Crust Soup.
- 1 quart of dry crusts, the more stale the better, if sweet.
- 2 cups of yesterday’s soup.
- 2 cups of boiling water.
- 1 onion.
- 3 great spoonfuls of butter.
- 2 eggs.
- Salt and pepper.
- A little chopped parsley.
Pour the boiling water upon the crusts, which should be broken small. Set in a pot of boiling water for one hour, with a small onion minced fine, and the seasoning. Meanwhile skim the cold soup (or any good gravy) and heat to a boil. At the end of the hour, add the butter to the bread, and cover ten minutes longer. Then turn into the soup; beat up the bread and stir in the parsley. Simmer fifteen minutes, beat the eggs light, pour a little of the soup upon them to heat them before stirring them well into the contents of the kettle. Take from the fire at once, lest the eggs should curdle.
Mock Pigeons with Mushroom Sauce.
- 2 fillets of veal.
- Force-meat of crumbs and chopped salt pork, well seasoned.
- ½ cup of mushrooms and a little minced onion.
- 1 sweetbread.
- 12 oysters.
- Pepper and salt.
The fillets must be boneless. Sprinkle with pepper and spread with force-meat. Roll up closely and wind with packthread. Put into a dripping-pan with enough water to half cover them. Invert a pan over them, and bake from forty-five minutes to one hour in proportion to their size. Boil, then blanch the sweetbread, by dropping it into cold water. Cut into dice, put into a cup of oyster liquor with a spoonful of butter, and simmer fifteen minutes. Baste the “pigeons” four times—twice with butter, and when tender, lay on a hot dish, clip and carefully withdraw the threads, and cover to keep warm. Add the gravy from the dripping-pan to the sweetbread; thicken with browned flour; boil once; put in the oysters and mushrooms, chopped, and stew five minutes quite fast. Pour a few large spoonfuls, taking up the thickest part, over the “pigeons;” send the rest up in a sauce-boat. You will find this a very nice dish.
Baked Potatoes.
Parboil and skin while hot. Lay in a pan and anoint with beef-dripping or butter, from time to time, as they brown. Drain off the grease and serve hot, after peppering and salting.
Cabbage Sprouts and Eggs.
Boil the sprouts tender, drain well, pepper and salt. Lay some slices of crustless toast in a deep dish, and soak in boiling water; drain them and cover with a soft omelette made of three or four eggs, “stirred” up in a pan in which has been heated a spoonful of butter. Lay the sprouts upon this, butter well and eat hot.
Bread and Raisin Pudding.
- 1 quart of milk.
- 1 loaf of stale light bread, pared and sliced.
- Butter to spread the bread.
- 4 eggs.
- ½ cup of sugar.
- ¾ lb. of raisins, seeded and cut into thirds.
Butter the bread. Make a raw custard of eggs, sugar and milk. Line the bottom of a buttered dish with the bread. Wet with custard; strew with raisins, and lay in more bread. Go on in this order until the dish is full. The uppermost layer should be of bread, well buttered and soaked. Cover the dish; set in boiling water, and bake one hour, keeping the water at a fast boil. Turn out carefully, and pour hot, sweet sauce over it. The liquor from brandied peaches, made hot, with a little butter, makes a delicious sauce for it.