Clear Vermicelli Soup.

• 6 lbs. of veal—the knuckle is best.
• 1 lb. of lean ham, cut fine.
• 1 bunch of sweet herbs.
• ¼ lb. of vermicelli.
• 5 quarts of water.
• Pepper and salt with half a teaspoonful ground mace.

Cut the meat from the bones in thin shreds, and crack the bones to splinters. Mince the ham and herbs. Put into a soup-kettle, add the water, cover very tightly with a weight upon the lid, and stand where it will slowly boil, for five hours. Then turn into a jar, salt and pepper, and shut up while hot. Leave the jar all Saturday night upon the side of the range, where it will keep warm until morning. Pour into a bowl before breakfast and let it get cold. Take off the cake of fat two hours before dinner, turn the soup-jelly, bones and all, into the soup-pot, and when it is melted strain through your wire sieve. Put in the mace, boil for an hour and a half, and skim. Put the vermicelli, already broken into short bits and boiled tender, into the tureen (but not the water in which it was boiled) and strain the soup over it through double tarlatan. Let it stand ten minutes before serving. This is a showy soup, and easily made, really requiring little attention.

Stewed Ducks.

On Saturday, draw, wash, and stuff your ducks, adding a touch of onion and sage to the dressing. On Saturday, also, make a gravy of the giblets, cut small, an onion, sliced, with a pint of water. Stew, closely covered, for two hours; take off, season, and set away with the giblets in it still. Next day—on Sunday—lay the ducks in the dripping-pan, put in the gravy, adding water if there is not enough to half cover the fowls, at least. Invert another pan of the same size over them, and let them stew, at a moderate heat, for two hours. Or, you can put them into a large saucepan, pour in the gravy, fit on the lid, and cook upon the range for the same time. In either case they will take care of themselves, as will the soup, if Bridget be reasonably obedient to orders, while you go to church. When the ducks are done, lay them upon a hot dish, thicken the gravy with browned flour, add a glass of brown sherry and the juice of a lemon. Lay three-cornered bits of fried bread around the inside of the dish, and pour the gravy over all.

Fried Apples and Bacon.

Pare, core, and slice round, some well-flavored pippins, or greenings. Cut into thin slices some streaked middling of excellent bacon, and fry in their own fat almost to crispness. Take out the meat and arrange it upon a hot chafing-dish, while you fry the apples in the fat left in the pan from the bacon. Drain and lay upon the slices of meat.

This is a Southern dish, and not so homely as it would seem from the mere reading.

Potatoes À la Reine.

Mash as usual, beating up light with butter and milk, but not so soft as not to take any shape you like to give them. Make a rounded hillock, or a four-sided pyramid of them upon a flat dish. Brush this all over with beaten yolk of egg, set in the oven a few minutes to harden the coating, and send to table.

Mashed Carrots.

Scrape, wash, lay in cold water half an hour; then cook tender in boiling water. Drain well, mash with a wooden spoon, or beetle, work in a good piece of butter, and season with pepper and salt. Heap up in a vegetable dish, and serve very hot.

Potato Pie.

• 1 lb. mashed potato, rubbed through a colander.
• ¼ lb. of butter, creamed with the sugar.
• 6 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 1 lemon, squeezed into the potato while hot.
• 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg and the same of mace.
• 2 cups of white sugar.

Cream the butter and sugar; add the yolks, the spice, and beat in the potato gradually until it is very light. At last, whip in the whites. Bake in open shells of paste. Eat cold.

When making these pies on Saturday—forecasting Monday’s needs and superabundance of cares—prepare more pastry than you need for the two large pies which the above quantity of potato mixture will fill, and set aside a trim roll of raw crust to be rolled out in due time—we shall see to what end. I take it for granted (once more) that all of Sunday’s receipts will be diligently conned on the day when the old distich tells us, even “lazy people work the best.”

This potato pie will be pronounced delicious.

Oranges and Bananas.

These will make a pretty finish to what I flatter myself with the hope that you will find a good, and not inelegant repast.

Strain out the vermicelli left in yesterday’s “stock.” Heat very hot, and add two cups of milk in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of rice-flour, or, if you cannot get that, corn-starch. Stir until it thickens; take out a cupful and pour it over two beaten eggs. Return to the soup, taste, and supply what seasoning is needed; lift from the fire and leave covered five minutes before pouring into the tureen.

Duck PatÉ.

Cut the meat from the bones of yesterday’s ducks, in season to make gravy. Do this by breaking the skeletons to pieces, and putting them, with the stuffing, into a saucepan, pouring in a quart of cold water, and letting it in two hours boil down to half as much, or even one-third. Boil slowly, with the lid slightly lifted after the boiling begins. Let this get cold; skim and season. In the bottom of a pudding-dish put some neat slices of duck; on this a layer of boiled egg sliced thin; then, a few slices of corned tongue. (That of a calf will do as well as beef, and be cheaper. It should be boiled and cold.) Sprinkle each layer with pepper and a little salt, with a tiny pinch of mace upon the tongue. When your materials are used up, pour in the gravy, and, just before it goes into the oven, cover with a crust of pastry kept over from Saturday. Bake about three-quarters of an hour for a large dish—half an hour for one of medium size. There must be a slit in the centre of the crust to let out the steam.

By proper foresight, the manufacture of this very palatable pie will consume but little of a busy woman’s time on Monday. Do not forget that with gravies and soups, after you have placed them over the fire in a well-chosen location, they will need nothing more than a hasty glance for, perhaps, several hours, during which much work in other parts of the household can be done.

Sweet Potatoes, Boiled.

It is poor economy, in buying sweet or Irish potatoes, to get either very large or very small ones. So, in cooking, select those of uniform size. Put on in hot water; boil until a fork will go easily into the largest. Peel quickly and set in the oven for a few minutes to dry. Eat hot, with butter.

Succotash.

• 1 can of sweet corn.
• 1 can of string beans.
• 1 great spoonful of butter.
• Pepper and salt.
• 1 cup of milk.
• A little flour.

Cut the beans into inch lengths; put them into a saucepan with the corn, and cover with cold water. Stew half an hour, after they begin to cook, turn off most of the water and put in the milk—cold. When it is hot, stir in the butter, rolled in flour. Season, simmer for five minutes, and pour into a deep dish.

This will make a large quantity of succotash for a small family, but what is not eaten will be nice warmed over for breakfast.

Cup Custards—Boiled.

• 1 quart of milk.
• Yolks of 5 eggs and whites of 3 (reserving 2 for the mÉringue).
• 6 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Vanilla flavoring, 1 teaspoonful to the pint.

Heat the milk almost to boiling. Take out a cupful and add, slowly, to the beaten yolks and sugar, whipped up with three of the whites. Return to the fire and stir until it begins to thicken, but not until it curdles. Pour into a bowl and, when cold, flavor. Fill glass, or china cups with it. Whip the reserved whites to a mÉringue with a little powdered sugar, and heap a spoonful upon the top of each cup.

Watch your opportunity for boiling the custard. I have often slipped into the kitchen and made it while the coffee was boiling for breakfast. This once off the fire, no more cooking is needed.

Cut, or Fancy Cake,

Of which every housewife keeps a supply in her pantry, for luncheon and tea, makes, with these custards, a nice dessert, to which you need never be ashamed to seat John and his friends.

Put the cracked bones, the meat, and the chopped vegetables into the soup-pot, and cover with the water. The liver should lie in salted water one hour before it is sliced. Stew very slowly five hours. Then strain, rubbing hard; cool enough to bring the fat to the top. Take it off, season the soup, put over the fire, and when it boils stir in the rice, previously cooked soft in a little salted water. Simmer together half an hour, and pour out.

Rolled Beef.

Get a fillet of beef—that is, the tenderloin of several steaks cut in one piece. It will not be cheap, but there will be no waste. Therefore, as one weighing four or five pounds will make a roast for one day, your dinner will not be really expensive. Roll it up round; pin tightly with skewers not to be removed, except by the carver, and roast with care, basting often that it may not dry up. Carve horizontally.

Browned Potatoes—Whole.

Peel and parboil some fine potatoes, and half an hour before your beef is taken up, lay them in the dripping-pan. Baste with the meat and turn several times. Drain off the grease when they are done to a fine brown, and lay about the meat in the dish when it goes to table.

Baked Tomatoes.

Open a can of tomatoes, and turn into a bowl. After an hour, season them with a teaspoonful of sugar, half as much salt, a little pepper and a tablespoonful of butter cut into bits, each bit rolled in flour and all distributed evenly throughout the tomatoes. Cover with very dry bread-crumbs. Bake in a pudding-dish, covered, about thirty minutes, then brown on the upper grating of the oven.

Apple Sauce.

Make this on Saturday, by stewing sliced tart apples in a little water until soft, draining and mashing them, adding a bit of butter while doing this. Sweeten abundantly and season with nutmeg.

Unity Pudding.

• 1 cup of milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 egg.
• 1 generous pint of prepared flour.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Rub butter and sugar together; beat in the egg, and whip up very light. Then, milk and salt, finally the flour. Bake in a buttered mould, until a straw thrust into the thickest part comes out clean. Turn out upon a plate. Cut in slices and eat hot.

If for this and other receipts which prescribe prepared flour, you cannot conveniently procure it, add one teaspoonful of soda and two of cream of tartar to each quart of flour. Sift all several times through a sieve. You can keep this for a week or two in a dry place.

Cream Sauce.

• 2 cups rich milk—half cream, if you can get it.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Whites of 2 eggs whipped stiff.
• 1 teaspoonful extract of bitter almonds.
• ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
• 1 even tablespoonful of corn-starch wet up with cold water.

Heat the milk to scalding; add the sugar, stir in the corn-starch. When it thickens beat in the stiffened whites, then the seasoning. Take from the fire, and set in boiling water to keep warm—but not cook—until wanted.

Put soaked peas, pork, bones and vegetables over the fire, with the water, and boil slowly for three hours, until the liquid is reduced nearly one half. Strain through a colander, rubbing the peas into a tolerably thick purÉe into the vessel below. Season, simmer ten minutes over the fire, and pour over the lemon, sliced and pared and laid in the tureen.

Fricasseed Chicken—Brown.

• 1 pair of chickens.
• ½ lb. salt pork, minced.
• 1 small onion.
• Tablespoonful of chopped parsley.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Browned flour.
• Pepper, and a little salt.

Joint the chickens, cutting them with a sharp knife. Put, with the pork, into a pot with a quart of water, and stew until tender. Do not boil fast, especially at first. Strain off the liquor and cover the chickens while you prepare the gravy. Put it into a large frying-pan. There will not be too much after the chickens are taken out of it. Add to it the parsley and chopped onion, with seasoning. Boil up, thicken with browned flour; stir in the butter and cook rapidly, stirring often, ten minutes. Arrange the chickens upon a hot dish and pour the gravy over it. Let all stand for five minutes before sending to the table.

Ladies’ Cabbage.

• 1 firm white cabbage, boiled and left to get cold.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of rich milk.
• Pepper and salt.

Boil the cabbage in two waters. When it is cold, chop fine, and mix with it the beaten eggs, butter, milk, pepper and salt to your liking. Beat up well and bake in a buttered pudding-dish until brown. Serve in the dish in which it was cooked, and eat hot.

Baked Potatoes.

Select large, fair potatoes of equal size, wash, wipe and put into the oven to bake until soft all through. Send to table wrapped in a napkin.

Stewed Salsify.

Scrape and drop into cold water as fast as you clean them. Cut into inch lengths; cover with hot water and stew tender. Turn off the water; put in a cupful of cold milk. Stew in this ten minutes after the boil begins; add a lump of butter rolled thickly in flour; pepper and salt as you fancy. Boil up once and pour into a deep dish.

Soft Gingerbread.

• 1 cup of butter.
• 1 cup of molasses.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 1 cup of sour or butter milk.
• ½ lb. of raisins, seeded and cut in half.
• 1 teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in boiling water.
• 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon.
• 2 eggs.
• Nearly 5 cups of sifted flour, enough for tolerably thick batter.

Cream butter, sugar, molasses, and spice; set the mixture on the range until lukewarm. Add the milk, then the beaten eggs, the soda, and at last the flour. Beat hard five minutes; put in the fruit dredged with flour; beat three minutes, and bake in small round tins.

Eat warm all that is needed for dessert. The rest will keep well. This gingerbread is uncommonly fine.

CafÉ au Lait.

• 2 cups strong made coffee—fresh and hot.
• 2 cups of boiling milk.

Strain the coffee from the boiler into the table coffee-pot, through thin muslin. Add the boiling milk and set in a vessel of hot water, a “cozey,” or a thick cloth wrapped about it, for five minutes. Then it is ready for use. Pass with the gingerbread.

Put on the meat, bones, and sweet herbs, to stew in four quarts of water. Do not disturb for four hours. Meanwhile, pare and cut the vegetables into dice, and boil until tender in just enough water to cover them. Drain this off and throw it away. Cover the vegetables with cold water, a little salt, and let them stand until you have strained the soup. This should be allowed to cool to throw up the fat. Skim it with care; put back over the fire. Salt and pepper, boil up, and skim again before putting in the vegetables, without the water in which they have been standing. The barley should, all this time, be soaking in warm water, just deep enough to cover it. Turn it now, with the water in which it has lain, into the soup. Let all simmer together one hour, and serve the vegetables in the soup.

Baked Calf’s Head.

Take out the brains and set aside. Wash the head carefully. It should, of course, be cleaned with the skin on. Soak it in cold, salted water, one hour, then in hot water ten minutes. Boil in three quarts of cold water for about an hour after the water begins to bubble. Take it out, saving the liquor when you have salted it, as stock for to-morrow’s soup. Plunge the head into cold water for five minutes. Wipe carefully, put into your dripping-pan, brush it over with beaten egg, sprinkle with bread-crumbs, and bake until nicely browned, basting three times with butter. Make a gravy of a cupful of the liquor, seasoned and thickened. Fry strips of ham, about an inch wide by four inches long, almost crisp in their own fat, and having laid the head upon a flat dish, dispose these about it. Serve a piece with each plate of the head.

French Beans and Fried Brains.

Open a can of string-beans one hour at least before they are to be cooked. Cut into short pieces, cover with hot water, and stew thirty minutes, but not until they break. Drain well; stir into them two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, in which have been mixed salt, pepper, and a tablespoonful of lemon-juice. Heap within a deep dish, and garnish with the brains.

Wash the brains and lay in cold salt and water for an hour, then boil ten minutes. Leave in very cold water until firm—say a quarter of an hour. Wipe, and chop fine, add a little parsley, pepper and salt; make into small cakes by flouring your hands; dip in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry in hot dripping. Drain thoroughly.

Stewed Tomatoes.

Season a can of tomatoes with salt, pepper, sugar, and a little chopped onion. Stew for twenty-five minutes and stir in a large tablespoonful of butter. Simmer ten minutes, and serve.

Potatoes in Cases.

Roast large potatoes. Cut off a piece from the top of each, and lay it aside. Empty the insides carefully by the help of a small spoon—not tearing the skins. To this potato, when mashed, add butter, grated cheese, pepper and salt, as suits your taste. Bind the mixture with a beaten egg; heat in a saucepan, stirring to prevent scorching; refill the cases, fit on the top of each, and set in a hot oven three minutes before sending to table in a warm napkin.

Snowballs.

• ¼ lb. raw rice.
• 1 quart fresh milk.
• 5 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• A little nutmeg.

Wash the rice in several waters, and boil in the milk (always in a farina-kettle), adding a little salt and five tablespoonfuls of sugar, with a pinch of nutmeg. Stew gently until the rice is soft and has soaked up the milk. Fill small cups with the rice, pressing it down firmly, and let it get cold. At dinner-time, turn it out upon a large flat dish, or pile within a glass bowl. Eat with sweetened cream.

Sweet Cream.

• 2 cups of cream.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar.
• 2 teaspoonfuls of rose-water.

Stir the sugar into the cream until it is dissolved; then the rose-water.

In bespeaking your calf’s head from your butcher, ask also for four nice feet, already cleaned. (You can secure your sweetbreads at the same time.) Put on the feet in a quart of cold water. Cover closely and heat gradually to a very gentle boil. Keep this up until the feet begin to shrink from the bones—about two hours. Should the water fall perceptibly, fill up from the tea-kettle. Have ready the vegetables, herbs, and spice, the former cut up small. Put them into the liquor left from yesterday’s head, and when you have heated this to a boil, add the feet with the water in which they are cooking. Boil for another hour, still slowly. Strain the soup, cool to make the grease rise. Skim, season, and return to the fire. When again boiling, stir in the milk, and the meat from the feet, cut into dice. Take out a cupful of the soup and pour, by degrees, over the beaten eggs. Return to the pot, stir two minutes, and serve.

A very nice soup, and nutritious. If you cannot get calf’s feet, use those of a pig instead, cooking exactly in the same way.

Salt Mackerel, with Cream Sauce.

Soak overnight in lukewarm water, changing this in the morning for ice-cold. Rub all the salt off, and wipe dry. Grease your gridiron with butter, and rub the fish on both sides with the same, melted. Then broil quickly over a clear fire, turning with a cake-turner so as not to break it. Lay upon a hot-water dish, and cover until the sauce is ready.

Heat a small cup of milk to scalding. Stir into it a teaspoonful of corn-starch, wet up with a little water. When this thickens, add two tablespoonfuls of butter, pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Beat an egg light, pour the sauce gradually over it, put the mixture again over the fire, and stir one minute, not more. Pour upon the fish, and let all stand, covered, over the hot water in the chafing-dish. Put fresh boiling water under the dish before sending to table.

Mashed Potatoes,

Beaten light with milk and butter, and smoothed into a mound, should be served with the fish. If you have a pretty butter-print, wet it, and stamp the top of the mound.

Remember that everything tastes better for looking well.

Larded Sweetbreads, Stewed.

• 3 or 4 fine sweetbreads.
• ¼ lb. fat salt pork, cut into “lardoons,” or long narrow strips.
• 1 cup of gravy (saved from the roast calf’s head of yesterday).
• 1 tablespoonful of tomato or other catsup.
• Juice of half a lemon.
• Season with pepper.

Parboil the sweetbreads for five minutes. The water should boil when they are dropped in. Take out and lay at once in ice-cold water. This makes them firm. Leave in this five minutes, wipe dry, and set aside to get cold. Then lard with the strips of pork, passing them quite through, so as to project on both sides. If you have no larding-needle, use a long-bladed penknife. Put them into a saucepan; cover with the gravy. If there is not enough, put in a few spoonfuls from the boiling soup. The gravy should be cold, however, when poured over the sweetbreads. Stew about twenty-five minutes after the boil begins. Take out the sweetbreads; thicken the gravy with browned flour, add catsup, lemon, and pepper, the lardoons having salted it sufficiently. Lay the sweetbreads upon a hot dish, pour the gravy over them, and serve; in carving, cut perpendicularly.

Stewed Celery.

• 2 bunches of celery, the white stalks only, scraped and cut into short pieces.
• 2 beaten eggs.
• 1 cup of milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour.
• Pepper, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg.

Stew the celery in a little salted hot water until quite tender. Drain off the water and put in the milk, cold. So soon as it boils, stir in the butter, rolled in flour, pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Add a few spoonfuls of the hot milk to the beaten eggs that they may not curdle in the saucepan; put with the celery and sauce over the fire; boil up once, and dish.

Omelette SoufflÉ.

• 8 eggs.
• 5 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• Vanilla or rose-water flavoring.

Whip the whites to a very stiff froth, thick enough to be cut with a knife. Beat the yolks smooth and long; add to these the sugar, whip up well, and flavor. Grease a neat pudding-dish abundantly with the tablespoonful of butter. The last thing before you take your seat at the table, do all this; stir whites and yolks together, and put into a steady, not too hot, oven. If you have a teachable cook, let her learn how to put the prepared ingredients together after dinner has gone in. The oven-door should be opened as seldom as possible, certainly not under fifteen minutes. By this time the omelette should have risen high, and be of a golden brown. Partly close the oven-door, to keep it hot, and let it be served as soon as possible in the bake-dish.

Never attempt this or any other nerve-trying dish, for the first time, for others than a family party. Yet it is easy enough when you have once learned for yourself how long to cook it, and how soon it will fall.

Tea and Toasted Crackers.

Split Boston crackers, toast, butter; put where they will keep hot, and pass with an after-dinner cup of tea.

Cut the beef into narrow strips, the onions into slices. Fry the latter brown in dripping, strain them out, and set aside. Return the dripping to the pan, and fry the meat until it is nicely browned, but not crisp. Lastly, fry the bones in the same fat. They should be broken up small. Put meat, bones, celery, spice, and onions into a pot with a quart of cold water; cover closely, and put where it will not boil under an hour, but will heat all the time. This is to draw out color and open the pores (so to speak) of the meat. So soon as it boils add four quarts more of cold water. Set where it will boil steadily, but never fast, for five hours. Strain, and cool sufficiently to make the fat rise. Take it off, put back over the fire, season, boil up and skim; put in the sago, which should have been soaked two hours in a little water, simmer fifteen minutes and serve.

Save all that is left from dinner, for Monday.

Boiled Corned Beef.

Wash well, and put over the fire in hot water—plenty of it—and boil twenty minutes for each pound of meat. Turn three times while cooking. Drain dry, and serve with drawn butter in a boat. “Draw” the butter in liquor taken from the pot. Keep the rest of the liquor for the base of Sunday’s soup.

Mashed Turnips.

Pare, quarter, and lay in cold water half an hour. Put on in boiling water, and cook until tender. Drain, mash, and press to get out the water, work in pepper, salt, and a generous lump of butter. Do all this quickly not to cool the turnips, and pile smoothly in a hot, deep dish.

Cauliflower, with Sauce.

Pick off the leaves and cut the stem close. Do not cut the cauliflower unless very large. Lay in cold water for thirty minutes, tie in coarse bobbinet lace or mosquito net, and cook in boiling water, slightly salted, until tender. Lay the cauliflower, flower upward, within a hot dish, and pour the sauce over it.

Sauce for the above.

Stir into a cup of boiling water a tablespoonful of flour, wet up with cold. When it has boiled two minutes, add two tablespoonfuls of butter, the white of an egg whipped stiff, pepper and salt, and the juice of a lemon. Boil one minute, and pour over the cauliflower.

Baked Macaroni.

Break half a pound of macaroni into pieces an inch long, and cook in boiling water, slightly salted, twenty minutes. Drain, and put a layer in the bottom of a greased bake-dish, upon this some grated cheese—Parmesan, if you can get it—and tiny bits of butter. Then more macaroni, and so on, filling the dish, with grated cheese on top. Wet with a little milk, and salt lightly. Bake, covered half an hour, then brown. Serve in the bake-dish.

Jelly Tartlets.

• 1 lb. of flour.
• ½ lb. of butter.
• ¼ lb. of lard.
• Yolk of an egg.
• Ice-water.

Wash the butter in three waters, working it over well to get out the salt. Melt it in a tin cup set in boiling water, take the scum from the top, and let it get almost cold, when beat, little by little, into the whipped egg. Work these into the flour, adding just enough ice-water to make the paste soft enough to roll out. When you have rolled it into a thin sheet, spread all over with the lard, put on with a knife. Sprinkle lightly with flour, roll up, and flatten with three or four strokes of the rolling-pin. Roll again into a yet thinner sheet; again lubricate with the lard and sprinkle with flour, and, once more, make into a tight roll. Set for an hour in a cold place. Cut in two. Set aside enough for your Monday’s dessert; line small “patty-pans” with the rest, pricking the paste on the bottom to keep it from puffing too high. Bake in a quick oven, and when cold put a tablespoonful of sweet jelly or jam in each.

Apples and Nuts,

Especially the former, are better for very young stomachs than pastry.

Soak the beans overnight. In the morning, pour on a quart of cold water, and set them where they will heat for an hour, without burning. Stir up often from the bottom. At the end of this time add the beef liquor (after taking off the fat), the onions, and celery. Cook gently three hours, until the beans are boiled to pieces. Strain, season, put back into the kettle, boil up, season with pepper, stir in the butter rolled in flour. Simmer five minutes, and pour upon the fried bread in the tureen.

If you cannot get the purple “mock turtle soup beans,” use the common white ones.

Haunch of Venison.

Wash all over with lukewarm vinegar and water; then rub well with butter or lard to soften the skin. Cover the top and sides with foolscap paper, well greased, and coat it with a paste of flour and water, half an inch thick. Lay over this a large sheet of thin wrapping-paper, and over this another of stout foolscap. Tie all down in place by greased pack-thread. The papers should also be thoroughly greased.

Thus much on Saturday—and set the venison in a very cold place. Next day, about three hours before it will be needed, put into the dripping-pan, with two cups of boiling water in the bottom. Invert another pan over it to keep in the steam; be sure that the fire is good, and leave it to itself for an hour. Then see that the paper is not scorching; wet it all over with hot water and a ladleful of gravy; cover and let it alone for an hour and a half more. Remove the papers and paste, and test with a skewer in the thickest part. If it goes in readily, close the oven, and let it brown for half an hour. Baste freely four times with claret and butter; at last dredge with flour and rub over with butter to make a froth. Take it up, put upon a hot dish. Skim the gravy left in the dripping pan, strain it, thicken with browned flour; add two teaspoonfuls of currant-jelly, a glass of claret, pepper and salt. Boil up for an instant, and serve in a gravy-boat. Allow a quarter of an hour to the pound in roasting venison. The neck can be roasted in the same way as the haunch.

Mashed Potatoes—Moulded.

Having mashed and seasoned them as usual, grease well the inside of a fluted pudding or cake mould, put in the potato, cover, and set for half an hour in a dripping-pan half full of boiling water, within a moderate oven. Then remove the lid, dip, for a moment, the mould in cold water, and turn the potato out upon a flat dish.

Lima Beans.

You can get them canned, but they are nearly, if not quite as good dried. In this case soak them overnight in soft water. Change this in the morning for fresh, and put them on to boil in hot water, a little salted. Cook slowly until soft. Do not boil so fast as to break the skins. Drain well, stir in a good piece of butter, a little pepper and salt, and eat very hot.

Sweet Potatoes—Browned.

Boil in their skins, peel while hot, and set them in a quick oven. Glaze presently with butter, repeating the process, several times, as they brown.

Wine Jelly with Whipped Cream.

• 1 package of Coxe’s gelatine, soaked for two hours in a large cup of cold water.
• 2 cups of white wine, or pale sherry.
• 1 lemon, all the juice and half the grated peel.
• 1 teaspoonful of bitter almond extract.
• 2 cups of white sugar.
• 2 cups of boiling water.

Put soaked gelatine, lemon, sugar, and flavoring extract together, and cover closely for half an hour. Pour on boiling water, stir and strain. Add the wine, strain again through a flannel bag, without squeezing, and leave in a mould wet with cold water, until just before the Sunday dinner.

Whip a cup of rich cream to a thick froth in a syllabub-churn. The jelly should have been formed in an open mould—one with cylinder in the middle. Fill the hollow left by this with the whipped cream; or, if your jelly be a solid mass, heap the cream about the base.

Coffee and Macaroons

Should be the final course. I make no apology for hot and good Sunday dinners. There is a vast deal of straining out infinitesimal gnats and swallowing gigantic camels upon this, as upon most other questions of conscience. We have neither time nor space for their discussion. I have simply tried to deal with the fact that most husbands, brothers, and fathers expect a better dinner on Sabbath, and enjoy it more, than upon other days, by showing, to the best of my ability, how they can be gratified without imposing heavy duties upon mistress and servants at a season when both mind and body need comparative rest.

Heat Saturday’s soup to a boil; add two cups of milk, and when this heats, pour a little of it upon two beaten eggs. Return these to the soup, add whatever seasoning is necessary; simmer all together for one minute, and pour upon three or four tablespoonfuls of grated cheese placed in the bottom of the tureen. Stir up well, and it is ready.

Larded Venison.

Trim the remains of the roast haunch into a neat shape, and lard with strips of fat pork, making incisions to receive it with a thin, sharp-edged knife. Pour what gravy you have over it, or should there be none, use butter and water instead. Put into a dripping-pan, turn another over it and roast—or steam—for one hour. Meantime, make a gravy of the trimmings, bits of bone, etc., by covering them well with cold water, and adding half an onion, sliced. Stew until the gravy is reduced one-half. Strain, season with pepper; a tablespoonful of currant-jelly, one of catsup and two of claret. Thicken slightly with browned flour, boil up to mix well, and pour gradually over the meat. Baste abundantly with this for half an hour if the piece of meat be large. Less time may suffice for a small roast. Never let it dry for an instant. When done, it should seem to have been stewed rather than roasted. Serve the gravy in a sauce-boat.

Like some other “second thoughts,” this dish will be even better than at its first appearance.

Scalloped Tomatoes.

Turn nearly all the juice off from a can of tomatoes. Salt and pepper this, by the way, and put aside in a cool place for some other day’s soup. Put a layer of bread-crumbs in the bottom of a buttered pie-dish; on them one of tomatoes; sprinkle with salt, pepper, and some bits of butter, also a little sugar. Another layer of crumbs, another of tomatoes—seasoned—then a top layer of very fine, dry crumbs. Bake covered until bubbling hot, and brown quickly.

Fried Sweet Potatoes.

Slice cold ones left from yesterday, or boiled this fore-noon; roll in flour and fry in dripping. Drain well.

Raspberry and Currant Jelly Tart.

Roll out the raw paste reserved for to-day from Saturday, and line two pie-dishes. Fill them nearly full of canned raspberries, sweetened to your liking. Spread a coating of currant jelly over the top, and cover with a lattice-work of pastry, cut with a jagging-iron. Watch your chance of putting them into the oven, as they are better when not hot.

You will like them, I think.

Drain off the liquor from the clams and put it over the fire in a large farina-kettle, with a pint of water, the peppers, mace, celery, and salt. When it has boiled ten minutes, strain and put back into the kettle with the clams. Shut the lid down closely, and boil, fast, thirty minutes. Heat the milk in another vessel, stir into it the rice-flour, wet up with cold water, and the butter. Pour into the kettle with the clams, take at once from the fire, pour into the tureen, in the bottom of which you have laid four or five Boston crackers, split. Cover, and wait five minutes before serving.

RagoÛt of Veal.

• 5 lbs. of knuckle of veal.
• 1 onion.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• Juice of tomatoes set aside yesterday.
• Juice of half a lemon.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of browned flour.
• ¼ lb. of streaked fat pork.
• Pepper and salt.

Crack the bones, when you have taken the meat off, and put them into a saucepan with the minced onion, celery, and herbs, with a quart of water. Stew slowly until the liquor has boiled down to a pint. Meanwhile, cut the veal into neat slices, and fry until they begin to brown, in some good dripping. Strain the gravy made from the bones and vegetables over this, and put all on to stew, adding the tomato-juice, pepper, and pork, the last cut up fine. Simmer, with the lid on, for two hours. Then add the browned flour, wet up in cold water, salt, if needed, the butter and lemon-juice. Boil up once, and dish.

Rice and Cheese.

Boil a cup of rice in a quart of water, slightly salted, and when half-done add two tablespoonfuls of butter. By the time the rice is soft, the water should have been soaked up entirely, and each grain stand out whole in the mass. Never stir boiling rice, but shake up the saucepan instead. Stir into the rice, at this point, three tablespoonfuls of grated cheese, salt and pepper to taste. Toss up with a fork until the cheese is dissolved, and pour into a deep dish.

Potato Puff.

Mash the potatoes while hot. Beat in butter, milk, and two whipped eggs, with salt to your liking, until you have a light, soft paste. Bake in a buttered pudding-dish in a quick oven.

Celery Salad.

Cut up blanched stalks of celery into short pieces. Mix a dressing of one tablespoonful of oil to one teaspoonful of sugar, one of salt, half as much pepper, and four tablespoonfuls of vinegar with half a teaspoonful of made mustard. Heat the vinegar to scalding, and pour over a beaten egg, a little at a time, and beating it in well. To this add the oil and other ingredients, whipping up the mixture with an egg-beater. When cold, pour over the salad, toss up with a silver fork, and put into a glass bowl.

A Mere Trifle.

• 1 quart of fresh milk.
• 5 eggs.
• 6 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Vanilla, or other essence, 2 teaspoonfuls.

Heat the milk to boiling, and pour, gradually, upon the beaten yolks and sugar. Put again over the fire, stir steadily for about ten minutes, or until it begins to thicken. Take it off, and while still very hot, stir in with a few light strokes half of the frothed whites. Let it get cold before flavoring it. Pour into a glass bowl. Whip the remaining whites to a mÉringue with a little powdered sugar. Heap upon the custard. Put bits of bright jelly, or preserved strawberries, here and there upon the snowy mass.

Wash, scrape, and slice the vegetables, and put all except the tomatoes into a pot; cover with hot water and boil gently ten minutes. Drain off the water, put a handful of the mixed vegetables, including now the tomatoes, in the bottom of a stone jar. Pepper and salt, strew thickly with the minced raw beef, repeat the order until your materials are all in the jar. Fit a top or a small plate over the mouth; tie down with stout greased paper, set it within the oven, and let it alone for five or six hours, except that you must look, now and then, to see that the paper does not take fire. Prevent this by greasing it abundantly. At the end of this time, turn out the hotch-potch; stir in the butter, and, if needed, additional seasoning through it, and serve in a tureen.

Stewed Pigeons.

Pick, clean, and wash the pigeons, and put into a pot with a cupful of water to keep them from burning, and a tablespoonful of butter for each one. Shut the lid down tightly, and subject to a slow heat until they are of a nice brown—about nut-color. Once in a great while turn them, and see that each is well wet with the liquor. Take them out and cover in a warm place—a colander set over a pot of hot water is best—while you make the gravy. Chop the giblets of the pigeon “exceeding small” with a little onion and parsley. Put into the gravy, pepper and salt, boil up and thicken with browned flour. Return the pigeons to the pot, cover again tightly, and cook slowly until tender. If there should not be liquor enough in the pot to make the gravy, add boiling water before the giblets go in.

This is an admirable receipt.

Potatoes À la Lyonnaise.

Cut parboiled potatoes into dice. Chop an onion and fry it, with a little minced parsley, in good dripping or butter, for one minute. Then put in the potatoes. Stir briskly until they have fried slowly for five minutes. They must never stick to the bottom, nor brown. Sprinkle with pepper and salt, drain free of fat by shaking them in a heated colander, and send up hot.

Kidney Beans.

Soak over night in soft water; next morning cover with lukewarm, and cook slowly for one hour. Salt slightly and boil until tender, but not to actual breaking. Drain very well, stir in a liberal spoonful of butter, pepper, and serve.

English Tapioca Pudding.

• 1 cup of tapioca.
• 5 eggs.
• 3 pints of milk.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• ½ lb. of raisins.
• Half the grated peel of a lemon.
• A little salt.

Soak the tapioca for one hour in a pint of the milk; pour into a farina-kettle, surround with warm water, salt very slightly, and bring to a boil. When soft throughout, turn out to cool, while you make the custard. Heat a quart of milk to scalding; pour over the beaten eggs and sugar, this last having been rubbed to a cream with the butter. Mix with the tapioca—lemon-peel and raisins last. Dredge the fruit lightly with flour, and beat all up hard. Bake in a buttered dish one hour—at first covered.

Eat warm, with powdered sugar. It is better for not being too hot.

Chop the meat, onion, and herbs; cover with the water and put on to stew early in the day. When the meat has boiled to rags and the liquid reduced one-half, strain, and put in the celery, cut into small pieces. Use the best parts only. Stew soft; rub through a colander and return with the broth to the saucepan. Season, add the sugar, boil up and skim, and put in the milk. Heat, and add corn starch. When it again boils, you stirring all the while, put in the butter.

Take off so soon as this has melted, and pour over the fried bread in the tureen.

Mutton Cutlets—Fried.

Beat them flat with the broad side of a hatchet; season with pepper and salt, dip first in beaten egg, then in bread-crumbs, and fry in lard or dripping. Drain perfectly free from the fat, and arrange them, standing on end and touching one another, around a mound of mashed potatoes.

Mashed Potatoes.

Prepare as usual, and shape with a knife into a smooth mound, with a hedge of cutlets about the base.

Stewed Corn and Tomatoes.

Take a half-can of tomatoes and the same of corn, the rest of that which was opened for your “hotch-potch” yesterday, and, after mixing them up well, season with pepper, salt, and a little sugar. Set on where they will cook slowly. At the end of twenty-five minutes, stir in a great spoonful of butter. Put on the lid and stew very gently ten minutes more. Serve in a deep dish.

Brussels Sprouts.

Pick over, trim, and lay in cold water for half an hour cook quickly in boiling water, a little salt, for fifteen minutes. Drain carefully, put upon a flat dish, and pour drawn butter over them.

Apple MÉringue Pie.

• 1 quart of flour.
• ½ lb. of butter.
• ¼ lb. of lard.
• Ice-water.

Chop the lard in flour, wet up with ice-water to a stiff paste. Roll thin, and baste with one-third of the butter, sprinkle lightly with flour, and roll up. Again roll out, even thinner than before, baste again with half the remaining butter, sprinkle with flour, and make a second roll. Repeat this process yet a third time, and set in a cold place for one hour.

Cut the roll of paste into two pieces, reserving one for to-morrow’s oyster-pie. With the other, line two pie-dishes and fill with good apple-sauce, well sweetened, and seasoned with nutmeg. Bake until just done. Draw to the oven door, and spread with a mÉringue made by whipping stiff the whites of three eggs for each pie, sweetening with a tablespoonful of sugar for each egg. Flavor with a little rose-water or lemon-essence, beat until you can make a clean cut in it, and spread three-quarters of an inch thick upon each pie. Shut the oven door until the mÉringue is well set. Do not let it scorch. Eat cold.

Boil the vegetables, all chopped fine (reserving the parsley for seasoning), in three quarts of water until they can be pulped through a colander. Return them, with the water in which they were cooked, to the fire. Boil the rice, meantime, in a little water until it swells and absorbs it all. Stir into the vegetable porridge, season, and simmer for fifteen minutes. Add the butter, simmer ten minutes, dip out a cupful and beat into the eggs. Stir this into the broth, and before it begins to boil, take from the fire and pour out, lest the eggs should curdle.

Oyster Pie.

Roll out the raw paste made yesterday into a pretty thick sheet. Fill a pudding-dish with crusts of stale bread, or light crackers. Butter the edges of the dish that the crust may be easily removed. Cover the mockpie with the pastry; lay a strip cut in scallops or points, around the edge, to keep it in place, and bake.

To each pint of oyster-liquor allow a cup of milk, but heat them in separate vessels. So soon as the liquor boils, put in the oysters and cook five minutes more. Stir a tablespoonful of corn-starch into the pint of hot milk, having, of course, first wet it up with cold water, and, when it thickens, pour over the oysters and liquor. Season with pepper and salt, and add two tablespoonfuls of butter, if there be a quart of oysters. Lift the hot crust from the pudding-dish with great care. Remove the stale bread, wipe out the inside; pour in the stewed oysters with enough of the soup to cover them well; replace the pastry and set in the oven for two or three minutes.

Calf’s Liver À l’Anglaise.

• 2 lbs. of fresh liver.
• ½ lb. fat salt pork.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• ½ of a small onion.
• 1 teaspoonful of chopped parsley.
• Pepper.
• The pork should salt it sufficiently.

Put the butter into a warm—not hot saucepan. Cut the liver into slices half an inch thick, and lay upon the butter. Mince the pork and cover the liver. Sprinkle the parsley and onion, with pepper, on top. Cover the saucepan closely and set in a kettle of hot water. Keep this water below the boiling-point for an hour. Then let it boil another hour. The liver should by this time be very tender and juicy, if the heat has been properly managed. Take it out, and put it upon a chafing-dish to keep warm. Boil up, and thicken the gravy with browned flour; pour over the liver and serve. The inner saucepan should be made of tin.

Potatoes au Gratin.

Mash your potatoes soft with butter and milk; mould in a round pan or tin jelly-mould, made very wet with cold water. Turn out upon a flat plate—a sheet of tin is better—well-greased, strew with fine, dry bread-crumbs; set upon the upper grating of the oven to brown quickly. Slip dexterously from the plate to a hot dish.

Stewed Parsnips.

Boil tender and cut in long slices. Heat in a saucepan a cup of milk, thicken it with a tablespoonful of butter cut into bits and rolled in flour, season with pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg. Put in the parsnips, boil up once gently, take from the fire, and leave covered in the saucepan for five minutes before you serve.

Picklette and Apple Sauce.

Pass the first with the oyster pie, which is a course of itself; the apple sauce with the meat.

Chocolate Custard.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 5 eggs.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 4 heaping tablespoonfuls of grated chocolate.
• 2 teaspoonfuls vanilla extract.

Scald the milk, rub the chocolate to a smooth paste in a little cold milk. Stir into the milk and cook two minutes in it. Beat up the yolks of the five eggs with the whites of two, and the sugar. Pour the hot mixture, gradually, upon them, stirring deeply. Turn into a buttered pudding-dish, and set in a dripping-pan of boiling water. Bake until firm. When “set” in the middle, spread quickly, without taking from the oven, with a mÉringue made by whipping the reserved whites stiff with a very little sugar. Bake until this is done. Eat cold.

Mince the meat, crack the bones, and slice the vegetables. Mix all together. Put the butter in the bottom of a soup-pot, next the meat, then the vegetables and herbs; fit on a tight lid, and set the pot where it will warm very slowly. At the end of an hour, open it, pour off the gravy; increase the heat until the meat begins to brown on the sides of the pot. Return the gravy to the rest of the ingredients; cover with six quarts of cold water, and boil until the liquor has fallen to four quarts. This should be in four hours. Strain the soup; pressing out all the nourishment, and rubbing the vegetables through the sieve. Add the paste, or, if you cannot obtain it, the same quantity of pipe macaroni, boiled a few minutes in hot water, and left to get cool. Then, with a sharp knife or scissors, clip it into very short bits, and put into the soup. Season, boil up, skim well, and let all cook gently together for ten minutes. Half of the above quantity of stock will be enough for Saturday’s dinner. Therefore, before adding the macaroni, take out about two quarts, season well, and set aside for Sunday’s soup.

Baked Ham.

Soak overnight in warm water. In the morning, scrub it hard; trim away the rusty part of the under side and edges; wipe dry; cover the bottom with a stiff paste of flour and water, and lay, upside down, in the dripping-pan, with enough water to keep it from burning. Allow, in baking, twenty-five minutes to the pound. Baste a few times, to prevent the skin from cracking, and keep hot water in the pan. When a skewer will pierce the thickest part, take it up, plunge for one minute into cold water; skin carefully, brush all over with beaten egg, then strew very thickly with cracker-crumbs, and set in a hot oven to brown. Eat hot or cold, garnished with sprigs of celery or parsley.

Cheese Fondu.

• 1 pint of boiling milk.
• 1 cup very dry bread-crumbs. (Crush the crusts baked in yesterday’s oyster pie.)
• ½ lb. dry cheese, grated.
• 3 eggs.
• Pepper and salt.

Soak the crumbs in the hot milk; beat in the cheese; then the yolks of the eggs, pepper and salt. Have a buttered pudding-dish ready, and just before the fondu goes into the oven whip in the whites of the eggs, already frothed. Pour into the dish, bake in a brisk oven, and send at once to table, as it soon falls. This is a delightful accompaniment to ham.

Spinach with Eggs.

Pick the leaves from the stems, wash well, and boil in hot water, a little salted, for twenty minutes. Chop and drain. Return to the saucepan with a tablespoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, a little pepper and salt. Have ready the yolks of three eggs, rubbed to powder, then wet up with a little cream or milk. Stir all together in the saucepan, beating with a wire spoon, until they are smooth and thick. Turn into a deep dish and garnish with the whites of the eggs cut into rings.

Stewed Potatoes.

Pare the potatoes; cut into quarters, and these into long, even strips. Lay in cold water half an hour, and cook in boiling water until tender, with half a minced onion. Drain off nearly all the water; pepper and salt, and add a cup of cold milk with a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. When it thickens, stir in a little chopped parsley. Simmer five minutes and serve. The potatoes should not be allowed to break so much as to lose their shape.

Seymour Pudding.

• ½ cup of molasses.
• 1 scant cup of milk.
• ½ cup of raisins, seeded and cut in half.
• ½ cup of currants.
• ½ cup of suet, powdered.
• ½ teaspoonful of soda dissolved in hot water.
• 1 egg.
• 1 teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace.
• A little salt.
• 1½ cups of Graham flour.

Stir molasses, suet, and milk together, add the egg, spice, flour, fruit, well dredged with flour—at last, the soda. Beat hard five minutes before putting it into a buttered pudding-mould. Boil two hours and a half. Eat with butter and sugar.

Use the two quarts of stock set aside yesterday. Soak five or six tablespoonfuls of barley in cold water two hours. Boil half an hour or until tender, in a little salted water. When you have taken the cake of cold fat from the top of the soup, put in the barley and simmer all together half an hour. Then stir in two tablespoonfuls of shred gelatine previously soaked one hour in cold water. When this has dissolved, the soup is ready for use.

Steamed Turkey.

Prepare the turkey as for roasting, and, if you have no steamer, put a gridiron upon the top of a pot of boiling water; lay the fowl upon it, invert a deep pan, as nearly as possible the size of the mouth of the pot, over it, stuff wet cloths into whatever space may be left between the pot and the pan, and keep the water at a hard boil, allowing twenty minutes for each pound of turkey. Two or three times, replenish the water by pulling away one of the cloths so as to leave an aperture large enough to admit the nose of the boiling tea-kettle. When the turkey is half done, lift the pan and turn it; replace the cloths and steam again. When it is done, lay upon a hot dish and baste with a mixture of melted butter and chopped parsley, anointing all parts of it well. Serve drawn butter in a boat, with a couple of boiled eggs chopped fine, stirred up in it. Save the giblets of the turkey for Monday’s soup.

Cranberry Sauce

In a mould, as strained jelly, or the plainer dish of stewed cranberries, well-sweetened, must accompany this dish.

Naples Rice Pudding.

Take a few tablespoonfuls of the meat boiled in yesterday’s soup, mince fine, add half a chopped onion, a tablespoonful of dripping from the top of the soup, and put on to warm with a very little hot water. Simmer, but do not boil, fifteen minutes. Boil one cup of rice in enough water, slightly salt, to cover it well. Shake up from time to time, but do not stir. When the rice is soft and has soaked up the water, add a cup of cold milk in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of corn-starch, one raw egg, and a tablespoonful of butter. Take from the fire before you do this and turn into a bowl. Stir in now the minced meat and gravy (there should be very little of the latter), season to taste, mix all up well, and put into a buttered cake-mould. Set this in a dripping-pan of hot water and bake one hour, closely covered. Turn out upon a hot dish. It is a very good entrÉe, and easily made.

Boiled Sweet Potatoes.

Boil in their skins until soft to the touch; pare quickly, lay upon a flat dish, butter each, and serve hot.

Pumpkin Pie.

• 1 quart of stewed pumpkin, rubbed through a fine colander.
• 6 eggs.
• 2 quarts of milk.
• 1 teaspoonful of mace.
• 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon and the same of nutmeg.
• 1½ cups of sugar.

Beat the eggs light and whip in the sugar, then the pumpkin and spice. At last, mix in the milk, stirring up well from the bottom.

Bake in open shells of paste made according to the receipt given last Thursday. Eat cold, and send around a plate of cheese with it.

Cut the giblets of your turkey into six pieces each, and stew, closely covered, in a pint of water until tender. Strain out the barley from the remains of yesterday’s soup and if you have any of Saturday’s in the pantry, strain out the vermicelli and add that. Warm this to a boil with the liquor in which the giblets were cooked. Boil up sharply and skim; add the giblets, and while they simmer together, put two tablespoonfuls of butter cut into bits, and rolled in browned flour, into a frying-pan. Stir until it is hissing hot. Add to the soup with a handful of chopped parsley, and a tablespoonful of walnut or mushroom catsup. Boil up once and serve.

Turkey and Ham.

Cover the uncarved side of your steamed turkey with rather thick and fat slices of cooked ham. Three or four large ones will suffice. Bind them to the body with greased packthread. Lay the turkey, cut side downward, and the ham up, in the dripping-pan with a little boiling water in the bottom. Bake about three-quarters of an hour, basting the ham, when it begins to drip, with its own grease. Ten minutes before taking it up, clip the strings, and remove the ham to a hot dish. Dredge the upper side of the turkey with flour, and baste with butter to make a brown froth. Dish, with the ham laid around it.

Corn Puddings.

• Add to a can of sweet corn,
• 1 cup of milk.
• 3 eggs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• 1 of sugar.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of flour.
• 1 teaspoonful of salt.

Beat up the eggs, add the sugar and butter, the milk, corn, and, lastly, the flour. Bake in earthenware cups well buttered, or in neat patty-pans. Turn out upon a dish, or eat from the cups. They are very nice when hot.

Baked Potatoes.

Wash, wipe, and bake in a moderate oven. When done, cut a round piece of skin almost entirely from the top of each, leaving a “hinge” at one side. With a small knife make an incision in the mealy part of the potato, i. e., the heart, put in a pinch of salt, and a bit of butter, replace the flap of skin, and send hot to table.

Farina Custard.

• 1 quart of milk.
• 4 tablespoonfuls of farina.
• 3 eggs well beaten.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• Vanilla essence—2 teaspoonfuls.
• 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Heat the milk to scalding; stir in the farina, which should have been previously soaked in a little cold water for an hour. Cook in a farina-kettle fifteen minutes, stirring often. Take out a cupful and beat into the eggs already whipped up with the sugar. Put into the kettle, stir in salt and flavoring, boil two minutes, and pour into a deep dish. Eat warm, putting a teaspoonful of sweet fruit jelly upon the top of each saucerful in serving.

Wash a calf’s head (cleaned with the skin on), in three waters, and soak one hour in salted water. Then put on to boil in five quarts of cold water. Cook until the meat slips easily from the bones. Take out the head, remove the bones, and throw back into the soup. Set aside three-quarters of the meat—the best portions—for to-morrow’s dinner. Chop the ears and other refuse parts fine; season with salt, pepper, onion, sweet marjoram, a teaspoonful of ground cloves, and as much allspice—even spoonfuls. Mix all up well, return to the soup and boil down to three quarts. Mash the brains and make into force-meat balls with raw egg, seasoning and enough flour to hold them together; roll in flour and set in a cool place until wanted. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of browned flour wet up with cold water, and stir together five minutes. Strain the soup, put back two quarts over the fire, stir in the thickening of flour and butter, boil up and put in the force-meat balls. Simmer ten minutes, add the juice of a lemon, and a glass of brown sherry, and pour out. The reserved quart of “stock” is for another day’s soup. Do not put the calf’s tongue into the soup. It is indispensable in to-morrow’s ragoÛt.

Boiled Mutton.

The best part for boiling is the leg. Put on in boiling water and cook, allowing fifteen minutes to the pound. Make a sauce by taking out a cupful of liquor when it is nearly done, cooling it until you can take off the fat, then heating again in a saucepan and stirring into it one tablespoonful of butter, two teaspoonfuls of flour, wet up with cold water. Stir for five minutes, putting in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and after another boil, take from the fire before you put in the juice of a lemon.

In this, as in other cases where the liquor in which meat is boiled is to be used for broth, salt slightly while cooking, sprinkling all over lightly with salt the moment you take it from the fire. Serve the sauce in a boat.

Minced Cabbage.

Boil a firm head of cabbage, quartered, in two waters, throwing the first away after ten minutes’ cooking and putting in more as hot, and a little salted. When it is tender all through, drain and chop quite fine, seasoning with salt, pepper, and a liberal portion of butter. Serve hot in a vegetable dish.

String Beans.

Open a can of string beans an hour before they are to be used. Cut them into short pieces when you are ready to cook them; turn off the liquor and cover them with cold water. Put into a pot with a bit of salt pork a little more than an inch square. Boil slowly until tender, strain, season with pepper, and serve hot, with the pork on top of the pile of beans.

Beet-root Salad.

Boil the beets until tender; scrape clean; drop into cold water for three minutes. Slice, and pour over them a dressing of vinegar, salt, sugar, made mustard, pepper, and one tablespoonful of oil to four of vinegar. Cover, and let all stand together for two hours. This salad will keep for a couple of days.

Corn-meal Puffs.

• 1 quart of boiling milk.
• 2 scant cups of white “corn-flour.”
• ½ cup of wheat-flour.
• 1 scant cup of powdered sugar.
• A little salt.
• 4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• ½ teaspoonful of soda.
• 1 teaspoonful of cream tartar.
• ½ teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and nutmeg.

Sift soda and cream tartar twice through the flour. Then, mix flour and meal together, and sift a third time. Boil the milk and stir into it the meal, flour, and salt. Boil ten minutes, stirring well up from the bottom. Take it off, put into a bowl, add the butter and beat hard for three minutes. Let it cool while you whip the eggs light, then the yolks and sugar and spice together. Beat these into the cold mush, and lastly the frothed whites. Whip all together faithfully, and bake in greased cups or small “corn-bread moulds,” set within a steady oven. When done, turn out and eat hot, breaking—not cutting—them open, and after buttering sprinkling with white sugar.

Wash and scald the sweetbreads, and put on to stew in the cold water. When they have boiled slowly half an hour, salt, boil up and skim. Take all the fat from the top of the cold soup-stock, and stir into the liquor already on the fire. Add the onion and parsley minced, and the mace; season to taste, cover and stew gently for one hour. Take out the sweetbreads and lay them where they will cool quickly. Strain the soup, return to the fire; put in a dozen mushrooms (you can buy the French champignons in cans), stew fifteen minutes; cut the sweetbreads into small squares, drop into the soup; thicken with the corn-starch wet with cold water; boil up once and serve.

This soup is very fine.

RagoÛt of Calf’s Head and Mushrooms.

• 1 cold boiled calf’s head, cut into slices with the tongue.
• 1 can French mushrooms, minus those used for the soup.
• 1 sliced onion.
• Pepper, salt, and sweet herbs.
• ½ teaspoonful mixed mace and allspice.
• Juice of a lemon.
• Butter or dripping for frying.

Cut three-quarters of the calf’s head—the best parts—into neat slices, also the tongue. Chop the rest, season with the onion, pepper and salt, cover with three cups of cold water, and stew gently down to one cup of gravy. Meanwhile fry the slices of meat in good dripping. Take them out with a wire spoon and put into the bottom of a tin vessel set within another of warm—not boiling—water. Cover and set over the fire. Drain, slice and fry the mushrooms in the fat left in the frying-pan. Drain and lay these upon the meat in the inner vessel. Time the cooking of the gravy so as to have it ready, spiced, and seasoned, to be strained, hot over the meat and mushrooms. Put on a tight lid and simmer fifteen minutes, never boiling once. Strain off the gravy into a saucepan. Thicken, and let it boil up once. Add the lemon-juice, put the meat and mushrooms into a deep dish, and pour the hot gravy over all.

Mashed Turnips.

Boil soft, drain and mash, pressing the water out well, return to the saucepan, with a generous lump of butter; pepper and salt; stir constantly until the butter is dissolved, and all smoking hot, and serve in a covered dish.

Creamed Potatoes.

In mashing them, add more milk than usual, whipping up hard with a silver fork. While still very hot, beat in the white of an egg, already frothed stiffly; pile in a deep dish and set, uncovered, within the oven, until a light crust begins to form on the top, but not long enough to injure the dish. Brush over with butter to glaze it, and serve.

Tomato Soy

Is an excellent “stock” pickle. For directions for making it, please refer to page 488, “General Receipts, No. 1, of Common-Sense Series.”

Sponge-cake Pudding.

• 1 stale sponge-cake.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• 4 eggs, beaten light.
• 2 cups of milk.
• 1 tablespoonful of corn-starch, wet up with cold milk.
• Juice of one lemon and half the grated peel.

Slice the cake and lay some of it in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish. Make a custard by scalding the milk, stirring into it the corn-starch, then pouring it, by degrees, upon the beaten eggs and sugar. Add the lemon; pour over the cake, put another layer of slices; more custard, and so on, until the mould is full. Put a small, heavy plate on top, and let all stand until the custard is soaked up. Cover and bake, half an hour, or until done throughout. Turn out upon a flat dish, sprinkle thickly with white sugar, and eat warm or cold.

Nuts and Raisins.

Crack the nuts, and select for table use fair bunches of plump, fresh raisins.

In plainer English, rice-broth, can be achieved for to-day, with little trouble, by the help of the liquor in which your mutton was boiled on Tuesday. Wash and soak a cup of rice in cold water. At the end of half an hour, add it, with the water in which it has soaked, to the mutton-broth, from which you must first take the fat. Boil very slowly two hours, and should the water sink below the original level more than an inch, replenish with boiling. In another saucepan heat a cup of milk, thickened with a tablespoonful of rice-flour. Season the mutton-broth with pepper and parsley—it will hardly need salt. (Boil up and skim, before the parsley goes in.) Pour the hot milk over two beaten eggs, stir in well; add to the soup in the kettle, and take instantly from the fire.

English Pork Pie.

• 3 lbs. of lean fresh pork, cut into strips as long as your finger.
• 6 large juicy apples.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Pepper, salt, and mace to taste.
• 1 cup of sweet cider.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Good pie-paste for an upper crust, made according to receipt given for Thursday of second week in this month.

Put a layer of pork within a pudding-dish; season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, or mace. Next a layer of sliced apples, strewed with sugar and bits of butter. Go on in this order until you are ready for the crust, having the last layer of apples. Pour in the cider, cover with a thick crust of good pastry, ornamented around the edge; make a slit in the middle, and bake in a moderate oven one hour and a half. Should the crust threaten to brown too fast, cover with paper. When nicely browned, brush over with butter and close the oven door for a moment; then wash well with white of egg. Eat hot. You will find it very good, odd as the receipt may seem.

Mock Stewed Oysters.

Scrape and drop into cold water a bunch of salsify, or oyster-plant. Cut into short pieces and stew tender in boiling water, a little salted. Drain off nearly all the water, and pour into the saucepan a cup of cold milk. When again hot, add a heaping tablespoonful of butter and a handful of fine cracker-dust, with pepper and salt. Stir very slowly for five minutes, and pour out. It should be about as thick as oyster soup.

Potato Balls.

Mash potatoes with a little butter and salt, and let them get cold. Then work in a beaten egg. Make into balls about twice the size of a walnut, with floured hands, roll them well in flour, and fry yellow-brown in good dripping or lard. Drain in a colander, and pile upon a flat dish.

Lemon Jelly and Light Cake.

• 5 lemons—juice of all and grated peel of two.
• 2 large cups of sugar.
• 1 package of Coxe’s gelatine, soaked in two cups of cold water.
• 2 glasses pale sherry.
• 1 pint of boiling water.

Stir sugar, lemon-juice, peel, and soaked gelatine together, and leave, covered, for an hour. Then pour over them the boiling water; stir until the gelatine is dissolved; strain through a flannel bag, without pressing. Add the wine, and let all drip, untouched, through double flannel. Pour into a wet mould. In cold weather, or if set on ice, it will be ready for use in six hours. Pass a basket of light cake with it.

Free the lobster from all bits of shell, and cut up small, tearing as little as may be. Put the water into a saucepan, with the salt and pepper. When boiling, stir in the lobster and stew half an hour. Heat the milk in another vessel, and, when scalding, stir in the cracker and set in hot water for ten minutes. The lobster having cooked for thirty minutes, add the butter, and simmer five minutes longer. Then pour in the milk; mix all up well; set for five minutes in hot water, and serve in a tureen. Pass sliced lemon with it.

This bisque is delicious.

Stewed Chicken.

Prepare a fine young fowl as for roasting, with the exception of the dressing, which should be left out. Early in the day (if you have no gravy already made) put on the feet and giblets to stew in two cups of cold water, with a little minced onion. When the giblets are very tender, and the liquid has boiled down to one cupful, strain it and set aside the giblets to cool. Chop a quarter of a pound of pork, put it in the bottom of a pot, lay the chicken upon it; pour the gravy over it; cover tightly and set where it will heat steadily, but not reach the boil under an hour. Increase the heat, not allowing the steam to escape, for an hour longer, but it should not stew fast at any time. By this time the fowl should be thoroughly done. Remove carefully to a hot dish; season the gravy, adding a little hot water if needful, and strain out the pork. Add the giblets, chopped fine, stew fast for one minute, pour over the chicken, and it is ready for the table.

Rice Croquettes.

• 2 cups of cold boiled rice.
• 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
• 2 eggs, well beaten.
• 1 tablespoonful sugar.
• A little flour.
• Salt to taste.

Work butter and sugar to a cream, and these into the rice. Salt, and stir up with the eggs to a smooth paste. Make into oval balls or rolls, with well-floured hands. Roll in flour, and fry, a few at a time, in sweet lard. Drain well and eat hot.

Winter Squash.

Pare, take out the seeds, cut into strips, and lay in cold water, one hour. Cook in boiling water, a little salt, until very soft. Drain off every drop of water, and mash with a potato beetle, stirring in a large spoonful of butter, and seasoning with pepper and salt. Mound up in a vegetable dish and serve hot.

Apple Snow.

• 6 fine pippins (raw).
• 2 cups of milk.
• 4 eggs.
• 1 cup of powdered sugar.

Make a custard by stirring into the hot milk half the sugar, the yolks of all the eggs, and the white of one, and cooking, stirring constantly until it thickens. Let this cool while you whip the whites to a stiff mÉringue with the rest of the sugar. Peel the apples, and grate directly into the mÉringue, stirring in at once that the coating of egg may prevent them from changing color. Put the cold custard in the bottom of a glass dish, and heap the snow upon it. Eat soon after making it.

Tea and Macaroons.

Pass after dinner in the dining-room, or send into the parlor.

Chop the vegetables and herbs; cut the meat fine, and break up the bones. Put the oatmeal to soak in a pint of water. Slice the potatoes, and parboil them in hot water for ten minutes. Add them then to the other vegetables, and put them all, with the meat and bones, into a soup-pot, with the water. Stew for four hours, until the liquor in the pot has fallen one-third. Strain through a colander, set aside two quarts of the stock until to-morrow, after seasoning it all, and return the rest to the fire. Boil up and skim; add the oatmeal, and stew, covered, forty minutes, stirring often, lest it should burn.

Mutton Chops and Tomato PurÉe.

Broil the chops, after trimming them neatly; rub, as soon as they leave the gridiron, with butter on both sides; pepper and salt, and cover, for a few minutes, in a hot water dish, that they may take up the seasoning.

Make the purÉe by stewing a can of tomatoes until almost dry, then seasoning, and stirring in a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Simmer three minutes, arrange the chops on their sides, overlapping each other, inside of the curve of a flat dish, and pour the purÉe within their enclosure.

Potato Strips.

Pare and cut the potatoes in long strips, the length of the potato, and not more than the sixteenth of an inch thick. Lay in ice-water for one hour; dry by laying on one clean towel and pressing another upon it, and fry, not too many at once, in hot lard, a little salt. Take out so soon as they are browned lightly, toss in a hot colander, and serve in a deep dish lined with a napkin.

Boiled Beans.

Soak all night, and in the morning change the cold water for lukewarm. Leave in this two hours; drain it off and put them on to boil in cold water, with a piece of fat salt pork two inches square. Cook slowly until soft. Take out the pork, drain the beans well, season with pepper, and dish.

Macaroni Pudding.

• ½ lb. of macaroni broken into inch lengths.
• 2 cups of boiling water.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 large cup of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• Grated peel of half a lemon.
• A little cinnamon and salt.

Boil the macaroni in the water until it is tender, and has soaked up the liquid. It must be cooked in a farina-kettle. Add the butter and salt. Cover for five minutes without cooking. Put in the rest of the ingredients. Simmer, after the boil begins, ten minutes longer, before serving in a deep dish. Be careful, in stirring, not to break the macaroni. Eat with butter and powdered sugar, or cream and sugar.

Slice the potatoes, cover with boiling water, and cook ten minutes. Throw away this water, and add the quart of cold, slightly salted, and the onion, to the potatoes. Boil to pieces, and pass, with the water in which they were boiled, through a colander into the stock. Heat all together, and cook gently half an hour, before adding the rice, which should have been boiled soft in a very little water. When the rice is nearly dry, stir in the butter, put into the soup, and simmer five minutes.

Roast Beef.

A rib-roast is best for family use. Make your butcher saw off about half of the bone, after cutting the ends of the ribs clear of the meat; then fold the flap neatly around to the thick part, and secure with skewers. The “trimmings” are yours—a fact housekeepers often fail to insist upon. The meat is weighed before you buy it. Take all that you pay for—and you will seldom be at a loss for a “base” for soup or gravy. Between butchers and cooks, there is enough wasted in American kitchens to supply a National Soup-house that might feed all the poor in the land.

Put your beef in the dripping-pan; pour a cup of boiling water over it, and roast ten minutes for every pound. Bake as soon as the juices begin to flow—the oftener in reason the better. If your meat has much fat on top, cover it—the fat—with a paste of flour and water. When nearly done, remove this, dredge the beef with flour, baste well with gravy, strew salt over the top, and serve. Pour the fat off from the gravy; return to the fire, thicken with browned gravy, season, and boil up once.

Sweet Potatoes—Baked.

Parboil, take off the skins, and, half an hour before you take up your beef, lay the potatoes in the dripping-pan to brown, basting them with the meat. They should be of a fine brown. Drain off the grease, and lay about the beef when dished.

Baked Hominy.

• 1 cupful of cold boiled hominy (small grained).
• 2 cups of milk.
• 1 large teaspoonful of butter.
• The same of sugar.
• A little salt.
• 2 eggs.

Work the melted butter well into the hominy, mashing all lumps. Then come the beaten yolks; next, sugar and salt; then, gradually, the milk; lastly the whites. Beat until perfectly smooth, and bake in a greased pudding-dish until delicately browned. Serve in the bake-dish.

Cabbage Salad.

Chop a firm white cabbage with a sharp knife. A dull one bruises it. Make a dressing of two tablespoonfuls of oil; six of vinegar; a teaspoonful each of salt and sugar; half as much each of made mustard and pepper. Work all in well, the vinegar going in last, and then beat in a raw egg, whipped light. Pour over the salad, toss up with a fork, and serve in a glass dish.

Arrow-root Pudding—(Cold).

• 3 even tablespoonfuls of arrow-root. Get the Bermuda if you can, or you may require more.
• 3 cups of fresh milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• ¼ lb. of crystallized peaches, chopped fine.

Heat the milk to scalding, and stir in the arrow-root wet up with cold milk. Stir ten minutes, and add sugar and butter. Stir five minutes more, and pour out. When nearly cold, beat in the fruit. Pour into a wet mould. Make on Saturday, and on Sunday, turn out upon a dish, and eat with sugar and cream. It is very good without the fruit, but needs more sugar in making.

Coffee

Should be served last of all.

A few raw beef-bones and trimmings, spoken of yesterday. Bones, bits of skin, gristle, etc., left from Sunday’s roast when you have cut off the meat for the cannelon.

• 1 pint of stock.
• 1 onion.
• 2 stalks of celery.
• Bunch of sweet herbs.
• 4 quarts of cold water.
• 1 lb. stale bread-crusts, the drier the better, provided they are not mouldy or sour.
• Salt and pepper.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.

Crack the bones, chop meat and vegetables; put on in the water, and boil slowly down to two quarts. Strain the liquor; let it cool; take off all the fat, season, and return to the pot with the stock. Boil up and skim; put in the crusts; stew, covered, half an hour. Take it from the range and beat in the butter, taking out indissoluble bits. Then simmer, in a vessel set within another of boiling water, half an hour.

As you will see, by a careful perusal of these directions, the preparation of this soup requires little actual expenditure of time. I beg, therefore, that you will “gather up the fragments” from larder and bread-box, and give your family a hot, nourishing, “comforting” dish of porridge, if it is wash-day.

Cannelon of Beef.

Cut the meat from your cold roast, and chop it fine. Season well, and beat into it the yolks of three eggs and the white of one. Add one-third as much cold mashed potato as you have meat, wet up with gravy, and make, with floured hands, into a long roll—three times as long as it is broad. It should be just soft enough to handle. Dredge thickly with flour, and lay in a greased baking-pan. Invert another one over it, and bake until it is hissing hot on top and sides, when uncover, and brown quickly. Brush over the outside with white of egg; dredge again with flour, shut the oven-door to brown this, glaze again with egg, and shut up the oven for one minute. Carefully, with the aid of a cake-turner, slip the cannelon to a hot dish and serve.

Chow-chow

Should go around with the cannelon.

Potato Stew.

Pare and cut the potatoes into dice. Stew in hot water, with a slice of fat salt pork, cut very small, half a minced onion and a little chopped parsley, until the pork is dissolved and the potatoes very tender. Pepper, and if necessary, salt, and pour into a hot, deep dish. The “stew” should not be too liquid, nor yet stiff.

Pork and Beans.

This is a good, nourishing dish for Monday, and easily managed, if you have boiled the beans on Saturday. Fill a bake-dish nearly full of them, and put in the middle a piece of fat salt pork, about three inches wide, which you have parboiled in your soup. It will improve the taste of the “stock” and be itself the better for the temporary association. Pour in a little hot water to keep the beans from burning. Pepper and bake, covered, for half an hour. Remove the cover and brown.

Peach Batter Pudding.

Open a can of peaches—whole ones, if you have them—and pour into the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish before you make your batter. There should be just syrup enough to half cover the fruit.

For batter, take 1 quart of milk.

• 10 tablespoonfuls of prepared flour.
• 5 eggs, beaten light.
• 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
• 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Beat the yolks light, add the milk and salt, and pour slowly into a hole made in the middle of the flour. Finally, stir in the whites lightly, but not until you have beaten the batter smooth. Pour over the peaches and bake quickly. You can put it in the oven after the beans are done, setting the latter aside to keep warm. If you have not time to make sauce, eat with butter and sugar. Do not let the pudding stand after drawing from the oven, or it will fall.

Chop the meat and onion fine, cover with the water, and stew slowly three hours. Strain, cool and skim. Season and set back on the fire. Boil up and skim carefully; add the milk, and when hot, the corn-starch wet with cold water. As it thickens, take out a cupful, pour upon the eggs; stir into the soup, and take at once from the fire.

Roast Breast of Veal.

Make incisions between the ribs and the meat, and stuff with a force-meat of dry bread-crumbs, chopped pork or ham, pepper, sweet marjoram, and one beaten egg. Save a little to thicken the gravy. Roast slowly, basting often and copiously. Dredge at the last with flour, and baste well, when this has colored, with butter.

Stewed Tomatoes.

Stew a can of tomatoes twenty-five minutes; season with pepper, salt, a little sugar, and a tablespoonful of butter. Cook five minutes and serve.

Plain Boiled Potatoes.

Pare very thin, and put on (after having lain half an hour in cold water) in boiling water. Cook fast until a fork will go easily into the largest; drain off every drop of water, and throw in salt. Set back, uncovered, on the side of the range, or where they will dry quickly, yet not scorch. Serve in an uncovered dish.

Celery.

Wash, scrape, trim off the green tops, and throw aside for seasoning soups, vinegar, etc., the rank green stalks. Lay the better parts in cold water until wanted for the table. Put into a tall glass or celery-stand.

Essex Pudding.

• 2 cups of fine bread-crumbs.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of sago, soaked three hours in a little water.
• ¾ of a cup of powdered suet.
• 5 eggs, beaten light.
• 1 cup of milk.
• 1 cup of sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful flour, wet in cold milk.
• ½ lb. of whole raisins, “plumped” by laying them in boiling water for two minutes.
• A little salt.

Cook the sago in enough water to cover it until tender and nearly dry. Heat the milk and pour upon the beaten eggs and sugar, add the crumbs, beating into a good batter in a bowl; then suet, flour, sago, and salt. Butter a mould thickly and lay the raisins, dredged with flour, in the bottom and sides, in whatever designs you fancy. Fill the mould with the batter—well beaten up at the last—putting it in by cautious spoonfuls not to dislodge the raisins, which should be imbedded in the butter. Put on the lid of the pudding mould, and boil one hour, never relaxing the heat. Dip in cold water and turn out upon a flat dish. Eat with jelly sauce.

Jelly Sauce.

• ½ cup of currant jelly.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of melted butter.
• 1 lemon—juice and half the grated peel.
• ½ teaspoonful of nutmeg.
• 1 tablespoonful of powdered sugar.
• 1 glass of wine.
• 1 cup of boiling water.
• 1 teaspoonful flour.

Beat the hot water gradually into the jelly, and add the butter, lemon, and nutmeg. Warm almost to a boil, put in the sugar, then the flour wet up with cold water. Boil up once sharply; add the wine, and take from the fire. Set, closely covered, in a vessel of hot water until wanted. Stir well before pouring it out.

Cut the meat small, crack the bones, and put on to cook in five quarts of water with the herbs. While it simmers, prepare the vegetables, with the exception of the cabbage and tomatoes, by cleaning, paring, and cutting them into narrow strips about two inches long, and as nearly as possible of uniform size. Lay them in cold water for one hour. Drain very dry, and put them into a frying-pan in which you have melted, but not cooked, the butter, and dissolved the sugar. Toss them over a hot fire until they are coated with the butter, but do not let them scorch. Set aside in a clean vessel set within one of hot water. When the meat has boiled to rags, and the liquid is reduced one-third, strain it and set by until the fat rises and can be taken off. Return the soup to the fire, season, boil up and skim; add the glazed vegetables, with the chopped cabbage—which should have been parboiled, then drained—and the tomatoes, cut up small. Stew gently for one hour. Serve with the vegetables in it.

This will make enough soup for two days, unless your family be large.

Halibut Steaks—Broiled.

Wash and wipe the steaks dry. Broil upon a buttered gridiron, turning when the lower side is done. Remove carefully to a chafing-dish, and anoint with a mixture of butter, salt, pepper, and a little lemon-juice.

Always serve fish upon hot plates. Pass potatoes, and no other vegetable, with it.

Scalloped Potatoes.

• 3 cups of mashed potatoes.
• 3 tablespoonfuls of milk.
• 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
• Yolks of four hard-boiled eggs. (Cut the whites in rings to garnish your fish.)
• Handful of dry bread-crumbs.
• Salt and pepper.

Beat butter, milk, and seasoning into the potatoes while hot. Put a layer in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish; cover this with thin slices of yolk; pepper and salt them; spread another layer of potato over these, and proceed in this order until the dish is full, having the top layer of potato. Strew thickly with bread-crumbs. Bake covered until hot through, then brown quickly. Serve in the bake-dish.

Veal and Ham Pie.

Cut the meat from the cold roast of yesterday. Put the bones, well-cracked, the refuse bits of meat and skin into a saucepan with an onion, a few spoonfuls of tomatoes, and three cups of cold water, and cook slowly until there remains but one cup of gravy. Strain and season, thickening with a tablespoonful of browned flour. Cut the veal into small, even slices. If you have no cold boiled ham, cook half a pound on purpose by boiling in your gravy stock. Slice this also, and lay upon the veal, with now and then a slice of hard-boiled egg. Fill the dish with alternate layers of veal and ham; pour in the gravy, and cover with a thick crust of good pastry, such as you made last Thursday for your pork-pie. Bake one hour.

Stewed Cauliflower.

When your soup is about half done, and before you strain it, take out a cupful, strain through a thin cloth, and put into a saucepan, with a little salt and a tablespoonful of butter. Cut a cauliflower into small bunches, when you have washed and trimmed it, and lay these in the cooled broth. Stew slowly, covered, twenty-five minutes, turning the bunches now and then. When they are tender, take them out, lay in a covered dish to keep warm, stir into the broth a tablespoonful of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour, with nearly half a cup of milk. Pepper, boil up once, and pour over the cauliflower.

Pancakes with Preserves.

• 1 pint of prepared flour.
• About a quart of milk.
• 6 eggs.
• A little salt.

Beat the yolks light, add the salt and two cups of milk, then the flour and beaten whites alternately, and thin with more milk until the batter is of the right consistency. It should be quite thin. Have ready in a small frying-pan a tablespoonful of butter or sweet lard, hissing hot, but not discolored by too long heating. Pour in enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan, and fry quickly, pouring off the fat so soon as the cakes set. Turn it with a lift of your spatula and a skilful toss of the pan at the same time. As fast as the pancakes are done—the same lard will do for several—let an assistant spread each upon a hot plate and cover with sweet jam or jelly, rolling up neatly so soon as this is done. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, and set in a warm oven until you are ready for dessert.

Draw, stuff, and truss a pair of chickens, as for roasting; tie soft pack-thread around their legs and wings, binding them close to their bodies, and put on to boil in four quarts of cold water, a little salted. They will require at least one hour’s boiling, if they are of fair size. Do not cook fast, especially at first. Try with a fork if they are tender, and if it pierces the breast easily, take them up, butter well, and set in a warm place, covered. Take out a cupful of liquor when they are three-quarters done, in which to cook your rice. Strain the broth after taking out the fowls, season with pepper and chopped parsley and put again over the fire. Take off the scum, as it rises, and boil hard fifteen minutes. Then add a half cupful of rice, previously stewed soft in a very little water. Simmer a quarter of an hour; pour in a cup of milk in which has been stirred a tablespoonful of rice-flour; bring to a slow boil, and pour a few spoonfuls upon two beaten eggs. Return these to the soup, stir them in and take from the fire. Have ready the giblets and one hard-boiled egg chopped fine in the bottom of the tureen, and turn in the broth upon them.

Chickens and Rice.

Parboil a cup of rice in a little water. When it has taken it up, and is about half done, add the cupful of broth taken from the soup, seasoned well. Cook the rice slowly in it until done. (Always cook rice in a farina-kettle, and shake, instead of stirring.) It should absorb all the gravy. At the last, stir in a beaten egg, mixed with a tablespoonful of melted butter. It is best to do this with a fork, and not a spoon. Make a low, flattened mound of the rice upon a hot dish; remove the pack-threads from the chickens and lay them on the top. Pass grated cheese with it.

Potato Croquettes.

To each cupful of mashed potato, add half a raw egg, beaten light, a little salt and pepper, and half a teaspoonful of butter. Beat well. Make into oblong balls, or rolls, flour well and fry, a few at a time, in boiling lard, or dripping. Drain off the fat and serve hot.

Boiled Sweet Potatoes.

Select those of uniform size, wash, wipe, and boil until a fork will penetrate them easily. Skin, set in the oven a moment to dry, and send to table.

Cold Slaw—Cream Dressing.

• 1 small head of white cabbage, shred fine.
• 1 cup of milk, scalding hot.
• ¾ of a cup of vinegar.
• 1 tablespoonful of butter.
• 1 egg, beaten light.
• 1 tablespoonful of sugar.
• 1 even tablespoonful of corn-starch.
• 1 teaspoonful essence of celery.
• Pepper and salt to taste.

Rub butter and sugar together and pour over them the hot milk. Beat into these the frothed egg. Put into a vessel set within another of hot water, add the corn-starch wet up with cold water, boil slowly until it thickens, and set aside. In another saucepan scald the vinegar; put in the pepper and salt with essence of celery, and pour hot over the cabbage. Mix up well; put back into the saucepan, and stir briskly over the fire until it is smoking all through, but not until it boils. Turn it into a bowl, stir into it the custard with a silver fork, until well mixed; cover, to keep in the strength of the vinegar, and set it where it will cool suddenly. It is very fine.

Poor Man’s Plum Pudding.

• 3 eggs.
• 1 quart of milk.
• Small loaf of stale bread.
• 1 tablespoonful of sugar.
• ½ lb. seeded raisins, cut in two.
• Cinnamon to taste.
• A pinch of salt.
• Butter.

Slice the bread and cut off all the crust. Butter thinly and lay in order in a well-greased pudding-dish, strewing each layer with raisins. Heat the milk, put in sugar and salt, and pour over the beaten eggs. Lay a heavy saucer upon the top of the bread and soak with the custard. Let all stand half an hour, then set in a dripping-pan of boiling water, cover closely, and cook one hour, keeping the pan full of water at a hard boil. Turn out and eat with liquid sauce.

The Julienne soup which, as I stated in the receipt for making it, was sufficient for two days, will have kept perfectly well in the refrigerator, or in any cold closet. You have now only to warm it over—not quite to the boil, and it will be even better than upon the first day. It is wise, sometimes, to skip a day with a rÉchauffÉ, for fear of wearying those for whose comfort your bills-of-fare are made up.

Boiled Cod.

Sew up the piece of fish in a thin cloth, fitted neatly to the shape, and boil in salted water (boiling from the first), allowing about fifteen minutes per pound. Unwrap carefully and pour over it a sauce made thus:

Heat half a cup of milk and as much water together; stir in a tablespoonful of butter, cut into bits and rolled in flour, and when it has thickened, pour by degrees upon two beaten eggs. Put back into the saucepan and stir for one minute; add salt, chopped parsley, and a dozen capers or nasturtium seeds. Take at once from the fire.

Chicken PatÉs.

Line your patÉ-pans with a good paste, made according to either of the receipts already given this month, and bake in a brisk oven.

Mince the chicken left from yesterday. Put the bones and stuffing into a saucepan with two cups of cold water, and stew down to one cup of gravy. Season this well, add three tablespoonfuls of milk when you have strained out the bones, a tablespoonful of butter, and a very little parsley. The stuffing should thicken it sufficiently. Stir in the chicken, warm until hot, but do not let it boil, or it will be spoiled. Fill the paste-shells, having taken them from the tins; arrange upon a hot dish and set within an open oven until they are sent to table.

Cheese Fingers.

Cut good pastry, left from your patÉs, into strips three inches long and two inches wide. Strew with grated cheese, season with pepper and salt; double the paste upon this lengthwise, and bake in a quick oven. Brush over with beaten egg just before taking them up, and sift a little powdered cheese upon them.

Pile, log-cabin-wise, upon a folded napkin laid within a flat dish, and eat without delay, as they are not good cold.

Mashed Potatoes and Mashed Turnips.

The receipts for these standard dishes having been already given this month, it is scarcely necessary to repeat them here. Bear in mind, always, that they must be served hot, and the turnips be well drained.

Sweet Potato Pudding.

• 1 lb. parboiled sweet potatoes.
• ½ cup of butter.
• ¾ cup of white sugar.
• 1 tablespoonful of cinnamon.
• 4 eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately.
• 1 teaspoonful of nutmeg.
• 1 lemon, juice and grated rind.
• 1 glass of brandy.

Let the potatoes get entirely cold, and grate them. Cream the butter and sugar; add the yolks, spice and lemon. Beat the potato in by degrees, to a light paste; then the brandy, lastly the whites. Bake in a buttered dish, and eat cold.

Cover beans, meat, onions, and half the celery cut into bits, with the water, and boil to pieces, and until the liquid is reduced one-third. Rub the beans and celery through a fine colander into the soup. Return to the fire, season with pepper, put in the rest of the celery, cut into inch-lengths, and simmer half an hour, stirring often, that it may not “catch” on the bottom. Set aside a quart of it, if you can spare as much, for Monday’s soup.

Jugged Pigeons.

Clean and wash well, and stuff with a dressing made of the giblets boiled and chopped, a slice of fat pork also minced fine; the yolks of two hard eggs rubbed to powder, some bread-crumbs, pepper and salt, bound with a beaten raw egg. Tie the legs and wings close to their bodies, and pack the pigeons in a tin pail with a tight top. Plunge this into a pot of boiling water; put a weight on top to keep it steady, and cook two hours and a half. The water should not boil over the top. Drain off the gravy into a saucepan, thicken with a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Season, boil up, pour over the pigeons. Cover again, and leave in the hot water ten minutes before serving.

Shred Macaroni.

Break half a pound of pipe macaroni into pieces two inches long, and cook in boiling water, a little salted, ten minutes. Drain off the water, and spread the macaroni out to cool upon a dish. When cold, take a sharp knife or a pair of scissors, and split each piece in half, lengthwise. Put on in a farina-kettle with a cup of hot milk and a tablespoonful of butter, seasoning with pepper and salt. Cover and stew tender, but not to breaking. Ten minutes after the boil should do this. Then stir in three tablespoonfuls of grated cheese. Serve in a deep dish.

Brussels-Sprouts.

Wash and pick over very carefully. Put on in plenty of boiling water with a little salt, and cook fifteen minutes after the water begins to boil anew. Drain well and pile upon a dish, with drawn butter poured over them.

Sponge-Cake Fritters.

• 8 penny sponge-cakes—very stale.
• 1 cup of boiling milk, with a pinch of soda stirred in.
• 4 eggs whipped light.
• 1 tablespoonful of flour wet up in cold milk.
• ¼ lb. currants, washed and dried.

Roll the cakes into fine crumbs; pour over them the hot milk, with the soda and flour stirred into it. Cover for fifteen minutes, then beat until cold. Add the whipped eggs—the yolks first, then the whites; finally, the currants dredged with flour. Beat all well. Drop in great spoonfuls in boiling lard, trying one first to be sure that the batter is of the right consistency; drain quickly in a hot colander; sprinkle with powdered sugar mixed with nutmeg, and serve hot.