Brown Soup.
½ lb. lean bacon; 2 onions; 2 tablespoonfuls of butter; 1 scant teaspoonful mixed allspice and cloves; 2 tablespoonfuls browned flour; liquor in which your mutton was boiled; pepper.
Cut the bacon into strips, and slice the onions. Put the butter into your soup-pot with these, and simmer, stirring often, until they are browned, but not scorched. Add the flour, wet up in cold water, and stir until very hot. Then, having taken the fat from the top of your mutton “pot-liquor,” pour it in, with pepper and parsley. Add by degrees, stirring well, not to lump the flour. Cover, and set at the back of the range to simmer for two hours—more would not hurt it. When ready for it, strain into the tureen.
Ragoût of Mutton.
Slice even, rather thick slices, without skin or fat, from your boiled mutton, and lay in a deep dish. Pour a good glass of claret wine over them, and cover for an hour. Make a gravy of the bones and refuse portions with a quart of cold water. When this has boiled down to a pint, strain it off. Let it cool, and take off the fat. Put into a saucepan with a little minced onion, pepper, salt, and a tablespoonful of tomato catsup, and boil down to a large cupful. Then stir in a tablespoonful of browned flour, wet up in cold water; simmer three minutes; add the sliced meat and wine, with a little grated lemon-peel and a teaspoonful of currant jelly. Let all get hot slowly, but the meat must not boil, or it will be tough. Set at one side of the range to heat, until you are ready to pour it into a deep dish.
Squash à la Crême.
Boil and mash in the customary manner; press out all the water, and beat in a tablespoonful of melted butter, with two of cream, heated, pepper and salt to taste; lastly, a beaten egg. Put the mixture into a pail, and set in boiling water fifteen minutes, stirring often, and keeping the water at a boil. It should look like rich custard. Serve in a deep dish.
Mashed Potatoes.
Prepare as usual, and serve without browning.
Lettuce Salad.
Pick out and pull apart the hearts; pile in a glass dish; sprinkle with sugar, and season to taste with oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt.
Raspberries, Cream, and Cake.
Since your soup and ragoût have taken more time and labor than you like to give to Monday’s dinner, make up for the loss by serving the dessert given above, sure that nobody will murmur.
Iced Coffee.
Make more coffee than usual at breakfast-time, and stronger. Add one-third as much hot milk as you have coffee, and set away. When cold, put upon ice. Serve at dessert, with cracked ice in each tumbler.