Family Soup.
4 lbs. of lean beef; 2 lbs. of cracked bones, of any kind; 4 turnips; 3 carrots; 2 onions; 4 stalks of celery; 7 quarts of water; pepper and salt.
Cut the meat into strips, and fry with a sliced onion, in dripping, until brown, but not dry. Slice the carrots, turnips, and onion; chop the celery, and put these with meat, fried onion, bones, and gravy from the frying-pan, into the soup-pot. Add the water, and cook slowly four hours after the boil begins. Pour off the liquor—there should be at least five quarts; take out meat and bones, season highly, and consign to the stock-pot, with all of the liquor except that needed for to-day. Salt and pepper, and set away in a cold place. Pulp the vegetables into the soup kept out for to-day; cool, skim, season, and bring to a gentle boil; then pour out.
Killarney Stew.
3 lbs. of lean mutton—that from the scrag is best, and you can use the bones for your soup; 8 sliced potatoes; 1 sliced onion; salt, pepper, and chopped parsley.
Put on the mutton, cut into small pieces, with the sliced onion, and enough cold water to cover it, and stew very slowly two hours, or until tender. Strain the gravy into a bowl, and set in cold water to throw up the fat. Put a layer of potatoes, sliced thin, in the bottom of a saucepan; cover with meat, peppered and salted; sprinkle with parsley—more potatoes, and more meat until all are in. Take all the fat from the top of the gravy and strain it over the meat. Cover closely, and simmer until the potatoes are broken to pieces. Half an hour after the boil begins should suffice.
Baked Tomatoes.
Drain the superfluous juice from a can of tomatoes into your boiling soup. Lay the tomatoes in a buttered pie-dish; season with pepper, salt, butter and sugar; strew bread-crumbs over the top; add a little gravy saved from yesterday’s ragoût; cover, and bake half an hour; then brown.
Fried Sweet Potatoes.
Boil, and, when cold, scrape off the skins; slice lengthwise, and fry to a light brown in nice dripping, or butter. Drain, salt, pepper, and serve hot.
Stewed Carrots.
Scrape, and boil whole forty-five minutes. Drain, and cut into round slices a quarter of an inch thick. Put on in a cupful of weak broth—a little of your soup will do—and cook gently half an hour. Then add three or four tablespoonfuls of milk, a lump of butter rolled in flour, with seasoning to taste. Boil up and dish.
Boiled Pudding.
3 cupfuls of flour; 2 cupfuls of sour milk; 1 teaspoonful of soda dissolved in hot water; ½ cupful powdered suet; a little salt.
Stir the milk gradually into the flour until a smooth batter is the result. Put in suet and salt; lastly, beat in the soda-water thoroughly and quickly. Pour into a buttered mould and boil one hour and a half. Turn out and eat hot with sauce.