“Red Pottage.”
To the bean-stock set by on yesterday add a can of red tomatoes, cut small, and two lumps of sugar, and simmer, set in boiling water for fear of burning, until they are one mass of pulp. Strain through a colander, add seasoning, and stir in a generous glass of claret which was poured, two hours before, upon a sliced, deep-colored beet, warm from the boil. Strain the juice from the beet by squeezing in a cloth. Put a double-handful of fried bread into a tureen, and pour the soup upon it.
This, if not “that same red pottage” for which poor hungry Esau—who certainly came honestly, by hereditary right, by his love of “good eating”—bartered his birthright, is yet very pretty and savory.
Boiled Cod with Caper Sauce.
Sew the fish up neatly in a thin cloth and cook in boiling water, fifteen minutes to the pound. Unwrap, lay upon a hot dish, and pour over it the following sauce:
Put a cupful of boiling water into a saucepan, and stir in two tablespoonfuls of butter, cut up in a heaping teaspoonful of flour. Beat in, when thick, the whipped yolk of an egg, the juice of a lemon, and twenty-four capers. Stir up well, cook half a minute, and take from the fire.
Scalloped Chicken.
Clean, wash, and cut an old fowl to pieces. Put into a pot with four quarts of cold water and cook very slowly until tender. Take it out, salt and pepper the broth, and put by for to-morrow’s soup, reserving one cupful for your gravy.
Let the chicken cool, and cut—cleanly—into pieces an inch long by one fourth that width. Put the gravy, well-seasoned, over the fire, thicken with a tablespoonful of butter, cut up and rolled in flour; stir in the chicken, and just before it boils, take from the fire, and beat in two whisked eggs, with a little finely minced parsley. Strew the bottom of a bake-dish with crumbs; pour in the chicken; cover with a deeper coating of bread-crumbs; stick bits of butter over this, and bake, covered, until bubbling hot; then brown delicately.
Mashed Potatoes—Browned.
Mash soft with milk and butter, season, and round into a heap upon a greased pie-dish. Brown in a quick oven; glaze with butter; slip carefully to a hot dish.
Split Pea Pancakes.
Soak a pint of split peas all night. Put on, in the morning, in cold water and cook soft. Rub through a fine colander. While hot, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, and season with pepper and salt. When quite cold, beat in two eggs, a cupful of milk, and half a cupful of flour in which has been sifted—twice—a quarter teaspoonful of soda and twice as much cream-of-tartar. Beat hard and long, and fry as you would griddle-cakes.
Queen of Puddings.
- 1½ cups of sugar.
- 5 eggs.
- 2 cups of dry bread-crumbs.
- 1 tablespoonful of butter.
- 2 teaspoonfuls vanilla, or other extract—Colgate’s, if you can get it.
- 1 quart of fresh milk.
- ½ cup sweet fruit-jelly, or jam.
Cream butter and sugar and whip in the yolks. Soak the crumbs in the milk and add next—then flavor. Pour into a buttered pudding-dish, filling it two-thirds of the way to the top, and bake until well “set” in the middle. Draw to the oven door, spread quickly with the jelly, and this with a méringue of the whites and half a cup of sugar. Shut the oven and bake quickly until the méringue begins to color. Eat cold with cream.