14 JELLIES, CREAMS AND OTHER FANCY DISHES FOR TEA AND LUNCHEON OR SUPPER-PARTIES.

THE pleasing custom in many families is to make the daughters responsible for “fancy cookery.” Mamma turns naturally, when company is expected, to her young allies for the manufacture of cake, jellies, blanc-mange, etc., and for the arrangement of fruit and flowers, and seldom cavils at the manner in which they do the work.

The difference in the appointment of feasts in houses where there are girls growing up and grown, and in those where there are none, is so marked that I need not call attention to it.

Lemon or Orange Jelly.

One package of gelatine soaked in two cups of cold water.

Two and a half cups of sugar.

Juice of four lemons and grated peel of two (same of oranges).

Three cups of boiling water.

A quarter-teaspoonful powdered cinnamon.

Soak the gelatine two hours; add lemon juice, grated peel, sugar and spice, and leave for one hour. Pour on the boiling water, stir until dissolved, and strain through double flannel. Do not shake or squeeze, but let the jelly filter clearly through it into a bowl or pitcher set beneath. Wet moulds in cold water and set aside to cool and harden.

Ribbon Jelly.

Take one third currant jelly, one third lemon jelly, and as much plain blanc-mange. (See Desserts.)

When all are cold and begin to form, wet a mould, pour in about a fourth of the red jelly and set on the ice to harden; keep the rest in a warm room, or near the fire. So soon as the jelly is firm in the bottom of the mould, add carefully some of the white blanc-mange, and return the mould to the ice. When this will bear the weight of more jelly, add a little of the lemon, and when this forms, another line of white.

Proceed in this order, dividing the red from the yellow by white, until the jellies are used up. Leave the mould on ice until you are ready to turn the jelly out.

A pretty dish, and easily managed if one will have patience to wait after putting in each layer until it is firm enough not to be disturbed or muddied by the next supply.

Buttercup Jelly.

One half package of gelatine soaked in half a cup of cold water for two hours.

Three eggs.

One pint of milk.

One heaping cup of sugar.

One teaspoonful of vanilla.

Bit of soda the size of a pea stirred into the milk.

Heat the milk to scalding in a farina-kettle and stir in the soaked gelatine until the latter is dissolved, and strain through a coarse cloth. Beat the yolks of the eggs light, add the sugar and pour the boiling mixture gradually upon it, stirring all the time.

Return to the farina-kettle and stir three minutes, or until it begins to thicken. Let it cool before you flavor it. Whip the white of one egg stiff, and when the yellow jelly coagulates around the edges, set the bowl containing the frothed white in cracked ice or in ice-water and beat the jelly into it, spoonful by spoonful, with the egg-whip, until it is all in and your sponge thick and smooth. Wet a mould and set it on the ice to form. Lay about the base when you dish it.

Whipped Cream.

I have been assured by those who have made the experiment, that excellent whipped cream can be produced, and very quickly, by the use of our incomparable Dover Egg-beater. I have never tried this, but my pupils may, if they have not a syllabub-churn.

Put a pint of rich, sweet cream in a pail or other wide-mouthed vessel with straight sides, and set in ice while you whip or churn it.

As the frothing cream rises to the top, remove it carefully with a spoon and lay it in a perfectly clean and cold colander, or on a hair sieve, set over a bowl. If any cream drips from it return to the vessel in which it is whipped to be beaten over again. When no more froth rises, whip a tablespoonful of powdered sugar into the white syllabub in the colander, and it is ready for use.

Swan’s Down Cream.

One pint of whipped cream.

Whites of three eggs beaten to a stiff froth.

One cup of powdered sugar.

One teaspoonful essence bitter almond.

Just before you are ready to send the dish to table, beat whipped cream, frothed whites, sugar and flavoring together in a bowl set deep in cracked ice. Heap in a glass dish and leave in the ice until it is to be eaten.

Send sponge cake around with it.

Jellied Oranges.

Cut a small round piece from the blossom end of each of six or eight oranges, and scoop out the pulp very carefully, so as not to widen the hole, or tear the inside of the fruit. Use your fingers and a small teaspoon for this purpose until the oranges are empty and clean.

Lay them then in very cold water while you prepare with the pulp and juice you have taken out, and the grated peel of another orange, half the quantity of orange-jelly called for by the receipt for lemon jelly. When it is quite cold, fill the orange-skins with it, and set in a cold place to harden.

In serving them, cut the oranges cross-wise with a sharp knife and arrange in a glass dish, the open sides upward. A few orange, lemon, or japonica leaves to line the edges of the dish, will give a pretty effect.

Ambrosia.

Peel fine, sweet oranges, and cut into small pieces, extracting the seeds. Put a layer in a glass dish and sprinkle well with sugar. In this scatter a thick coating of grated cocoanut, strewing this also with powdered sugar. Over the cocoanut lay thin slices of bananas, peeled and cut crosswise. Fill the dish in this order, the top being covered with banana.

A nice dessert for Sundays and warm afternoons when one dreads the heat of the stove.

How to make Coffee and Tea.

If you wish to have really strong coffee, allow a cup of freshly-ground coffee to a quart of boiling water. Put the coffee in a bowl and wet with half a cup of cold water. Stir in the white and shell of a raw egg, and turn into a clean, newly-scalded coffee-boiler. Shut down the top and shake hard up and down half a dozen times before pouring in the boiling water. Set where it will boil hard, but not run over, for twenty minutes, draw to the side of the range and check the boil suddenly by pouring in a third of a cup of cold water. Let it stand three minutes to settle, and pour off gently into the pot which is to be set on the table.

Scald the milk to be drunk with coffee, unless you can serve really rich cream with it.

Tea.

First rule. The water should boil.

Second rule. The water in which the tea is steeped, must be boiling.

Third rule. The water used for filling the pot must be boiling.

I speak within bounds when I say that I could tell on the fingers of my two hands the tables at which I have drunk really good, hot, fresh tea. Sometimes it is made with boiling water, then allowed to simmer on the range or hob until the decoction is rank, reedy and bitter. Sometimes too little tea is put in, and the beverage, while hot enough, is but faintly colored and flavored.

Oftenest of all, the tea is made with unboiled water, or with water that did boil once, but is now flat and many degrees below the point of ebullition.

Scald the china, or silver, or tin teapot from which the beverage is to flow directly into the cups; put in an even teaspoonful of tea for each person who is to partake of it, pour in a half-cup of boiling water and cover the pot with a cozy or napkin for five minutes. Then, fill up with boiling water from the kettle and take to the table. Fill the cups within three minutes or so and you have the fresh aroma of the delicious herb.