Tomato Soup.
Peel, by pouring boiling water over them, a dozen fine tomatoes, cut them up, throwing aside the hard cores and unripe portions. Take the fat from the surface of your soup stock; pour it off from the meat and sediment; add the tomatoes, and stew gently half an hour. Strain, rubbing the tomatoes through the sieve; return to the pot; add a little pepper and salt, a lump of sugar, and a tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour. Boil one minute, and pour out. It will be a delicious soup.
Larded Beef.
Make perpendicular incisions in your cold roast, having trimmed the top smoothly, and thrust in lardoons of fat salt pork, set closely together. Take the fat from the cold gravy, and add to the latter a little minced onion, a tablespoonful of catsup, and a large cup of boiling water. Lay the meat in a dripping-pan, pour the gravy upon it, invert another pan over it, and cook in a moderate oven about an hour. Turn the meat once, and baste six times with the gravy. Dish the meat; strain the gravy, thicken it with browned flour, boil up and pour into a boat.
Stewed Cream Potatoes.
Peel and cut into neat dice. Leave in cold water half an hour; then cook as long in boiling water, salted. Drain this off before the potatoes break; add half a cup of milk (or cream) with a pinch of soda. When it heats, stir in a generous lump of butter cut up in a teaspoonful of flour, and a mere pinch of finely-grated lemon-peel. Stew one minute and pour into a deep dish.
Spinach Dressed with Egg.
Boil the spinach in plenty of hot water, salted, for twenty minutes. Drain and press out the water. Chop fine; put back over the fire with a large spoonful of butter, and a teaspoonful of sugar, with salt and pepper to taste, also a little nutmeg. Beat until hot and smooth; turn into a hot, deep dish, and cover with a dressing of the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, left to cool, then pounded in a Wedgewood mortar, and rubbed to a paste with a teaspoonful of melted butter, one of cream, and lastly, one of lemon-juice. Spread over the surface of the spinach and garnish with a border of the sliced whites.
Strawberries and Cream.
Cap the berries, and pile in a glass bowl. Do not sugar them, but pass powdered sugar and cream with each saucerful.
Martha’s Cake.
An economical and very nice variety of jelly-cake, easily made, and which keeps well. Please see “Common Sense in the Household” Series No. 1, “General Receipts,” page 314.