The Dinner Year-Book. Marion Harland
Lexington Soup.
2 lbs. of veal.
1 lb. of mutton, with some bones.
1 onion.
1 carrot.
½ cup of rice.
1 cup of split peas.
4 quarts of water.
Sweet herbs, pepper and salt.
Mince the meat and vegetables and crack the bones. The peas should have been soaked overnight in soft water, the rice washed and picked over. Put all together in your soup-kettle, pour in the water and stew gently, covered, five hours. Should the water waste too much, put in more from the tea-kettle. At the end of this time, strain, rubbing the vegetables through a colander. Return to the fire, season, and boil slowly ten minutes, skimming carefully. Put sliced lemon, from which the yellow rind has been pared, into the tureen, and pour the soup upon it. Serve a slice in each plateful.
Boiled Chickens and Macaroni.
Clean, wash, and stuff your chickens as for roasting; sew each up in a piece of new tarlatan, fitted snugly to the shape. Boil, putting them down in pretty hot, but not scalding water, allowing twelve minutes to the number of pounds in one of the pair, and that the larger. About half an hour before they are to be served take out a large cupful of the liquor from the pot and put into a saucepan. Season it, and boil for five minutes with a small chopped onion. Strain, and when again hot, drop in a double handful of macaroni, broken into short lengths. Cook until tender, by which time the liquor should be absorbed by the macaroni. The saucepan should be set in another, holding boiling water, that there may be no danger of scorching while stewing. Make a flattened mound of the macaroni upon a hot dish; lay the chickens upon it, and anoint them well with melted butter, made more salt than usual. Serve them out together, and have grated cheese for such as wish it.
Chow-Chow,
Or “picklette,” in American store-rooms—is a keen appetizer and especially harmonious with boiled fowls. For receipt for making in winter or summer, see “General Receipts, No. 1, Common Sense Series,” page 491.
Parsnip Cakes.
Scrape, wash, boil, and mash the parsnips. When cold, season with salt and pepper, and, flouring your hands, make them into small, flat cakes. Roll in flour and fry in boiling dripping. Drain dry and send up on a hot dish.
Whipped Potatoes.
Instead of mashing the potatoes in the ordinary way, whip with a fork until light and dry. Then whip in a little melted butter and some milk with salt to taste, beating up fast until you have a creamy compound, almost like a méringue. Pile as lightly and irregularly as you can upon a hot dish.
Jam Roley-Poley.
1 quart of prepared flour.
1 tablespoonful of butter and the same of lard.
2 cups of milk, or enough to make soft dough.
1 large cup of fruit or berry jam.
Rub lard and butter into the flour, with a little salt, and wet with cold milk into a soft paste. Roll out into a pretty thick crust—say about a quarter of an inch—and trim into an oblong sheet. Spread this generously with jam, leaving a margin at each end. Roll up closely, the fruit inside. Pinch the open ends together, and baste neatly in a floured bag fitted to the roll, but not so tightly as to interfere with the swelling of the pudding. Boil an hour and a half in hot water that, from first to last, is not once off the boil. Dip the cloth into cold water before attempting to turn the roley-poley out—but for one hasty second only.
Wine Sauce.
3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
2 cupfuls of powdered sugar.
½ cup of wine.
Grated peel of half a lemon.
½ cupful of boiling water.
1 teaspoonful of corn-starch.
Nutmeg.
Cream the butter and sugar, adding the boiling water, a little at a time, until you have used the half cupful. Put on in a saucepan, and stir in the corn-starch wet up with cold milk. When it has thickened, put in the lemon-peel and nutmeg. Simmer one minute, add the wine, put on the lid of the saucepan and set in hot water to keep warm until wanted.
Apples and Nuts,
Being cheap and abundant at this season, should form the sequel of many dinners.
Fourth Week. Thursday.
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White Soup.
Langue de Bœuf, or Beef’s Tongue. Fried Brains and Green Peas.
Sauce Piquante. Hominy Croquettes.
Cold Slaw.
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Brown Betty.
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White Soup.
Skeletons of yesterday’s chickens.
3 or 4 lbs. of veal bones, cracked to pieces.
1 lb. of lean veal, cut small.
1 pint of milk.
1 egg.
1 small cup of boiled farina.
Salt, pepper, minced onion and parsley for seasoning.
1 quart of water, and liquor in which chickens were boiled.
Cover the broken chicken and veal bones, the minced veal, parsley, and onion with the cold water and chicken liquor and simmer three hours, until the three quarts are reduced to two. Strain the liquor; put back into the pot; salt and pepper; boil gently and skim for ten minutes before