The Dinner Year-Book. Marion Harland
Please never lose sight of the cardinal principle that all the essence, strength, and taste should be extracted from meat, vegetables, etc., in soup-making, and that the soup which boils fast is lost. Take plenty of time, and cast an eye into the kitchen from hour to hour until you have educated your cook up to a glimmering appreciation of this law of enlightened cookery.
Oyster Salad.
1 quart of oysters, cut, not chopped, into small pieces.
1 bunch of celery, also cut small.
1 tablespoonful best oil.
1 small spoonful of salt, and the same of pepper, likewise of mustard (made).
⅛ cup cider vinegar.
Saltspoonful of powdered sugar.
Drain the liquor from the oysters and cut them up. Add the minced celery. Prepare the seasoning, putting in the vinegar last, and pour the mixture over the celery and oysters. Toss up well with a silver fork. Do this just before dinner, as the salad will be injured by lying long in the dressing.
Calf’s Liver à la Mode.
1 calf’s liver.
½ lb. fat salt pork.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter, or dripping.
2 small onions.
1 tablespoonful chopped parsley and marjoram.
2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
1 teaspoonful mixed cloves, mace, and allspice.
1 tablespoonful Worcestershire sauce.
Pepper and salt to taste.
Wash the liver thoroughly, and soak half an hour in salted water. Wipe, make incisions about an inch apart, and lard with strips of pork, projecting slightly on each side. Fry the onions and herbs in the dripping. Take them out, put in the liver, and fry both sides to a light brown. Turn all into a saucepan, with the vinegar and water to cover the liver—barely. Cover closely, and stew gently an hour and a half. Lay the liver on a hot dish, strain the gravy, return to the fire, thicken with a tablespoonful of browned flour, put in the sauce and spice; boil up and pour some of it over the liver, the rest into a gravy-boat. What is left from dinner will be nice for luncheon or tea, cut horizontally in thin slices.
Salsify Fritters.
1 bunch salsify.
2 eggs.
½ cup milk.
Flour for thin batter.
Lard, or dripping.
Salt to taste.
Scrape and grate the roots, and stir into a batter made of the beaten eggs, the milk, and flour. Grate the salsify directly into this, that it may not blacken by exposure to the air. Salt, and drop a spoonful into the boiling fat to see if it is of the right consistency. As fast as you fry the fritters, throw into a hot colander to drain. One great spoonful of batter should make a fritter.
Potatoes à la Duchesse.
Cut the remnants of yesterday’s potatoes à l’Italienne into rounds with a cake-cutter, dipped in cold water. Set like biscuits, but not so near as to touch one another, in a greased pan, and bake quickly, brushing top and sides with beaten egg when they begin to brown. Serve upon a heated napkin folded flat, on a platter.
Corn-Meal Fruit Pudding.
1 heaping cup white Indian meal.
3 pints of milk.
1 cup of flour.
4 beaten eggs.
1 cup of white sugar.
2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
½ lb. of raisins, seeded and cut in two.
1 teaspoonful of salt, and same of mixed mace and cinnamon.
1 teaspoonful of soda, and two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar, sifted twice with the flour.
Scald a pint of milk and wet up the meal with it, stirring well. While it is cooling, add the flour, wet into batter with a pint of cold milk. Heat the remaining pint, and when scalding, add sugar and eggs. Beat this gradually, hard and long, into the cooled paste. When well mixed, put in butter, spice, and the fruit dredged with flour. Beat fast and deep for two minutes. Bake in a buttered dish, in a tolerably brisk oven. Cover with paper as it browns. It ought to be done in three-quarters of an hour. Eat hot, with butter and sugar.
Third Week. Sunday.
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Tomato Soup.
Roast Beef, with Yorkshire Pudding.
Macaroni al Napolitano.
Potatoes au naturel. French Beans, Sauté.
Apple Sauce. Made Mustard.
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Narcissus Blanc-mange.
Coffee.
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Tomato Soup.
Stew one can of tomatoes half an hour; strain and rub through a colander into the soup left from yesterday. Heat to a slow boil, and simmer together ten minutes before serving.
Roast Beef, with Yorkshire Pudding.
Have your meat ready for roasting on Saturday, always. Roast upon a grating or several clean sticks (not pine) laid over the dripping-pan. Dash a cup of boiling water over the beef when it goes into the oven; baste often, and see that the fat does not scorch. About three-quarters of an hour before it is done, mix the pudding.
Yorkshire Pudding.
1 pint of milk.
4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
2 cups of flour—prepared flour is best.
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