Chapter V: Part 5

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

OYSTER PIE.

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

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

CALF’S LIVER À L’ANGLAISE.

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

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

POTATOES AU GRATIN.

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

STEWED PARSNIPS.

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

PICKLETTE AND APPLE SAUCE.

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

CHOCOLATE CUSTARD.

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

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

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

MACARONI SOUP.

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

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

BAKED HAM.

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

CHEESE FONDU.

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

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

SPINACH WITH EGGS.

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

STEWED POTATOES.

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

SEYMOUR PUDDING.

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

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

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

BEEF AND BARLEY SOUP.

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

STEAMED TURKEY.

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

CRANBERRY SAUCE

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

NAPLES RICE PUDDING.

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

BOILED SWEET POTATOES.

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

PUMPKIN PIE.

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

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

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

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

GIBLET SOUP.

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

TURKEY AND HAM.

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

CORN PUDDINGS.

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

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

BAKED POTATOES.

Wash, wipe, and bake in a moderate oven. When done, cut a round piece of skin almost entirely from the top of each, leaving a “hinge” at one side. With a small knife make an incision in the mealy part of the potato, _i. e._, the heart, put in a pinch of salt, and a bit of butter, replace the flap of skin, and send hot to table.

FARINA CUSTARD.

1 quart of milk.
4 tablespoonfuls of farina.
3 eggs well beaten.
1 cup of sugar.
Vanilla essence—2 teaspoonfuls.
1 saltspoonful of salt.

Heat the milk to scalding; stir in the farina, which should have been previously soaked in a little cold water for an hour. Cook in a farina-kettle fifteen minutes, stirring often. Take out a cupful and beat into the eggs already whipped up with the sugar. Put into the kettle, stir in salt and flavoring, boil two minutes, and pour into a deep dish. Eat warm, putting a teaspoonful of sweet fruit jelly upon the top of each saucerful in serving.

Third Week. Tuesday.
——
Plain Calf’s Head Soup.
Boiled Mutton. Minced Cabbage.
String-Beans. Beet-root Salad.
——
Corn Meal Puffs.
——

PLAIN CALF’S HEAD SOUP.

Wash a calf’s head (cleaned with the skin on), in three waters, and soak one hour in salted water. Then put on to boil in five quarts of cold water. Cook until the meat slips easily from the bones. Take out the head, remove the bones, and throw back into the soup. Set aside three-quarters of the meat—the best portions—for to-morrow’s dinner. Chop the ears and other refuse parts fine; season with salt, pepper, onion, sweet marjoram, a teaspoonful of ground cloves, and as much allspice—even spoonfuls. Mix all up well, return to the soup and boil down to three quarts. Mash the brains and make into force-meat balls with raw egg, seasoning and enough flour to hold them together; roll in flour and set in a cool place until wanted. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of browned flour wet up with cold water, and stir together five minutes. Strain the soup, put back two quarts over the fire, stir in the thickening of flour and butter, boil up and put in the force-meat balls. Simmer ten minutes, add the juice of a lemon, and a glass of brown sherry, and pour out. The reserved quart of “stock” is for another day’s soup. Do not put the calf’s tongue into the soup. It is indispensable in to-morrow’s ragoût.

BOILED MUTTON.

The best part for boiling is the leg. Put on in boiling water and cook, allowing fifteen minutes to the pound. Make a sauce by taking out a cupful of liquor when it is nearly done, cooling it until you can take off the fat, then heating again in a saucepan and stirring into it one tablespoonful of butter, two teaspoonfuls of flour, wet up with cold water. Stir for five minutes, putting in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and after another boil, take from the fire before you put in the juice of a lemon.

In this, as in other cases where the liquor in which meat is boiled is to be used for broth, salt slightly while cooking, sprinkling all over lightly with salt the moment you take it from the fire. Serve the sauce in a boat.

MINCED CABBAGE.

Boil a firm head of cabbage, quartered, in two waters, throwing the first away after ten minutes’ cooking and putting in more as hot, and a little salted. When it is tender all through, drain and chop quite fine, seasoning with salt, pepper, and a liberal portion of butter. Serve hot in a vegetable dish.

STRING BEANS.

Open a can of string beans an hour before they are to be used. Cut them into short pieces when you are ready to cook them; turn off the liquor and cover them with cold water. Put into a pot with a bit of salt pork a little more than an inch square. Boil slowly until tender, strain, season with pepper, and serve hot, with the pork on top of the pile of beans.

BEET-ROOT SALAD.

Boil the beets until tender; scrape clean; drop into cold water for three minutes. Slice, and pour over them a dressing of vinegar, salt, sugar, made mustard, pepper, and one tablespoonful of oil to four of vinegar. Cover, and let all stand together for two hours. This salad will keep for a couple of days.

CORN-MEAL PUFFS.

1 quart of boiling milk.
2 scant cups of white “corn-flour.”
½ cup of wheat-flour.
1 scant cup of powdered sugar.
A little salt.
4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
½ teaspoonful of soda.
1 teaspoonful of cream tartar.
½ teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and nutmeg.

Sift soda and cream tartar twice through the flour. Then, mix flour and meal together, and sift a third time. Boil the milk and stir into it the meal, flour, and salt. Boil ten minutes, stirring well up from the bottom. Take it off, put into a bowl, add the butter and beat hard for three minutes. Let it cool while you whip the eggs light, then the yolks and sugar and spice together. Beat these into the cold mush, and lastly the frothed whites. Whip all together faithfully, and bake in greased cups or small “corn-bread moulds,” set within a steady oven. When done, turn out and eat hot, breaking—not cutting—them open, and after buttering sprinkling with white sugar.

Third Week. Wednesday.
——
Marie’s Soup.
——
Ragoût of Calf’s Head and Mushrooms. Mashed Turnips.
Creamed Potatoes. Tomato Soy.
——
Sponge-cake Pudding.
Nuts and Raisins.
——

MARIE’S SOUP.

2 sweetbreads.
1 quart of soup jelly, left from yesterday’s stock.
1 quart of cold water.
1 onion.
Bunch of parsley.
2 blades of mace.
A dozen mushrooms.
Pepper and salt.
1 tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up in cold water.

Wash and scald the sweetbreads, and put on to stew in the cold water. When they have boiled slowly half an hour, salt, boil up and skim. Take all the fat from the top of the cold soup-stock, and stir into the liquor already on the fire. Add the onion and parsley minced, and the mace; season to taste, cover and stew gently for one hour. Take out the sweetbreads and lay them where they will cool quickly. Strain the soup, return to the fire; put in a dozen mushrooms (you can buy the French _champignons_ in cans), stew fifteen minutes; cut the sweetbreads into small squares, drop into the soup; thicken with the corn-starch wet with cold water; boil up once and serve.

This soup is very fine.

RAGOÛT OF CALF’S HEAD AND MUSHROOMS.

1 cold boiled calf’s head, cut into slices with the tongue.
1 can French mushrooms, _minus_ those used for the soup.
1 sliced onion.
Pepper, salt, and sweet herbs.
½ teaspoonful mixed mace and allspice.
Juice of a lemon.
Butter or dripping for frying.

Cut three-quarters of the calf’s head—the best parts—into neat slices, also the tongue. Chop the rest, season with the onion, pepper and salt, cover with three cups of cold water, and stew gently down to one cup of gravy. Meanwhile fry the slices of meat in good dripping. Take them out with a wire spoon and put into the bottom of a tin vessel set within another of warm—not boiling—water. Cover and set over the fire. Drain, slice and fry the mushrooms in the fat left in the frying-pan. Drain and lay these upon the meat in the inner vessel. Time the cooking of the gravy so as to have it ready, spiced, and seasoned, to be strained, hot over the meat and mushrooms. Put on a tight lid and _simmer_ fifteen minutes, never boiling once. Strain off the gravy into a saucepan. Thicken, and let it boil up once. Add the lemon-juice, put the meat and mushrooms into a deep dish, and pour the hot gravy over all.

MASHED TURNIPS.

Boil soft, drain and mash, pressing the water out well, return to the saucepan, with a generous lump of butter; pepper and salt; stir constantly until the butter is dissolved, and all smoking hot, and serve in a covered dish.

CREAMED POTATOES.

In mashing them, add more milk than usual, whipping up hard with a silver fork. While still very hot, beat in the white of an egg, already frothed stiffly; pile in a deep dish and set, uncovered, within the oven, until a light crust begins to form on the top, but not long enough to injure the dish. Brush over with butter to glaze it, and serve.

TOMATO SOY

Is an excellent “stock” pickle. For directions for making it, please refer to page 488, “GENERAL RECEIPTS, NO. 1, OF COMMON-SENSE SERIES.”

SPONGE-CAKE PUDDING.

1 stale sponge-cake.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
4 eggs, beaten light.
2 cups of milk.
1 tablespoonful of corn-starch, wet up with cold milk.
Juice of one lemon and half the grated peel.

Slice the cake and lay some of it in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Make a custard by scalding the milk, stirring into it the corn-starch, then pouring it, by degrees, upon the beaten eggs and sugar. Add the lemon; pour over the cake, put another layer of slices; more custard, and so on, until the mould is full. Put a small, heavy plate on top, and let all stand until the custard is soaked up. Cover and bake, half an hour, or until done throughout. Turn out upon a flat dish, sprinkle thickly with white sugar, and eat warm or cold.

NUTS AND RAISINS.

Crack the nuts, and select for table use fair bunches of plump, fresh raisins.

Third Week. Thursday.
——
Potage au Riz.
English Pork Pie. Mock Stewed Oysters.
Potato Balls. Mixed Pickles.
——
Lemon Jelly and Light Cake.
——

POTAGE AU RIZ,

In plainer English, rice-broth, can be achieved for to-day, with little trouble, by the help of the liquor in which your mutton was boiled on Tuesday. Wash and soak a cup of rice in cold water. At the end of half an hour, add it, with the water in which it has soaked, to the mutton-broth, from which you must first take the fat. Boil very slowly two hours, and should the water sink below the original level more than an inch, replenish with boiling. In another saucepan heat a cup of milk, thickened with a tablespoonful of rice-flour. Season the mutton-broth with pepper and parsley—it will hardly need salt. (Boil up and skim, before the parsley goes in.) Pour the hot milk over two beaten eggs, stir in well; add to the soup in the kettle, and take instantly from the fire.

ENGLISH PORK PIE.

3 lbs. of _lean_ fresh pork, cut into strips as long as your finger.
6 large juicy apples.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Pepper, salt, and mace to taste.
1 cup of sweet cider.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Good pie-paste for an upper crust, made according to receipt given
for Thursday of second week in this month.

Put a layer of pork within a pudding-dish; season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, or mace. Next a layer of sliced apples, strewed with sugar and bits of butter. Go on in this order until you are ready for the crust, having the last layer of apples. Pour in the cider, cover with a thick crust of good pastry, ornamented around the edge; make a slit in the middle, and bake in a moderate oven one hour and a half. Should the crust threaten to brown too fast, cover with paper. When nicely browned, brush over with butter and close the oven door for a moment; then wash well with white of egg. Eat hot. You will find it very good, odd as the receipt may seem.

MOCK STEWED OYSTERS.

Scrape and drop into cold water a bunch of salsify, or oyster-plant. Cut into short pieces and stew tender in boiling water, a little salted. Drain off nearly all the water, and pour into the saucepan a cup of cold milk. When again hot, add a heaping tablespoonful of butter and a handful of fine cracker-dust, with pepper and salt. Stir very slowly for five minutes, and pour out. It should be about as thick as oyster soup.

POTATO BALLS.

Mash potatoes with a little butter and salt, and let them get cold. Then work in a beaten egg. Make into balls about twice the size of a walnut, with floured hands, roll them well in flour, and fry yellow-brown in good dripping or lard. Drain in a colander, and pile upon a flat dish.

LEMON JELLY AND LIGHT CAKE.

5 lemons—juice of all and grated peel of two.
2 large cups of sugar.
1 package of Coxe’s gelatine, soaked in two cups of cold water.
2 glasses pale sherry.
1 pint of boiling water.

Stir sugar, lemon-juice, peel, and soaked gelatine together, and leave, covered, for an hour. Then pour over them the boiling water; stir until the gelatine is dissolved; strain through a flannel bag, without pressing. Add the wine, and let all drip, untouched, through double flannel. Pour into a wet mould. In cold weather, or if set on ice, it will be ready for use in six hours. Pass a basket of light cake with it.

Third Week. Friday.
——
Lobster Bisque.
Stewed Chicken. Rice Croquettes.
Crab-apple Jelly. Winter Squash.
——
Apple Snow.
Tea and Macaroons.
——

LOBSTER BISQUE.

1 can of lobster.
1 quart of milk.
1 quart of cold water.
3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
½ cup of pounded cracker.
1 teaspoonful of salt.
A little cayenne pepper.

Free the lobster from all bits of shell, and cut up small, tearing as little as may be. Put the water into a saucepan, with the salt and pepper. When boiling, stir in the lobster and stew half an hour. Heat the milk in another vessel, and, when scalding, stir in the cracker and set in hot water for ten minutes. The lobster having cooked for thirty minutes, add the butter, and simmer five minutes longer. Then pour in the milk; mix all up well; set for five minutes in hot water, and serve in a tureen. Pass sliced lemon with it.

This _bisque_ is delicious.

STEWED CHICKEN.

Prepare a fine young fowl as for roasting, with the exception of the dressing, which should be left out. Early in the day (if you have no gravy already made) put on the feet and giblets to stew in two cups of cold water, with a little minced onion. When the giblets are very tender, and the liquid has boiled down to one cupful, strain it and set aside the giblets to cool. Chop a quarter of a pound of pork, put it in the bottom of a pot, lay the chicken upon it; pour the gravy over it; cover _tightly_ and set where it will heat steadily, but not reach the boil under an hour. Increase the heat, not allowing the steam to escape, for an hour longer, but it should not stew fast at any time. By this time the fowl should be thoroughly done. Remove carefully to a hot dish; season the gravy, adding a little hot water if needful, and strain out the pork. Add the giblets, chopped fine, stew fast for one minute, pour over the chicken, and it is ready for the table.

RICE CROQUETTES.

2 cups of cold boiled rice.
1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
2 eggs, well beaten.
1 tablespoonful sugar.
A little flour.
Salt to taste.

Work butter and sugar to a cream, and these into the rice. Salt, and stir up with the eggs to a smooth paste. Make into oval balls or rolls, with well-floured hands. Roll in flour, and fry, a few at a time, in sweet lard. Drain well and eat hot.

WINTER SQUASH.

Pare, take out the seeds, cut into strips, and lay in cold water, one hour. Cook in boiling water, a little salt, until very soft. Drain off every drop of water, and mash with a potato beetle, stirring in a large spoonful of butter, and seasoning with pepper and salt. Mound up in a vegetable dish and serve hot.

APPLE SNOW.

6 fine pippins (raw).
2 cups of milk.
4 eggs.
1 cup of powdered sugar.

Make a custard by stirring into the hot milk half the sugar, the yolks of all the eggs, and the white of one, and cooking, stirring constantly until it thickens. Let this cool while you whip the whites to a stiff _méringue_ with the rest of the sugar. Peel the apples, and grate directly into the _méringue_, stirring in at once that the coating of egg may prevent them from changing color. Put the cold custard in the bottom of a glass dish, and heap the snow upon it. Eat soon after making it.

TEA AND MACAROONS.

Pass after dinner in the dining-room, or send into the parlor.

Third Week. Saturday.
——
Ayrshire Soup.
Mutton Chops and Tomato Purée. Potato Strips.
Sweet Pickles. Boiled Beans.
——
Macaroni Pudding.
——

AYRSHIRE SOUP.

4 lbs. of lean beef.
2 lbs. of marrow-bones well cracked.
2 onions.
2 turnips.
3 stalks of celery.
Bunch of sweet herbs.
6 large potatoes.
½ cup of oatmeal.
Pepper and salt.
6 quarts of cold water.

Chop the vegetables and herbs; cut the meat fine, and break up the bones. Put the oatmeal to soak in a pint of water. Slice the potatoes, and parboil them in hot water for ten minutes. Add them then to the other vegetables, and put them all, with the meat and bones, into a soup-pot, with the water. Stew for four hours, until the liquor in the pot has fallen one-third. Strain through a colander, set aside two quarts of the stock until to-morrow, after seasoning it all, and return the rest to the fire. Boil up and skim; add the oatmeal, and stew, covered, forty minutes, stirring often, lest it should burn.

MUTTON CHOPS AND TOMATO PURÉE.

Broil the chops, after trimming them neatly; rub, as soon as they leave the gridiron, with butter on both sides; pepper and salt, and cover, for a few minutes, in a hot water dish, that they may take up the seasoning.

Make the _purée_ by stewing a can of tomatoes until almost dry, then seasoning, and stirring in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Simmer three minutes, arrange the chops on their sides, overlapping each other, inside of the curve of a flat dish, and pour the _purée_ within their enclosure.

POTATO STRIPS.

Pare and cut the potatoes in long strips, the length of the potato, and not more than the sixteenth of an inch thick. Lay in ice-water for one hour; dry by laying on one clean towel and pressing another upon it, and fry, not too many at once, in _hot_ lard, a little salt. Take out so soon as they are browned lightly, toss in a hot colander, and serve in a deep dish lined with a napkin.

BOILED BEANS.

Soak all night, and in the morning change the cold water for lukewarm. Leave in this two hours; drain it off and put them on to boil in cold water, with a piece of fat salt pork two inches square. Cook slowly until soft. Take out the pork, drain the beans well, season with pepper, and dish.

MACARONI PUDDING.

½ lb. of macaroni broken into inch lengths.
2 cups of boiling water.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
1 large cup of milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Grated peel of half a lemon.
A little cinnamon and salt.

Boil the macaroni in the water until it is tender, and has soaked up the liquid. It must be cooked in a farina-kettle. Add the butter and salt. Cover for five minutes without cooking. Put in the rest of the ingredients. Simmer, after the boil begins, ten minutes longer, before serving in a deep dish. Be careful, in stirring, not to break the macaroni. Eat with butter and powdered sugar, or cream and sugar.

Fourth Week. Sunday.
——
Potato Soup.
Roast Beef. Baked Hominy.
Sweet Potatoes, baked. Cabbage Salad.
——
Arrow-Root Pudding, Cold.
Coffee.
——

POTATO SOUP.

3 pints of good stock.
1 quart of cold water.
12 mealy potatoes.
1 onion.
½ cup of rice.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Seasoning to taste.

Slice the potatoes, cover with boiling water, and cook ten minutes. Throw away this water, and add the quart of cold, slightly salted, and the onion, to the potatoes. Boil to pieces, and pass, with the water in which they were boiled, through a colander into the stock. Heat all together, and cook gently half an hour, before adding the rice, which should have been boiled soft in a very little water. When the rice is nearly dry, stir in the butter, put into the soup, and simmer five minutes.

ROAST BEEF.

A rib-roast is best for family use. Make your butcher saw off about half of the bone, after cutting the ends of the ribs clear of the meat; then fold the flap neatly around to the thick part, and secure with skewers. The “trimmings” are yours—a fact housekeepers often fail to insist upon. The meat is weighed before you buy it. Take all that you pay for—and you will seldom be at a loss for a “base” for soup or gravy. Between butchers and cooks, there is enough wasted in American kitchens to supply a National Soup-house that might feed all the poor in the land.

Put your beef in the dripping-pan; pour a cup of boiling water over it, and roast ten minutes for every pound. Bake as soon as the juices begin to flow—the oftener in reason the better. If your meat has much fat on top, cover it—the fat—with a paste of flour and water. When nearly done, remove this, dredge the beef with flour, baste well with gravy, strew salt over the top, and serve. Pour the fat off from the gravy; return to the fire, thicken with browned gravy, season, and boil up once.

SWEET POTATOES—BAKED.

Parboil, take off the skins, and, half an hour before you take up your beef, lay the potatoes in the dripping-pan to brown, basting them with the meat. They should be of a fine brown. Drain off the grease, and lay about the beef when dished.

BAKED HOMINY.

1 cupful of cold boiled hominy (small grained).
2 cups of milk.
1 large teaspoonful of butter.
The same of sugar.
A little salt.
2 eggs.

Work the melted butter well into the hominy, mashing all lumps. Then come the beaten yolks; next, sugar and salt; then, gradually, the milk; lastly the whites. Beat until perfectly smooth, and bake in a greased pudding-dish until delicately browned. Serve in the bake-dish.

CABBAGE SALAD.

Chop a firm white cabbage with a sharp knife. A dull one bruises it. Make a dressing of two tablespoonfuls of oil; six of vinegar; a teaspoonful each of salt and sugar; half as much each of made mustard and pepper. Work all in well, the vinegar going in last, and then beat in a raw egg, whipped light. Pour over the salad, toss up with a fork, and serve in a glass dish.

ARROW-ROOT PUDDING—(COLD).

3 even tablespoonfuls of arrow-root. Get the Bermuda if you can, or
you may require more.
3 cups of fresh milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
¼ lb. of crystallized peaches, chopped fine.

Heat the milk to scalding, and stir in the arrow-root wet up with cold milk. Stir ten minutes, and add sugar and butter. Stir five minutes more, and pour out. When nearly cold, beat in the fruit. Pour into a wet mould. Make on Saturday, and on Sunday, turn out upon a dish, and eat with sugar and cream. It is very good without the fruit, but needs more sugar in making.

COFFEE

Should be served last of all.

Fourth Week. Monday.
——
Bread Soup.
Cannelon of Beef. Pork and Beans.
Chow-chow. Potato Stew.
——
Peach Batter Pudding.
——

BREAD SOUP.

A few raw beef-bones and trimmings, spoken of yesterday. Bones, bits of skin, gristle, etc., left from Sunday’s roast when you have cut off the meat for the _cannelon_.

1 pint of stock.
1 onion.
2 stalks of celery.
Bunch of sweet herbs.
4 quarts of cold water.
1 lb. stale bread-crusts, the drier the better, provided they are
not mouldy or sour.
Salt and pepper.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Crack the bones, chop meat and vegetables; put on in the water, and boil slowly down to two quarts. Strain the liquor; let it cool; take off all the fat, season, and return to the pot with the stock. Boil up and skim; put in the crusts; stew, covered, half an hour. Take it from the range and _beat_ in the butter, taking out indissoluble bits. Then simmer, in a vessel set within another of boiling water, half an hour.

As you will see, by a careful perusal of these directions, the preparation of this soup requires little actual expenditure of time. I beg, therefore, that you will “gather up the fragments” from larder and bread-box, and give your family a hot, nourishing, “comforting” dish of porridge, if it _is_ wash-day.

CANNELON OF BEEF.

Cut the meat from your cold roast, and chop it fine. Season well, and beat into it the yolks of three eggs and the white of one. Add one-third as much cold mashed potato as you have meat, wet up with gravy, and make, with floured hands, into a long roll—three times as long as it is broad. It should be just soft enough to handle. Dredge thickly with flour, and lay in a greased baking-pan. Invert another one over it, and bake until it is hissing hot on top and sides, when uncover, and brown quickly. Brush over the outside with white of egg; dredge again with flour, shut the oven-door to brown this, glaze again with egg, and shut up the oven for one minute. Carefully, with the aid of a cake-turner, slip the _cannelon_ to a hot dish and serve.

CHOW-CHOW

Should go around with the _cannelon_.

POTATO STEW.

Pare and cut the potatoes into dice. Stew in hot water, with a slice of fat salt pork, cut very small, half a minced onion and a little chopped parsley, until the pork is dissolved and the potatoes very tender. Pepper, and if necessary, salt, and pour into a hot, deep dish. The “stew” should not be too liquid, nor yet stiff.

PORK AND BEANS.

This is a good, nourishing dish for Monday, and easily managed, if you have boiled the beans on Saturday. Fill a bake-dish nearly full of them, and put in the middle a piece of fat salt pork, about three inches wide, which you have parboiled in your soup. It will improve the taste of the “stock” and be itself the better for the temporary association. Pour in a little hot water to keep the beans from burning. Pepper and bake, covered, for half an hour. Remove the cover and brown.

PEACH BATTER PUDDING.

Open a can of peaches—whole ones, if you have them—and pour into the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish before you make your batter. There should be just syrup enough to half cover the fruit.

For batter, take 1 quart of milk.

10 tablespoonfuls of _prepared_ flour.
5 eggs, beaten light.
1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
1 saltspoonful of salt.

Beat the yolks light, add the milk and salt, and pour slowly into a hole made in the middle of the flour. Finally, stir in the whites lightly, but not until you have beaten the batter smooth. Pour over the peaches and bake quickly. You can put it in the oven after the beans are done, setting the latter aside to keep warm. If you have not time to make sauce, eat with butter and sugar. Do not let the pudding stand after drawing from the oven, or it will fall.

Fourth Week. Tuesday.
——
Cream Soup.
Roast Breast of Veal. Stewed Tomatoes.
Plain Boiled Potatoes. Celery.
——
Essex Pudding with Jelly Sauce.
——

CREAM SOUP.

3 lbs. lean veal.
3 beaten eggs.
2 blades of mace.
1 onion.
2 quarts of water.
2 cups of milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of rice flour (or corn-starch).
Pepper and salt.

Chop the meat and onion fine, cover with the water, and stew slowly three hours. Strain, cool and skim. Season and set back on the fire. Boil up and skim carefully; add the milk, and when hot, the corn-starch wet with cold water. As it thickens, take out a cupful, pour upon the eggs; stir into the soup, and take at once from the fire.

ROAST BREAST OF VEAL.

Make incisions between the ribs and the meat, and stuff with a force-meat of dry bread-crumbs, chopped pork or ham, pepper, sweet marjoram, and one beaten egg. Save a little to thicken the gravy. Roast slowly, basting often and copiously. Dredge at the last with flour, and baste well, when this has colored, with butter.

STEWED TOMATOES.

Stew a can of tomatoes twenty-five minutes; season with pepper, salt, a little sugar, and a tablespoonful of butter. Cook five minutes and serve.

PLAIN BOILED POTATOES.

Pare _very_ thin, and put on (after having lain half an hour in cold water) in boiling water. Cook fast until a fork will go easily into the largest; drain off every drop of water, and throw in salt. Set back, uncovered, on the side of the range, or where they will dry quickly, yet not scorch. Serve in an uncovered dish.

CELERY.

Wash, scrape, trim off the green tops, and throw aside for seasoning soups, vinegar, etc., the rank green stalks. Lay the better parts in cold water until wanted for the table. Put into a tall glass or celery-stand.

ESSEX PUDDING.

2 cups of fine bread-crumbs.
2 tablespoonfuls of sago, soaked three hours in a little water.
¾ of a cup of powdered suet.
5 eggs, beaten light.
1 cup of milk.
1 cup of sugar.
1 tablespoonful flour, wet in cold milk.
½ lb. of whole raisins, “plumped” by laying them in _boiling_ water
for two minutes.
A little salt.

Cook the sago in enough water to cover it until tender and nearly dry. Heat the milk and pour upon the beaten eggs and sugar, add the crumbs, beating into a good batter in a bowl; then suet, flour, sago, and salt. Butter a mould _thickly_ and lay the raisins, dredged with flour, in the bottom and sides, in whatever designs you fancy. Fill the mould with the batter—well beaten up at the last—putting it in by cautious spoonfuls not to dislodge the raisins, which should be imbedded in the butter. Put on the lid of the pudding mould, and boil one hour, never relaxing the heat. Dip in cold water and turn out upon a flat dish. Eat with jelly sauce.

JELLY SAUCE.

½ cup of currant jelly.
2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
1 lemon—juice and half the grated peel.
½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
1 tablespoonful of powdered sugar.
1 glass of wine.
1 cup of boiling water.
1 teaspoonful flour.

Beat the hot water gradually into the jelly, and add the butter, lemon, and nutmeg. Warm almost to a boil, put in the sugar, then the flour wet up with cold water. Boil up once sharply; add the wine, and take from the fire. Set, closely covered, in a vessel of hot water until wanted. Stir well before pouring it out.

Fourth Week. Wednesday.
——
Julienne Soup.
Veal and Ham Pie. Halibut Steaks, Broiled.
Scalloped Potatoes. Stewed Cauliflower.
——
Pancakes with Preserves.
——

JULIENNE SOUP.

2 lbs. of mutton, and a like quantity of veal, with some beef-bones.
2 carrots.
2 turnips.
Half a cabbage.
3 onions.
3 stalks of _blanched_ celery.
½ can of tomatoes.
5 quarts of cold water.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
2 teaspoonfuls of sugar.
Bunch of sweet herbs.
Pepper and salt.

Cut the meat small, crack the bones, and put on to cook in five quarts of water with the herbs. While it simmers, prepare the vegetables, with the exception of the cabbage and tomatoes, by cleaning, paring, and cutting them into narrow strips about two inches long, and as nearly as possible of uniform size. Lay them in cold water for one hour. Drain very dry, and put them into a frying-pan in which you have melted, but not cooked, the butter, and dissolved the sugar. Toss them over a hot fire until they are coated with the butter, but do not let them scorch. Set aside in a clean vessel set within one of hot water. When the meat has boiled to rags, and the liquid is reduced one-third, strain it and set by until the fat rises and can be taken off. Return the soup to the fire, season, boil up and skim; add the glazed vegetables, with the chopped cabbage—which should have been parboiled, then drained—and the tomatoes, cut up small. Stew gently for one hour. Serve with the vegetables in it.

This will make enough soup for two days, unless your family be large.

HALIBUT STEAKS—BROILED.

Wash and wipe the steaks dry. Broil upon a buttered gridiron, turning when the lower side is done. Remove carefully to a chafing-dish, and anoint with a mixture of butter, salt, pepper, and a little lemon-juice.

Always serve fish upon hot plates. Pass potatoes, and no other vegetable, with it.

SCALLOPED POTATOES.

3 cups of mashed potatoes.
3 tablespoonfuls of milk.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Yolks of four hard-boiled eggs. (Cut the whites in rings to garnish
your fish.)
Handful of dry bread-crumbs.
Salt and pepper.

Beat butter, milk, and seasoning into the potatoes while hot. Put a layer in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish; cover this with thin slices of yolk; pepper and salt them; spread another layer of potato over these, and proceed in this order until the dish is full, having the top layer of potato. Strew thickly with bread-crumbs. Bake covered until hot through, then brown quickly. Serve in the bake-dish.

VEAL AND HAM PIE.

Cut the meat from the cold roast of yesterday. Put the bones, well-cracked, the refuse bits of meat and skin into a saucepan with an onion, a few spoonfuls of tomatoes, and three cups of cold water, and cook slowly until there remains but one cup of gravy. Strain and season, thickening with a tablespoonful of browned flour. Cut the veal into small, even slices. If you have no cold boiled ham, cook half a pound on purpose by boiling in your gravy stock. Slice this also, and lay upon the veal, with now and then a slice of hard-boiled egg. Fill the dish with alternate layers of veal and ham; pour in the gravy, and cover with a thick crust of good pastry, such as you made last Thursday for your pork-pie. Bake one hour.

STEWED CAULIFLOWER.

When your soup is about half done, and before you strain it, take out a cupful, strain through a thin cloth, and put into a saucepan, with a little salt and a tablespoonful of butter. Cut a cauliflower into small bunches, when you have washed and trimmed it, and lay these in the cooled broth. Stew slowly, covered, twenty-five minutes, turning the bunches now and then. When they are tender, take them out, lay in a covered dish to keep warm, stir into the broth a tablespoonful of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour, with nearly half a cup of milk. Pepper, boil up once, and pour over the cauliflower.

PANCAKES WITH PRESERVES.

1 pint of prepared flour.
_About_ a quart of milk.
6 eggs.
A little salt.

Beat the yolks light, add the salt and two cups of milk, then the flour and beaten whites alternately, and thin with more milk until the batter is of the right consistency. It should be quite thin. Have ready in a small frying-pan a tablespoonful of butter or sweet lard, hissing hot, but not discolored by too long heating. Pour in enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan, and fry quickly, pouring off the fat so soon as the cakes set. Turn it with a lift of your spatula and a skilful toss of the pan at the same time. As fast as the pancakes are done—the same lard will do for several—let an assistant spread each upon a _hot_ plate and cover with sweet jam or jelly, rolling up neatly so soon as this is done. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, and set in a warm oven until you are ready for dessert.

Fourth Week. Thursday.
——
Chicken Broth.
Chickens and Rice. Potato Croquettes.
Boiled Sweet Potatoes. Cold Slaw—Cream Dressing.
——
Poor Man’s Plum Pudding.
——

CHICKEN BROTH.

Draw, stuff, and truss a pair of chickens, as for roasting; tie soft pack-thread around their legs and wings, binding them close to their bodies, and put on to boil in four quarts of cold water, a little salted. They will require at least one hour’s boiling, if they are of fair size. Do not cook fast, especially at first. Try with a fork if they are tender, and if it pierces the breast easily, take them up, butter well, and set in a warm place, covered. Take out a cupful of liquor when they are three-quarters done, in which to cook your rice. Strain the broth after taking out the fowls, season with pepper and chopped parsley and put again over the fire. Take off the scum, as it rises, and boil hard fifteen minutes. Then add a half cupful of rice, previously stewed soft in a very little water. Simmer a quarter of an hour; pour in a cup of milk in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of rice-flour; bring to a slow boil, and pour a few spoonfuls upon two beaten eggs. Return these to the soup, stir them in and take from the fire. Have ready the giblets and one hard-boiled egg chopped fine in the bottom of the tureen, and turn in the broth upon them.

CHICKENS AND RICE.

Parboil a cup of rice in a little water. When it has taken it up, and is about half done, add the cupful of broth taken from the soup, seasoned well. Cook the rice slowly in it until done. (Always cook rice in a farina-kettle, and shake, instead of stirring.) It should absorb all the gravy. At the last, stir in a beaten egg, mixed with a tablespoonful of melted butter. It is best to do this with a fork, and not a spoon. Make a low, flattened mound of the rice upon a hot dish; remove the pack-threads from the chickens and lay them on the top. Pass grated cheese with it.

POTATO CROQUETTES.