The Dinner Year-Book. Marion Harland
four hours, keeping the pot-lid on. Soak the rice in lukewarm water, enough to cover it well—adding warmer as it swells—for one hour. Cook in the same water, never touching with a spoon, but shaking up from the bottom, now and then. Strain and press the soup into a bowl; cool to throw up the fat for the skimmer, and return to the pot. Salt and pepper; boil up and skim, and stir in the corn-starch wet up in the milk. Simmer three minutes; put in the rice with the water in which it was boiled, and the parsley. Simmer very gently five minutes, and pour out.
Mutton à la Jardinière.
5 lbs. of mutton, breast or neck, all in one piece.
2 onions, peeled.
1 carrot, peeled.
2 turnips, peeled.
1 pint canned tomatoes.
A few sprigs of cauliflower.
2 stalks of blanched celery.
Pepper and salt.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
1 tablespoonful of corn-starch.
Dripping for frying.
Fry the mutton (whole) in a large frying-pan, until it is lightly browned on both sides. Put into a deep, broad saucepan with all the vegetables (also whole) except the tomatoes; cover with cold water, and stew, closely covered, for an hour after they begin to boil. Take out the vegetables, and set aside; add boiling water to the meat, if it is not covered, and simmer steadily, never fast, two hours longer. The meat should be tender throughout, even the fibres. Turn off all the gravy, except about half a cupful, fit the pot-lid on very tightly, and leave the meat where it will keep just below the cooking-point. Strain the gravy you have poured off; leave it to cool until the fat rises. Skim, and return to the pot with the tomatoes. Season, and boil fast, skimming two or three times, until it is reduced to one-half the original quantity, or just enough to half cover the meat. Thicken with corn-starch, and put in the meat, with its juices from the bottom of the pot. Simmer, closely covered, half an hour. Cut the now cooled vegetables into neat dice; put the butter into a saucepan, and when it is hot, the vegetables. Shake all together until smoking hot, season, add a little gravy from the meat, and leave them to keep hot in it while you dish the mutton. Put it in the middle of a flat dish, and put the vegetables around it in separate mounds, with sprigs of parsley or celery between. Pour gravy over the mutton.
Try this dish. It is not difficult of preparation, diffuse as I have made the directions. It is, if well managed and discreetly seasoned, a family dinner of itself, and a very cheap one.
Potato Puff.
Mash the potatoes as usual; beat in more milk than is your custom, and a couple of eggs, whipping all to a cream, and seasoning well. Pour into a buttered pudding-dish, and bake quickly to a good brown.
Pork and Beans.
Soak a quart of dried beans overnight in soft water. Change this for more and warmer in the morning, and, two hours later, put them on to boil in cold. When they are soft, drain well, put into a deep dish; and sink in the middle a pound of salt pork (the “middling” is best), leaving only the top visible. The pork should have been previously parboiled. Bake to a fine brown. It is well to score the pork in long furrows to mark the slices, before baking.
Minced Pudding.
4 large juicy pippins, pared, cored, and chopped.
¼ lb. of raisins, seeded and chopped.
2 tablespoonfuls beef suet, freed from strings and rubbed to powder.
12 almonds, blanched and minced.
½ cup of sugar for pudding, and three tablespoonfuls for custard.
1 pint of milk.
Stale bread.
Butter to spread it.
2 eggs.
Nutmeg.
Cut the crust from the bread and slice evenly. Butter a shallow pudding-dish, and line it with the slices, fitted neatly together, and well buttered. Spread thickly with a mixture of the ingredients just enumerated, to wit: apples, raisins, suet, and almonds, sweetened with sugar, and spiced with nutmeg. They should form a paste and adhere to the bread. Make a custard by scalding and sweetening the milk, then pouring gradually over the eggs. Soak the bread, etc., with this by pouring it on, a few spoonfuls at a time, until the dish is full. Bake in a moderate oven, for a time covered, lest it should dry out. Eat cold, with powdered sugar sifted over the top.
Apples, Nuts, and Raisins
Should be served on clean plates after the pudding.
Third Week. Friday.
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Purée of Peas.
Fried Bass. Roast Chicken.
Mashed Potatoes. Stewed Celery.
Fried Salsify. Crab-apple Jelly.
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Margherita Lemon Custard.
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Purée of Peas.
1 pint of split peas, soaked overnight in soft water.
3 onions—small.
3 stalks of celery.
2 carrots—small.
1 bunch of sweet herbs.
1 pint of tomatoes.
Season to taste.
3 tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in flour.
3 quarts of water.
Put all on to cook together, except the tomatoes and butter. The vegetables must be chopped fine. Stew steadily and gently three hours. Rub to a purée through a sieve, and put in the tomatoes, freed of bits of skin and cores, and cut into bits. Season, and return to the fire to stew for twenty minutes longer, closely covered. Stir in the butter—divided into teaspoonfuls, each rolled in flour. Boil up and serve. Dice of fried bread should be put into the tureen.
Fried Bass.
Clean, wipe dry, inside and out, dredge with flour, and season with