Bread Soup.
A few raw beef-bones and trimmings, spoken of yesterday. Bones, bits of skin, gristle, etc., left from Sunday’s roast when you have cut off the meat for the cannelon.
- 1 pint of stock.
- 1 onion.
- 2 stalks of celery.
- Bunch of sweet herbs.
- 4 quarts of cold water.
- 1 lb. stale bread-crusts, the drier the better, provided they are not mouldy or sour.
- Salt and pepper.
- 2 tablespoonfuls of butter.
Crack the bones, chop meat and vegetables; put on in the water, and boil slowly down to two quarts. Strain the liquor; let it cool; take off all the fat, season, and return to the pot with the stock. Boil up and skim; put in the crusts; stew, covered, half an hour. Take it from the range and beat in the butter, taking out indissoluble bits. Then simmer, in a vessel set within another of boiling water, half an hour.
As you will see, by a careful perusal of these directions, the preparation of this soup requires little actual expenditure of time. I beg, therefore, that you will “gather up the fragments” from larder and bread-box, and give your family a hot, nourishing, “comforting” dish of porridge, if it is wash-day.
Cannelon of Beef.
Cut the meat from your cold roast, and chop it fine. Season well, and beat into it the yolks of three eggs and the white of one. Add one-third as much cold mashed potato as you have meat, wet up with gravy, and make, with floured hands, into a long roll—three times as long as it is broad. It should be just soft enough to handle. Dredge thickly with flour, and lay in a greased baking-pan. Invert another one over it, and bake until it is hissing hot on top and sides, when uncover, and brown quickly. Brush over the outside with white of egg; dredge again with flour, shut the oven-door to brown this, glaze again with egg, and shut up the oven for one minute. Carefully, with the aid of a cake-turner, slip the cannelon to a hot dish and serve.
Chow-chow
Should go around with the cannelon.
Potato Stew.
Pare and cut the potatoes into dice. Stew in hot water, with a slice of fat salt pork, cut very small, half a minced onion and a little chopped parsley, until the pork is dissolved and the potatoes very tender. Pepper, and if necessary, salt, and pour into a hot, deep dish. The “stew” should not be too liquid, nor yet stiff.
Pork and Beans.
This is a good, nourishing dish for Monday, and easily managed, if you have boiled the beans on Saturday. Fill a bake-dish nearly full of them, and put in the middle a piece of fat salt pork, about three inches wide, which you have parboiled in your soup. It will improve the taste of the “stock” and be itself the better for the temporary association. Pour in a little hot water to keep the beans from burning. Pepper and bake, covered, for half an hour. Remove the cover and brown.
Peach Batter Pudding.
Open a can of peaches—whole ones, if you have them—and pour into the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish before you make your batter. There should be just syrup enough to half cover the fruit.
For batter, take 1 quart of milk.
- 10 tablespoonfuls of prepared flour.
- 5 eggs, beaten light.
- 1 tablespoonful of melted butter.
- 1 saltspoonful of salt.
Beat the yolks light, add the milk and salt, and pour slowly into a hole made in the middle of the flour. Finally, stir in the whites lightly, but not until you have beaten the batter smooth. Pour over the peaches and bake quickly. You can put it in the oven after the beans are done, setting the latter aside to keep warm. If you have not time to make sauce, eat with butter and sugar. Do not let the pudding stand after drawing from the oven, or it will fall.