The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, Adapted to the Use of Private Families. Eaton Mary
be good in proportion as they are dried as soon as possible, taken care that they be not burnt. Take away the stalks, put the pods into a cullender, and set them twelve hours before the fire to dry. Then put them into a mortar, with one fourth their weight of salt; pound and rub them till they are as fine as possible, and put the powder into a well-stopped bottle. A hundred large chillies will produce about two ounces of cayenne. When foreign cayenne is pounded, it is mixed with a considerable portion of salt, to prevent its injuring the eyes: but English chillies may be pounded in a deep mortar without any danger, and afterwards passed through a fine sieve.
CELERY SAUCE. Cut small half a dozen heads of clean white celery, with two sliced onions. Put them into a stewpan, with a small piece of butter, and sweat them over a slow fire till quite tender. Add two spoonfuls of flour, half a pint of broth, salt and pepper, and a little cream or milk. Boil it a quarter of an hour, and pass it through a fine hair sieve with the back of a spoon. When celery is not in season, a quarter of a dram of celery seed, or a little of the essence, will impregnate half a pint of sauce with all the flavour of the vegetable. This sauce is intended for boiled turkey, veal, or fowls.
CELERY SOUP. Split half a dozen heads of celery into slips about two inches long, wash them well, drain them on a hair sieve, and put them into a soup pot, with three quarts of clear gravy. Stew it very gently by the side of the fire, about an hour, till the celery is tender. If any scum arise, take it off, and season with a little salt. When celery cannot be procured, half a dram of the seed, pounded fine, will give a flavour to the soup, if put in a quarter of an hour before it is done. A little of the essence of the celery will answer the same purpose.
CELLARS. Beer and ale that have been well brewed, are often injured or spoiled in the keeping, for want of paying proper attention to the state of the cellar. It is necessary however to exclude as much as possible all external air from these depositaries, as the state of the surrounding atmosphere has a most material influence upon the liquor, even after it has been made a considerable time. If the cellar is liable to damps in the winter, it will tend to chill the liquor, and make it turn flat; or if exposed to the heat of summer, it will be sure to turn sour. The great object therefore is to have a cellar that is both cool and dry. Dorchester beer, generally in high esteem, owes much of its fineness to this circumstance. The soil in that county being very chalky, of a close texture and free from damps, the cellars are always cool and dry, and the liquors are found to keep in the best possible manner. The Nottingham ale derives much of its celebrity also from the peculiar construction of the cellars, which are generally excavated out of a rock of sand-stone to a considerable depth, of a circular or conical form, with benches formed all round in the same way, and on these the barrels are placed in regular succession.
CERATE. Half a pound of white wax, half a pound of calumine stone finely powdered, and a pint and a half of olive oil, will make an excellent cerate. Let the calumine be rubbed smooth with some of the oil, and added to the rest of the oil and wax, which should be previously melted together. Stir them together till they are quite cold.
CHARDOONS. To dress chardoons, cut them into pieces of six inches long, and tie them in a bunch. Boil them tender, then flour and fry them with a piece of butter, and when brown serve them up. Or tie them in bundles, and serve them on toast as boiled asparagus, with butter poured over. Another way is to boil them, and then heat them up in fricassee sauce. Or boil in salt and water, dry them, dip them into butter, fry, and serve them up with melted butter. Or having boiled, stew, and toss them up with white or brown gravy. Add a little cayenne, ketchup, and salt, and thicken with a bit of butter and flour.
CHARLOTTE. Rub a baking-dish thick with butter, and line the bottom and sides with very thin slices of white bread. Put in layers of apples thinly sliced, strewing sugar between, and bits of butter, till the dish is full. In the mean time, soak in warm milk as many thin slices of bread as will cover the whole; over which lay a plate, and a weight to keep the bread close on the apples. To a middling sized dish use half a pound of butter in the whole, and bake slowly for three hours.
CHEAP SOUP. Much nutricious food might be provided for the poor and necessitous, at a very trifling expence, by only adopting a plan of frugality, and gathering up the fragments, that nothing be lost. Save the liquor in which every piece of meat, ham, or tongue has been boiled, however salt; for it is easy to use only a part of it, and to add a little fresh water. Then, by the addition of more vegetables, the bones of meat used in the family, the pieces of meat that come from table on the plates, and rice, Scotch barley, or oatmeal, there will be some gallons of useful soup saved. The bits of meat should only be warmed in the soup, and remain whole; the bones and sinewy parts should be boiled till they yield their nourishment. If the fragments are ready to put into the boiler as soon as the meat is served, it will save lighting the fire, and a second cooking. Take turnips, carrots, leeks, potatoes, leaves of lettuce, or any sort of vegetable that is at hand; cut them small, and throw in with the thick part of peas, after they have been pulped for soup, and grits, or coarse oatmeal, which have been used for gruel. Should the soup be poor of meat, the long boiling of the bones, and different vegetables, will afford better nourishment than the laborious poor can generally obtain; especially as they are rarely tolerable cooks, and have not fuel to do justice to what they buy. In almost every family there is some superfluity; and if it be prepared with cleanliness and care, the benefit will be very great to the receiver, and the satisfaction no less to the giver. The cook or servant should never be allowed to wash away as useless, the peas or grits of which soup or gruel have been made, broken potatoes, the green heads of celery, the necks and feet of fowls, and particularly the shanks of mutton; all of which are capable of adding flavour and richness to the soup. The bones, heads, and fins of fish, containing a portion of isinglass, may also be very usefully applied, by stewing them in the water in which the fish is boiled, and adding it to the soup, with the gravy that is left in the dish. If strained, it considerably improves the meat soup, particularly for the sick; and when such are to be supplied, the milder parts of the spare bones and meat should be used, with very little of the liquor of the salt meats. If a soup be wanted for the weakly and infirm, put two cow heels and a breast of mutton into a large pan, with four ounces of rice, one onion, twenty corns of Jamaica pepper, and twenty black, a turnip, and carrot, and four gallons of water. Cover it with white paper, and bake it six hours.
CHEESE. This well-known article of domestic consumption, is prepared from curdled milk, cleared from the whey. It differs very much in quality and flavour, according to the pasture in which the cows feed, and the manner in which the article itself is made. The same land rarely produces very fine butter, and remarkably fine cheese; yet with proper management, it may give one pretty good, where the other excels in quality. Cheese made on the same land, from new milk, skimmed or mixed milk, will differ greatly, not only in richness, but also in taste. Valuable cheese may be made from a tolerable pasture, by taking the whole of two meals of milk, and proportioning the thickness of the vat to the quantity, rather than having a wide and flat one, as the former will produce the mellowest cheese. The addition of a pound of fresh-made butter of a good quality, will cause the cheese made on poor land to be of a very different quality from that usually produced by it. A few cheeses thus made, when the weather is not extremely hot, and when the cows are in full feed, are well adapted to the use of the parlour. Cheese for common family use may very well be produced by two meals of skim, and one of new milk; or on good land, by the skim milk only. The principal ingredient in making cheese is the rennet, maw, or inner part of a calf's stomach, which is cleaned, salted, and hung up in paper bags to dry. The night before it is used, it is washed and soaked in a little water. When the milk is ready, being put into a large tub, warm a part of it to the degree of new milk; but if made too hot, the cheese will be tough. Pour in as much rennet as will curdle the milk, and then cover it over. Let it stand till completely turned; then strike the curd down several times with the skimming dish, and let it separate, still keeping it covered. There are two modes of breaking the curd, and there will be a difference in the taste of the cheese, according as either is observed. One is to gather it with the hands very gently towards the side of the tub, letting the whey pass through the fingers till it is cleared; and lading it off as it collects. The other is, to get the whey from it by early breaking the curd. The last method deprives it of many of its oily particles, and is therefore less proper. In pursuing the process, put the vat on a ladder over the tub, and fill it with curd by means of the skimmer. Press the curd close with the hand, add more as it sinks, and finally leave it two inches above the edge.