The Dinner Year-Book. Marion Harland
quarts of cold water.
Put the cracked bones, the meat, and the chopped vegetables into the soup-pot, and cover with the water. The liver should lie in salted water one hour before it is sliced. Stew very slowly five hours. Then strain, rubbing hard; cool enough to bring the fat to the top. Take it off, season the soup, put over the fire, and when it boils stir in the rice, previously cooked soft in a little salted water. Simmer together half an hour, and pour out.
Rolled Beef.
Get a fillet of beef—that is, the tenderloin of several steaks cut in one piece. It will not be cheap, but there will be no waste. Therefore, as one weighing four or five pounds will make a roast for one day, your dinner will not be really expensive. Roll it up round; pin tightly with skewers not to be removed, except by the carver, and roast with care, basting often that it may not dry up. Carve horizontally.
Browned Potatoes—Whole.
Peel and parboil some fine potatoes, and half an hour before your beef is taken up, lay them in the dripping-pan. Baste with the meat and turn several times. Drain off the grease when they are done to a fine brown, and lay about the meat in the dish when it goes to table.
Baked Tomatoes.
Open a can of tomatoes, and turn into a bowl. After an hour, season them with a teaspoonful of sugar, half as much salt, a little pepper and a tablespoonful of butter cut into bits, each bit rolled in flour and all distributed evenly throughout the tomatoes. Cover with very dry bread-crumbs. Bake in a pudding-dish, covered, about thirty minutes, then brown on the upper grating of the oven.
Apple Sauce.
Make this on Saturday, by stewing sliced tart apples in a little water until soft, draining and mashing them, adding a bit of butter while doing this. Sweeten abundantly and season with nutmeg.
Unity Pudding.
1 cup of milk.
1 tablespoonful of butter.
1 egg.
1 generous pint of prepared flour.
1 cup of sugar.
1 saltspoonful of salt.
Rub butter and sugar together; beat in the egg, and whip up very light. Then, milk and salt, finally the flour. Bake in a buttered mould, until a straw thrust into the thickest part comes out clean. Turn out upon a plate. Cut in slices and eat hot.
If for this and other receipts which prescribe prepared flour, you cannot conveniently procure it, add one teaspoonful of soda and two of cream of tartar to each quart of flour. Sift all several times through a sieve. You can keep this for a week or two in a dry place.
Cream Sauce.
2 cups rich milk—half cream, if you can get it.
4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Whites of 2 eggs whipped stiff.
1 teaspoonful extract of bitter almonds.
½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
1 even tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water.
Heat the milk to scalding; add the sugar, stir in the corn-starch. When it thickens beat in the stiffened whites, then the seasoning. Take from the fire, and set in boiling water to keep warm—but not cook—until wanted.
First Week. Wednesday.
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Split Pea Soup.
Fricasseed Chicken, Brown. Ladies’ Cabbage.
Baked Potatoes. Stewed Salsify.
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Soft Gingerbread.
Café au Lait.
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Split Pea Soup.
1 quart of split peas, soaked in soft water all night.
1 lb. streaked salt pork, cut into thin strips.
2 lbs. of beef bones, cracked well.
3 stalks of celery, and 1 onion, chopped.
Salt and pepper to taste.
4 quarts of cold water.
A sliced lemon.
Put soaked peas, pork, bones and vegetables over the fire, with the water, and boil slowly for three hours, until the liquid is reduced nearly one half. Strain through a colander, rubbing the peas into a tolerably thick purée into the vessel below. Season, simmer ten minutes over the fire, and pour over the lemon, sliced and pared and laid in the tureen.
Fricasseed Chicken—Brown.
1 pair of chickens.
½ lb. salt pork, minced.
1 small onion.
Tablespoonful of chopped parsley.
2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Browned flour.
Pepper, and a little salt.
Joint the chickens, cutting them with a sharp knife. Put, with the pork, into a pot with a quart of water, and stew until tender. Do not boil fast, especially at first. Strain off the liquor and cover the chickens while you prepare the gravy. Put it into a large frying-pan. There will not be too much after the chickens are taken out of it. Add to it the parsley and chopped onion, with seasoning. Boil up, thicken with browned flour; stir in the butter and cook rapidly, stirring often, ten minutes. Arrange the chickens upon a hot dish and pour the gravy over it. Let all stand for five minutes before sending to the table.
Ladies’ Cabbage.
1 firm white cabbage, boiled and left to get cold.
2