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The Dinner Year-Book

Chapter 607: Boiled Chicken.
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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.

Eel Soup.

  • 4 lbs. of eels.
  • 1 onion.
  • 12 whole peppers.
  • 3 tablespoonfuls of butter.
  • Tablespoonful of chopped parsley.
  • 1 cup of milk.
  • 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, rubbed into the butter.
  • 2 quarts of water.
  • 2 slices of toast cut into strips.
  • Dripping.

Clean the eels with care, removing all the fat; cut them into short pieces, and fry for five minutes in dripping. Drain, put into a saucepan with the water, onion, and pepper, and stew slowly one hour, or until they are tender, without breaking. Strain through a colander; pick out the eels and cover in a tureen, the bottom of which is lined with strips of buttered toast. Strain the soup, through a soup-sieve, back into the saucepan; heat, and stir in butter, flour, and parsley. Boil up, add the milk, already heated, and pour over the eels and toast.

Boiled Chicken.

Clean and stuff as for roasting. Bind legs and wings to the sides; tie in a net, and put on in boiling water—if tender. If doubtful, use cold water, and cook very slowly. When the fork-test shows that it is done, unwrap and lay on a dish. Salt, pepper, and butter well, and cover while preparing the sauce. Take out a cup of the liquor, cool, and skim, put on in a saucepan; put in a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in flour, and stir to a boil. Take off, and pour gradually over two beaten eggs. Return to the fire, with minced parsley, almost boil, and pour over the fowl.

Salt the liquor and set aside for soup.

Potatoes à la Crème.

Mash thin, whip up with a fork, at first, with butter, salt, and milk; at last, with the frothed white of an egg. Heap roughly upon a dish, set upon the upper grating of the oven until they begin to color, and serve.

Rice Croquettes.

  • 2 cups cold boiled rice.
  • 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter.
  • 2 beaten eggs.
  • 1 tablespoonful of flour.
  • 1 raw egg, and some cracker dust.
  • 2 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar.
  • A pinch of grated lemon peel, and the same of nutmeg.
  • Lard for frying.

Work the butter into the rice, then the seasoning, lastly, the beaten eggs. Make into long balls, roll in egg, then in powdered cracker, and fry, a few at a time, in hot lard.

Steamed Corn-Meal Pudding.

  • 2 cups Indian meal.
  • 1 cup of flour.
  • 2 tablespoonfuls of white sugar.
  • 2½ cups of “loppered” milk, or buttermilk.
  • 1 teaspoonful of soda, sifted twice through the flour.
  • 1 teaspoonful of salt.
  • 1 heaping tablespoonful of butter, melted.

Put meal, flour, salt, sugar, and soda in a bowl; mix thoroughly; make a hole in the middle and work in the milk and butter. Beat hard and long when all are in; put into a buttered mould with a tight top, and steam one hour and a half. If you have no regular steamer, fit the mould in the top of a pot of boiling water, taking care it does not hang into the water. Lay a thick wet towel, folded, over the top of the mould to keep in all the heat. Or, you may simply boil it. Eat hot, with butter and sugar.