The Dinner Year-Book. Marion Harland
Use less flour if the batter grows too stiff. Mix quickly; pour off the fat from the top of the gravy in the dripping-pan, leaving just enough to prevent the pudding from sticking to the bottom. Pour in the batter and continue to roast the beef, letting the dripping fall upon the pudding below. The oven should be brisk by this time. Baste the meat with the gravy you have taken out to make room for the batter.
In serving, cut the pudding into squares and lay about the meat in the dish. It is very delicious.
Macaroni al Napolitano.
½ lb. of macaroni.
2 nice sweetbreads.
1 small onion, minced.
Parsley, pepper, and salt.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Wash the sweetbreads; lay in salted water fifteen minutes, and stew with the onion, in a pint of cold water, a little salt, until done, as may be seen by cutting into the thickest part. Wash the macaroni when you have broken it into small bits, and cook gently until tender, but not to breaking, in the hot broth from which you have taken the sweetbreads and strained the onion. Stew in a farina-kettle or tin saucepan set in hot water. Chop the sweetbreads; stir the butter into the macaroni, which should have absorbed all the broth; then the minced sweetbreads. Season with parsley, pepper, and salt; cover closely and leave in the hot water, but not over the fire, five minutes before turning into a deep dish.
Potatoes au Naturel
Are, with all their high-sounding name, only the homely vegetables boiled in their skins. Put on in cold water, bring to a slow boil, and increase the heat until a fork will pierce the largest. Throw in salt; turn off every drop of the water; set back on the range, without the cover, for two minutes to dry, peel, and send to table in a napkin.
French Beans, Sauté.
Open a can of French or “string” beans; cut into inch lengths and boil in the can liquor, adding a little cold water, if needed, for twenty minutes. Drain, return to the saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of butter and a little salt and pepper. Toss constantly with a fork until they are hissing hot, but not until they scorch. Serve in a hot vegetable dish.
Apple Sauce.
Pare, core, and slice tart apples, and stew in water enough to cover them until they break to pieces. Beat to a pulp with a good lump of butter and plenty of sugar. Eat cold. Make enough for several meals, as it will keep a week at this season.
Made Mustard.
4 tablespoonfuls English mustard.
2 teaspoonfuls of salt.
The same quantity of salad oil and white sugar.
1 teaspoonful of pepper.
Vinegar to make a smooth paste—that from celery, or onion pickle, if you have it.
Rub mustard, oil, sugar, pepper, and salt together; wet, by degrees, with vinegar, beating very hard at the last, when the proper consistency has been gained.
This is far superior to mustard as usually mixed for the table.
Narcissus Blanc-mange.
1 quart of milk.
1 package of Cooper’s gelatine, soaked in two cups of cold water.
Yolks of 4 eggs, beaten light.
2 cups of white sugar.
Vanilla and rose-water for flavoring.
Less than 2 cups of rich cream.
Heat the milk to scalding; stir in gelatine and sugar. When these are dissolved, take out a cupful and pour, by degrees, over the beaten yolks. Return to the saucepan and stir together over the fire for two minutes after the boiling point is reached. Take from the range, flavor with rose-water, and pour into a mould with a cylinder in the centre, previously wet with cold water. Next day, turn out upon a dish with a broad bottom, and fill the hollow in the middle with the cream, whipped light with a little powdered sugar and flavored with vanilla. Pile more whipped cream about the base.
Send your coffee around after the blanc-mange has been eaten. A spoonful of whipped cream, without the vanilla, will give a touch of elegance to the beverage. Let this happy thought come to you while you are preparing the cream, and before the flavoring goes in.
Third Week. Monday.
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Variety Soup.
Beef Pudding. Scored Potatoes.
Canned Peas. Mixed Pickles.
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Apple Méringue.
Crackers and Cheese.
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Variety Soup.
Chop a quarter of a small cabbage, a turnip, and some sweet herbs; cover with cold water, and heat to boiling. Throw off the first water, and add a quart more of cold. Put in the roast-beef bones, after you have cut off the meat, with a slice or two, or bone, of ham. Stew all two hours at the back of the range. Half an hour before dinner, warm up what was left from Sunday’s soup. Strain the hot liquor in which your cabbage, etc., have boiled, into this. Pick out bits of bones and meat from the colander, mashing the vegetables as little as possible; put these into the soup, with any macaroni or beans you may have left over; season to your liking; simmer for ten minutes; thicken with a tablespoonful of corn-starch, and pour out.
This will not be a “show-soup,” but it will be savory and nutritious.
Beef Pudding.
1 pint of milk.
3 eggs.
A cupful of prepared flour.
A little salt.
1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
Cut the meat from yesterday’s roast into neat pieces; lay them in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish, season well, and pour a few spoonfuls of cold gravy over them, letting