The Dinner Year-Book. Marion Harland
Roast Mutton.
Wash the meat well and wipe with a clean cloth. Put into the dripping-pan, pour a cup of boiling water over it, and roast, basting often, for a while, with salt and water, afterwards with its own gravy. Allow twelve minutes to each pound of meat, and keep the fire at a steady, moderate heat. Should it brown too fast, cover with a sheet of paper. Take up the meat, put it on a hot dish; thicken the gravy with browned flour, having first taken off all the fat you can—season with pepper and salt, boil up, skim and serve. Pass currant jelly with it.
Spinach à la Crème.
Pick over and wash the spinach, and cut the leaves from the stalks. Boil in hot water, a little salted, about twenty minutes. Drain, put into a wooden tray, or upon a board; chop very fine, and rub through a colander. Put into a saucepan; stir until it begins to smoke throughout. Add then two tablespoonfuls of butter for a good-sized dish, a teaspoonful of white sugar, three tablespoonfuls of milk, salt and pepper to liking. Beat, as it heats, with a silver fork or wire spoon. Some put in a little nutmeg, and most people like it. Cook thus until it begins to bubble up as you beat it. Pour into a deep dish, surround with sliced egg, and serve.
Potatoes Stewed Whole.
Pare the potatoes and boil in water which was cold when they went in. When they are done, as is proved by piercing the largest with a fork, turn off the water, and cover them barely with milk already heated. Stew in this five minutes; take the potatoes out, and put into a covered deep dish. Add to the milk in the saucepan a good lump of butter, rolled in flour, some chopped parsley, pepper and salt. Boil up once. Crack each potato as it lies in the dish, by pressing with the back of a spoon; pour the hot milk over them; let them stand three minutes in it, and send to table.
French Tapioca Custard.
5 dessertspoonfuls of tapioca.
1 quart of milk.
1 pint of cold water.
3 eggs.
1 teaspoonful of vanilla.
1 heaping cup of sugar.
A pinch of salt.
Soak the tapioca in the water five hours. Heat the milk to scalding; add the tapioca, the water in which it was soaked, and the salt. Stir to boiling, and pour gradually upon the yolks and sugar, which should have been beaten together. Boil again, stirring constantly, about five minutes, or until it begins to thicken well. Turn into a bowl and stir gently into the custard the frothed whites and the flavoring. Eat cold.
Fourth Week. Saturday.
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Old Hare Soup.
Hot Pot. Turnips with White Sauce.
Boiled Rice, au Genève. Cucumber Pickle.
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Cabinet Pudding.
Cabinet Pudding Sauce.
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Old Hare Soup.
1 hare, or rabbit, full grown.
The bones from yesterday’s mutton broken up well.
A slice of corned ham, or some bones of salt pork.
1 onion.
Chopped parsley.
Pepper and salt.
1 tablespoonful of mushroom or walnut catsup.
3 quarts of water.
Clean the hare carefully and cut to pieces, cracking all the bones. Put into the soup-kettle with the mutton bones, the bacon, onion, and parsley. Pour on three quarts of cold water; put on the lid tightly, and stew four hours very slowly. By this time the meat should be in shreds. Strain it, return to the fire, season it, stew and skim five minutes. Slice three boiled eggs and put into the tureen and pour the soup over them.
Hot Pot.
Put into a deep bake-dish a layer of cold mutton left from your roast, freed from fat and skin and cut into strips two inches long by one wide. Overlay these with slices of parboiled potatoes, a little minced onion, an oyster or two chopped, some tiny bits of butter, with salt and pepper. Repeat this process until your meat is used up. The top layer should be potatoes. Add a cupful of gravy from Friday’s dinner (or elsewhere), cover very closely and bake one hour before lifting the lid. Peep in to see if the contents are done—they will be if your fire is tolerably strong. Turn out into a deep dish.
Cucumber Pickles
Are a better condiment for this dish than any others.
Turnips with White Sauce.
Peel and quarter your turnips. Leave in cold water half an hour. Put on in hot water, and boil until tender. Drain and cover with a sauce prepared by heating a cup of milk, thickening it with a heaping teaspoonful of corn-starch, and stirring in a great spoonful of butter with pepper and salt to season it well. Put this, when you have added the turnips, into a vessel set within another of boiling water, and let them stand covered, without cooking, ten minutes before serving.
Boiled Rice au Genève.
Pick over and wash the rice, and boil in a farina-kettle, with enough cold water, a little salted, to cover it an inch deep. Shake now and then as the rice swells. Take from your hare soup, when you have strained it, a cupful of the liquor and about half as much of the boiled shreds of meat. Chop these extremely fine, season with salt and pepper. Heat the cup of liquor to a boil, stir into it a scant tablespoonful of browned flour, then the chopped meat and a tablespoonful of butter, and stew gently five minutes. Pile the boiled rice, which should be almost dry, in a dish, and pour the gravy over it. It is very savory, and makes a pleasant variety in the list of winter vegetables.
Cabinet Pudding.