the bottom of a greased bake-dish with crumbs, and cover this with a thick stratum of minced turkey, stuffing, and tiny bits of butter. Pepper and salt, and put on more crumbs, then meat, and so on. Stale bread is better for this scallop than cracker-dust. Having used up all your meat and reserved enough crumbs for a thick upper crust, cover the dish and put aside in a cool place until your gravy is ready. It is economy of time, on Monday, to slip in such work as this between the many “must be’s” of the season. Your scallop will be none the worse for waiting some hours before, or after, the gravy is added, provided you keep it covered. When the gravy has drawn all the substance from bones, etc., strain it and return to the saucepan with what was left in yesterday’s gravy-boat, having first skimmed the latter. Boil up, thicken with browned flour wet up with cold water; bring to another boil; pour over the scallop, saving a little to wet the top. Now comes your layer of _fine_ bread-crumbs. Wet these with the gravy in a bowl, season to taste, beat to a soft paste with a couple of eggs and spread evenly over the scallop. Invert a plate over the bake-dish and set in the oven. When, at the end of half an hour or so, the gravy bubbles up at the sides, remove the cover and brown. Serve in the pudding-dish.

PANNED OYSTERS.

A four-course dinner is hardly in order in most households on Monday. You can, if you like, and have an efficient table-waiter, bring on oysters, as usual, between soup and meat. But there will be no violation of the “unities of the drama” of a family dinner, if you send around your oysters, scallop, and vegetables together.

1 quart of oysters.
Some thin slices of toast.
Butter, salt, and pepper.

Have ready some “patty pans”—the more nearly upright the sides the better. Cut stale bread in rounds to fit the bottoms of these. Toast, and lay a piece in each. Wet with oyster liquor and put into each pan as many oysters as it will conveniently hold. Pepper and salt; put a bit of butter upon each; arrange all in a large dripping-pan; invert another of the same size over it, and bake eight minutes, or until the oysters “ruffle.” Send hot to table in the pans.

You can toast the bread at breakfast-time if you choose. The oysters can go into the oven when the soup is poured out, and be in good season on the table. By this arrangement they will not interfere with the other “baked meats.” Panned oysters are always popular, and there is no more simple manner of cooking this favorite shell-fish.

ROAST POTATOES.

Choose large, fair potatoes, wash and wipe, and bake until soft to the grasp. Three-quarters of an hour should suffice. Take out, before the oysters go in; wipe off dust and ashes, and serve in a heated napkin. This will keep them hot a long time, yet prevent them from “sweating.”

TOMATO SAUCE.

Open a can of tomatoes at least one hour before it is to be used, and empty into an earthenware basin, that no close or metallic taste may linger about them. Cook in tin or porcelain. Stew half an hour, gently; add salt, pepper, a teaspoonful of sugar, and three of butter, a handful of dry bread-crumbs—or, if you have any stewed corn left from yesterday, use that instead of bread. Cook ten minutes longer, and turn out.

FLOATING ISLAND.

1 quart of milk.
4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
4 tablespoonfuls (great ones) of sugar.
2 teaspoonfuls extract of bitter almond or vanilla. (COLGATE’S
extracts are the best in market, and _do not spoil_ within
a few days after they are uncorked, as the manner of some
is.)
½ cup of currant jelly.

Heat the milk to scalding, but not boiling. Beat the yolks, stir into them the sugar, and pour upon them, gradually and mixing well, a cupful of the hot milk. Return to the saucepan and boil until it begins to thicken. You can do this while breakfast is cooking, before the Moloch clothes-boiler goes on. When cool, flavor and pour into a glass dish. Heap upon the top a _méringue_ of the whites whipped until you can cut it, into which you have beaten the jelly, a teaspoonful at a time.

TEA.

“A comfortable cup of tea” never comes amiss to a fagged housewife, be it served at breakfast, luncheon, or dinner. The best way to insure its goodness—that is, that it be strong, hot and fresh—is to have your own tea-urn or kettle on the table, with a spirit-lamp burning under it. Scald the tea-pot, put in the tea; cover with boiling water; put a “cosey” or a thick napkin about it, and let it stand five minutes before filling with more _boiling_ water. Wait a minute longer and pour out.

Second Week. Tuesday.
——
Mutton Soup with Tapioca.
Salmon Pudding. Beefsteak.
Potatoes à la Lyonnaise. Macaroni with Cheese.
——
Susie’s Bread Pudding.
——

MUTTON SOUP WITH TAPIOCA.

3 lbs. perfectly lean mutton. The scrag makes good soup and costs
little.
2 or 3 lbs. of bones, well pounded.
1 onion.
2 turnips.
2 carrots.
2 stalks of celery.
A few sprigs of parsley. If you have any tomatoes left from yesterday,
add them.
4 tablespoonfuls of pearl or granulated tapioca (not heaping
spoonfuls).
4 quarts of water.

Put on the meat, cut in small pieces, with the bones, in two quarts of cold water. Heat very slowly, and when it boils pour in two quarts of hot water from the kettle. Chop the vegetables; cover with cold water. So soon as they begin to simmer, throw off the first water, replenishing with hot, and stew until they are boiled to pieces. The meat should cook steadily, never fast, five hours, keeping the pot-lid on. Strain into a great bowl; let it cool to throw the fat to the surface; skim and return to the fire. Season with pepper and salt, boil up, take off the scum; add the vegetables with their liquor. Heat together ten minutes, strain again, and bring to a slow boil before the tapioca goes in. This should have been soaked one hour in cold water, then cooked in the same within another vessel of boiling water until each grain is clear. It is necessary to stir up often from the bottom while cooking. Stir gradually into the soup until the tapioca is dissolved.

Send around grated cheese with this soup.

SALMON PUDDING.

1 can preserved salmon.
3 eggs.
4 tablespoonfuls melted butter.
½ cup fine bread-crumbs.
Pepper, salt, and minced parsley.

Mince the fish, draining off the liquor for the sauce. Rub in the butter until thoroughly incorporated. Work in the crumbs, the seasoning, at last the beaten eggs. Put into a buttered pudding-mould, set in a dripping-pan full of hot water. Cover the mould, and steam in the oven, keeping the water in the pan at a fast boil, filling up as it evaporates, for one hour. Set it in cold water one minute when you have taken it from the oven. This will make it shrink from the sides and turn out easily upon a flat dish.

SAUCE FOR THE ABOVE.

1 cupful of milk heated to a boil and thickened with a tablespoonful
of corn-starch, previously wet up with cold water.
The liquor from the salmon.
1 great spoonful of butter.
1 raw egg, beaten light.
Juice of half a lemon.
Mace and cayenne pepper to taste.

Put the egg into the thickened milk when you have stirred in the butter and liquor; take from the fire, season, and let it stand in hot water three minutes, covered. Lastly, put in the lemon-juice and turn out immediately. Pour it all over and about the pudding. Cut the latter into slices when helping it out.

BEEFSTEAK.

First of all, let me recommend the plan of broiling a steak under, instead of over the grate. I have found so many and manifest advantages in the former method that I have had a gridiron made to fit beneath my range.

Wipe the steak dry, and broil upon a buttered gridiron, turning frequently, whenever it begins to drip. When done, which should be in twelve minutes, if your fire is clear and strong, lay upon a _hot_ dish—a chafing-dish is best—season with pepper and salt (not until then), and butter very liberally. Put over it a hot cover, and wait five minutes before sending to table, to draw the juices to the surface and allow the seasoning to penetrate the steak.

POTATOES À LA LYONNAISE.

Parboil a dozen potatoes at breakfast-time, and set aside, when you have peeled them, as they should get perfectly cold. When you are ready to cook them, heat some butter, or good dripping, in a frying-pan; fry in it one small onion, chopped fine, until it begins to change color—say about one minute. Then put in the potatoes, cut into dice, not too thick or broad. Stir well and cook five minutes, taking care the potatoes do not break to pieces. _They must not brown._ Put in some minced parsley just before taking them up. Drain dry by shaking in a heated colander. Serve very hot.

MACARONI WITH CHEESE.

Cook half a pound of pipe macaroni, broken into inch lengths, in boiling water until tender. Drain this off, and substitute a cupful of cold milk. When the macaroni has again come to a boil, season with pepper and salt and stir in a great spoonful of butter; lastly, two tablespoonfuls of dry, grated cheese. Turn into a deep dish, strew more cheese thickly over it, and it is ready for use.

SUSIE’S BREAD PUDDING.

1 quart of milk.
4 eggs.
3 cups very fine, dry bread-crumbs.
1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
1 teacupful white sugar.
Juice and half the grated peel of a lemon.

Rub butter and sugar together. Beat the yolks of the four eggs and the white of one very light; mix the butter and sugar with these. Soak the crumbs in the milk, and beat in with the other ingredients, hard and fast. Add the lemon last. Bake in a buttered dish. When nearly done and fully “set,” even in the middle, spread with a _méringue_ made of the reserved whites, beaten stiff with a little sugar. It is good eaten warm—not really hot—or cold, especially if a little cream be poured over each saucerful.

Second Week. Wednesday.
——
Bean Soup.
Fillet of Veal, Stuffed. Baked Corn.
Potato Cakes. Canned String-Beans.
——
Baked Apple Dumplings.
Brandy Sauce.
——

BEAN SOUP.

Soak a quart of dried beans all night in soft water. Throw this off next morning, and cover the beans for two hours in water a little more than lukewarm. Put over the fire with five quarts of cold water, and one pound of salt pork. A bone of veal or beef may be added, if you have it. Boil slowly for at least four hours; shred into it a small onion, four stalks of celery, pepper—the pork _may_ salt it sufficiently—simmer half an hour longer, rub through a colander until only husks and fibres remain, and send to table. Pass sliced lemon with it.

FILLET OF VEAL—STUFFED.

Make ready a force-meat of bread-crumbs, chopped thyme and parsley; pepper, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg; a little dripping for shortening; moisten with warm water and bind with a raw egg.

If your butcher has not “put up” the fillet, remove the bone, pin the meat into a round with skewers; then bind firmly with a strip of muslin passed two or three times about it. Fill the cavity left by the bone with dressing, and thrust the same between the folds of the meat, besides making cuts with a sharp knife to receive more. Tuck in a strip of fat pork here and there. Baste three times with salt and water while roasting, afterwards with its own gravy. At last, dredge once with flour and baste with butter. Cut the bands, draw out the skewers carefully, and serve.

BAKED CORN.

To one can of corn allow a pint of milk (more if the corn be dry), three eggs, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, one of white sugar, pepper and salt to taste. Beat the eggs very light, rub butter and sugar together and stir in hard; next, the corn and seasoning; finally, the milk. Beat hard, and bake in a buttered dish for half an hour, covered. Then brown by lifting the top. Send up in the bake-dish.

POTATO CAKES.

Boil and mash the potatoes, working in salt and butter and an egg or two—beaten light. Let them get cold; make into cakes of size and shape to suit yourself; roll in raw egg, then in flour, or cracker-dust, and fry quickly in hot dripping. Take each up as soon as it is done, and drain with a wire spoon, before laying upon a hot dish.

CANNED STRING-BEANS.

Cook in their own liquor half an hour, or until very tender. First, however, cut them into neat lengths. The comeliness of the dish depends upon this. When almost done, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, with salt and pepper. Simmer ten minutes longer, and serve by draining off the liquid and heaping the beans upon a hot dish, with a bit of butter on the top. If the can does not contain liquor enough to cover the beans, add a little cold water in cooking them.

BAKED APPLE DUMPLINGS.

1 quart prepared flour.
1 tablespoonful of butter and the same of lard.
1 pint of milk.
1 saltspoonful of salt.
Some ripe apples.

Chop the shortening into the flour when you have sifted and salted the latter. Wet up with milk and roll out quickly in a sheet less than half an inch thick. Cut into squares; lay in the centre of each a tart, juicy apple, pared and cored. Bring the corners of the square together and pinch to join them neatly. Lay in a baking-pan, the joined edges downward, and bake to a fine brown. When done, brush over with butter and shut the oven door for a minute more to glaze them. Sift powdered sugar over them, and eat hot.

These are more wholesome and more easily prepared than boiled dumplings. Eat with sweet sauce.

BRANDY SAUCE.

2 cups of powdered sugar.
½ cup of butter.
1 wineglass of brandy. That from brandied peaches—the _liqueur_,
if you have it.
1 teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace.

Warm the butter slightly, work in the sugar until they form a rich cream, when add brandy and spice. Beat hard; shape by putting into a mould made _very_ wet with cold water, and set in a cool place to harden. Should it not turn out readily by shaking gently, dip for a second in hot water.

Second Week. Thursday.
——
Veal and Sago Soup.
Jugged Rabbit. Scalloped Potatoes.
Sweet Potatoes, Fried. Minced Celery with Egg Dressing.
——
Macaroni and Almond Pudding.
——

VEAL AND SAGO SOUP.

3 lbs. veal.
¼ lb. pearl sago.
3 quarts of water.
4 eggs.
1 pint of milk.

Cut the meat into bits; put on with the water and boil very slowly, with the pot-lid laid on loosely, four hours, until the meat is in rags. Strain through coarse net, or a wire soup-strainer (which you ought to possess), season with pepper and salt, and return to the kettle when you have scalded it out.

Meanwhile, the sago should have been washed and soaked in lukewarm water, for an hour. Stir it into the broth and let them simmer, stirring often, half an hour. Heat the milk scalding hot in another vessel, beat the yolks of the eggs light, reserving the whites for your pudding; pour gradually over these a cupful of the hot milk, and stir carefully into the soup with all the milk. Taste, to see if it needs more seasoning; add a little chopped parsley, if you like; let it almost boil and pour into the tureen. It should be about as thick as boiled custard. Should the sago thicken it too much, add boiling water.

A relishful and wholesome soup.

JUGGED RABBIT.

1 full-grown but tender rabbit or hare.
½ lb. corned ham.
1 cup of good gravy, saved from yesterday’s roast.
Dripping for frying.
1 onion, sliced.
Juice of 1 lemon.
1 tablespoonful currant jelly.
Parsley, pepper and salt, and browned flour.

Joint the rabbit, and lay for an hour in salted water. Wipe dry and fry in the dripping, with the onion, until brown. Put in the bottom of a tin pail, or farina-kettle, a layer of salt pork cut into strips; upon this one of rabbit. Sprinkle with pepper and a little salt. Scatter fried onion over the rabbit and proceed in this order until your meat is used up. Pour in the gravy; cover the vessel, and set it in another of cold water. Bring gradually to a boil and stew steadily one hour, or until tender. Arrange the meat upon a dish; strain the gravy, thicken with browned flour wet up with cold water; boil up once; stir in the jelly and lemon-juice, heat to boiling, and pour over the rabbit. If you have no gravy, use a little butter and water instead.

SCALLOPED POTATOES.

3 cups mashed potato.
3 tablespoonfuls of milk.
3 hard-boiled eggs.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
1 handful very dry bread-crumbs.
Salt.

Work butter, milk, and salt into the hot mashed potatoes. Put a layer in the bottom of a pudding-dish well greased; cover this with thin slices of egg; salt and pepper; another stratum of potato, and so on, until the dish is full. Strew bread-crumbs thickly over the uppermost layer of potatoes. Stick bits of butter over this and bake, covered, until hot throughout; then brown quickly. Send up in the pudding-dish.

A simple and nice side-dish.

SWEET POTATOES—FRIED.

Boil, peel, and when cold, slice the potatoes neatly. Fry in good dripping until they are of a light brown. Drain from the fat and eat hot.

MINCED CELERY WITH EGG DRESSING.

Scrape and wash the celery and cut into half-inch lengths, having first crisped it in cold water. Rub the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs to a paste with a tablespoonful of oil; add salt, pepper, a little powdered sugar, vinegar to make the mixture liquid, and pour over the celery. Serve in a salad-bowl and eat at once, lest the celery should toughen in the vinegar.

MACARONI AND ALMOND PUDDING.

½ lb. macaroni.
3 pints of milk.
1 cup of white sugar.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
5 eggs.
½ lb. sweet almonds, blanched and chopped.
Rose-water and bitter almond flavoring.
A little salt and nutmeg.

Simmer the macaroni half an hour in a pint of the milk. When tender, but not broken, put in butter and salt. Take the saucepan from the fire and turn out the contents to cool while you make a custard of the rest of the milk, the eggs and sugar. Add the latter to the scalding milk, but do not boil the custard. Chop the almonds when you have blanched them, _i. e._, taken off the skins with boiling water. As you chop, put in a few drops of rose-water from time to time, to prevent oiling. When the macaroni is almost cold, mix it with the custard, breaking it as little as may be. Season, and last of all, stir in the chopped almonds. Bake in a well-buttered pudding-dish. Spread with the _méringue_ made from the whites of the eggs reserved from the soup. Eat warm with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

Second Week. Friday.
——
Fish Chowder.
Fricasseed Chicken, White. Potatoes à l’Italienne.
Tomatoes Stewed with Onion. Cheese Fondu.
——
Sponge Gingerbread.
Chocolate.
——

FISH CHOWDER.

3 lbs. of cod, cut into strips an inch thick and four inches long,
and freed from bone so far as is possible without breaking
the fish.
1 pint of oysters.
2 large onions cut into thin slices.
_About_ ½ lb. Boston crackers, split, and buttered thickly.
Pepper and salt.
1 cup of milk.
Parsley.

Cover the bottom of your soup-kettle with the fish; pepper and salt; strew with sliced onion, and this with the split crackers, buttered sides down. Follow this order until your ingredients are all in the pot, and cover them with cold water. Stew gently for an hour, keeping the water at the original level by replenishing from the tea-kettle. By this time the fish should be thoroughly done, if it has cooked steadily. Take it up with a perforated skimmer, and cover in the tureen to keep hot, while you strain the chowder to get out the bones, returning the crackers with the liquor to the soup-kettle, when you have rinsed it out. Thicken with two teaspoonfuls of corn-starch wet up in a cup of milk, and when this has boiled, add the oysters, cut small, two great spoonfuls of butter, and a little chopped parsley. Stew for three minutes, pour slowly over the fish in the tureen. Send sliced lemon around with it.

This is a most palatable chowder when properly prepared. You can use fewer crackers, if you dislike a thick soup.

FRICASSEED CHICKEN—WHITE.

One pair of full-grown fowls.
½ lb. salt pork cut into strips.
2 eggs.
1 cupful of milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of flour and the same of butter.
1 onion.
Parsley, pepper and salt.

Joint the fowls neatly, and cut the back, neck, and breast apart from each other, the latter into two pieces. Lay them in salt water for half an hour. Put them into a pot with enough cold water to cover them, and the pork cut into thin strips. Cover and heat _very_ slowly. Stew constantly, but never fast, for one hour after it comes to a boil, or until the chickens are tender. The time will depend upon their age. If they are tough, put them on early and cook all the more slowly. Add now the onion, parsley, and pepper, with salt, if needed. Heat again, and stir in the flour wet up in the cup of milk. Beat the eggs and pour upon them a cupful of hot gravy; mix well, and put back into the soup with the butter. Just as the stew begins to simmer again, remove from the fire. Take out and pile the chicken upon a dish; then pour the gravy over all.

POTATOES À L’ITALIENNE.

Instead of mashing the potatoes with a beetle or spoon, whip them up light with a silver fork. When they are fine and mealy, beat in a few spoonfuls of milk, a tablespoonful of butter, the yolks of two eggs, pepper and salt. Whip into a creamy heap before adding, with a few dexterous strokes, the stiffly-frothed whites. Pile roughly up on a buttered pie-dish; brown quickly in the oven, and transfer, with the help of a cake-turner, to a flat dish.

Make a rather too abundant dish, according to this receipt, as the residue will be found useful in to-morrow’s bill of fare.

TOMATOES STEWED WITH ONION.

Stew in the usual manner, adding a small onion minced fine. When they have cooked half an hour, season with pepper, salt, a little sugar, and a good spoonful of butter. Simmer ten minutes more, uncovered, and turn out.

CHEESE FONDU.

1 cup of bread-crumbs, dry and fine.
2 scant cups of _fresh_ milk.
½ lb. dry, rich cheese, grated.
3 eggs, whipped light.
1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
Pepper and salt.
A pinch of soda, dissolved in hot water.

Soak the crumbs in the milk; beat in the eggs, the butter, seasoning—lastly, the cheese. Pour into a neat pudding-dish, strew dry bread-crumbs over the top, and bake in a quick oven until delicately browned. Serve in the pudding-dish, and at once, as it _falls_ in cooling.

Very good!

SPONGE GINGERBREAD.

5 cups of flour, dried and sifted. Measure _after_ sifting.
1 cup of molasses.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
1 cup of sugar.
1 rather larger cup of sour, or buttermilk.
2 teaspoonfuls of saleratus (not soda), dissolved in hot water.
2 teaspoonfuls ginger.
1 teaspoonful of cinnamon.

Mix molasses, sugar, butter, and spice together. Warm slightly, and beat hard for five minutes. Add the milk, then the soda, lastly the flour. Beat three minutes, and bake in a broad, shallow pan. Take heed that it does not burn. Eat warm.

CHOCOLATE.

6 tablespoonfuls of chocolate to each pint of boiling water.
As much milk as you have chocolate.
Sweeten to taste.

Rub the chocolate smooth in a little cold water, and stir into the hot. Boil twenty minutes; put in the milk, and boil five minutes more, stirring often. Sweeten at pleasure, while boiling, or in the cups. Send around with the warm gingerbread and some slices of mild cheese. You will not regret not having prepared a more pretentious dessert.

Second Week. Saturday.
——
Clear Gravy Soup.
Oyster Salad. Calf’s Liver à la Mode.
Salsify Fritters. Potatoes à la Duchesse.
——
Corn-meal Fruit Pudding.
——

CLEAR GRAVY SOUP.

5 lbs. lean beef, the coarser parts, of course.
Some bones.
2 slices of lean corned ham.
2 carrots.
2 turnips.
6 stalks of celery.
¼ package Coxe’s gelatine.
Pepper and salt.
A bunch of sweet herbs.
Dripping.
5 quarts of cold water.

Cut the meat into dice and slice the onions. Fry the latter brown in some good dripping. Take them out, and fry the meat in the same fat, turning often, until it has a thick brown coat. Put it, drained from the fat, into the soup-kettle, with two quarts of cold water, and set where it will come to a boil in about an hour. The bones should also be fried, and put into the pot with the meat. When these fairly boil, skim, add three quarts of cold water, and stew gently four hours. If you dine early, the soup should go on before breakfast. Put herbs and vegetables, including the fried onions, all chopped up, into a saucepan, with enough cold water to cover them, and boil to pieces. Strain the soup half an hour before dinner; season, return to the pot; boil and skim. Strain the vegetable liquor into it, without squeezing or rubbing. Boil up once more, skim well, and put in the gelatine, which should have soaked one hour in a little cold water. Simmer five minutes and pour out.

The soup should be of a clear, light brown. Should the color not suit you, burn a tablespoonful of sugar in a tin cup, add three or four spoonfuls of boiling water, stir until you get a deep color, and turn off the water into the soup. It will not injure the flavor.

Please never lose sight of the cardinal principle that all the essence, strength, and taste should be extracted from meat, vegetables, etc., in soup-making, and that the _soup which boils fast is lost_. Take plenty of time, and cast an eye into the kitchen from hour to hour until you have educated your cook up to a glimmering appreciation of this law of enlightened cookery.

OYSTER SALAD.

1 quart of oysters, cut, not chopped, into small pieces.
1 bunch of celery, also _cut_ small.
1 tablespoonful best oil.
1 small spoonful of salt, and the same of pepper, likewise of
mustard (made).
⅛ cup cider vinegar.
Saltspoonful of powdered sugar.

Drain the liquor from the oysters and cut them up. Add the minced celery. Prepare the seasoning, putting in the vinegar last, and pour the mixture over the celery and oysters. Toss up well with a silver fork. Do this just before dinner, as the salad will be injured by lying long in the dressing.

CALF’S LIVER À LA MODE.

1 calf’s liver.
½ lb. fat salt pork.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter, or dripping.
2 small onions.
1 tablespoonful chopped parsley and marjoram.
2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
1 teaspoonful mixed cloves, mace, and allspice.
1 tablespoonful Worcestershire sauce.
Pepper and salt to taste.

Wash the liver thoroughly, and soak half an hour in salted water. Wipe, make incisions about an inch apart, and lard with strips of pork, projecting slightly on each side. Fry the onions and herbs in the dripping. Take them out, put in the liver, and fry both sides to a light brown. Turn all into a saucepan, with the vinegar and water to cover the liver—barely. Cover closely, and stew gently an hour and a half. Lay the liver on a hot dish, strain the gravy, return to the fire, thicken with a tablespoonful of browned flour, put in the sauce and spice; boil up and pour some of it over the liver, the rest into a gravy-boat. What is left from dinner will be nice for luncheon or tea, cut horizontally in thin slices.

SALSIFY FRITTERS.

1 bunch salsify.
2 eggs.
½ cup milk.
Flour for thin batter.
Lard, or dripping.
Salt to taste.

Scrape and grate the roots, and stir into a batter made of the beaten eggs, the milk, and flour. Grate the salsify directly into this, that it may not blacken by exposure to the air. Salt, and drop a spoonful into the boiling fat to see if it is of the right consistency. As fast as you fry the fritters, throw into a hot colander to drain. One great spoonful of batter should make a fritter.

POTATOES À LA DUCHESSE.

Cut the remnants of yesterday’s potatoes _à l’Italienne_ into rounds with a cake-cutter, dipped in cold water. Set like biscuits, but not so near as to touch one another, in a greased pan, and bake quickly, brushing top and sides with beaten egg when they begin to brown. Serve upon a heated napkin folded flat, on a platter.

CORN-MEAL FRUIT PUDDING.

1 _heaping_ cup white Indian meal.
3 pints of milk.
1 cup of flour.
4 beaten eggs.
1 cup of white sugar.
2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
½ lb. of raisins, seeded and cut in two.
1 teaspoonful of salt, and same of mixed mace and cinnamon.
1 teaspoonful of soda, and two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar,
sifted _twice_ with the flour.

Scald a pint of milk and wet up the meal with it, stirring well. While it is cooling, add the flour, wet into batter with a pint of cold milk. Heat the remaining pint, and when scalding, add sugar and eggs. Beat this gradually, _hard_ and long, into the cooled paste. When well mixed, put in butter, spice, and the fruit dredged with flour. Beat fast and deep for two minutes. Bake in a buttered dish, in a tolerably brisk oven. Cover with paper as it browns. It ought to be done in three-quarters of an hour. Eat hot, with butter and sugar.

Third Week. Sunday.
——
Tomato Soup.
Roast Beef, with Yorkshire Pudding.
Macaroni al Napolitano.
Potatoes au naturel. French Beans, Sauté.
Apple Sauce. Made Mustard.
——
Narcissus Blanc-mange.
Coffee.
——

TOMATO SOUP.

Stew one can of tomatoes half an hour; strain and rub through a colander into the soup left from yesterday. Heat to a slow boil, and simmer together ten minutes before serving.

ROAST BEEF, WITH YORKSHIRE PUDDING.

Have your meat ready for roasting on Saturday, always. Roast upon a grating or several clean sticks (not pine) laid over the dripping-pan. Dash a cup of boiling water over the beef when it goes into the oven; baste often, and see that the fat does not scorch. About three-quarters of an hour before it is done, mix the pudding.

YORKSHIRE PUDDING.

1 pint of milk.
4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
2 cups of flour—prepared flour is best.
1 teaspoonful of salt.

Use less flour if the batter grows too stiff. Mix quickly; pour off the fat from the top of the gravy in the dripping-pan, leaving just enough to prevent the pudding from sticking to the bottom. Pour in the batter and continue to roast the beef, letting the dripping fall upon the pudding below. The oven should be brisk by this time. Baste the meat with the gravy you have taken out to make room for the batter.

In serving, cut the pudding into squares and lay about the meat in the dish. It is very delicious.

MACARONI AL NAPOLITANO.

½ lb. of macaroni.
2 nice sweetbreads.
1 small onion, minced.
Parsley, pepper, and salt.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Wash the sweetbreads; lay in salted water fifteen minutes, and stew with the onion, in a pint of cold water, a little salt, until done, as may be seen by cutting into the thickest part. Wash the macaroni when you have broken it into small bits, and cook gently until tender, but not to breaking, in the hot broth from which you have taken the sweetbreads and strained the onion. Stew in a farina-kettle or tin saucepan set in hot water. Chop the sweetbreads; stir the butter into the macaroni, which should have absorbed all the broth; then the minced sweetbreads. Season with parsley, pepper, and salt; cover closely and leave in the hot water, but not over the fire, five minutes before turning into a deep dish.

POTATOES AU NATUREL

Are, with all their high-sounding name, only the homely vegetables boiled in their skins. Put on in cold water, bring to a slow boil, and increase the heat until a fork will pierce the largest. Throw in salt; turn off every drop of the water; set back on the range, without the cover, for two minutes to dry, peel, and send to table in a napkin.

FRENCH BEANS, SAUTÉ.

Open a can of French or “string” beans; cut into inch lengths and boil in the can liquor, adding a little cold water, if needed, for twenty minutes. Drain, return to the saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of butter and a little salt and pepper. Toss constantly with a fork until they are hissing hot, but not until they scorch. Serve in a hot vegetable dish.

APPLE SAUCE.

Pare, core, and slice tart apples, and stew in water enough to cover them until they break to pieces. Beat to a pulp with a good lump of butter and plenty of sugar. Eat cold. Make enough for several meals, as it will keep a week at this season.

MADE MUSTARD.

4 tablespoonfuls English mustard.
2 teaspoonfuls of salt.
The same quantity of salad oil and white sugar.
1 teaspoonful of pepper.
Vinegar to make a smooth paste—that from celery, or onion pickle,
if you have it.

Rub mustard, oil, sugar, pepper, and salt together; wet, by degrees, with vinegar, beating very hard at the last, when the proper consistency has been gained.

This is far superior to mustard as usually mixed for the table.

NARCISSUS BLANC-MANGE.

1 quart of milk.
1 package of Cooper’s gelatine, soaked in two cups of cold water.
Yolks of 4 eggs, beaten light.
2 cups of white sugar.
Vanilla and rose-water for flavoring.
Less than 2 cups of rich cream.

Heat the milk to scalding; stir in gelatine and sugar. When these are dissolved, take out a cupful and pour, by degrees, over the beaten yolks. Return to the saucepan and stir together over the fire for two minutes after the boiling point is reached. Take from the range, flavor with rose-water, and pour into a mould with a cylinder in the centre, previously wet with cold water. Next day, turn out upon a dish with a broad bottom, and fill the hollow in the middle with the cream, whipped light with a little powdered sugar and flavored with vanilla. Pile more whipped cream about the base.

Send your coffee around after the blanc-mange has been eaten. A spoonful of whipped cream, without the vanilla, will give a touch of elegance to the beverage. Let this happy thought come to you while you are preparing the cream, and before the flavoring goes in.

Third Week. Monday.
——
Variety Soup.
Beef Pudding. Scored Potatoes.
Canned Peas. Mixed Pickles.
——
Apple Méringue.
Crackers and Cheese.
——

VARIETY SOUP.

Chop a quarter of a small cabbage, a turnip, and some sweet herbs; cover with cold water, and heat to boiling. Throw off the first water, and add a quart more of cold. Put in the roast-beef bones, after you have cut off the meat, with a slice or two, or bone, of ham. Stew all two hours at the back of the range. Half an hour before dinner, warm up what was left from Sunday’s soup. Strain the hot liquor in which your cabbage, etc., have boiled, into this. Pick out bits of bones and meat from the colander, mashing the vegetables as little as possible; put these into the soup, with any macaroni or beans you may have left over; season to your liking; simmer for ten minutes; thicken with a tablespoonful of corn-starch, and pour out.

This will not be a “show-soup,” but it will be savory and nutritious.

BEEF PUDDING.

1 pint of milk.
3 eggs.
A cupful of prepared flour.
A little salt.
1 tablespoonful of melted butter.

Cut the meat from yesterday’s roast into neat pieces; lay them in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish, season well, and pour a few spoonfuls of cold gravy over them, letting it soak into the meat while you prepare a batter according to the above directions, taking care not to get it too stiff. Pour over the meat and bake in a quick oven. Eat hot.

SCORED POTATOES.

Mash in the usual way, mixing rather soft; heap and round upon a greased pie-plate; score deeply in triangles with the back of a carving or butcher’s knife; brown in the oven, and slip carefully to another dish.

CANNED PEAS.

Open a can of peas an hour before cooking them, that there may be no musty, airless taste about them, and turn into a bowl. When ready for them put on in a farina-kettle—or one saucepan within another—of hot water. If dry, add cold water to cover them, and stew about twenty-five minutes. Drain, stir in a generous lump of butter; pepper and salt.

APPLE MÉRINGUE.

Butter a neat pudding-dish, and nearly fill it with apple sauce. Cover and leave in the oven until it is smoking hot. Draw to the oven door and spread with a méringue made of the whites of three eggs, whipped stiff with a little powdered sugar. (Your pudding will be much nicer, by the way, if you have beaten the yolks into the stewed apple before putting it into the dish.) Shut the oven door long enough to brown the _méringue_ very lightly. Eat nearly or quite cold, with sugar and cream.

Send around crackers and cheese as an accompaniment.

Third Week. Tuesday.
——
Celery Soup.
Veal Cutlets with Ham. Cauliflower with Cream Sauce.
Stewed Potatoes. Mixed Pickles.
——
Jam Pudding.
Tea, and Albert Biscuits.
——

CELERY SOUP.

3 lbs. of veal, and some bones of the same.
2 onions.
2 bunches of celery, using the white parts only.
3 quarts of cold water.
1 pint of fresh milk.
2 dessertspoonfuls of corn-starch.
Pepper and salt.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Some fried bread.