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The Dinner Year-Book

Chapter 1142: Cucumbers.
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About This Book

A practical, year‑round guide to planning family dinners, offering weekly menus arranged for four weeks each month and tailored to seasonal ingredients and the average American market. The author emphasizes variety, economy, and the tasteful reuse of leftovers, providing techniques for stretching meats and transforming cold cuts, crumbs, gravies, and other odds‑and‑ends into attractive meals. Guidance includes larder and refrigerator management, balancing thrift with hospitality, and simplifying company dinners so everyday good cooking will suffice for entertaining. The tone is instructional and focused on achieving consistent, well‑cooked meals without waste or extravagance.

Pea and Tomato Soup.

1 lb. of lean ham; 2 lbs. of lean beef; 2 lbs. of lean veal; 2 onions; bunch of sweet herbs; 12 tomatoes; 1 quart of green peas; 5 quarts of water; pepper and salt to taste; corn-starch; sugar.

Cook the meat, cut into strips, and the herbs and onions in the cold water four hours. Strain; put the meat and half the stock on the ice—after seasoning well—for Sunday. Season the rest, when you have cooled and skimmed it, and put over the fire with the sliced tomatoes and peas. Boil slowly half an hour. Pulp through a colander; stir in a tablespoonful of corn-starch wet with cold water, and a tablespoonful of white sugar. Simmer five minutes, and pour out.

Salmi of Ducks.

Cut the meat neatly from the bones, having the slices as nearly as possible of uniform size. Make a gravy of the bones, stuffing, skin, etc., and a quart of water, boiling gently down to one large cupful. Skim and strain this into a saucepan. Add the juice of a lemon, and browned flour for thickening; stir smooth, and lay in the sliced duck. Warm slowly at one side of the range, but do not let it boil. When very hot, pour upon oblong slices of fried toast covering the bottom of a hot dish.

Mashed Squash.

Peel, quarter, and boil soft. Mash in a hot colander, pressing hard. Serve in a deep dish, with butter, pepper, and salt beaten in.

String-Beans.

Cut off the strings from both sides; cut into short lengths, and cook tender in boiling salt water. They require twice as much time as peas. Drain, season with pepper, salt, and butter. Set aside half for to-morrow’s salad.

Cucumbers.

Peel and lay in ice-water one hour. Slice; put upon a lump of ice in a salad-dish, and season to taste upon saucers after they are helped out.

Almond Corn-Starch Blanc-Mange.

1 quart of milk; 4 tablespoonfuls of corn-starch; 3 eggs; ¼ lb. almonds, blanched, dried, and pounded; rose-water and bitter almond; ¾ cup of powdered sugar.

Scald the milk, with a pinch of soda stirred in. Have the almonds beaten to a paste with a teaspoonful of rose-water, and stir into the hot milk. Simmer five minutes; then strain through thin muslin, pressing hard upon the almonds. Add this, hot, to the beaten eggs and sugar; put upon the fire, and stir in, with the eggs, the corn-starch wet up in cold milk, never taking the spoon out until it is thick. Take off; flavor, and pour into a wet mould. Set in ice, and it will soon form. Eat with sugar and cream.