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
is equally good broiled.
COD'S HEAD. The head and shoulders of the cod will eat much finer by having a little salt rubbed down the bone, and along the thick part, even if eaten the same day. Tie it up, put it on the fire in cold water sufficient to cover it, and throw a handful of salt into it. Great care must be taken to serve it up without the smallest speck of black, or scum. Garnish with plenty of double parsley, lemon, horse radish, and the milt, roe and liver, and fried smelts, if approved. If with smelts, no water must be suffered to hang about the fish, or the beauty and flavour of the smelts will be lost. Serve with plenty of oyster or shrimp sauce, anchovy and butter.
COD PIE. Take a piece of the middle of a small cod, and salt it well one night. Wash it the next day, season with pepper and salt, mixed with a very little nutmeg. Lay the meat in a dish, with the addition of a little good broth of any kind, and some bits of butter on it. Cover the dish with a crust, and bake it. When done, make a sauce of a spoonful of broth, a quarter of a pint of cream, a little flour and butter, and a dust of grated lemon and nutmeg. Give it one boil, and pour it into the pie. Oysters may be added, but parsley will do instead. Mackarel may be done in the same way, but must not be salted till they are used.
COD SOUNDS BOILED. Soak them in warm water half an hour, then scrape and clean them. If to be dressed white, boil them in milk and water. When tender, serve them up in a napkin, with egg sauce. The salt must not be much soaked out, unless for fricassee.
COD SOUNDS BROILED. Scald them in hot water, rub well with salt, pull off the dirty skin, and simmer them till tender. Then take them out, flour, and broil them. While this is doing, season a little brown gravy with pepper, salt, a tea-spoonful of soy, and a little mustard. Give it a boil with a little flour and butter, and pour it over the sounds.
COD SOUNDS RAGOUT. Having scalded, cleaned, and rubbed them well with salt, stew them in white gravy seasoned. Before they are served, add a little cream, butter and flour, gently boiling up. A bit of lemon peel, nutmeg, and the least pounded mace, will give it a good flavour.
COD SOUNDS LIKE CHICKENS. Carefully wash three large sounds, boil them in milk and water, but not too tender. When cold, put a forcemeat of chopped oysters, crumbs of bread, a bit of butter, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and the yolks of two eggs. Spread it thin over the sounds, roll up each in the form of a chicken, and skewer it. Then lard them as chickens, dust a little flour over, and roast them slowly in a tin oven. When done enough, pour over them a fine oyster sauce, and place them on the table as a side or corner dish.
CODLINS. This fruit may be kept for several months, if gathered of a middling size at midsummer, and treated in the following manner. Put them into an earthen pan, pour boiling water over them, and cover the pan with cabbage leaves. Keep them by the fire till ready to peel, but do not peel them; then pour off the water, and leave them cold. Place the codlins in a stone jar with a smallish mouth, and pour on the water that scalded them. Cover the pot with bladder wetted and tied very close, and then over it coarse paper tied again. The fruit is best kept in small jars, such as will be used at once when opened.
CODLIN CREAM. Pare and core twenty good codlins; beat them in a mortar with a pint of cream, and strain it into a dish. Put to it sugar, bread crumbs, and a glass of wine; and stir it well.
CODLIN TART. Scald the fruit, and take off the skin. Put a little of the liquor on the bottom of a dish, lay in the apples whole, and strew them over with Lisbon or fine sugar. When cold, put a paste round the edges, and over the fruit. Moisten the crust with the white of an egg, and strew some fine sugar over it; or cut the lid in quarters, without touching the paste on the edge of the dish. Remove the lid when cold, pour in a good custard, and sift it over with sugar. Another way is to line the bottom of a shallow dish with paste, lay in the scalded fruit, sweeten it, and lay little twists of paste over in bars.
COFFEE. Put two ounces of fresh-ground coffee, of the best quality, into a coffee pot, and pour eight coffee cups of boiling water on it. Let it boil six minutes, and return it; then put in two or three chips of isinglass, and pour on it one large spoonful of boiling water. Boil it five minutes more, and set the pot by the fire for ten minutes to keep it hot: the coffee will then be of a beautiful clearness. Fine cream should always be served with coffee, and either pounded sugar-candy, or fine Lisbon sugar. If for foreigners, or those who like it very strong, make only eight dishes from three ounces. If not fresh roasted, lay it before the fire until perfectly hot and dry; or put the smallest bit of fresh butter into a preserving pan, and when hot, throw the coffee into it, and toss it about until it be freshened, but let it be quite cold before it is ground. – But as coffee possesses a raw and astringent quality, which often disagrees with weak stomachs, and by being drank too warm is as frequently rendered unwholesome, the following is recommended as an improved method of preparing it. To an ounce of coffee, add a tea-spoonful of the best flour of mustard, to correct its acidity, and improve its fragrance; and in order to render it truly fine and wholesome, it should be made the evening before it is wanted. Let an ounce of fresh-ground coffee be put into a clean coffee pot well tinned, pour upon it a full pint of boiling water, set it on the fire, and after it has well boiled, let it stand by to settle. Next morning pour off the clear liquor, add to it a pint of new milk, warm it over the fire, and sweeten it to taste. Coffee made in this way, will be found particularly suitable to persons of a weak and delicate habit. – A substitute for foreign coffee may be prepared from the acorns of the oak, by shelling and dividing the kernels, drying and roasting them gradually in a close vessel, and keeping them constantly stirring. Grind it like other coffee, and either use it alone, or mix with it a small quantity of foreign coffee. The seeds of the flower de luce, or common waterflag, being roasted in the same manner as coffee, very much resembles it in colour and flavour. Coffee made of these seeds is extremely wholesome, in the proportion of an ounce to a pint of boiling water.
COFFEE CAKES. Melt some fresh butter in a pint of thin cream, and work up with it four pounds of dried flour. Add a pound of sugar, a pint of yeast, and half an ounce of carraways. Stir them all together, set it before the fire to rise, roll the paste out thin, cut it into small cakes, and bake them on buttered paper.
COFFEE CREAM. Boil a calf's foot in water till reduced to a pint of jelly, clear of sediment and fat. Make a tea-cupful of strong fresh coffee, clear it perfectly bright with isinglass, and pour it to the jelly. Add a pint of very good cream, sweeten it with fine Lisbon sugar, boil it up once, and pour it into the dish. This article is much admired, but the jelly must not be stiff, and the coffee must be fresh.
COFFEE MILK. Boil a dessert-spoonful of ground coffee, in nearly a pint of milk, a quarter of an hour. Then put in a shaving or two of isinglass to clear it; let it boil a few minutes, and set it on the side of the fire to grow fine. This makes a very fine breakfast; it should be sweetened with real Lisbon sugar of a good quality.
COLD CAUDLE. Boil a quart of spring water; when cold, add the yolk of an egg, the juice of a small lemon, six spoonfuls of sweet wine, sugar to taste, and syrup of lemons one ounce.
COLD FISH. Soles, cod, whitings, or smelts may be cut into bits, and put into scallop shells, with cold oyster, lobster, or shrimp sauce. Having added some bread crumbs, they may be put into a Dutch oven, and browned like scalloped oysters.
COLD MEAT. If it be a little underdone, the best way to warm it up is to sprinkle over a little salt, and put it into a Dutch oven at some distance before a gentle fire, that it may warm gradually. Watch it carefully, and keep turning it till it is quite hot and brown, and serve it up with gravy. This is preferable to hashing, as it will retain more of its original flavour. Roast beef or mutton, of course, are best for this purpose.
COLD SALLAD. Boil an egg quite hard, put the yolk into a sallad dish, mash it with a spoonful of water, then add a little of the best sallad oil or melted butter, a tea-spoonful of ready-made mustard, and some vinegar. Cut the sallad small and mix it together, adding celery, radishes, or other sallad herbs with it. Onions may be served in a saucer, rather than mixed in the bowl. An anchovy may be washed, cut small, and mixed with it; also a bit of beet root, and the white of an egg. Celery may be prepared in the same way.
COLDS. For a bad cold take a large tea-cupful of linseed, two pennyworth of stick liquorice, and a quarter of a pound of sun raisins. Put them into two quarts of water, and let it simmer over a slow fire till reduced one half. Then add a quarter of a pound of sugar-candy pounded,