Chapter III: Part 3

Cut the veal up small, crack the bones, and put on in cold water. Boil slowly four hours, replenishing with boiling water should the broth sink to less than two-thirds of the original quantity. Strain, pressing all the strength out of the meat. Cut the celery into bits, and stew in the broth, with the minced onions, until so soft that you can rub through a colander. Strain a second time, and return the soup, with the pulped celery, to the fire. Season, and thicken with the corn-starch wet up in the pint of milk. Stir until it boils, and lastly, put in, carefully, the butter, after which take from the range. Have ready a double handful of fried bread in the tureen, and pour the soup upon it.

VEAL CUTLETS AND HAM.

2 lbs. of veal cutlets, neatly trimmed, and the same of sliced ham.
Yolks of 2 eggs.
Bread- or cracker-crumbs.
Dripping for frying.

Divide each cutlet into pieces about two inches wide by three inches long, and cut the ham into slices of corresponding size. Dip in the egg, then roll in the bread-crumbs, and fry—the ham first, afterwards the veal, until nicely browned on both sides. Sprinkle salt upon the veal cutlets. Arrange upon the dish in alternate slices of veal and ham, overlapping one another. Anoint the ham with butter mixed with a little mustard; the veal with butter melted up with a spoonful of tart jelly.

CAULIFLOWER WITH CREAM SAUCE.

Boil your cauliflower, when you have washed and trimmed it, and tied it up in coarse net or tarletan. Cook in boiling water slightly salted, keeping the stalk end uppermost. Prepare, in another saucepan, the dressing, by adding to a cup of scalding milk a tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water, two tablespoonfuls of butter, pepper and salt at discretion. Drain the cauliflower, remove the net, put into a deep dish, the flower up, and drench with the boiling sauce.

STEWED POTATOES.

Cut into slices, cook until tender, but not to breaking, in hot water. Turn half of this off and replace by as much milk, in which some slices of onion have been boiled and strained out. Add pepper and salt, a good lump of butter rolled in flour, and some chopped parsley. Simmer three minutes, and turn into a vegetable dish.

MIXED PICKLES,

Home-made or bought, should be passed with the cutlets.

JAM PUDDING.

3 cups of milk.
4 eggs.
¾ of a cup of sugar.
Bread and butter.
Sweet jam—berry, peach, or quince.

Spread slices of stale bread with butter, then with jam. Fit them closely into a buttered pudding-dish until it is two-thirds full. Make a custard by adding the beaten eggs and sugar to the scalding milk, but do not let them boil. Lay a heavy saucer upon the bread and butter to prevent floating, and moisten gradually with the hot custard. Let all soak for fifteen minutes before the dish goes into the oven. When it is hot throughout, take off the saucer, that the pudding may brown equally. Eat cold.

TEA, AND ALBERT BISCUITS

May follow the pudding.

Third Week. Wednesday.
——
Sheep’s-head Soup.
Roast Hare, with Currant Jelly. Macaroni, with Ham.
Stuffed Potatoes. Turnips.
——
Fig Pudding.
——

SHEEP’S-HEAD SOUP.

Get your butcher to clean a sheep’s head with the skin on, as he would a calf’s head for soup. Let him also split it in half that you may get at the brains. Take them out, with the tongue, and set aside. Break the bone of the head, wash it well in several waters, and soak for half an hour in salted water. Cover it with fresh water, and heat gradually to a boil. Drain off the water, and thus remove any peculiar odor from the wool or other causes, and add four quarts of cold water, with two turnips, two roots of salsify, two carrots, two stalks of celery, and a bunch of sweet herbs, all chopped fine. Boil slowly four hours. Strain the soup into a bowl, pressing all the nourishment out of the meat, and let it stand in a cool place until the fat rises thickly to the surface to be taken off. The vegetables should be soft enough to pass freely through a fine colander, or coarse strainer, when rubbed. While the soup cools, prepare the force-meat balls. The tongue and brains should have been cooked and chopped up, then rubbed to a paste together and mixed with an equal quantity of bread-crumbs, salt, pepper, and parsley, bound with a raw egg, and rolled into small balls, dipped in flour. Set them, not so near as to touch one another, in a tin plate or dripping-pan, and put in a quick oven until a crust is formed upon the top, when they must be allowed to cool. Return the skimmed broth to the fire; season; boil up once; take off the scum, and add a cup of milk in which you have stirred a tablespoonful of corn-starch. Simmer, stirring all the while, for two minutes after it boils. Put the force-meat balls into the tureen and pour the soup gently over them so as not to break them.

This is a good and cheap soup, and deserves to be better known.

ROAST HARE.

Have the hare skinned and well cleaned. Cooks are often careless about the latter duty. Stuff, as you would a fowl, with a force-meat of bread-crumbs, chopped fat pork, a little sweet marjoram, onion, pepper, and salt, just moistened with hot water. Sew up the hare with fine cotton; tie the legs close to the body in a kneeling position. The English cook it with the head on, but we take it off as more seemly in our eyes. Lay in the dripping-pan, back uppermost; pour two cups of boiling water over it; cover with another pan and bake, closely covered, except when you baste it with butter and water, for three-quarters of an hour. Uncover, baste freely with the gravy until nicely browned; dredge with flour and anoint with butter until a fine froth appears on the surface. Take up the hare, put on a hot dish, and keep covered while you make the gravy. Strain, and skim that left in the pan; season, thicken with browned flour, stir in a good spoonful of currant-jelly, and some chopped parsley; boil up; pour a few spoonfuls of it over the hare; serve the rest in a gravy-boat. Clip, instead of tearing hard at the cotton threads. Send currant-jelly around with it.

MACARONI AND HAM.

Break the macaroni into inch lengths, and stew ten minutes in boiling water. Meanwhile, cut two slices of corned (not smoked) ham into dice, wash well and put on to boil in a cup of cold water. Drain the macaroni, and when the ham has cooked for ten minutes after coming to a boil, pour it, with the liquor, over the macaroni. Season with pepper, simmer in a closed farina-kettle for fifteen minutes; add a little chopped parsley, cover, and let it stand a minute more, and serve in a deep dish. The fatter the ham the better for this dish. Always pass grated cheese with stewed macaroni.

STUFFED POTATOES.

Wash and wipe large, fair potatoes, and bake soft. Cut a round piece from the top of each, and carefully preserve it. Scrape out the inside with a spoon without breaking the skin, and set aside the empty cases with the covers. Mash the potato which you have taken out, smoothly, working into it butter, a raw egg, a little cream, pepper, and salt. When soft, heat in a saucepan set over the fire in boiling water. Stir until smoking hot, fill the skins with the mixture, put on the caps, set in the oven for three minutes, and send to table wrapped in a heated napkin.

TURNIPS.

Boil, sliced or quartered, until soft all through; drain well and mash in a colander with a wooden spoon or beetle, very quickly, lest they should cool. Cold turnips are detestable. Work in a little salt and a good lump of butter; serve in a hot dish, smoothly rounded on top, with a pat of pepper here and there.

FIG PUDDING.

½ lb. good dried figs, washed, wiped, and minced.
2 cups fine, dry bread-crumbs.
3 eggs.
½ cup beef suet, powdered.
2 scant cups of milk.
½ cup of white sugar.
A little salt.
A pinch of soda, dissolved in hot water and stirred into the milk.

Soak the crumbs in the milk. Add the eggs, beaten light, with the sugar, salt, suet, and figs. Beat three minutes, put in a buttered mould with a tight top; set in boiling water with a weight on the cover, to prevent the mould from upsetting, and boil three hours.

Eat hot, with hard sauce, or butter and powdered sugar, mixed with nutmeg. It is very good.

Third Week. Thursday.
——
Veal and Rice Broth.
Stewed Mutton à la Jardinière. Potato Puff.
Pork and Beans. Grape Jelly.
——
Minced Pudding.
Apples, Nuts, and Raisins.
——

VEAL AND RICE BROTH.

4 lbs. knuckle of veal, well broken up.
1 onion.
2 stalks of celery.
½ cup of rice, washed and picked over.
Chopped parsley, pepper, and salt.
1 cup of milk.
4 qts. of cold water.
1 tablespoonful corn-starch.

Put on the veal and bones, with the onion and celery minced, in four quarts of cold water. Boil gently after it begins to bubble, four hours, keeping the pot-lid on. Soak the rice in lukewarm water, enough to cover it well—adding warmer as it swells—for one hour. Cook in the same water, never touching with a spoon, but _shaking_ up from the bottom, now and then. Strain and press the soup into a bowl; cool to throw up the fat for the skimmer, and return to the pot. Salt and pepper; boil up and skim, and stir in the corn-starch wet up in the milk. Simmer three minutes; put in the rice with the water in which it was boiled, and the parsley. Simmer very gently five minutes, and pour out.

MUTTON À LA JARDINIÈRE.

5 lbs. of mutton, breast or neck, all in one piece.
2 onions, peeled.
1 carrot, peeled.
2 turnips, peeled.
1 pint canned tomatoes.
A few sprigs of cauliflower.
2 stalks of blanched celery.
Pepper and salt.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
1 tablespoonful of corn-starch.
Dripping for frying.

Fry the mutton (whole) in a large frying-pan, until it is lightly browned on both sides. Put into a deep, broad saucepan with all the vegetables (also whole) except the tomatoes; cover with cold water, and stew, closely covered, for an hour after they begin to boil. Take out the vegetables, and set aside; add boiling water to the meat, if it is not covered, and simmer steadily, never fast, two hours longer. The meat should be tender throughout, even the fibres. Turn off all the gravy, except about half a cupful, fit the pot-lid on very tightly, and leave the meat where it will keep just below the cooking-point. Strain the gravy you have poured off; leave it to cool until the fat rises. Skim, and return to the pot with the tomatoes. Season, and boil _fast_, skimming two or three times, until it is reduced to one-half the original quantity, or just enough to half cover the meat. Thicken with corn-starch, and put in the meat, with its juices from the bottom of the pot. Simmer, closely covered, half an hour. Cut the now cooled vegetables into neat dice; put the butter into a saucepan, and when it is hot, the vegetables. Shake all together until smoking hot, season, add a little gravy from the meat, and leave them to keep hot in it while you dish the mutton. Put it in the middle of a flat dish, and put the vegetables around it in separate mounds, with sprigs of parsley or celery between. Pour gravy over the mutton.

Try this dish. It is not difficult of preparation, diffuse as I have made the directions. It is, if well managed and discreetly seasoned, a family dinner of itself, and a very cheap one.

POTATO PUFF.

Mash the potatoes as usual; beat in more milk than is your custom, and a couple of eggs, whipping all to a cream, and seasoning well. Pour into a buttered pudding-dish, and bake quickly to a good brown.

PORK AND BEANS.

Soak a quart of dried beans overnight in soft water. Change this for more and warmer in the morning, and, two hours later, put them on to boil in cold. When they are soft, drain well, put into a deep dish; and sink in the middle a pound of salt pork (the “middling” is best), leaving only the top visible. The pork should have been previously parboiled. Bake to a fine brown. It is well to score the pork in long furrows to mark the slices, before baking.

MINCED PUDDING.

4 large juicy pippins, pared, cored, and chopped.
¼ lb. of raisins, seeded and chopped.
2 tablespoonfuls beef suet, freed from strings and rubbed to powder.
12 almonds, blanched and minced.
½ cup of sugar for pudding, and three tablespoonfuls for custard.
1 pint of milk.
Stale bread.
Butter to spread it.
2 eggs.
Nutmeg.

Cut the crust from the bread and slice evenly. Butter a shallow pudding-dish, and line it with the slices, fitted neatly together, and well buttered. Spread thickly with a mixture of the ingredients just enumerated, to wit: apples, raisins, suet, and almonds, sweetened with sugar, and spiced with nutmeg. They should form a paste and adhere to the bread. Make a custard by scalding and sweetening the milk, then pouring gradually over the eggs. Soak the bread, etc., with this by pouring it on, a few spoonfuls at a time, until the dish is full. Bake in a moderate oven, for a time covered, lest it should dry out. Eat cold, with powdered sugar sifted over the top.

APPLES, NUTS, AND RAISINS

Should be served on clean plates after the pudding.

Third Week. Friday.
——
Purée of Peas.
Fried Bass. Roast Chicken.
Mashed Potatoes. Stewed Celery.
Fried Salsify. Crab-apple Jelly.
——
Margherita Lemon Custard.
——

PURÉE OF PEAS.

1 pint of split peas, soaked overnight in soft water.
3 onions—small.
3 stalks of celery.
2 carrots—small.
1 bunch of sweet herbs.
1 pint of tomatoes.
Season to taste.
3 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in flour.
3 quarts of water.

Put all on to cook together, except the tomatoes and butter. The vegetables must be chopped fine. Stew steadily and gently three hours. Rub to a purée through a sieve, and put in the tomatoes, freed of bits of skin and cores, and cut into bits. Season, and return to the fire to stew for twenty minutes longer, closely covered. Stir in the butter—divided into teaspoonfuls, each rolled in flour. Boil up and serve. Dice of fried bread should be put into the tureen.

FRIED BASS.

Clean, wipe dry, inside and out, dredge with flour, and season with salt. Fry in hot butter, beef-dripping, or sweet lard. Half butter, half lard is a good mixture for frying fish. The moment the fish are done to a good brown, take them from the fat and drain in a hot colander. Garnish with parsley.

MASHED POTATOES

Must accompany the fish.

ROAST CHICKEN.

Wash well in three waters, adding a little soda to the second. Stuff with a mixture of bread-crumbs, butter, pepper, and salt. Fill the crops and bodies of the fowls; sew them up with strong, not coarse thread, and tie up the necks. Pour a cupful of boiling water over the pair, and roast an hour—or more, if they are large. Baste three times with butter and water, four or five times with their own gravy.

Stew the giblets, necks, and feet in water, enough to cover them well. When you take up the fowls, add this liquor to the gravy left in the dripping-pan, boil up once, thicken with browned flour; add the giblets chopped fine; boil again, and send up in a gravy-boat.

Should there be more gravy than you need, set it away carefully. Each day brings forth a need for such.

CRAB-APPLE JELLY

Is a pleasing sauce for roast fowls.

STEWED CELERY.

Select the best blanched stalks, and lay aside in cold water. Stew three or four stalks of the coarser parts, minced, with a small onion, a few sprigs of parsley, also chopped, and a bone of ham, or other meat. Stew for an hour in enough water to cover them; strain, pressing hard. Cut the choicer celery into pieces two inches long; pour over them the “stock” from the strainer, season with pepper, and, if needed, salt. Stew until very tender. Stir in a good tablespoonful of butter, and a little corn-starch, wet up in cold water. Simmer gently three minutes, and dish.

FRIED SALSIFY.

Scrape and lay in cold water ten minutes. Boil tender, drain, and when cold, mash with a wooden spoon, picking out the fibrous parts. Wet to a paste with milk, work in a little butter, and an egg and a half for each cupful of salsify. Beat the eggs very light. Season to taste, make into round, flat cakes, dredge with flour, and fry to a light brown. Drain off the fat, and serve hot.

MARGHERITA LEMON CUSTARD.

5 eggs.
1 quart of milk.
Half the grated peel of a lemon.
5 tablespoonfuls of white sugar.

Beat the whites of two eggs and the yolks of five very light; add the sugar and pour over these the milk, scalding hot. Lastly, put in the grated peel, pour into a buttered pudding-dish, and set in a pan of hot water. Put both into the oven, and bake the custard until it is well “set.” Then spread with a _méringue_ made of the reserved whites beaten stiff with a little powdered sugar. Shut the oven door, and cook the _méringue_ until slightly tinged with yellow-brown. Eat cold.

Third Week. Saturday.
——
English Soup.
Mutton Chops, Broiled. Browned Potato.
Stewed Tomatoes. Sweet Pickles.
——
Orange Fritters with Beehive Sauce.
Coffee.
——

ENGLISH SOUP.

6 lbs. brisket of beef, cut into thin strips.
2 onions, sliced and fried in dripping.
The bones of yesterday’s chickens.
2 carrots.
3 turnips.
4 stalks of celery.
1 bunch of sweet herbs.
¼ lb. of vermicelli.
Pepper and salt at discretion.
6 quarts of cold water.

Put the beef, cut into strips, the “carcasses” of the chickens broken to pieces, and three quarts of cold water, into a large soup-pot, and heat gradually. When it boils, skim well, and add the fried onion and other vegetables, cut fine, and three quarts more of _cold_ water. Stew, with the pot-lid on, five hours, after it again boils, giving it no attention save to see that it never boils fast, and that the liquid has not diminished to less than three-quarters of the original quantity. Strain at the end of this time, first taking out the meat that has not boiled to shreds, and the bones. Rub the vegetables through the colander; afterwards strain the soup again through your wire strainer or sieve, into the kettle when you have washed it out. Season, and simmer ten minutes after the boil recommences, skimming often. Break the vermicelli into short lengths, put into the soup when you have taken out two quarts for Sunday’s “stock.” Cook gently twelve minutes after the vermicelli goes in.

At first glance, the quantity of meat prescribed for this soup may seem extravagant; but, apart from the fact that the coarser and cheaper quality is used, you must note that you have now the foundation of three days’ soups, and that you have saved time, no less than money, by making this as I have directed. It is by the long, intelligent look ahead that the mistress proves her right to the title.

MUTTON CHOPS—BROILED.

Next to beef, good mutton, properly cooked, deserves the most prominent place among the meats upon your weekly bill of fare. It is digestible, nutritious, and, as a rule, popular. I therefore offer no apology for the regular and frequent appearance of these two standard articles of diet upon these pages. They may well be named the two staves of healthful existence—for civilized humanity, at least.

Trim your mutton chops, if your butcher has neglected to do it, leaving a naked end of bone as a “handle” upon each. Lay them for fifteen minutes in a little melted butter, turning them several times. Then hold each up for a moment, to let all the butter drip off that will, and broil over a clear fire, watching constantly and turning them often when the falling fat threatens a blaze from below. If your gridiron is beneath the grate, they can be cooked far more satisfactorily, and with one-tenth of the trouble. Pepper and salt when they are laid upon a hot dish, and put a bit of butter upon each.

SWEET PICKLES

“Go” well with broiled chops. For receipts for these and other pickles, with preserves and fruit jellies, the reader is respectfully referred to “COMMON SENSE IN THE HOUSEHOLD, NO. 1, GENERAL RECEIPTS.”

BROWNED POTATO.

Mash your potatoes with milk, butter, and salt; heap as irregularly as possible in a vegetable dish, and hold a red-hot shovel close to them. They will brown more quickly if you glaze them with butter so soon as a crust is formed by the hot shovel, then heat it again and repeat the browning.

STEWED TOMATOES.

To one can of tomatoes allow a saltspoonful of salt, half as much pepper, a teaspoonful of sugar, and a great tablespoonful of butter. Drain off half the liquor, season thus, and stew _fast_ for twenty minutes, in a vessel set within another filled with water on the hard boil. This receipt was given to me by a notable housewife. It is worth trying for her sake—and variety’s.

ORANGE FRITTERS.

3 cups of milk.
2 cups of prepared flour.
4 eggs.
A little salt.
Lard for frying.
6 or 8 sweet oranges.
A little powdered sugar.

Take the peel and thick white skin from the oranges. Slice, and take out the seeds. Make a batter of the ingredients given above, taking care not to get it too thin. Dip each slice in this dexterously and fry in boiling lard. Drain in a hot colander, and eat with the sauce given below.

BEEHIVE SAUCE.

½ cup of butter.
2 cups of sugar.
Juice and peel of a lemon.
½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
¼ cup of currant jelly, or cranberry syrup.

Make hard sauce in the usual way by creaming the butter and sugar. Before beating in the lemon-juice and nutmeg, set aside three tablespoonfuls to be colored. Having added lemon and spice to the larger quantity, color the less by whipping in currant jelly or cranberry syrup, until it is of a rich pink. Shape the white sauce into a conical mound. Roll a sheet of note paper into a long, narrow funnel, tie a string about it to keep it in shape, and fill with colored sauce. Squeeze it gently through the aperture at the small end, beginning at the base, and winding round the cone to the top, guiding it so that the white will show prettily between the pink ridges.

The effect is pleasing and costs little trouble to produce.

COFFEE

Is believed by some to aid digestion, and, since fritters are not generally classed among very wholesome dainties, it may be as well to give John and John’s wife—_not_ the children—a cup of the fragrant elixir as a possible preventive against an attack of dyspepsia. It always lends grace even to a homely dinner.

Fourth Week. Sunday.
——
German Sago Soup.
Boiled Turkey with Oyster Sauce. Savory Rice Pudding.
Potatoes au Maître d’hôtel. Celery.
Grape Jelly.
——
Mince Pie.
Bananas and Oranges.
——

GERMAN SAGO SOUP.

Soak half a cup of German sago in enough water to cover it entirely for two hours. Heat yesterday’s soup to boiling, with a little of the reserved “stock,” should the supply be too small; stir in the sago with a little salt, until dissolved, and serve.

BOILED TURKEY AND OYSTER SAUCE.

15 oysters.
A little milk, bread-crumbs, butter and seasoning.
Wheat flour.

Chop about fifteen oysters and work up with them bread-crumbs, a spoonful of butter, with pepper and salt. Stuff the turkey as for roasting; sew it up, neatly, in a thin cloth fitted to every part, having dredged the cloth well inside with flour. Boil slowly, especially at first, allowing fifteen minutes to a pound. The water should be lukewarm when the turkey goes in. Salt and save the liquor in which the fowl was boiled.

OYSTER SAUCE.

12 oysters, cut into thirds.
1 cupful of milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
2 teaspoonfuls rice, or wheat flour.
Flavoring to taste.
Chopped parsley.

Drain the liquor from the oysters before you cut them up. Boil the liquor two minutes, and add the milk. When this is scalding hot, strain and return to the saucepan. Wet the flour with cold water and stir into the sauce. As it thickens, put in the butter, then pepper and salt, with a very little parsley. The juice of a half a lemon is a pleasant flavoring. Stir it in after taking the sauce from the fire. Before this, and so soon as the flour is well incorporated with the other ingredients, add the oysters, each cut into three pieces. Simmer five minutes and pour into a gravy-tureen. Some also pour a little over the turkey on the dish. Garnish with slices of boiled egg and celery tops.

SAVORY RICE PUDDING.

1 teacupful of rice.
Giblets of the turkey.
A slice of fat salt pork, chopped very fine.
Half a _small_ onion, also minced.
1 small cup of milk.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
Pepper and salt.

Wash the rice thoroughly; clean the giblets; soak them an hour in salted water, cut each into several pieces, and put on to stew with the pork and rice in nearly a quart of cold water. Cook slowly until the giblets are tender and the rice soft. The grains should be kept as whole as possible, so do not use a spoon in stirring, but shake up the saucepan, which should be set in another of boiling water. The rice should, by this time, be nearly dry. Take out the giblets and chop fine. Pour on the rice the milk, previously heated with the minced onions, and then strained. When this is again scalding, stir in the giblets, then the butter and seasoning. Cover and simmer for ten minutes. Wet a round or oval pan with cold water; press the rice firmly into it, so that it may take the shape, and turn out carefully upon a flat dish. Set in the oven for two minutes before sending to table. It should be stiff enough to take the mould, yet not dry.

POTATOES AU MAÎTRE D’HÔTEL.

Slice cold boiled potatoes a quarter of an inch thick, and put into a saucepan containing enough milk, already heated, to cover them—barely. When all are smoking hot, add a tablespoonful or more of butter, pepper, salt, and minced parsley. Add a teaspoonful of flour wet in cold water; heat quickly to a boil; put in the juice of half a lemon; pour into a deep dish without further cooking.

CELERY AND GRAPE JELLY

Should flank the castor, or _épergne_, or whatever may be your centre-piece.

MINCE PIE.

A receipt for mince-meat will be found in the proper order in the _menu_ for next December. I take it for granted that, like the wise woman you are, you have laid up in the store-room enough from your Christmas supply to last for some weeks to come. If not, let me advise you to get a box of “ATMORE’S CELEBRATED MINCE-MEAT,” and fill your pastry-crusts, instead of repeating so soon the tedious operation so lately performed. It comes in neat, wooden cans, and is really _good_. If you like, you can add more sugar and brandy. N. B.—_My_ John has a sweet tooth. Has yours?

Make the paste by rubbing into a quart of your best flour one-third of a pound of sweet lard. Chop it in with a broad knife, if you have plenty of time. Wet up with ice-water, roll out very thin, and cover with “dabs” of butter, also of the best. Fold into a tight roll, flatten with a few strokes of the rolling-pin, and roll out into a sheet as thin as the first; baste again with the butter; roll up and out into a third sheet hardly thicker than drawing-paper; a third time dot with butter, and fold up closely. Having used as much butter for this purpose as you have lard, set aside your last roll for an hour in a very cold place. Then roll out, line your pie-plates with the paste, fill with mince-meat; put strips, cut with a jagging-iron, across them in squares or triangles, and bake in a steady, never a dull, heat.

These pies, like all others, must be made on Saturday, and warmed up for Sabbath—unless you prefer to line your plates on Saturday, and set them aside until next day, then fill the raw, crisp paste with the mince-meat, and bake. The paste will be the better, instead of worse, for standing overnight, and the trouble of baking scarcely exceed that of warming over.

BANANAS AND ORANGES

May solace the disappointment of the dyspeptic or very juvenile members of the family party, who “dare not touch mince pie.”

Fourth week. Monday.
——
Combination Soup.
Mince of Fowl. Turkey Salad.
Sweet Potatoes, Baked. Brussels Sprouts.
——
Sweet Macaroni, with Brandied Fruit.
Chocolate.
——

COMBINATION SOUP.

Put the remains of yesterday’s soup and of the stock reserved on Saturday together, and heat almost to boiling. Split and toast crisp half a dozen Boston crackers; butter while hot, set in the oven until the butter has soaked in, when put on more. Lay in the bottom of your soup-tureen, wet with a little boiling milk, and when they have soaked this up, pour on the soup.

MINCE OF FOWL.

Set what was left of yesterday’s oyster-sauce over the fire to heat, thinning, if necessary, with a little milk. Or, if you have no sauce, substitute a cupful of drawn butter, made from the liquor in which the turkey was boiled on Sunday, reserving the rest for another day’s soup. Cut the meat closely from the bones of the turkey (saving these, also). Set aside the white flesh for a nice little dish of salad. Cut the rest, freed from skin and gristle, into pieces of nearly uniform length, not more than an inch long. When your sauce boils, put in the meat, simmer until smoking hot, then take off the saucepan, and pour gradually over two beaten eggs. Cover the bottom of a pudding-dish with bread-crumbs, when you have greased it well; season the mince to taste; fill up the dish with it; put another layer of bread-crumbs, on top, and stick bits of butter over these. Bake covered, until bubbling hot, then brown lightly. This will be found very delightful.

TURKEY SALAD.

The white meat of the turkey cut up in small pieces. An equal quantity of blanched celery, also cut into lengths. Salt slightly, and when dinner is nearly ready pour over them a dressing made of the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs rubbed to a powder with a teaspoonful of sugar, half as much salt, pepper and made mustard, when worked into a paste with two tablespoonfuls of oil, and six of vinegar. Toss up the salad well with a silver fork, and garnish with white of egg cut into rings.

SWEET POTATOES—BAKED.

Select those which are nearly of a size, and not too large, or so small as to shrivel into dry husks. Wash, wipe, and bake in a moderate oven until, by pinching, you find that they are soft at heart.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS.

Wash carefully, cut off the lower part of the stems, and lay in cold water, slightly salted, for half an hour. Cook quickly, in boiling water, with a very little salt, for fifteen minutes, or until tender. Drain thoroughly, heap neatly upon a dish, and put a few spoonfuls of melted butter, peppered to taste, upon them. Eat hot.

SWEET MACARONI.

½ lb. of macaroni.
1 pint of milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
4 tablespoonfuls of cream.
4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Nutmeg and vanilla.
A little salt.

Break the macaroni into short pieces, put into a farina-kettle, cover with the milk, put on the lid of the kettle, and cook with boiling water in the outer vessel, until the milk is soaked up and the macaroni looks clear, but has not begun to break. Add the butter, sugar, and flavoring, and, if you have it, a few spoonfuls of cream. If you have not, thicken a little milk slightly with corn-starch, and use instead. Cover, and set in the boiling water for ten minutes longer. Serve in a deep dish, and send around canned or brandied peaches with it.

CHOCOLATE.

To one pint of boiling water allow six tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate wet up to a paste in cold water. Boil twenty minutes, put in one pint of milk and boil ten minutes more. Stir often. It saves time, if you know the tastes of those who are to drink it, if you sweeten it in the saucepan.

Fourth Week. Tuesday.
——
Mother’s Soup.
Beefsteak and Onions. Sweet and Irish Potatoes, Chopped.
Mixed Pickles. Corn and Tomatoes, Stewed.
——
Crème du Thé, Café et Chocolat.
——

MOTHER’S SOUP.

Bones of yesterday’s turkey, with the stuffing.
A slice of lean ham.
The bone from your steak, and half a can of sweet corn.
1 onion, small.
1 stalk of celery.
Bunch of sweet herbs.
Pepper and salt.
3 quarts of water.

Put on bones, ham (chopped), and the vegetables, cut up with the sweet herbs, but not the corn, in a soup-kettle; cover well with the liquor in which the turkey was cooked, and boil slowly, untouched, two hours. Take out the bones, and strain the soup, rubbing the vegetables through the strainer, into a bowl. Return this to the fire and with it the corn and turkey dressing. Bring to a gentle boil and keep it steady, for fully half an hour. Season, and simmer a quarter of an hour longer. The corn and dressing will thicken it sufficiently.

BEEFSTEAK WITH ONIONS.

While your steak is broiling, watched by some one else, fry three or four sliced onions in a pan with some beef dripping or butter. Stir and shake them until they begin to brown. Dish your steak, salt and pepper, and lay the onions on top. Cover, and let all stand where they will keep hot, for five minutes. Do not help onions to any one unless you are sure that he likes them.

There is no dish so good for keeping a steak hot, yet juicy, as a hot-water chafing-dish. No household can afford to be without one, if no more.

MIXED PICKLES

Give the needed piquancy to steak. Home-made ones are best.

SWEET AND IRISH POTATOES—CHOPPED.

Chop cold boiled Irish potatoes and mix with them the cold sweet ones left from Monday—in equal parts, if convenient—or, if you have but two or three, make them do. There is philosophy, and religion, too, sometimes, in “making things do.” Heating a little butter in a saucepan, stir in the potatoes when it begins to “fizzle.” Shake and toss them up with a wooden fork until they are very hot; season with pepper and salt, and dish.

CORN AND TOMATOES STEWED.

To a can of tomatoes add the half can of corn left from your soup. Stew together half an hour, with a little minced onion; then pepper and salt to taste, and stir in a great spoonful of butter with a very little sugar. Simmer ten minutes before turning out.

CRÈME DU THÉ, CAFÉ ET CHOCOLAT.

1 quart of milk.
1 package of Cooper’s gelatine.
1 cup of sugar.
2 tablespoonfuls grated chocolate.
1 cup _strong_ tea.
1 cup of strong coffee.

Soak the gelatine for an hour in a cup of cold water. Heat the milk to boiling and add the gelatine. So soon as this is dissolved, put in the sugar, stir until melted, and take the saucepan from the fire. Strain through thin muslin and divide into three parts. Into the largest stir the chocolate, rubbed smooth in cold water; into another the tea, and into a third equal to the second, the coffee. Return that containing the chocolate to the farina-kettle, and heat scalding hot, stirring all the while. Rinse out the kettle well with boiling water, and put in, successively, those portions flavored with the tea and the coffee, scalding the vessel between each. Wet several small cups or glasses with cold water. Pour the chocolate into some, the tea into others, and the coffee blanc-mange into the rest. When cold, turn out upon a flat dish, and eat with sugar and sweet cream. It will “form” in about six hours. This is a dessert by no means tedious or difficult of preparation, and is worth trying, being both dainty and wholesome.

Fourth Week. Wednesday.
——
Lexington Soup.
Boiled Chickens and Macaroni. Whipped Potatoes.
Chow-chow. Parsnip Cakes.
——
Jam Roley-Poley with Wine Sauce.
Apples and Nuts.
——

LEXINGTON SOUP.

2 lbs. of veal.
1 lb. of mutton, with some bones.
1 onion.
1 carrot.
½ cup of rice.
1 cup of split peas.
4 quarts of water.
Sweet herbs, pepper and salt.

Mince the meat and vegetables and crack the bones. The peas should have been soaked overnight in soft water, the rice washed and picked over. Put all together in your soup-kettle, pour in the water and stew gently, covered, five hours. Should the water waste too much, put in more from the tea-kettle. At the end of this time, strain, rubbing the vegetables through a colander. Return to the fire, season, and boil slowly ten minutes, skimming carefully. Put sliced lemon, from which the yellow rind has been pared, into the tureen, and pour the soup upon it. Serve a slice in each plateful.

BOILED CHICKENS AND MACARONI.

Clean, wash, and stuff your chickens as for roasting; sew each up in a piece of new tarlatan, fitted snugly to the shape. Boil, putting them down in pretty hot, but not scalding water, allowing twelve minutes to the number of pounds in _one_ of the pair, and that the larger. About half an hour before they are to be served take out a large cupful of the liquor from the pot and put into a saucepan. Season it, and boil for five minutes with a small chopped onion. Strain, and when again hot, drop in a double handful of macaroni, broken into short lengths. Cook until tender, by which time the liquor should be absorbed by the macaroni. The saucepan should be set in another, holding boiling water, that there may be no danger of scorching while stewing. Make a flattened mound of the macaroni upon a hot dish; lay the chickens upon it, and anoint them well with melted butter, made more salt than usual. Serve them out together, and have grated cheese for such as wish it.

CHOW-CHOW,

Or “picklette,” in American store-rooms—is a keen appetizer and especially harmonious with boiled fowls. For receipt for making in winter or summer, see “General Receipts, No. 1, Common Sense Series,” page 491.

PARSNIP CAKES.

Scrape, wash, boil, and mash the parsnips. When cold, season with salt and pepper, and, flouring your hands, make them into small, flat cakes. Roll in flour and fry in boiling dripping. Drain dry and send up on a hot dish.

WHIPPED POTATOES.

Instead of mashing the potatoes in the ordinary way, whip with a fork until light and dry. Then whip in a little melted butter and some milk with salt to taste, beating up fast until you have a creamy compound, almost like a _méringue_. Pile as lightly and irregularly as you can upon a hot dish.

JAM ROLEY-POLEY.

1 quart of _prepared_ flour.
1 tablespoonful of butter and the same of lard.
2 cups of milk, or enough to make soft dough.
1 large cup of fruit or berry jam.

Rub lard and butter into the flour, with a little salt, and wet with cold milk into a soft paste. Roll out into a pretty thick crust—say about a quarter of an inch—and trim into an oblong sheet. Spread this generously with jam, leaving a margin at each end. Roll up closely, the fruit inside. Pinch the open ends together, and baste neatly in a floured bag fitted to the roll, but not so tightly as to interfere with the swelling of the pudding. Boil an hour and a half in hot water that, from first to last, is not once off the boil. Dip the cloth into cold water before attempting to turn the roley-poley out—but for one hasty second only.

WINE SAUCE.

3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
2 cupfuls of powdered sugar.
½ cup of wine.
Grated peel of half a lemon.
½ cupful of boiling water.
1 teaspoonful of corn-starch.
Nutmeg.

Cream the butter and sugar, adding the boiling water, a little at a time, until you have used the half cupful. Put on in a saucepan, and stir in the corn-starch wet up with cold milk. When it has thickened, put in the lemon-peel and nutmeg. Simmer one minute, add the wine, put on the lid of the saucepan and set in hot water to keep warm until wanted.

APPLES AND NUTS,

Being cheap and abundant at this season, should form the sequel of many dinners.

Fourth Week. Thursday.
——
White Soup.
Langue de Bœuf, or Beef’s Tongue. Fried Brains and Green Peas.
Sauce Piquante. Hominy Croquettes.
Cold Slaw.
——
Brown Betty.
——

WHITE SOUP.

Skeletons of yesterday’s chickens.
3 or 4 lbs. of veal bones, cracked to pieces.
1 lb. of lean veal, cut small.
1 pint of milk.
1 egg.
1 small cup of _boiled_ farina.
Salt, pepper, minced onion and parsley for seasoning.
1 quart of water, and liquor in which chickens were boiled.

Cover the broken chicken and veal bones, the minced veal, parsley, and onion with the cold water and chicken liquor and simmer three hours, until the three quarts are reduced to two. Strain the liquor; put back into the pot; salt and pepper; boil gently and skim for ten minutes before adding the milk and boiled farina. Simmer another ten minutes; take out a cupful and pour over the beaten egg. Mix well, and put with the soup; let all stand covered, off the fire, two minutes, and serve.

LANGUE DE BŒUF, OR BEEF’S TONGUE.

Get your butcher to save you a fresh, large beef’s tongue, the finest he can get. Soak, in cold water, a little salt, six hours—overnight, if you choose—changing the water before you go to bed. Wipe it, trim and scrape it, and plunging into boiling water, keep it at a slow boil for an hour and a half. Take it up, pepper and salt; brush over with beaten egg and coat thickly with bread-crumbs; lay in your dripping-pan and bake, basting often with butter melted in a _little_ water. Half an hour in a good oven should suffice. Put on a hot dish and cover while you prepare the sauce.

SAUCE PIQUANTE.

1 cupful of the liquor in which the tongue was boiled.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
1 teaspoonful of made mustard.
A little salt and pepper.
1 heaping tablespoonful of browned flour.
1 teaspoonful mixed parsley and sweet marjoram.
1 tablespoonful of onion vinegar.

Brown the butter by shaking it over a clear fire in a saucepan. Heat the cupful of liquor to a boil, skim and season it with salt and pepper. Skim again before stirring in the flour wet up with cold water. As it thickens, put in the butter, herbs, mustard, and vinegar. Boil up, pour half over the tongue, the rest into a sauce-boat.

FRIED BRAINS AND GREEN PEAS.

Open a can of green peas an hour before cooking them, and turn into a bowl. If there is not liquor in the can to cover them, add a little water, slightly salted, and cook over twenty minutes after they boil. Drain, pepper and salt; stir in a lump of butter nearly as large as an egg, and put into a vegetable dish, the fried brains arranged along the base of the mound.

Wash a calf’s brains in several waters; scald in boiling, then lay in ice-cold water, for half an hour. Wipe, and beat them into a paste; season, work in a little butter, a beaten egg, and enough flour to hold the paste together. Fry upon a griddle in small cakes. Drain off every drop of fat. Eat hot.

A nice and savory garnish.

HOMINY CROQUETTES.

2 cups fine hominy, boiled and cold.
2 beaten eggs.
1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
Salt to taste.
1 teaspoonful of sugar.

Work the butter into the hominy until the latter is smooth; then the eggs, salt and sugar. Beat hard with a wooden spoon to get out lumps and mix well. Make into oval balls with floured hands. Roll each in flour, and fry in sweet dripping or lard, putting in a few at a time and turning over with care as they brown. Drain in a hot colander.

COLD SLAW.

Chop or shred a small white cabbage. Prepare a dressing in the proportion of one tablespoonful of oil to four of vinegar, a teaspoonful of made mustard, the same quantity of salt and sugar, and half as much pepper. Pour over the salad, adding, if you choose, three tablespoonfuls of minced celery; toss up well and put into a glass bowl.

BROWN BETTY.

2 cups chopped apples, tart ones.
½ cup of sugar.
1 cup of bread-crumbs.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
1 teaspoonful of nutmeg.

Put a layer of chopped apple in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Sprinkle well with sugar, stick bits of butter here and there and add a pinch or two of nutmeg. Cover with bread-crumbs, then more apple. In this order of alternation fill the dish, spreading the surface with bread-crumbs. Cover, steam nearly an hour in a moderate oven; then brown quickly.

For sauce, mix a teaspoonful of cinnamon with a cup of powdered sugar. Butter the hot “Betty” as you fill each saucer, and strew with this mixture. Or it is excellent, eaten warm, not hot, with cream and sugar.

Fourth Week. Friday.
——
Potato Soup.
Fried Oysters. Roast Mutton.
Spinach à la Crème. Potatoes Stewed Whole.
——
French Tapioca Custard.
——

POTATO SOUP.

1 dozen mealy potatoes.
1 can of tomatoes.
2 onions.
3 stalks of celery.
4 tablespoonfuls of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour.
1 bunch of sweet herbs.
1 lump of white sugar.
Salt and pepper to taste.
3 quarts of water.
Fried bread.

Parboil the potatoes; then slice and put them into the soup-pot with the tomatoes, the onions, minced, and the celery and herbs chopped small. Pour on three quarts of water, and stew for one hour, or until the vegetables can be rubbed easily through the colander. Strain, return to the pot, drop in the sugar, pepper and salt judiciously, boil up and skim. Stir in the butter, and simmer, covered, for ten minutes. Have dice of fried bread in the tureen, upon which pour the soup.

FRIED OYSTERS.

Select for this the finest oysters. Drain, and wipe them by spreading them upon a cloth, laying another over them, and pressing lightly. Roll each in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs with which have been mixed a little salt and less pepper, and fry in a mixture of equal parts of lard and butter.

Drain each in a wire spoon, and eat them hot, with bread and butter.

ROAST MUTTON.

Wash the meat well and wipe with a clean cloth. Put into the dripping-pan, pour a cup of boiling water over it, and roast, basting often, for a while, with salt and water, afterwards with its own gravy. Allow twelve minutes to each pound of meat, and keep the fire at a steady, moderate heat. Should it brown too fast, cover with a sheet of paper. Take up the meat, put it on a hot dish; thicken the gravy with browned flour, having first taken off _all_ the fat you can—season with pepper and salt, boil up, skim and serve. Pass currant jelly with it.

SPINACH À LA CRÈME.

Pick over and wash the spinach, and cut the leaves from the stalks. Boil in hot water, a little salted, about twenty minutes. Drain, put into a wooden tray, or upon a board; chop _very_ fine, and rub through a colander. Put into a saucepan; stir until it begins to smoke throughout. Add then two tablespoonfuls of butter for a good-sized dish, a teaspoonful of white sugar, three tablespoonfuls of milk, salt and pepper to liking. _Beat_, as it heats, with a silver fork or wire spoon. Some put in a little nutmeg, and most people like it. Cook thus until it begins to bubble up as you beat it. Pour into a deep dish, surround with sliced egg, and serve.

POTATOES STEWED WHOLE.

Pare the potatoes and boil in water which was cold when they went in. When they are done, as is proved by piercing the largest with a fork, turn off the water, and cover them barely with milk already heated. Stew in this five minutes; take the potatoes out, and put into a covered deep dish. Add to the milk in the saucepan a good lump of butter, rolled in flour, some chopped parsley, pepper and salt. Boil up once. Crack each potato as it lies in the dish, by pressing with the back of a spoon; pour the hot milk over them; let them stand three minutes in it, and send to table.

FRENCH TAPIOCA CUSTARD.

5 dessertspoonfuls of tapioca.
1 quart of milk.
1 pint of cold water.
3 eggs.
1 teaspoonful of vanilla.
1 heaping cup of sugar.
A pinch of salt.

Soak the tapioca in the water five hours. Heat the milk to scalding; add the tapioca, the water in which it was soaked, and the salt. Stir to boiling, and pour gradually upon the yolks and sugar, which should have been beaten together. Boil again, stirring constantly, about five minutes, or until it begins to thicken well. Turn into a bowl and stir gently into the custard the frothed whites and the flavoring. Eat cold.

Fourth Week. Saturday.
——
Old Hare Soup.
Hot Pot. Turnips with White Sauce.
Boiled Rice, au Genève. Cucumber Pickle.
——
Cabinet Pudding.
Cabinet Pudding Sauce.
——

OLD HARE SOUP.

1 hare, or rabbit, full grown.
The bones from yesterday’s mutton broken up well.
A slice of corned ham, or some bones of salt pork.
1 onion.
Chopped parsley.
Pepper and salt.
1 tablespoonful of mushroom or walnut catsup.
3 quarts of water.

Clean the hare carefully and cut to pieces, cracking all the bones. Put into the soup-kettle with the mutton bones, the bacon, onion, and parsley. Pour on three quarts of cold water; put on the lid tightly, and stew four hours very slowly. By this time the meat should be in shreds. Strain it, return to the fire, season it, stew and skim five minutes. Slice three boiled eggs and put into the tureen and pour the soup over them.

HOT POT.

Put into a deep bake-dish a layer of cold mutton left from your roast, freed from fat and skin and cut into strips two inches long by one wide. Overlay these with slices of _parboiled_ potatoes, a little minced onion, an oyster or two chopped, some tiny bits of butter, with salt and pepper. Repeat this process until your meat is used up. The top layer should be potatoes. Add a cupful of gravy from Friday’s dinner (or elsewhere), cover very closely and bake one hour before lifting the lid. Peep in to see if the contents are done—they will be if your fire is tolerably strong. Turn out into a deep dish.

CUCUMBER PICKLES

Are a better condiment for this dish than any others.

TURNIPS WITH WHITE SAUCE.

Peel and quarter your turnips. Leave in cold water half an hour. Put on in hot water, and boil until tender. Drain and cover with a sauce prepared by heating a cup of milk, thickening it with a heaping teaspoonful of corn-starch, and stirring in a great spoonful of butter with pepper and salt to season it well. Put this, when you have added the turnips, into a vessel set within another of boiling water, and let them stand covered, without cooking, ten minutes before serving.

BOILED RICE AU GENÈVE.