Heat milk to boiling, add cornstarch dissolved in a little cold milk and a pinch of salt. Boil five minutes, add yolks of eggs beaten with sugar. Boil 2 minutes longer, remove from fire and beat in the whipped whites of eggs. Flavor with vanilla or lemon. Serve cold with cream and sugar or canned peaches or pears.
This is used also as a filling for cream pie, using the beaten whites of eggs, sweetened for a meringue and browning slightly in oven. Bake the crust before filling with the cream.
Beat eggs slightly, add sugar and salt, pour on slowly scalded milk, strain in buttered mold, set in pan of hot water. Sprinkle with nutmeg and bake in slow oven until firm, which may be readily determined by running a silver knife through custard. If knife comes out clean, custard is done. During baking care must be taken that water surrounding mold does not reach boiling point or custard will whey. Always bear in mind that eggs and milk combination must be cooked at a low temperature. For cup custards allow three eggs to four cups milk; for large molded custard four or five eggs; if fewer eggs are used, custard is liable to crack when turned on a serving dish.
Pare and core apples that are not too sour to hold their shape when baked. Put in a pudding dish, sprinkle the half cupful of sugar over and around them, also filling place where the core was taken out. Put in oven and bake. Remove from oven and pour around them the milk mixture made thus: Beat the eggs well, add sugar and beat again, add milk, salt and vanilla. Bake slowly until a knife-blade will come out clean after insertion in the custard. Serve hot or cold, with or without whipped cream. This is an especially good dessert for children.
Beat eggs slightly; add sugar, salt, vanilla, milk and coffee. Strain into buttered individual molds, set in pan of hot water and bake until firm.
Put sugar in omelette pan, stirring constantly over hot part of range until melted to a syrup of light brown color. Add gradually to milk, being careful that milk does not bubble up and go over, as is liable on account of high temperature of sugar. As soon as sugar is melted in milk, add mixture gradually to eggs slightly beaten, add salt and flavoring, then strain in buttered mold. Bake as custard. Chill and serve with caramel sauce.
Wash the rice thoroughly, mix the ingredients and bake three hours or more in a very slow oven, stirring occasionally at first.
Add to the list of ingredients for boiled custard ¼ cup of pearl tapioca. Soak the tapioca in water for an hour or two, drain it, and cook in the milk until it is transparent. Proceed as for boiled custard.
Bread and rice puddings, made with milk and eggs, are familiar to all cooks. Made without eggs, the following will be found suggestive:
For a quart of milk allow ⅓ of a cup of any coarse cereal (rice, cornmeal, cracked wheat, oatmeal or barley); add ⅓ of a cup of brown, white or maple sugar, syrup, honey or molasses; ½ teaspoon salt; ⅛ teaspoon spice. The flavoring may be omitted when honey or molasses is used.
The above recipe makes quite a large pudding. It is often convenient to make a smaller one, and enough for a child’s dinner can be made in the double boiler, allowing two level or one rounding tablespoon of cereal to a cup of salted and flavored milk. Cook an hour and sweeten slightly.
These puddings, if made thin, may be poured over stewed prunes or other cooked fruits, and are a good and economical substitute for the cream or soft custard usually used for that purpose.
A very old recipe for a baked corn pudding has recently been given to the author.
Milk and fruit mold
Heat milk in double boiler. Mix cornstarch with cold milk, stir it into the hot milk, add salt and sugar and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Remove from fire, fold in the beaten whites and add the flavoring. Rinse mold in cold water, drain, pour in part of the cooked mixture, add a layer of cherries and continue until mold is filled. Set on ice to chill. May be served in tall glasses, as illustrated, or unmolded on a flat serving platter.
Cook rice, salt, the quarter cup of sugar and milk together in a double boiler until rice is tender. Remove from fire, add grated rind and beaten eggs and mix well.
Put the cup of sugar in a small saucepan over the fire and stir constantly until it is a golden brown liquid. Have a mold heating, and when very hot pour the liquid in it, turning the mold so that all parts are coated. Turn the rice into the mold and set it in a pan of water in a hot oven for 20 minutes, having the mold covered the entire time.
Remove from oven, let stand until cold, unmold and serve with the caramel sauce that is in the mold.
Soak gelatine in the cold milk for 10 minutes. Heat balance of milk in a double boiler, add salt, sugar and beaten yolks, stirring constantly. Cook until mixture coats the spoon, remove from fire, add soaked gelatine and stir until dissolved. Then set aside to cool and when beginning to thicken add flavoring and mix in lightly the stiffly beaten whites.
Rinse a mold in cold water, drain, pour in mixture and set in a cold place until firm. Unmold and serve plain or with thin cream.
Milk cream
Heat a quart of milk until lukewarm, not to exceed 100° F. Remove from fire; sweeten and flavor to taste, using vanilla or any other desired flavor. Dissolve one Junket Tablet in cold water and stir the solution quickly into the lukewarm milk. Pour immediately into individual serving dishes, sherbet glasses, bowls or the like, and let stand warm until thickened. When “set” remove to ice box or other cool place without stirring and let stand until serving time. Serve with or without whipped cream, a sprinkle of nutmeg, or a few strawberries on the top, etc.
Plain junket
Sweeten a quart of milk with half a cup of sugar. Melt one square of chocolate or two tablespoonfuls of cocoa, add half a cup of the milk and boil one minute. Remove from fire and add the remainder of the milk, which must not be boiled, and a teaspoonful of vanilla. Probably the mixture will be lukewarm, if not, warm until it is. Stir in dissolved Junket Tablet, pour at once into serving dishes and leave undisturbed until set. Chill and serve. If whipped cream sweetened and flavored with vanilla is heaped upon the Chocolate Junket when serving, a most attractive dessert is obtained, and Chocolate Junket frozen makes a delicious ice cream.
One-half cup very strong coffee, ½ cup sugar, added to 1¾ pints of heated milk. Dissolve. Add your Junket Tablet and finish as ordinary Junket. Serve with cream.
An endless variety of Junkets can be made by varying flavor and color, by adding fruit or preserves, etc., and in the sick room various medicines or stimulants, peptone, wine, etc., may conveniently be administered as an ingredient in the pudding.
Prepared Junket in which all the ingredients are found except the milk is on the market in the form of a powder called “Nesnah.” It is put up in various flavors and is easily and quickly made when milk is at disposal.
Heat 1 qt. milk lukewarm, remove from fire, add one package of the prepared Junket and dissolve quickly and thoroughly by vigorous stirring for ½ minute only. Pour immediately into individual serving dishes and let stand in warm room until thoroughly set. Place in ice box until serving time. Serve with or without plain or whipped cream.
Heat the milk until lukewarm and add the tablet dissolved in the cold water. Allow it to set in a warm room. Then break up the curd gently and strain it through two thicknesses of cheese-cloth, being careful to remove all the casein. Cool at once and serve cold, without or with sweetening, and flavor as desired.
Heat the milk in a double boiler and add the lemon juice. Cook without stirring until the whey separates. Strain through cheese-cloth and add the sugar. Serve hot or cold, garnished with small slices of lemon.
Boil milk with sufficient cinnamon to flavor as desired. Sweeten and serve warm or cold.
Soak the rice twelve hours. Add the scalded milk, salt and sugar. Stir well and cook one hour; then rub through a fine sieve. Thin with more hot milk and serve.
Make a thin syrup of the sugar and water and cook one minute. Soften the yeast in two tablespoons of lukewarm milk. Heat the milk until lukewarm, add other ingredients and shake. Put in stone, sterile bottles, place in an upright position for twelve hours, at 70° (kitchen heat); then turn on side and leave at a temperature of 50° (lower part of ice box). Ready for use after the first twenty-four hours; often kept several days, but the longer it is kept the less palatable it is. It should look like thick, foamy cream.
Break the egg into a large glass and beat well. Add sugar and a couple of drops of vanilla or a dust of nutmeg and beat again. Fill up glass with rich milk. This makes a very nourishing drink.
Break egg into bowl, beat thoroughly with egg beater, add sugar, flavoring, a tiny pinch of salt and buttermilk. Beat again till light and foamy. Turn into glass.
A variation may be made from ordinary buttermilk by the addition of lemon juice and sugar. “Buttermilk lemonade” usually requires the juice of three lemons to one quart of buttermilk. The quantity of lemon and sugar, however, should be varied to suit the taste of the individual. The beverage is delightful and is especially refreshing on a hot summer day.
One may also use the juice of two oranges and one lemon to one quart of buttermilk, instead of the lemons alone.
Many people like the clear buttermilk slightly sweetened with a few grains of salt added.
Scald milk. Melt chocolate in small saucepan and gradually add boiling water. When smooth add to scalded milk, sweeten and add salt and vanilla. Mill with Dover egg beater, and serve, putting a large teaspoon of whipped cream on each cup.
Mix cocoa and sugar, add water and stir into milk already heated in double boiler. Cook 15 minutes, add vanilla and salt. Serve with whipped cream. A famous cook known to the writer adds 1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 1 tablespoon cold water to the cocoa when nearly ready for the table. It adds to the apparent richness of the beverage.
1. A tablespoonful of milk put in the pan before frying eggs will keep them tender.
2. Covering cold chicken or other meat with buttermilk will keep it for twenty-four hours or more, without affecting the meat except to make it more tender.
3. Custards and ice cream kept too long in warm weather may cause ptomaine poisoning.
4. Keep milk covered to shut out flavors from other food.
5. Milk warm from the cow should not be kept in a closed receptacle.
6. Danish cooks soak a piece of veal in skim milk overnight before roasting it, to improve the flavor.
7. Sliced ham covered with milk and baked in a moderate oven for an hour has delicate flavor and is always tender.
Dairy and household thermometers
In the United States and Canada as well as in England Fahrenheit’s thermometer is generally used according to which water freezes at 32° and boils at 212° at ordinary air pressure, leaving 180 degrees between the freezing and the boiling point. In some countries in Europe Réaumur’s thermometer is used with 0° for the freezing point and 80° for boiling. In France and for scientific work in all countries, however, the Celsius or Centigrade system is employed for measuring heat and cold, having 0° for freezing and 100° for boiling. As there are 180° Fahrenheit, 80° Réaumur and 100° Centigrade between freezing and boiling, the divisions are therefore as 9° F. to 4° R. and 5° C.
To change from degrees of F. above the freezing point to the other systems deduct 32, divide the remainder by 9 and multiply by 4 or by 5 respectively. To change from C. to F. divide by 5, multiply by 9 and add 32, etc. As the metric system is gradually being introduced everywhere instead of the old systems for weights and measures, so also is the Centigrade thermometer being substituted for the others and in cookery it may soon be used exclusively.