Béchamel Soup.
Take the fat from the jellied stock in your refrigerator; dip it out carefully from the meat—taking care of the chicken—and heat in a saucepan. Scald a quart of milk in another vessel, and stir into it a large spoonful of corn-starch, wet with cold milk. Pepper and salt to taste (the milk should have had a pinch of soda in it), and pour into the tureen. Add the boiling soup, stir up well, and serve.
Boiled Mutton.
The leg is best for this purpose, and will look much nicer when served, if it has been tied up in very coarse, thin muslin, or in white mosquito-netting. Put on in plenty of boiling salted water, and cook a quarter of an hour to the pound. Unwrap when done, brush all over with butter, and serve with a boat of drawn butter, in which have been stirred two dozen capers or pickled nasturtium-seed. Take care of the liquor.
Chicken Rissoles.
Cut the chicken, boiled in your soup, from the bones, and chop fine. Add to it a cupful of mashed potato, whipped to a cream, a beaten egg, pepper and salt; wet soft with a little of the soup, and heat in a frying-pan, in which has been melted a little butter. Stir until very hot, and let it get perfectly cold. You can see that this is done before morning service, if you have an early dinner on Sunday. When cold, make into bails; roll in egg, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry to a light brown in lard or nice dripping. Drain off the fat, and serve hot upon a folded napkin.
String-Beans.
See Monday of Fourth Week in June.
Green Peas and Raw Tomatoes.
See Thursday of First Week in July.
Self-freezing Ice-Cream.
- 1 quart of rich milk.
- 8 beaten eggs.
- 3 pints of rich, sweet cream.
- 4 cups of sugar.
- 1 vanilla bean, broken in two, and boiled in the custard, or 5 teaspoonfuls of vanilla essence.
Heat the milk; pour it upon the eggs and sugar. Cook, stirring steadily fifteen minutes, or until it has thickened well. When perfectly cold, add the cream. Make the custard on Saturday, and set on ice. Early Sunday morning, beat in the cream, and put all in an old-fashioned upright freezer, set in its pail. Put a block of ice within a stout sack, or between the folds of a piece of carpeting, and beat small with a hammer. Put a thick layer into the outer part, then one of rock-salt. Fill the pail in this order, and, before covering the freezer with ice, beat the custard for five minutes with a flat stick or ladle. Shut tightly; pack pounded ice and salt over it, and put a folded carpet over all. In an hour and a half, open the freezer, first wiping off the salt from about the top. Dislodge the frozen custard from sides and bottom with a long knife, and beat and stir with your stick, faithfully, until the custard is a smooth paste. Replace the cover; let off the water, and pack more pounded ice and salt about it, completely concealing the freezer. Put back the folded carpet. The cream will take care of itself for three hours, and more, and you can, if you like, leave it all day, with a visit of three minutes every few hours, to let off the water and pack in more salt and ice. Do not open the freezer until you are ready for the cream. Then take it out, wipe it off, wrap a towel wrung out in hot water about the lower part, and invert it upon a flat dish. Should the weather be very hot, you may have to let off the water oftener than once in three hours; but this seldom happens if the freezer be set in a cool cellar.