Friars’ Soup.
- 4 onions.
- 3 stalks of celery.
- ¼ of a small cabbage.
- 2 turnips.
- 4 tablespoonfuls of butter.
- ½ cup raw rice.
- 2 eggs.
- Pepper and salt to taste.
- 1 tablespoonful of chopped parsley.
- 3 quarts of water.
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.