JANUARY.

First Week. Sunday.

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Beef Soup.

Chicken smothered with Oysters. Celery Salad.

Mashed Potatoes. Cauliflower au gratin.

Stewed Tomatoes.

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Blanc Mange and Cream.

Sponge Cake.

Cocoa.

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Beef Soup.

3 lbs. of lean beef, with a marrow-bone.

½ lb. lean ham (or a ham-bone, if you have it).

1 turnip.

1 onion.

1 carrot.

¼ of a cabbage.

3 stalks of celery.

3 quarts of water—cold, of course.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Cut the meat very fine, and crack the bones well. Put these on in a pot with a close top; cover with a quart of water, and set where they will come very slowly to a boil. If they do not reach this point in less than an hour, so much the better. When the contents of the pot begin to bubble, add the remaining two quarts of cold water, and let all boil slowly for three hours: for two hours with the top closed, during the last with it slightly lifted. Wash and peel the turnip, carrot, and onion, scrape the celery, and wash with the cabbage. Cut all into dice and lay in cold water, a little salted, for half an hour. Put the carrot on to stew in a small vessel by itself; the others all together, with enough water to cover them. Some think the carrot keeps color and shape better if hot, instead of cold water be used for it. Let it stew until tender, then drain off the water and set it aside to cool. The other vegetables should be boiled to pieces. Half an hour before the soup is to be taken up, strain the water from the cabbage, etc., pressing them to a pulp to extract all the strength. Return this to the saucepan, throw in a little salt, let it boil up once to clear it; skim and add to the soup. Put in pepper, and salt—unless the ham has salted it sufficiently—and boil, covered, twenty minutes. Strain into an earthenware basin; let it get cool enough for the fat to arise to the surface, when take off all that will come away. Return to the pot, which should have been previously rinsed with hot water, boil briskly for one minute, and throw in the carrot. Skim and serve.

This is a good, clear soup. If you like it thicker, dissolve a tablespoonful of gelatine in enough cold water to cover it well—this may be done by an hour’s soaking—and add to the soup after the latter is strained and cleared of the fat.

When practicable, make Sunday’s soup on Saturday, so far as to prepare the “stock,” or meat base. Set it away in an earthenware crock, adding a little salt. This not only lessens Sunday’s work, but the unstrained soup gathers the whole strength of the meat, and the fat can be removed in a solid cake of excellent dripping. Indeed, it is a good rule always to prepare soup stock at least twenty-four hours before it is to be used for the table.

Try, likewise, to make enough soup for Sunday to last over Monday as well. A little forethought on Saturday will lessen the labors and increase the comfort of what has been somewhat profanely named “Job’s birthday,” the anniversary which was to be accursed for evermore.

Chicken smothered with Oysters.

1 full-grown, tender chicken.

1 pint of oysters.

2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

3 tablespoonfuls of cream.

1 tablespoonful of corn-starch.

Yolks of three hard-boiled eggs.

1 scant cup bread-crumbs.

Pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

Prepare the chicken as for roasting. Stuff with a dressing of the oysters chopped pretty fine, and mixed with the bread-crumbs, seasoned to taste with pepper and salt. Tie up the neck securely. (This can be done on Saturday, if the fowl be afterwards kept in a very cold place.)

Put the chicken thus stuffed and trussed, with legs and wings tied close to the body with soft tape, into a tin pail with a tight top. Cover closely and set, with a weight on the top, in a pot of cold water. Bring gradually to a boil, that the fowl may be heated evenly and thoroughly. Stew steadily, never fast, for an hour and a half after the water in the outer kettle begins to boil. Then open the pail and test with a fork to see if the chicken be tender. If not, re-cover at once, and stew for half or three-quarters of an hour longer. When the chicken is tender throughout, take it out and lay upon a hot dish, covering immediately. Turn the juices left in the pail into a saucepan, thicken with the corn-starch, which should first be wet up with a little cold milk, then the chopped parsley, butter, pepper and salt, and the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs chopped fine. Boil up once, stir in the cream, and take from the fire before it can boil again. Pour a few spoonfuls over the chicken, and serve the rest in a sauce-tureen.

Celery Salad.

2 bunches of celery.

1 tablespoonful of salad oil.

4 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.

1 small teaspoonful fine sugar.

Pepper and salt to taste.

Wash and scrape the celery, lay in ice-cold water until dinner-time, when cut into inch-lengths, season, tossing all well up together, and serve in a salad bowl.

Cauliflower au gratin.

1 large cauliflower.

4 tablespoonfuls grated cheese.

1 cup drawn butter.

Pepper and salt.

A pinch of nutmeg.

Boil the cauliflower until tender (about twenty minutes), having first tied it up in a bag of coarse lace or tarlatan. Have ready a cup of good drawn butter, and pour over the cauliflower, when you have drained and dished the latter. Sift the cheese thickly over the top, and brown by holding a red-hot shovel so close to the cheese that it singes and blazes. Blow out the fire on the instant, and send to the table.

Mashed Potatoes.

Pare the potatoes very thin, lay in cold water for an hour, and cover well with boiling water. (“Peach-blows” are better put down in cold water.) Boil quickly, and when done, drain off every drop of water; throw in a little salt; set back on the range for two or three minutes. Mash soft with a potato-beetle, or whip to a cream with a fork, adding a little butter and enough milk to make a soft paste. Heap in a smooth mound upon a vegetable dish.

Stewed Tomatoes.

Open a can of tomatoes an hour before cooking them. Leave out the cores and unripe parts. Cook always in tin or porcelain saucepans. Iron injures color and flavor. Stew gently for half an hour; season to taste with salt, pepper, a little sugar, and a tablespoonful of butter. Cook gently, uncovered, ten minutes longer, and turn into a deep dish.

Blanc Mange.

1 liberal quart of milk.

1 oz. Cooper’s gelatine.

¾ of a cup of white sugar.

2 teaspoonfuls vanilla.

Soak the gelatine for two hours in a breakfast-cup of cold water. Heat the milk to boiling in a farina-kettle, or in a tin pail set in a pot of hot water. Add the soaked gelatine and sugar, stir for ten minutes over the fire, and strain through a thin muslin bag into a mould wet with cold water. Flavor and set in a cold place to form. To loosen it, dip the mould for one instant in hot water, detach the surface from the sides by a light pressure of the fingers, and reverse over a glass or china dish. Serve with powdered sugar and cream.

By all means have Sunday desserts prepared upon the preceding day. To this end, I have endeavored to give such receipts for the blessed day as can be easily made ready on Saturday.

Cocoa.

6 tablespoonfuls of cocoa to each pint of water.

As much milk as you have water.

Sugar to taste.

Rub the cocoa smooth in a little cold water. Have ready on the fire the pint of boiling water. Stir in the grated cocoa-paste. Boil twenty minutes; add the milk and boil five minutes more, stirring often.

Sweeten in the cups to suit different tastes.

There is a preparation of cocoa, already powdered, called “cocoatina,” which needs no boiling. It is very good, and saves the trouble of grating and cooking. I regret that, although I have used it frequently and with great satisfaction, I have forgotten the name of the manufacturer. It is put up in round boxes, like mustard, and is quite as economical for family use as the cakes of cocoa.

Sponge Cake.

6 eggs.

The weight of the eggs in sugar.

Half their weight in flour.

1 lemon, juice and rind.

Beat yolks and whites very light, separately of course, the powdered sugar into the yolks when they are smooth and thick; next, the juice and grated peel of the lemon; then the whites with a few swift strokes; at last, the flour, in great, loose handfuls. Stir in lightly, but thoroughly. Too much beating after the flour goes in makes sponge cake tough. Bake in round tin moulds, buttered. Your oven should be steady. When the cakes begin to color on top, cover with paper to prevent burning.

When cool, wrap in a thick cloth to keep fresh.

First Week. Monday.

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Soup à l’Italienne.

Breaded Mutton Chops. Baked Macaroni, with Tomato Sauce.

Potato Puff. Apple Sauce.

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Corn Starch Hasty Pudding.

Coffee.

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Said an irascible householder to a friend from another city, whom he chanced to meet in the street one day, “Come and dine with me! But I give you warning we shall have nothing for dinner but a confounded dressmaker!” Few of the great middle class, who are the strength and glory of our land, would dare take an unexpected guest home on washing-day, although fewer still would dare reveal, as frankly as did our blunt citizen, the cause of their reluctance to unveil the penetralia of what are, upon all days save Black Monday and Blue Tuesday, orderly and brightsome households.

Don’t interrupt me, please, my much-tried and much-trying sister, upon whose brow the plaits of Monday’s tribulations have left enduring traces! I know Bridget is always cross on wash-day, and that Katy wears an aggrieved air from morning until night; that dusting, china-washing, and divers other unaccustomed tasks are appointed unto your already busy self; that John and the boys hate “pick-up dinners;” that the modest bills of fare set down in this book for the second and third days of the week will, at the first glance, seem preposterous and unfeeling. You will survey them with very much the same feeling as moved Pope to exclaim, with tears in his eyes, “From an old friend I had not expected this!” when his host, having allowed him to eat to repletion of less savory viands, had brought on, without a note of preparation, the poet’s favorite dish, a fine hare roasted with truffles. But the fact remains that people cannot swallow enough on Sunday to support Nature through the two days’ journey into the wilderness of making-clean that follows the season of rest and devotion. It is also true that your husband and yourself, with school-children and servants, work harder on Monday than upon any other one day of the seven, and that your food should be nourishing. Should Bridget protest against “hot mate and soup” as unprecedented and “onfaling,” Bridget’s mistress (by courtesy) must bring another unknown commodity to the obstinate Celt, to bear upon the subject—to wit, Brains. As I shall try to show, an hour given by yourself to the lower regions—too often an inferno on that direful day—will put such a repast before unexpectant John as shall have for his eye and taste none of the characteristics of a “pick-up dinner.”

Soup À l’Italienne.

The stock of Sunday’s soup strained from the carrots.

Half a cup of grated cheese and a cup of milk.

2 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch wet up with water.

2 eggs beaten light.

Put the soup on fifteen minutes before dinner, where it will heat quickly. The moment it boils, draw it to one side, stir in the corn-starch and milk and heat anew, stirring constantly until it begins to thicken. Set it again upon the side of the range, and add the beaten eggs. Cover and leave it where it will keep hot, but not cook, while you scald the tureen and put the grated cheese in the bottom. In five minutes pour the soup upon the cheese, stir all up well, and it is ready for the table.

This is a delicious soup and easily made.

Breaded Mutton Chops—Baked.

Trim the chops neatly and put aside the bones and bits of skin for the sauce for macaroni. Pour a little melted butter over the meat. Do this as early in the day as convenient, cover them and let them stand until an hour before they are to be served. Then, roll each in beaten egg, next, in fine cracker-dust, (you can buy it ready powdered) and lay them in your dripping-pan with a very little water in the bottom—just enough to keep them from burning. Bake quickly—covering the dripping-pan with another—for half an hour. Then remove the upper, baste the chops with butter and hot water, and let them brown. When done, lay them upon a hot dish and set in the open oven to keep warm. Add to the gravy in the dripping-pan a little hot water, a teaspoonful of browned flour, a tablespoonful of catsup, a small quantity of minced onion, pepper and salt. Boil up once, strain, and pour over the chops.

Macaroni with Tomato Sauce.

Break the macaroni into short pieces and set over the fire with enough boiling water to cover it well, as it swells to treble its original dimensions. In twenty minutes it should be tender. Drain off the water carefully, not to break the macaroni, and stir lightly into it pepper, salt, and a tablespoonful of butter. Turn it into a deep dish and pour over it a sauce made as follows: To the bones and refuse bits left from trimming the chops, add a pint of cold water, and stew slowly upon the back of the range, (lest Bridget should be inconvenienced thereby,) until you have less than a cupful of good gravy. Strain out the bones, etc., season to taste, and add what was left from the stewed tomatoes of yesterday. Having had the provision for to-day’s dinner in mind, you will have acted wisely in seeing for yourself that it did not go into the swill-pail under the head of “scraps.” Cook tomatoes and gravy together for three minutes after they begin to simmer, and pour, smoking hot, over the macaroni. Let it stand covered a few minutes before serving.

Potato Puff.

To two cupfuls of cold mashed potato (more of yesterday’s leavings), add a tablespoonful of melted butter, and beat to a cream. Put with this two eggs whipped light, and a cupful of milk, salting to taste. Beat all well; pour into a greased baking-dish, and bake quickly to a light brown. Serve in the dish in which it was cooked.

Corn-starch Hasty Pudding.

1 quart of fresh milk.

1 tablespoonful of butter.

4 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch wet up with water.

1 teaspoonful of salt.

Heat the milk to scalding, and stir into it the corn-starch until it has boiled ten minutes and is thick and smooth throughout. Add salt and butter, let the pudding stand in the farina-kettle in which it has been boiled—the hot water around it—for three minutes before turning it into a deep open dish.

Eat with butter and sugar, or with powdered sugar and cream, with nutmeg grated over it.

Coffee.

A French coffee-pot is a convenience on Monday. If you have one, you know how to use it. If not, put a quart of boiling water into your coffee-pot; wet up a cupful of ground coffee with the white of an egg, adding the egg-shell, and a little cold water. Put this into the boiling hot water, and boil fast ten minutes. Then, add half a cup of cold water, and set it upon the hearth or table to “settle” for five minutes. Pour it off carefully into your metal or china coffee-pot or urn.

First Week. Tuesday.

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Scotch Broth.

Rolled Beefsteaks. Cabbage Salad.

Browned Potatoes. Baked Beans.

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Apple and Tapioca Pudding.

Hard Sauce.

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Scotch Broth.

3 lbs. of veal and bones from neck or knuckle.

3 quarts of water.

1 onion.

1 turnip.

3 stalks of celery.

1 cupful pearl barley.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Crack the bones and mince the meat early in the day, if you dine near midday, and put on with the cold water. Soak the barley in lukewarm water, after washing it well, and when it has lain in the tepid bath for two hours, put it in the same over the fire to cook slowly, keeping it covered fully by adding hot water from the kettle. Wash, scrape and chop the vegetables; cover with cold water, and stew in a saucepan by themselves. When they are very soft, rub them through a colander; add the water in which they were cooked, and keep hot until the meat in the soup-kettle has boiled to rags. For this purpose four hours are better than three. Strain out bones and meat; put soup-stock, barley (with the water in which it has boiled), vegetable broth, pepper, and salt, into one kettle and boil slowly for thirty minutes. A little chopped parsley is an improvement.

Rolled Beefsteaks.

2 good sirloin steaks.

Bread-crumbs.

A slice of fat salt pork.

Seasoning, a little minced onion, pepper and salt.

Take out the bones from the steak and throw them into the soup-pot. If your butcher has not already done so, beat the meat flat with the broad side of a hatchet, and cover it with a force-meat made of bread-crumbs, minced pork, and half an onion. Moisten this slightly with water, and season to taste. Roll each steak up, closely enclosing the stuffing; bind with twine into two compact bundles and lay in a dripping-pan. Dash a cupful of boiling water over each, cover with an inverted pan, and bake about three-quarters of an hour, in their own steam. At the end of this time remove the cover, baste with butter and dredge with flour to brown the meat. When they are of a fine color, lay upon a hot dish. Thicken the gravy with a little browned flour, boil up and send to table in a boat. In removing the strings from the rolled beef prior to serving, clip them in several places, that the form of the meat may not be disturbed.

Cabbage Salad.

1 small head of cabbage, chopped fine, or cut into shreds.

1 cup of boiling milk.

¾ of a cup of vinegar.

1 tablespoonful of butter.

1 tablespoonful of white sugar.

2 eggs well beaten.

1 teaspoonful essence of celery.

Pepper and salt.

Heat milk and vinegar in separate vessels. To the boiling vinegar add butter, sugar, and seasoning, lastly the chopped cabbage. Heat to scalding, but do not let it boil. Stir the beaten eggs into the hot milk. Cook one minute together after they begin to boil. Turn the hot cabbage into a bowl; pour the custard over it; toss up and about with a wooden or silver fork, until all the ingredients are well mixed. Cover and set in a very cold place for some hours.

This is a very delightful salad, quite repaying the trouble of cooking the dressing.

Browned Potatoes.

Boil large potatoes with their skins on; peel them, and, when you uncover your beef for browning, lay the potatoes in the dripping-pan about the meat. Dredge and baste them as well as the beef. If not quite brown when the meat is ready, leave them in the gravy for awhile, before thickening the latter. Drain in a hot colander, and arrange neatly around the steaks in the dish.

Baked Beans.

Soak dried beans all night in soft water, exchanging this in the morning for lukewarm, and this, two hours later, for still warmer. Let them lie an hour in this, before putting them on to boil in cold water. When they are soft, drain and turn them into a bake-dish. Season with pepper and salt, with a liberal spoonful of butter. Add enough boiling water to prevent them from scorching and bake, covered, until they smoke and bubble. Remove the cover, and brown. Serve in the bake-dish.

Apple and Tapioca Pudding.

1 teacupful tapioca, soaked for five hours in 3 teacupfuls of warm (not hot) water.

8 juicy pippins, pared and cored.

3 tablespoonfuls of sugar and a saltspoonful of salt, with a few whole cloves.

Arrange the apples in a deep dish; add a cup of cold water; cover, and steam in a moderate oven until tender all through, turning them once or twice. Turn off half the liquid and pour the tapioca, which should have been soaked in a warm place, over the apples, when you have filled the hollows left by the cores with sugar and put a clove in each. The tapioca should be slightly salted. Bake one hour, or until the tapioca is clear and crusted on top. Serve in pudding-dish.

Hard Sauce.

To two cups of powdered sugar add half a cup of butter, slightly warmed, so that the two can be worked up together. When they are well mixed, beat in half a teaspoonful of nutmeg and the juice of a lemon. Whip smooth and light, mound neatly upon a butter-plate, and set in the cold to harden.

First Week. Wednesday.

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Split Pea Soup.

Halibut Steaks. Boiled Leg of Mutton.

Caper Sauce.

Spinach. Stewed Potatoes.

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Cottage Pudding with Liquid Sauce.

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Split Pea Soup.

1 pint of split peas.

4 quarts of water.

2 lbs. of beef and some bones.

¼ lb. of lean bacon or ham.

3 stalks of celery, the white part only, cut fine.

Juice of a lemon.

Stale bread cut into dice and fried.

Soak the peas all night in soft water, changing it in the morning for warm—not hot. Throw this off after an hour and cover the peas with four quarts of cold water. Boil in this—adding the meat, cut small, the bones well cracked and the celery—four hours. Always boil soups slowly. The neglect of this rule leaves in the kettle a mass of toughened meat and an ocean of dish-water.

When you are ready to take up your soup, strain in a colander, picking out and casting aside bits of bones and shreds of meat. Rub the peas and celery through the holes of the strainer until nothing more will pass. Season with pepper and salt; add the juice of a small lemon, and return to the kettle, which must first be rinsed with hot water. Let all boil together two minutes. Should it not seem so thick as you would like, you can put in, while it is boiling, a little corn-starch wet up with cold water. Put a couple of slices of stale bread, cut into dice and fried crisp in dripping, in the heated tureen, and pour the soup upon them.

Halibut Steaks—Fried.

Wash and wipe the steaks. Roll each in flour, and fry upon a buttered griddle, turning carefully with a spatula, or cake-turner, when the lower side is done. They should be of a nice brown, and tender throughout. Remove to a hot dish and garnish with sliced lemon; in carving, see that a bit of the lemon goes to each person, as many prefer it to any other sauce for fish. Send around potatoes with the steak. Worcestershire is a good store-sauce for fish and game. Anchovy is pre-eminently a fish sauce, but many do not like it.

Leg of Mutton—Boiled.

Do not have the mutton too fat or too large. Cut off the shank, which the butcher will have nicked for you, leaving about two inches beyond the ham. Wash and wipe carefully and boil in hot water, with a little salt, until a fork will readily pierce the thickest part. About ten or twelve minutes to the pound is a good rule in boiling fresh meat. Serve with caper sauce. Since you intend to use the liquor in which the meat is boiled for to-morrow’s soup, do not oversalt it. But sprinkle, instead, salt over the leg of mutton after it is dished; rub it all over with butter and set in a hot oven for a single minute.

Caper Sauce.

1 cup of the liquor in which the meat has been boiled.

2 teaspoonfuls of flour rubbed smooth in a little water. Salt to taste.

2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

About two dozen capers or green nasturtium-seed.

Heat the liquor to boiling, and skim before stirring in the flour, which must be perfectly free from lumps, and rubbed smooth in cold water. Stir until the sauce thickens evenly. It is best to cook all sauces in a vessel set within a larger one of hot water. When it has boiled about a minute, add the butter gradually, stirring each bit in well before putting in more. Salt, and drop in the capers. Let it just boil, and turn into a sauce-boat.

Spinach.

Pull the spinach from the stalks, leaf by leaf; wash carefully, and leave in cold water one hour. Boil in hot water fifteen minutes. Drain very dry in a colander; chop extremely fine in a wooden bowl, then return to the saucepan with a tablespoonful of butter, a little salt, and a teaspoonful of white sugar. As it heats beat it up with a wooden spoon until it is a soft paste. Let it bubble up once, and dish. Lay a hard-boiled egg or two, cut in thin slices, upon the surface. Few vegetables are more often ruined in the cooking than spinach. The above receipt is simple and good.

Stewed Potatoes.

Pare and cut into large dice some good potatoes. Lay in cold water half an hour. Stew in cold water, a little salted. There should be enough water to cover them well. When they are tender and begin to crumble at the edges, drain off half the water, and pour in as much milk. When they are again scalding hot, stir in a lump of butter the size of an egg (for a large dish) rolled in flour, salt, pepper and chopped parsley to taste. Boil up once and serve in a covered dish.

Cottage Pudding.

1 cup of powdered sugar.

1 cup of sweet milk.

1 tablespoonful of butter.

2 eggs, beaten light, yolks and whites separately.

Saltspoonful of salt.

About 3 cups of Hecker’s prepared flour, enough for cake-batter.

Rub the butter well into the sugar; add beaten yolks; the milk, salt, then whipped whites and yolks alternately. Bake in a buttered mould. When you can bring out the testing-straw clean from the middle of the loaf, turn it out upon a dish. Cut in slices while hot, as it is wanted.

One who has never tried it can hardly believe that the result of a receipt which may be tried fearlessly by a novice in cookery, could be the really elegant pudding just described.

It is also as economical as toothsome.

Sauce for Cottage Pudding.

2 cups of powdered sugar.

2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

1 cup of boiling water.

1 glass sherry wine.

Nutmeg or cinnamon to taste.

Rub the butter into the sugar; add hot water gradually; then spice and wine. Cover tightly to keep in the strength of the wine, and set for twenty minutes in a saucepan of boiling water. Stir up and send to table.

First Week. Thursday.

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Vermicelli Soup.

Scalloped Oysters. Mince of Mutton with Potato Frill.

Baked Tomatoes. Celery.

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Tipsy Trifle.

Apples and Nuts.

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Vermicelli Soup.

Take off all the fat from the broth in which your mutton was cooked yesterday, and boil it down slowly to two-thirds of the original quantity. Stew to pieces, in another vessel, a stalk of celery, one small onion, a carrot, and a bunch of sweet herbs—all cut up fine. A ham-bone, if you have it, or a couple of slices of lean ham, will be an improvement to the broth. Strain the soup; rub the vegetables through a fine colander with the water in which they were boiled; return to the fire with a double handful of vermicelli broken into short pieces; boil for ten minutes; add a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour; boil up and serve.

Send around a saucer of grated cheese with vermicelli and macaroni soups. It is a great improvement to the flavor and consistency. Each person may take as much or as little as he likes.

Scalloped Oysters.

1 quart of fine oysters.

1 coffee-cupful of pounded cracker.

2 great spoonfuls of butter.

½ cupful of cream or rich milk.

Pepper and salt to taste.

Butter a baking-dish and cover the bottom pretty thickly with pounded cracker. Wet with oyster liquor and a few spoonfuls of cream. Next, lay oysters, one deep, closely over these. Pepper and salt, and stick a bit of butter upon each. Another layer of crumbs, wet as before; more oysters, and proceed in like order until your dish is full, making the top layer of crumbs with butter dotted over it. Set in the oven, invert a plate or tin pan over the dish, and bake until the juice bubbles up to the top. Uncover; set upon the upper grating of the oven to brown, and send to table in the bake-dish. Pass around sliced lemon with it.

Oysters, like fish, follow immediately after soup, and are a course by themselves.

Mince of Mutton with Potato Frill.

The remains of yesterday’s mutton, minced, but not very fine.

1 cupful of drawn butter.

2 tablespoonfuls of cream, or rich milk.

Pepper, salt, and mace to taste, also chopped parsley.

1 button onion.

2 eggs, well beaten.

Heat the sauce to a boil, add the seasoning and the onion, chopped very fine; then, the meat. Draw the saucepan to the side of the range, and let it stand, closely covered, in boiling water for ten minutes. Set again over the fire and bring to boiling point. Add the eggs and milk and set back at the side for five minutes, still covered. The mince should never really boil after the meat goes in.

Potato Frill.

Boil and mash some potatoes; working in a little milk and butter, but not so much as to make the paste very soft. Season with salt, and, while still hot, knead in a beaten egg. Shape this paste into a fence, on the inside round of a shallow dish; fluting it regularly with the round handle of a knife. Set for one minute in a hot oven, but not long enough to cause the fence to crack. Glaze quickly with butter, and pour the meat carefully within the wall. The mince should not be so thin as to wash away the “frill.” If well managed this is a pretty and a savory dish.

Baked Tomatoes.

1 can of tomatoes.

Stale bread, crumbed fine.

1 tablespoonful of butter.

Pepper, salt, a little chopped parsley, and white sugar.

Drain off two-thirds of the liquor from the tomatoes; salt it and set aside for another day’s soup. One has no excuse for waste whose “stock-pot” is always near at hand. Little comes amiss to it. Cover the bottom of a bake-dish with crumbs; lay the tomatoes evenly upon this bed; season with pepper, salt, sugar, and parsley, with bits of butter here and there. Strew bread-crumbs over all, a thicker layer than at the bottom; put tiny pieces of butter upon this, and bake, covered, about thirty-five minutes. Take off the cover and brown upon the upper shelf of the oven. Do not let it stay there long enough to get dry.

Celery—Raw.

Wash, trim, and scrape the stalks, selecting those that are white and tender. Crisp by leaving them in very cold water until they are wanted for the table. Arrange neatly in a celery-stand. Pass between the oysters and meat.

Tipsy Trifle.

1 quart of milk.

3 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.

1 stale sponge-cake.

1 cup of sugar.

Flavoring of vanilla.

1 cup of sherry wine.

A few spoonfuls of currant jelly.

Make a custard of the milk, sugar, the yolks of the eggs and the whites of two. Put in the latter ingredients when the milk almost boils, and stir until it begins to thicken. Flavor when cold. Put a layer of sliced cake in the bottom of a glass bowl. Wet with the wine and a few spoonfuls of custard, and when it is quite soaked, put on more cake. Proceed in this manner until the cake and wine are used up, when pour on, a little at a time, the remainder of the custard; holding down the cake with a bread spoon as you do this to keep it from floating. Lay a heavy plate upon it, for the same purpose, while you prepare a méringue by whipping stiff the rest of the whites, and then beating in the currant jelly. Cover the trifle with this just before dinner-time.

Apples and Nuts.

Polish the apples, and crack the nuts, unless you have plenty of nut-crackers. Give a knife to each apple-plate, and teach the children to pare them neatly for themselves, instead of “munching” like rabbits at family dinners, and being awkwardly ill at ease when “company” is present. Silver or ivory knives are better for fruit than steel.

First Week. Friday.

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Soupe Maigre.

Boiled Cod. Roast Duck with Bread Sauce.

Mashed Potatoes. Rice Croquettes.

Stewed Celery.

——

Apple Pie.

——

Soupe Maigre.

1 quart of milk.

3 pints of water.

1 onion.

1 turnip.

3 stalks of celery.

1 potato (large).

Quarter of a small cabbage, sliced.

½ cup of bread-crumbs, very dry.

2 eggs, beaten light.

Parsley, pepper, and salt to taste.

4 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Clean, scrape, and mince the vegetables, and put on to cook in cold water, enough to cover them well. When they are scalding hot, drain, and cover them with three pints of boiling water. Stew slowly in this until they are reduced to pulp. Rub through a colander, season, and heat again to boiling. Stir in the bread-crumbs; then the butter, very gradually. Have the milk ready, heated in another vessel, and pour into the soup-kettle at this juncture. Let the soup get very hot, but not boil. Set upon the side of the range, and, dipping out a cupful, add it, a little at a time, to the beaten eggs. When well mixed, return eggs and liquor to the rest of the soup; stir over the fire for an instant, but never to boiling, and serve in a hot tureen.

The eggs should not be allowed to curdle in the liquor; hence the need of carefulness in following the directions above given. A little grated cheese is a pleasant accompaniment to this soup, each person adding it as pleases him.

Boiled Cod.

Lay the fish in cold water, a little salt, for half an hour. Wipe dry, and sew up in a linen cloth, coarse and clean, fitted to the shape of the piece of cod. Have but one fold over each part. Lay in the fish-kettle, cover with boiling water, salted at discretion. Allow nearly an hour for a piece weighing four pounds.

Sauce.

To one gill of boiling water allow as much milk; stir into this, while boiling, two tablespoonfuls of butter, added gradually, a tablespoonful of flour wet up with cold water, and, as it thickens, the chopped yolk of a boiled egg and one raw egg, beaten light. Take directly from the fire, season with pepper, salt, a little chopped parsley and the juice of a lemon, and set, covered, in boiling water, but not over the fire, for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour part of the sauce over the fish when dished; the rest in a boat. Send around mashed potatoes with it.

Roast Duck.

Clean the duck very carefully, rinsing it out with a little soda and water, and afterwards with fresh water. Lay in cold, salted water for an hour. Wipe dry, inside and out, and stuff with a dressing of bread-crumbs, seasoned with pepper and salt, a very little powdered sage and a “suspicion” of minced onion. Sew up; dash a cup of boiling water over them, as they lie in the dripping-pan, and roast, covered, for the first half-hour. Remove the cover, and baste freely—three times with butter and water, four or five times with the gravy from the pan. Stew the giblets in a little salted water, and reserve to piece out to-morrow’s salmi. Dish the ducks upon a hot platter.

Bread Sauce.

Skim the fat well from the gravy left in the dripping-pan; have ready a handful of bread-crumbs (stale), wet up with hot water. Thicken the gravy with these when it has come to a boil; season with pepper, salt, and a pinch of mace. Boil all together once and serve.

Mashed Potatoes.

See receipt for Sunday.

While I would spare you all waste of time and pains in looking up receipts in other parts of this volume, I yet deem it hardly worth while to write out in full the same directions twice for the same week—or month.

Rice Croquettes.

1 cup of cold boiled rice.

1 teaspoonful of sugar, and half as much salt.

1 teaspoonful of melted butter.

1 egg, beaten light.

Enough milk to make the rice into stiff paste.

Sweet lard for frying.

Work rice, butter, egg, etc., into an adhesive paste, beating each ingredient thoroughly into the mixture. Flour your hands and make the rice into oval balls. Dip each in beaten egg, then in flour, or cracker-dust, and fry in boiling lard, a few at a time, turning each with great care. When the croquettes are of a fine yellow-brown, take out with a wire spoon and lay within a heated colander to drain off every drop of fat. Serve hot, with sprigs of parsley laid about them, in an uncovered dish.

Stewed Celery.

Cut the celery into inch lengths; cover with cold water and stew until tender. Turn off the water and supply its place with enough milk to cover the celery. When this begins to boil stir in a good lump of butter rolled in flour; pepper and salt to taste, and stew gently five minutes.

You will like this vegetable thus prepared. Eat, if you like, with a little lemon-juice or vinegar.

Apple Pie.

1 quart of flour, dried and sifted.

½ lb. of lard.

¼ lb. of butter.

Ice-water to make stiff paste.

Chop the lard into the dry flour. Wet with ice-water into stiff paste, touching as little as may be with your hands. Roll out very thin, always from you. Stick bits of butter all over the sheet; roll up tightly as you would a sheet of paper. Beat flat with your rolling-pin, roll out again, and again baste with butter. Repeat the operations of rolling up, rolling out, and basting until your butter is used up. Set the roll of pastry in a cold, dry place for at least one hour. All night would not be too long. When it is crisp and firm, roll out and line your buttered pie-plates. The bottom crust should be thinner than the upper. And, as a rule, you would do well to give the roll of pastry intended for the latter a “baste” or two more than that meant for the lower.

Pare, core and slice juicy, tart apples; put a layer upon the inner crust, sprinkle with sugar thickly—scatter a few cloves upon the sugar; then another layer of apples, and so on, until the dish is full. Cover with crust, pressed down firmly at the edges, and bake. Eat warm, or cold, with white sugar sifted over the top.

Apple pie is very good with cream poured over each slice.

First Week. Saturday.

——

Macaroni Soup.

Ham and Eggs. Salmi of Duck.

Fried Parsnips. Stewed Salsify.

Sweet Potatoes—in Jackets.

——

Rosie’s Rice Custard.

——

Macaroni Soup.

4 quarts of cold water.

3 lbs. of coarse, lean beef, cut into thin strips.

2 or 3 lbs. of bones, broken small.

4 onions, sliced.

1 bunch of sweet herbs, chopped.

Tomato juice or catsup.

¼ lb. of macaroni.

A few salt pork bones.

Fry the meat until half done, in a very little dripping. Take it out and fry the onions and bones in the same gravy. Put all into a soup-kettle with the herbs, and cover with 4 quarts of water (cold). Bring to a slow boil, and, at the end of four hours, strain into a great bowl to cool, in order that the fat may rise and be taken off. Meanwhile, make ready your macaroni by breaking it into short bits, covering well with boiling water, a little salted, and stewing slowly twenty minutes, or until tender. Add a lump of butter the size of a walnut; let it stand, covered, for a few minutes, while you season the soup, adding the tomato-juice or catsup. Boil, skim, and thicken with a tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water. When it is again on the boil, turn in the macaroni, taking care not to break it. Heat to scalding, but do not boil; pour out, and serve.

Ham and Eggs.

Cut your slices of ham of a uniform size and shape, cutting off the rind. Fry quickly in their own fat. Remove from the pan with a wire spoon so soon as they are done, and arrange upon a hot dish, setting this within the open oven, or upon a pot of boiling water to keep warm. Drop the eggs, as you break them, into the hot fat left in the frying-pan. Do not put so many in as to crowd one another. Each egg should preserve its individuality. Cook about three minutes, without turning. Take up with a spatula, or cake-turner, and lay one upon each slice of ham. Do not send the gravy to table. Strain, and use for dripping.

Salmi of Duck.

From the cold ducks left after yesterday’s dinner cut all the meat in as neat slices as you can, leaving the joints of legs and wings whole. Take off the skin; break the carcass into pieces, and put these, with the stuffing, into a saucepan with a fried onion, some sweet herbs, pepper, salt, and a pinch of allspice. Cover with cold water and stew gently, after it reaches the boil, for one hour. Cool, that the fat may rise and be taken off. Strain the gravy when you have skimmed it; return to the saucepan, boil and skim again, and stir in two tablespoonfuls of browned flour, wet with cold water; lastly, stir in a great spoonful of butter. Stew five minutes longer, and put in the meat. Draw to one side of the range, and set, closely covered, in a pot of boiling water for ten minutes. The meat must be thoroughly heated and steeped in the gravy, but not boil. Take the meat out with a perforated spoon, pile neatly upon a dish and pour the gravy over it. Garnish with triangles of stale bread fried crisp, and send a piece to each person who is helped to salmi.

Fried Parsnips.

Boil, until tender, in hot water slightly salted; let them get almost cold, scrape off the skin, and cut in thick, long slices. Dredge with flour and fry in hot dripping, turning as they brown. Drain very dry in a hot colander; pepper and salt and serve.

Stewed Salsify.

Scrape the roots, dropping each into cold water as you do this, that they may not change color. Cut in pieces an inch long; cover with hot water and stew until tender. Drain off two-thirds of the water and add enough milk to cover the salsify. Stew ten minutes in this; put in a good lump of butter rolled thickly in flour. Pepper and salt. Boil up for one minute.

Sweet Potatoes—in Jackets.

Parboil in their skins when you have washed them, selecting such as are of like size. Then put in a moderate oven and bake until soft all through. You can ascertain this by pinching the largest. Wipe off and serve in their skins.

Rosie’s Rice Custard.

1 quart of milk.

3 eggs, well beaten.

4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.

1 tablespoonful of butter.

1 cup boiled rice.

A little salt.

Half the grated rind of a lemon.

Boil the rice, drain, and stir, while hot, into the milk. Beat the eggs well; rub butter and sugar to a cream with lemon-peel and a little salt, and stir into the warm milk. Mix well and bake in a buttered dish in a brisk oven. Eat warm or cold. We like it better warm, with a little cream poured over it when served in saucers.

Second Week. Sunday.

——

Soupe au Julienne.

Roast Turkey. Cranberry Sauce.

Mashed Potatoes, Browned. Stewed Corn.

Celery.

——

Tropical Snow.

Light Cakes and Coffee.

——

Soupe au Julienne.

6 lbs. of lean beef. If possible, get it from the shin and have the accompanying bones cracked to bits.

6 quarts of water—cold.

Prepare the stock on Saturday. Put meat and bones into a pot with a close cover, pour on the water, and set it where it will heat very slowly. Boil, also very slowly, six hours, at the back of the range. Should the water sink fast in the pot, replenish from the boiling tea-kettle. At the end of six hours, turn the soup, meat, bones and all, into an earthenware vessel; pepper and salt it and set on the cellar floor, covered, until next day. Take off, then, the cake of excellent dripping from the top; strain the soup and set over the fire, about an hour before dinner, and heat gradually.

The vegetables should be—

2 carrots.

3 turnips.

Half a head of cabbage.

1 pint Shaker corn, soaked overnight.

6 stalks of celery.

1 quart of tomatoes.

1 large onion.

Clean, scrape, and mince all these, except the corn and tomatoes. Cut the carrot into dice and stew, by itself, in a little cold water. Boil the corn in enough water to cover it, and add more hot water as it swells. Cover the minced vegetables with cold water, and so soon as it boils, turn it off, and replenish with boiling, from the kettle. This will take away the rank taste from cabbage and onion. When they are soft enough to pulp, strain well, but without pressing, into the soup. It is needless to add the vegetables, as the strength is in the liquor. Boil up and skim the soup before putting in the boiled corn and the canned tomatoes, which should be cut up small, and the unripe parts removed. Boil fifteen minutes, add the carrot, season to taste, and serve.[B]

Roast Turkey.

Rinse out the turkey well with soda and water; then with salt, lastly with fair water. Stuff with a dressing made of bread-crumbs, wet up with butter and water and seasoned to your taste. Stuff the craw and tie up the neck. Fill the body and sew up the vent. I need hardly say that these strings are to be clipped and removed after the fowl is roasted. Tie the legs to the lower part of the body that they may not “sprawl,” as the sinews shrink. Put into the dripping-pan, pour a teacupful of boiling water over it, and roast, basting often, allowing about ten minutes’ time for every pound. Be careful not to have your oven too hot—especially during the first half-hour or so. The turkey would, otherwise, be dry and blackened on the outside and raw within. And remember how much of the perfection of roasting meats and poultry depends upon basting faithfully. Boil the giblets tender in a little water. When the turkey is done, set it where it will keep warm; skim the gravy left in the pan; add a little boiling water; thicken slightly with browned flour; boil up once and add the giblets minced fine. Season to taste; give another boil, and send to table in a gravy-boat.

Cranberry Sauce.

Wash and pick over the cranberries; put on to cook in a tin or porcelain vessel, allowing a teacupful of water to each quart. Stew slowly, stirring often until they are as thick as marmalade. Take from the fire in little over an hour, if they have cooked steadily, sweeten plentifully with white sugar, and strain through coarse tarlatan, or mosquito-net, into a mould wet with cold water.

Do this on Saturday. On Sunday, turn out into a glass dish.

Mashed Potatoes—Browned.

Having mashed them in the usual manner, mound them smoothly upon a shallow earthenware dish and set them in a quick oven, glazing them with butter as they color. They should be of a light brown. Slip the mound from a coarser to a finer platter by the help of your cake-turner. It is still better if you have one of the pretty “enamelled” bake-dishes lined with porcelain, with silver stands for the table. They are invaluable for puddings, scallops, etc.

Stewed Corn.

Stew one quart of canned corn in its own liquor, setting the vessel containing it in an outer, of hot water. Should the corn be exceptionally dry, add a little cold water. When tender, pour in enough milk to cover the corn, bring to a boil, and put in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour, and salt to taste. Stew gently, stirring well, three or four minutes, and turn into a deep dish. Keep the vessel containing the corn closely covered while it is cooking. The steam facilitates the process and preserves the color of the corn.

Celery

Is the usual accompaniment of roast turkey. Prepare by selecting the blanched stalks, scraping off the rust, cutting off all but the youngest and tenderest tops, and laying these in cold water to crisp until wanted for the table. Garnish your turkey with alternate light and dark green sprigs of celery.

Tropical Snow.

8 sweet oranges.

1 grated cocoanut.

1 glass of pale sherry.

1 cup of powdered sugar.

5 red bananas.

Peel and cut the oranges into small pieces by dividing each lobe crosswise into thirds. Extract the seeds and put a layer of the fruit in the bottom of a glass dish. Pour a little wine upon it, and strew with powdered sugar. The cocoanut must have been prepared by removing the rind and throwing it into cold water for some time before grating it. Over the layer of oranges spread one of cocoanut; cut the bananas into very thin, round slices, and lay these, one deep, upon the cocoanut. Repeat the order just given until your dish is full and the oranges and bananas used up. The top layer must be of cocoanut, heaped high, sprinkled with powdered sugar and garnished about the base with slices of banana. Eat soon, as the oranges toughen in the wine.

Supplement this pretty, but not substantial dessert by a salver of lady’s-fingers, and macaroons, and a good cup of coffee.

Second Week. Monday.

——

Next Day’s Soup.

Turkey Scallop. Panned Oysters.

Roast Potatoes. Tomato Sauce.

——

Floating Island.

Tea.

——

Next Day’s Soup.

Julienne soup, like most other soups the base of which is meat, is better when warmed over the second day. Set it over the fire where it will heat, not too quickly, almost to a boil. It will not “put back” the business of the day twenty minutes, and be a welcome addition to your dinner.

Turkey Scallop.

Cut the meat from yesterday’s turkey. Crack the carcass to pieces, and put, with bits of skin, fat, and gristle, into a saucepan; cover with cold water, and set on to stew slowly into gravy. Chop the meat very fine; strew the bottom of a greased bake-dish with crumbs, and cover this with a thick stratum of minced turkey, stuffing, and tiny bits of butter. Pepper and salt, and put on more crumbs, then meat, and so on. Stale bread is better for this scallop than cracker-dust. Having used up all your meat and reserved enough crumbs for a thick upper crust, cover the dish and put aside in a cool place until your gravy is ready. It is economy of time, on Monday, to slip in such work as this between the many “must be’s” of the season. Your scallop will be none the worse for waiting some hours before, or after, the gravy is added, provided you keep it covered. When the gravy has drawn all the substance from bones, etc., strain it and return to the saucepan with what was left in yesterday’s gravy-boat, having first skimmed the latter. Boil up, thicken with browned flour wet up with cold water; bring to another boil; pour over the scallop, saving a little to wet the top. Now comes your layer of fine bread-crumbs. Wet these with the gravy in a bowl, season to taste, beat to a soft paste with a couple of eggs and spread evenly over the scallop. Invert a plate over the bake-dish and set in the oven. When, at the end of half an hour or so, the gravy bubbles up at the sides, remove the cover and brown. Serve in the pudding-dish.

Panned Oysters.

A four-course dinner is hardly in order in most households on Monday. You can, if you like, and have an efficient table-waiter, bring on oysters, as usual, between soup and meat. But there will be no violation of the “unities of the drama” of a family dinner, if you send around your oysters, scallop, and vegetables together.

1 quart of oysters.

Some thin slices of toast.

Butter, salt, and pepper.

Have ready some “patty pans”—the more nearly upright the sides the better. Cut stale bread in rounds to fit the bottoms of these. Toast, and lay a piece in each. Wet with oyster liquor and put into each pan as many oysters as it will conveniently hold. Pepper and salt; put a bit of butter upon each; arrange all in a large dripping-pan; invert another of the same size over it, and bake eight minutes, or until the oysters “ruffle.” Send hot to table in the pans.

You can toast the bread at breakfast-time if you choose. The oysters can go into the oven when the soup is poured out, and be in good season on the table. By this arrangement they will not interfere with the other “baked meats.” Panned oysters are always popular, and there is no more simple manner of cooking this favorite shell-fish.

Roast Potatoes.

Choose large, fair potatoes, wash and wipe, and bake until soft to the grasp. Three-quarters of an hour should suffice. Take out, before the oysters go in; wipe off dust and ashes, and serve in a heated napkin. This will keep them hot a long time, yet prevent them from “sweating.”

Tomato Sauce.

Open a can of tomatoes at least one hour before it is to be used, and empty into an earthenware basin, that no close or metallic taste may linger about them. Cook in tin or porcelain. Stew half an hour, gently; add salt, pepper, a teaspoonful of sugar, and three of butter, a handful of dry bread-crumbs—or, if you have any stewed corn left from yesterday, use that instead of bread. Cook ten minutes longer, and turn out.

Floating Island.

1 quart of milk.

4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.

4 tablespoonfuls (great ones) of sugar.

2 teaspoonfuls extract of bitter almond or vanilla. (Colgate’s extracts are the best in market, and do not spoil within a few days after they are uncorked, as the manner of some is.)

½ cup of currant jelly.

Heat the milk to scalding, but not boiling. Beat the yolks, stir into them the sugar, and pour upon them, gradually and mixing well, a cupful of the hot milk. Return to the saucepan and boil until it begins to thicken. You can do this while breakfast is cooking, before the Moloch clothes-boiler goes on. When cool, flavor and pour into a glass dish. Heap upon the top a méringue of the whites whipped until you can cut it, into which you have beaten the jelly, a teaspoonful at a time.

Tea.

“A comfortable cup of tea” never comes amiss to a fagged housewife, be it served at breakfast, luncheon, or dinner. The best way to insure its goodness—that is, that it be strong, hot and fresh—is to have your own tea-urn or kettle on the table, with a spirit-lamp burning under it. Scald the tea-pot, put in the tea; cover with boiling water; put a “cosey” or a thick napkin about it, and let it stand five minutes before filling with more boiling water. Wait a minute longer and pour out.

Second Week. Tuesday.

——

Mutton Soup with Tapioca.

Salmon Pudding. Beefsteak.

Potatoes à la Lyonnaise. Macaroni with Cheese.

——

Susie’s Bread Pudding.

——

Mutton Soup with Tapioca.

3 lbs. perfectly lean mutton. The scrag makes good soup and costs little.

2 or 3 lbs. of bones, well pounded.

1 onion.

2 turnips.

2 carrots.

2 stalks of celery.

A few sprigs of parsley. If you have any tomatoes left from yesterday, add them.

4 tablespoonfuls of pearl or granulated tapioca (not heaping spoonfuls).

4 quarts of water.

Put on the meat, cut in small pieces, with the bones, in two quarts of cold water. Heat very slowly, and when it boils pour in two quarts of hot water from the kettle. Chop the vegetables; cover with cold water. So soon as they begin to simmer, throw off the first water, replenishing with hot, and stew until they are boiled to pieces. The meat should cook steadily, never fast, five hours, keeping the pot-lid on. Strain into a great bowl; let it cool to throw the fat to the surface; skim and return to the fire. Season with pepper and salt, boil up, take off the scum; add the vegetables with their liquor. Heat together ten minutes, strain again, and bring to a slow boil before the tapioca goes in. This should have been soaked one hour in cold water, then cooked in the same within another vessel of boiling water until each grain is clear. It is necessary to stir up often from the bottom while cooking. Stir gradually into the soup until the tapioca is dissolved.

Send around grated cheese with this soup.

Salmon Pudding.

1 can preserved salmon.

3 eggs.

4 tablespoonfuls melted butter.

½ cup fine bread-crumbs.

Pepper, salt, and minced parsley.

Mince the fish, draining off the liquor for the sauce. Rub in the butter until thoroughly incorporated. Work in the crumbs, the seasoning, at last the beaten eggs. Put into a buttered pudding-mould, set in a dripping-pan full of hot water. Cover the mould, and steam in the oven, keeping the water in the pan at a fast boil, filling up as it evaporates, for one hour. Set it in cold water one minute when you have taken it from the oven. This will make it shrink from the sides and turn out easily upon a flat dish.

Sauce for the above.

1 cupful of milk heated to a boil and thickened with a tablespoonful of corn-starch, previously wet up with cold water.

The liquor from the salmon.

1 great spoonful of butter.

1 raw egg, beaten light.

Juice of half a lemon.

Mace and cayenne pepper to taste.

Put the egg into the thickened milk when you have stirred in the butter and liquor; take from the fire, season, and let it stand in hot water three minutes, covered. Lastly, put in the lemon-juice and turn out immediately. Pour it all over and about the pudding. Cut the latter into slices when helping it out.

Beefsteak.

First of all, let me recommend the plan of broiling a steak under, instead of over the grate. I have found so many and manifest advantages in the former method that I have had a gridiron made to fit beneath my range.

Wipe the steak dry, and broil upon a buttered gridiron, turning frequently, whenever it begins to drip. When done, which should be in twelve minutes, if your fire is clear and strong, lay upon a hot dish—a chafing-dish is best—season with pepper and salt (not until then), and butter very liberally. Put over it a hot cover, and wait five minutes before sending to table, to draw the juices to the surface and allow the seasoning to penetrate the steak.

Potatoes à la Lyonnaise.

Parboil a dozen potatoes at breakfast-time, and set aside, when you have peeled them, as they should get perfectly cold. When you are ready to cook them, heat some butter, or good dripping, in a frying-pan; fry in it one small onion, chopped fine, until it begins to change color—say about one minute. Then put in the potatoes, cut into dice, not too thick or broad. Stir well and cook five minutes, taking care the potatoes do not break to pieces. They must not brown. Put in some minced parsley just before taking them up. Drain dry by shaking in a heated colander. Serve very hot.

Macaroni with Cheese.

Cook half a pound of pipe macaroni, broken into inch lengths, in boiling water until tender. Drain this off, and substitute a cupful of cold milk. When the macaroni has again come to a boil, season with pepper and salt and stir in a great spoonful of butter; lastly, two tablespoonfuls of dry, grated cheese. Turn into a deep dish, strew more cheese thickly over it, and it is ready for use.

Susie’s Bread Pudding.

1 quart of milk.

4 eggs.

3 cups very fine, dry bread-crumbs.

1 tablespoonful of melted butter.

1 teacupful white sugar.

Juice and half the grated peel of a lemon.

Rub butter and sugar together. Beat the yolks of the four eggs and the white of one very light; mix the butter and sugar with these. Soak the crumbs in the milk, and beat in with the other ingredients, hard and fast. Add the lemon last. Bake in a buttered dish. When nearly done and fully “set,” even in the middle, spread with a méringue made of the reserved whites, beaten stiff with a little sugar. It is good eaten warm—not really hot—or cold, especially if a little cream be poured over each saucerful.

Second Week. Wednesday.

——

Bean Soup.

Fillet of Veal, Stuffed. Baked Corn.

Potato Cakes. Canned String-Beans.

——

Baked Apple Dumplings.

Brandy Sauce.

——

Bean Soup.

Soak a quart of dried beans all night in soft water. Throw this off next morning, and cover the beans for two hours in water a little more than lukewarm. Put over the fire with five quarts of cold water, and one pound of salt pork. A bone of veal or beef may be added, if you have it. Boil slowly for at least four hours; shred into it a small onion, four stalks of celery, pepper—the pork may salt it sufficiently—simmer half an hour longer, rub through a colander until only husks and fibres remain, and send to table. Pass sliced lemon with it.

Fillet of Veal—Stuffed.

Make ready a force-meat of bread-crumbs, chopped thyme and parsley; pepper, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg; a little dripping for shortening; moisten with warm water and bind with a raw egg.

If your butcher has not “put up” the fillet, remove the bone, pin the meat into a round with skewers; then bind firmly with a strip of muslin passed two or three times about it. Fill the cavity left by the bone with dressing, and thrust the same between the folds of the meat, besides making cuts with a sharp knife to receive more. Tuck in a strip of fat pork here and there. Baste three times with salt and water while roasting, afterwards with its own gravy. At last, dredge once with flour and baste with butter. Cut the bands, draw out the skewers carefully, and serve.

Baked Corn.

To one can of corn allow a pint of milk (more if the corn be dry), three eggs, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, one of white sugar, pepper and salt to taste. Beat the eggs very light, rub butter and sugar together and stir in hard; next, the corn and seasoning; finally, the milk. Beat hard, and bake in a buttered dish for half an hour, covered. Then brown by lifting the top. Send up in the bake-dish.

Potato Cakes.

Boil and mash the potatoes, working in salt and butter and an egg or two—beaten light. Let them get cold; make into cakes of size and shape to suit yourself; roll in raw egg, then in flour, or cracker-dust, and fry quickly in hot dripping. Take each up as soon as it is done, and drain with a wire spoon, before laying upon a hot dish.

Canned String-Beans.

Cook in their own liquor half an hour, or until very tender. First, however, cut them into neat lengths. The comeliness of the dish depends upon this. When almost done, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, with salt and pepper. Simmer ten minutes longer, and serve by draining off the liquid and heaping the beans upon a hot dish, with a bit of butter on the top. If the can does not contain liquor enough to cover the beans, add a little cold water in cooking them.

Baked Apple Dumplings.

1 quart prepared flour.

1 tablespoonful of butter and the same of lard.

1 pint of milk.

1 saltspoonful of salt.

Some ripe apples.

Chop the shortening into the flour when you have sifted and salted the latter. Wet up with milk and roll out quickly in a sheet less than half an inch thick. Cut into squares; lay in the centre of each a tart, juicy apple, pared and cored. Bring the corners of the square together and pinch to join them neatly. Lay in a baking-pan, the joined edges downward, and bake to a fine brown. When done, brush over with butter and shut the oven door for a minute more to glaze them. Sift powdered sugar over them, and eat hot.

These are more wholesome and more easily prepared than boiled dumplings. Eat with sweet sauce.

Brandy Sauce.

2 cups of powdered sugar.

½ cup of butter.

1 wineglass of brandy. That from brandied peaches—the liqueur, if you have it.

1 teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace.

Warm the butter slightly, work in the sugar until they form a rich cream, when add brandy and spice. Beat hard; shape by putting into a mould made very wet with cold water, and set in a cool place to harden. Should it not turn out readily by shaking gently, dip for a second in hot water.

Second Week. Thursday.

——

Veal and Sago Soup.

Jugged Rabbit. Scalloped Potatoes.

Sweet Potatoes, Fried. Minced Celery with Egg Dressing.

——

Macaroni and Almond Pudding.

——

Veal and Sago Soup.

3 lbs. veal.

¼ lb. pearl sago.

3 quarts of water.

4 eggs.

1 pint of milk.

Cut the meat into bits; put on with the water and boil very slowly, with the pot-lid laid on loosely, four hours, until the meat is in rags. Strain through coarse net, or a wire soup-strainer (which you ought to possess), season with pepper and salt, and return to the kettle when you have scalded it out.

Meanwhile, the sago should have been washed and soaked in lukewarm water, for an hour. Stir it into the broth and let them simmer, stirring often, half an hour. Heat the milk scalding hot in another vessel, beat the yolks of the eggs light, reserving the whites for your pudding; pour gradually over these a cupful of the hot milk, and stir carefully into the soup with all the milk. Taste, to see if it needs more seasoning; add a little chopped parsley, if you like; let it almost boil and pour into the tureen. It should be about as thick as boiled custard. Should the sago thicken it too much, add boiling water.

A relishful and wholesome soup.

Jugged Rabbit.

1 full-grown but tender rabbit or hare.

½ lb. corned ham.

1 cup of good gravy, saved from yesterday’s roast.

Dripping for frying.

1 onion, sliced.

Juice of 1 lemon.

1 tablespoonful currant jelly.

Parsley, pepper and salt, and browned flour.

Joint the rabbit, and lay for an hour in salted water. Wipe dry and fry in the dripping, with the onion, until brown. Put in the bottom of a tin pail, or farina-kettle, a layer of salt pork cut into strips; upon this one of rabbit. Sprinkle with pepper and a little salt. Scatter fried onion over the rabbit and proceed in this order until your meat is used up. Pour in the gravy; cover the vessel, and set it in another of cold water. Bring gradually to a boil and stew steadily one hour, or until tender. Arrange the meat upon a dish; strain the gravy, thicken with browned flour wet up with cold water; boil up once; stir in the jelly and lemon-juice, heat to boiling, and pour over the rabbit. If you have no gravy, use a little butter and water instead.

Scalloped Potatoes.

3 cups mashed potato.

3 tablespoonfuls of milk.

3 hard-boiled eggs.

2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

1 handful very dry bread-crumbs.

Salt.

Work butter, milk, and salt into the hot mashed potatoes. Put a layer in the bottom of a pudding-dish well greased; cover this with thin slices of egg; salt and pepper; another stratum of potato, and so on, until the dish is full. Strew bread-crumbs thickly over the uppermost layer of potatoes. Stick bits of butter over this and bake, covered, until hot throughout; then brown quickly. Send up in the pudding-dish.

A simple and nice side-dish.

Sweet Potatoes—Fried.

Boil, peel, and when cold, slice the potatoes neatly. Fry in good dripping until they are of a light brown. Drain from the fat and eat hot.

Minced Celery with Egg Dressing.

Scrape and wash the celery and cut into half-inch lengths, having first crisped it in cold water. Rub the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs to a paste with a tablespoonful of oil; add salt, pepper, a little powdered sugar, vinegar to make the mixture liquid, and pour over the celery. Serve in a salad-bowl and eat at once, lest the celery should toughen in the vinegar.

Macaroni and Almond Pudding.

½ lb. macaroni.

3 pints of milk.

1 cup of white sugar.

2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

5 eggs.

½ lb. sweet almonds, blanched and chopped.

Rose-water and bitter almond flavoring.

A little salt and nutmeg.

Simmer the macaroni half an hour in a pint of the milk. When tender, but not broken, put in butter and salt. Take the saucepan from the fire and turn out the contents to cool while you make a custard of the rest of the milk, the eggs and sugar. Add the latter to the scalding milk, but do not boil the custard. Chop the almonds when you have blanched them, i. e., taken off the skins with boiling water. As you chop, put in a few drops of rose-water from time to time, to prevent oiling. When the macaroni is almost cold, mix it with the custard, breaking it as little as may be. Season, and last of all, stir in the chopped almonds. Bake in a well-buttered pudding-dish. Spread with the méringue made from the whites of the eggs reserved from the soup. Eat warm with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

Second Week. Friday.

——

Fish Chowder.

Fricasseed Chicken, White. Potatoes à l’Italienne.

Tomatoes Stewed with Onion. Cheese Fondu.

——

Sponge Gingerbread.

Chocolate.

——

Fish Chowder.

3 lbs. of cod, cut into strips an inch thick and four inches long, and freed from bone so far as is possible without breaking the fish.

1 pint of oysters.

2 large onions cut into thin slices.

About ½ lb. Boston crackers, split, and buttered thickly.

Pepper and salt.

1 cup of milk.

Parsley.

Cover the bottom of your soup-kettle with the fish; pepper and salt; strew with sliced onion, and this with the split crackers, buttered sides down. Follow this order until your ingredients are all in the pot, and cover them with cold water. Stew gently for an hour, keeping the water at the original level by replenishing from the tea-kettle. By this time the fish should be thoroughly done, if it has cooked steadily. Take it up with a perforated skimmer, and cover in the tureen to keep hot, while you strain the chowder to get out the bones, returning the crackers with the liquor to the soup-kettle, when you have rinsed it out. Thicken with two teaspoonfuls of corn-starch wet up in a cup of milk, and when this has boiled, add the oysters, cut small, two great spoonfuls of butter, and a little chopped parsley. Stew for three minutes, pour slowly over the fish in the tureen. Send sliced lemon around with it.

This is a most palatable chowder when properly prepared. You can use fewer crackers, if you dislike a thick soup.

Fricasseed Chicken—White.

One pair of full-grown fowls.

½ lb. salt pork cut into strips.

2 eggs.

1 cupful of milk.

2 tablespoonfuls of flour and the same of butter.

1 onion.

Parsley, pepper and salt.

Joint the fowls neatly, and cut the back, neck, and breast apart from each other, the latter into two pieces. Lay them in salt water for half an hour. Put them into a pot with enough cold water to cover them, and the pork cut into thin strips. Cover and heat very slowly. Stew constantly, but never fast, for one hour after it comes to a boil, or until the chickens are tender. The time will depend upon their age. If they are tough, put them on early and cook all the more slowly. Add now the onion, parsley, and pepper, with salt, if needed. Heat again, and stir in the flour wet up in the cup of milk. Beat the eggs and pour upon them a cupful of hot gravy; mix well, and put back into the soup with the butter. Just as the stew begins to simmer again, remove from the fire. Take out and pile the chicken upon a dish; then pour the gravy over all.

Potatoes à l’Italienne.

Instead of mashing the potatoes with a beetle or spoon, whip them up light with a silver fork. When they are fine and mealy, beat in a few spoonfuls of milk, a tablespoonful of butter, the yolks of two eggs, pepper and salt. Whip into a creamy heap before adding, with a few dexterous strokes, the stiffly-frothed whites. Pile roughly up on a buttered pie-dish; brown quickly in the oven, and transfer, with the help of a cake-turner, to a flat dish.

Make a rather too abundant dish, according to this receipt, as the residue will be found useful in to-morrow’s bill of fare.

Tomatoes Stewed with Onion.

Stew in the usual manner, adding a small onion minced fine. When they have cooked half an hour, season with pepper, salt, a little sugar, and a good spoonful of butter. Simmer ten minutes more, uncovered, and turn out.

Cheese Fondu.

1 cup of bread-crumbs, dry and fine.

2 scant cups of fresh milk.

½ lb. dry, rich cheese, grated.

3 eggs, whipped light.

1 tablespoonful of melted butter.

Pepper and salt.

A pinch of soda, dissolved in hot water.

Soak the crumbs in the milk; beat in the eggs, the butter, seasoning—lastly, the cheese. Pour into a neat pudding-dish, strew dry bread-crumbs over the top, and bake in a quick oven until delicately browned. Serve in the pudding-dish, and at once, as it falls in cooling.

Very good!

Sponge Gingerbread.

5 cups of flour, dried and sifted. Measure after sifting.

1 cup of molasses.

2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

1 cup of sugar.

1 rather larger cup of sour, or buttermilk.

2 teaspoonfuls of saleratus (not soda), dissolved in hot water.

2 teaspoonfuls ginger.

1 teaspoonful of cinnamon.

Mix molasses, sugar, butter, and spice together. Warm slightly, and beat hard for five minutes. Add the milk, then the soda, lastly the flour. Beat three minutes, and bake in a broad, shallow pan. Take heed that it does not burn. Eat warm.

Chocolate.

6 tablespoonfuls of chocolate to each pint of boiling water.

As much milk as you have chocolate.

Sweeten to taste.

Rub the chocolate smooth in a little cold water, and stir into the hot. Boil twenty minutes; put in the milk, and boil five minutes more, stirring often. Sweeten at pleasure, while boiling, or in the cups. Send around with the warm gingerbread and some slices of mild cheese. You will not regret not having prepared a more pretentious dessert.

Second Week. Saturday.

——

Clear Gravy Soup.

Oyster Salad. Calf’s Liver à la Mode.

Salsify Fritters. Potatoes à la Duchesse.

——

Corn-meal Fruit Pudding.

——

Clear Gravy Soup.

5 lbs. lean beef, the coarser parts, of course.

Some bones.

2 slices of lean corned ham.

2 carrots.

2 turnips.

6 stalks of celery.

¼ package Coxe’s gelatine.

Pepper and salt.

A bunch of sweet herbs.

Dripping.

5 quarts of cold water.

Cut the meat into dice and slice the onions. Fry the latter brown in some good dripping. Take them out, and fry the meat in the same fat, turning often, until it has a thick brown coat. Put it, drained from the fat, into the soup-kettle, with two quarts of cold water, and set where it will come to a boil in about an hour. The bones should also be fried, and put into the pot with the meat. When these fairly boil, skim, add three quarts of cold water, and stew gently four hours. If you dine early, the soup should go on before breakfast. Put herbs and vegetables, including the fried onions, all chopped up, into a saucepan, with enough cold water to cover them, and boil to pieces. Strain the soup half an hour before dinner; season, return to the pot; boil and skim. Strain the vegetable liquor into it, without squeezing or rubbing. Boil up once more, skim well, and put in the gelatine, which should have soaked one hour in a little cold water. Simmer five minutes and pour out.

The soup should be of a clear, light brown. Should the color not suit you, burn a tablespoonful of sugar in a tin cup, add three or four spoonfuls of boiling water, stir until you get a deep color, and turn off the water into the soup. It will not injure the flavor.

Please never lose sight of the cardinal principle that all the essence, strength, and taste should be extracted from meat, vegetables, etc., in soup-making, and that the soup which boils fast is lost. Take plenty of time, and cast an eye into the kitchen from hour to hour until you have educated your cook up to a glimmering appreciation of this law of enlightened cookery.

Oyster Salad.

1 quart of oysters, cut, not chopped, into small pieces.

1 bunch of celery, also cut small.

1 tablespoonful best oil.

1 small spoonful of salt, and the same of pepper, likewise of mustard (made).

⅛ cup cider vinegar.

Saltspoonful of powdered sugar.

Drain the liquor from the oysters and cut them up. Add the minced celery. Prepare the seasoning, putting in the vinegar last, and pour the mixture over the celery and oysters. Toss up well with a silver fork. Do this just before dinner, as the salad will be injured by lying long in the dressing.

Calf’s Liver à la Mode.

1 calf’s liver.

½ lb. fat salt pork.

2 tablespoonfuls of butter, or dripping.

2 small onions.

1 tablespoonful chopped parsley and marjoram.

2 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.

1 teaspoonful mixed cloves, mace, and allspice.

1 tablespoonful Worcestershire sauce.

Pepper and salt to taste.

Wash the liver thoroughly, and soak half an hour in salted water. Wipe, make incisions about an inch apart, and lard with strips of pork, projecting slightly on each side. Fry the onions and herbs in the dripping. Take them out, put in the liver, and fry both sides to a light brown. Turn all into a saucepan, with the vinegar and water to cover the liver—barely. Cover closely, and stew gently an hour and a half. Lay the liver on a hot dish, strain the gravy, return to the fire, thicken with a tablespoonful of browned flour, put in the sauce and spice; boil up and pour some of it over the liver, the rest into a gravy-boat. What is left from dinner will be nice for luncheon or tea, cut horizontally in thin slices.

Salsify Fritters.

1 bunch salsify.

2 eggs.

½ cup milk.

Flour for thin batter.

Lard, or dripping.

Salt to taste.

Scrape and grate the roots, and stir into a batter made of the beaten eggs, the milk, and flour. Grate the salsify directly into this, that it may not blacken by exposure to the air. Salt, and drop a spoonful into the boiling fat to see if it is of the right consistency. As fast as you fry the fritters, throw into a hot colander to drain. One great spoonful of batter should make a fritter.

Potatoes à la Duchesse.

Cut the remnants of yesterday’s potatoes à l’Italienne into rounds with a cake-cutter, dipped in cold water. Set like biscuits, but not so near as to touch one another, in a greased pan, and bake quickly, brushing top and sides with beaten egg when they begin to brown. Serve upon a heated napkin folded flat, on a platter.

Corn-Meal Fruit Pudding.

1 heaping cup white Indian meal.

3 pints of milk.

1 cup of flour.

4 beaten eggs.

1 cup of white sugar.

2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.

½ lb. of raisins, seeded and cut in two.

1 teaspoonful of salt, and same of mixed mace and cinnamon.

1 teaspoonful of soda, and two teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar, sifted twice with the flour.

Scald a pint of milk and wet up the meal with it, stirring well. While it is cooling, add the flour, wet into batter with a pint of cold milk. Heat the remaining pint, and when scalding, add sugar and eggs. Beat this gradually, hard and long, into the cooled paste. When well mixed, put in butter, spice, and the fruit dredged with flour. Beat fast and deep for two minutes. Bake in a buttered dish, in a tolerably brisk oven. Cover with paper as it browns. It ought to be done in three-quarters of an hour. Eat hot, with butter and sugar.

Third Week. Sunday.

——

Tomato Soup.

Roast Beef, with Yorkshire Pudding.

Macaroni al Napolitano.

Potatoes au naturel. French Beans, Sauté.

Apple Sauce. Made Mustard.

——

Narcissus Blanc-mange.

Coffee.

——

Tomato Soup.

Stew one can of tomatoes half an hour; strain and rub through a colander into the soup left from yesterday. Heat to a slow boil, and simmer together ten minutes before serving.

Roast Beef, with Yorkshire Pudding.

Have your meat ready for roasting on Saturday, always. Roast upon a grating or several clean sticks (not pine) laid over the dripping-pan. Dash a cup of boiling water over the beef when it goes into the oven; baste often, and see that the fat does not scorch. About three-quarters of an hour before it is done, mix the pudding.

Yorkshire Pudding.

1 pint of milk.

4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.

2 cups of flour—prepared flour is best.

1 teaspoonful of salt.

Use less flour if the batter grows too stiff. Mix quickly; pour off the fat from the top of the gravy in the dripping-pan, leaving just enough to prevent the pudding from sticking to the bottom. Pour in the batter and continue to roast the beef, letting the dripping fall upon the pudding below. The oven should be brisk by this time. Baste the meat with the gravy you have taken out to make room for the batter.

In serving, cut the pudding into squares and lay about the meat in the dish. It is very delicious.

Macaroni al Napolitano.

½ lb. of macaroni.

2 nice sweetbreads.

1 small onion, minced.

Parsley, pepper, and salt.

2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Wash the sweetbreads; lay in salted water fifteen minutes, and stew with the onion, in a pint of cold water, a little salt, until done, as may be seen by cutting into the thickest part. Wash the macaroni when you have broken it into small bits, and cook gently until tender, but not to breaking, in the hot broth from which you have taken the sweetbreads and strained the onion. Stew in a farina-kettle or tin saucepan set in hot water. Chop the sweetbreads; stir the butter into the macaroni, which should have absorbed all the broth; then the minced sweetbreads. Season with parsley, pepper, and salt; cover closely and leave in the hot water, but not over the fire, five minutes before turning into a deep dish.

Potatoes au Naturel

Are, with all their high-sounding name, only the homely vegetables boiled in their skins. Put on in cold water, bring to a slow boil, and increase the heat until a fork will pierce the largest. Throw in salt; turn off every drop of the water; set back on the range, without the cover, for two minutes to dry, peel, and send to table in a napkin.

French Beans, Sauté.

Open a can of French or “string” beans; cut into inch lengths and boil in the can liquor, adding a little cold water, if needed, for twenty minutes. Drain, return to the saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of butter and a little salt and pepper. Toss constantly with a fork until they are hissing hot, but not until they scorch. Serve in a hot vegetable dish.

Apple Sauce.

Pare, core, and slice tart apples, and stew in water enough to cover them until they break to pieces. Beat to a pulp with a good lump of butter and plenty of sugar. Eat cold. Make enough for several meals, as it will keep a week at this season.

Made Mustard.

4 tablespoonfuls English mustard.

2 teaspoonfuls of salt.

The same quantity of salad oil and white sugar.

1 teaspoonful of pepper.

Vinegar to make a smooth paste—that from celery, or onion pickle, if you have it.

Rub mustard, oil, sugar, pepper, and salt together; wet, by degrees, with vinegar, beating very hard at the last, when the proper consistency has been gained.

This is far superior to mustard as usually mixed for the table.

Narcissus Blanc-mange.

1 quart of milk.

1 package of Cooper’s gelatine, soaked in two cups of cold water.

Yolks of 4 eggs, beaten light.

2 cups of white sugar.

Vanilla and rose-water for flavoring.

Less than 2 cups of rich cream.

Heat the milk to scalding; stir in gelatine and sugar. When these are dissolved, take out a cupful and pour, by degrees, over the beaten yolks. Return to the saucepan and stir together over the fire for two minutes after the boiling point is reached. Take from the range, flavor with rose-water, and pour into a mould with a cylinder in the centre, previously wet with cold water. Next day, turn out upon a dish with a broad bottom, and fill the hollow in the middle with the cream, whipped light with a little powdered sugar and flavored with vanilla. Pile more whipped cream about the base.

Send your coffee around after the blanc-mange has been eaten. A spoonful of whipped cream, without the vanilla, will give a touch of elegance to the beverage. Let this happy thought come to you while you are preparing the cream, and before the flavoring goes in.

Third Week. Monday.

——

Variety Soup.

Beef Pudding. Scored Potatoes.

Canned Peas. Mixed Pickles.

——

Apple Méringue.

Crackers and Cheese.

——

Variety Soup.

Chop a quarter of a small cabbage, a turnip, and some sweet herbs; cover with cold water, and heat to boiling. Throw off the first water, and add a quart more of cold. Put in the roast-beef bones, after you have cut off the meat, with a slice or two, or bone, of ham. Stew all two hours at the back of the range. Half an hour before dinner, warm up what was left from Sunday’s soup. Strain the hot liquor in which your cabbage, etc., have boiled, into this. Pick out bits of bones and meat from the colander, mashing the vegetables as little as possible; put these into the soup, with any macaroni or beans you may have left over; season to your liking; simmer for ten minutes; thicken with a tablespoonful of corn-starch, and pour out.

This will not be a “show-soup,” but it will be savory and nutritious.

Beef Pudding.

1 pint of milk.

3 eggs.

A cupful of prepared flour.

A little salt.

1 tablespoonful of melted butter.

Cut the meat from yesterday’s roast into neat pieces; lay them in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish, season well, and pour a few spoonfuls of cold gravy over them, letting it soak into the meat while you prepare a batter according to the above directions, taking care not to get it too stiff. Pour over the meat and bake in a quick oven. Eat hot.

Scored Potatoes.

Mash in the usual way, mixing rather soft; heap and round upon a greased pie-plate; score deeply in triangles with the back of a carving or butcher’s knife; brown in the oven, and slip carefully to another dish.

Canned Peas.

Open a can of peas an hour before cooking them, that there may be no musty, airless taste about them, and turn into a bowl. When ready for them put on in a farina-kettle—or one saucepan within another—of hot water. If dry, add cold water to cover them, and stew about twenty-five minutes. Drain, stir in a generous lump of butter; pepper and salt.

Apple Méringue.

Butter a neat pudding-dish, and nearly fill it with apple sauce. Cover and leave in the oven until it is smoking hot. Draw to the oven door and spread with a méringue made of the whites of three eggs, whipped stiff with a little powdered sugar. (Your pudding will be much nicer, by the way, if you have beaten the yolks into the stewed apple before putting it into the dish.) Shut the oven door long enough to brown the méringue very lightly. Eat nearly or quite cold, with sugar and cream.

Send around crackers and cheese as an accompaniment.

Third Week. Tuesday.

——

Celery Soup.

Veal Cutlets with Ham. Cauliflower with Cream Sauce.

Stewed Potatoes. Mixed Pickles.

——

Jam Pudding.

Tea, and Albert Biscuits.

——

Celery Soup.

3 lbs. of veal, and some bones of the same.

2 onions.

2 bunches of celery, using the white parts only.

3 quarts of cold water.

1 pint of fresh milk.

2 dessertspoonfuls of corn-starch.

Pepper and salt.

2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Some fried bread.

Cut the veal up small, crack the bones, and put on in cold water. Boil slowly four hours, replenishing with boiling water should the broth sink to less than two-thirds of the original quantity. Strain, pressing all the strength out of the meat. Cut the celery into bits, and stew in the broth, with the minced onions, until so soft that you can rub through a colander. Strain a second time, and return the soup, with the pulped celery, to the fire. Season, and thicken with the corn-starch wet up in the pint of milk. Stir until it boils, and lastly, put in, carefully, the butter, after which take from the range. Have ready a double handful of fried bread in the tureen, and pour the soup upon it.

Veal Cutlets and Ham.

2 lbs. of veal cutlets, neatly trimmed, and the same of sliced ham.

Yolks of 2 eggs.

Bread- or cracker-crumbs.

Dripping for frying.

Divide each cutlet into pieces about two inches wide by three inches long, and cut the ham into slices of corresponding size. Dip in the egg, then roll in the bread-crumbs, and fry—the ham first, afterwards the veal, until nicely browned on both sides. Sprinkle salt upon the veal cutlets. Arrange upon the dish in alternate slices of veal and ham, overlapping one another. Anoint the ham with butter mixed with a little mustard; the veal with butter melted up with a spoonful of tart jelly.

Cauliflower with Cream Sauce.

Boil your cauliflower, when you have washed and trimmed it, and tied it up in coarse net or tarletan. Cook in boiling water slightly salted, keeping the stalk end uppermost. Prepare, in another saucepan, the dressing, by adding to a cup of scalding milk a tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water, two tablespoonfuls of butter, pepper and salt at discretion. Drain the cauliflower, remove the net, put into a deep dish, the flower up, and drench with the boiling sauce.

Stewed Potatoes.

Cut into slices, cook until tender, but not to breaking, in hot water. Turn half of this off and replace by as much milk, in which some slices of onion have been boiled and strained out. Add pepper and salt, a good lump of butter rolled in flour, and some chopped parsley. Simmer three minutes, and turn into a vegetable dish.

Mixed Pickles,

Home-made or bought, should be passed with the cutlets.

Jam Pudding.

3 cups of milk.

4 eggs.

¾ of a cup of sugar.

Bread and butter.

Sweet jam—berry, peach, or quince.

Spread slices of stale bread with butter, then with jam. Fit them closely into a buttered pudding-dish until it is two-thirds full. Make a custard by adding the beaten eggs and sugar to the scalding milk, but do not let them boil. Lay a heavy saucer upon the bread and butter to prevent floating, and moisten gradually with the hot custard. Let all soak for fifteen minutes before the dish goes into the oven. When it is hot throughout, take off the saucer, that the pudding may brown equally. Eat cold.

Tea, and Albert Biscuits

May follow the pudding.

Third Week. Wednesday.

——

Sheep’s-head Soup.

Roast Hare, with Currant Jelly. Macaroni, with Ham.

Stuffed Potatoes. Turnips.

——

Fig Pudding.

——

Sheep’s-head Soup.

Get your butcher to clean a sheep’s head with the skin on, as he would a calf’s head for soup. Let him also split it in half that you may get at the brains. Take them out, with the tongue, and set aside. Break the bone of the head, wash it well in several waters, and soak for half an hour in salted water. Cover it with fresh water, and heat gradually to a boil. Drain off the water, and thus remove any peculiar odor from the wool or other causes, and add four quarts of cold water, with two turnips, two roots of salsify, two carrots, two stalks of celery, and a bunch of sweet herbs, all chopped fine. Boil slowly four hours. Strain the soup into a bowl, pressing all the nourishment out of the meat, and let it stand in a cool place until the fat rises thickly to the surface to be taken off. The vegetables should be soft enough to pass freely through a fine colander, or coarse strainer, when rubbed. While the soup cools, prepare the force-meat balls. The tongue and brains should have been cooked and chopped up, then rubbed to a paste together and mixed with an equal quantity of bread-crumbs, salt, pepper, and parsley, bound with a raw egg, and rolled into small balls, dipped in flour. Set them, not so near as to touch one another, in a tin plate or dripping-pan, and put in a quick oven until a crust is formed upon the top, when they must be allowed to cool. Return the skimmed broth to the fire; season; boil up once; take off the scum, and add a cup of milk in which you have stirred a tablespoonful of corn-starch. Simmer, stirring all the while, for two minutes after it boils. Put the force-meat balls into the tureen and pour the soup gently over them so as not to break them.