1 cup loppered milk or cream.
½ cup molasses.
½ cup butter, melted.
2½ cups flour.
2 even teaspoonfuls of soda, dissolved in hot water.
A little salt.
Mix molasses and butter together, and beat until very light. Stir in the cream or milk, and salt; make a hole in the flour, and pour in the mixture. Stir down the flour gradually until it is a smooth batter. Beat in the soda-water thoroughly, and boil at once in a buttered mould, leaving room to swell. It should be done in an hour and a half. Eat hot with a good sauce.
2 cupsveryfine stale biscuit or bread-crumbs.
1 cup rich milk—half cream, if you can get it.
5 eggs, beaten very light.
½ teaspoonful soda, stirred in boiling water.
1 cup sweet jelly, jam or marmalade.
Scald the milk and pour over the crumbs. Beat until half cold, and stir in the beaten yolks, then the whites, finally the soda. Fill large cups half full with the batter; set in a quick oven and bake half an hour.
When done, turn out quickly and dexterously; with a sharp knife make an incision in the side of each; pull partly open, and put a liberal spoonful of the conserve within. Close the slit by pinching the edges with your fingers.
Eat warm with sweetened cream.
3 cups of flour.
1 cup of milk.
½ cup powdered suet.
1 cup best molasses, slightly warmed.
1 teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water.
1 pound raisins, stoned and chopped.
1 teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and mace.
1 saltspoonful ginger.
1 teaspoonful of salt.
Beat suet and molasses to a cream; add the spice, the salt, and two-thirds of the milk; stir in the flour; beat hard; put in the rest of the milk, in which the soda must be stirred. Beat vigorously up from the bottom for a minute or so, and put in the fruit well dredged with flour. Boil in a buttered mould at least three hours.
Eat very hot with butter-and-sugar sauce.
1 scant cup of raw rice.
1 table-spoonful rice-flour, wet up with milk.
3 pints rich milk.
2 table-spoonfuls butter.
4 table-spoonfuls sugar.
½ pound currants, washed and dried.
¼ pound raisins, stoned and cut in two.
3 well-beaten eggs.
Soak the rice two hours in just enough warm water to cover it; setting the vessel containing it in another of hot water on one side of the range. When all the water is soaked up, shake the rice well and add a pint of milk. Simmer gently, still in the saucepan of hot water until the rice is again dry and quite tender. Shake up anew, and add another pint of milk. Sosoon as this is smoking hot, put in the fruit, well dredged with flour; cover the saucepan and simmer twenty minutes. Take from the fire and put with it the butter, the rice-flour and a custard made of the remaining pint of milk, the eggs and sugar. Add while the rice is still hot; stir up well and bake in a buttered pudding-dish three-quarters of an hour, or less, if your oven be brisk.
Eat warm or cold, with rich cream and sugar.
1 heaping cup finest bread-crumbs.
1 table-spoonful corn starch wet with cold water.
1 cocoanut, pared and grated.
½ cup butter.
1 cup powdered sugar.
2 cups milk.
6 eggs.
Nutmeg and rose-water to taste.
Soak the crumbs in the milk; rub the butter and sugar to a cream, and put with the beaten yolks. Beat up this mixture with the soaked crumbs; stir in the corn-starch; then the whisked whites, flavoring, and, at the last, the grated cocoanut. Beat hard one minute; pour into a buttered pudding-dish—the same in which it is to be served—and bake in a moderate oven three-quarters of an hour.
Eat very cold, with powdered sugar on top.
2 cups of best mince meat made for Christmas pies. Drain off all superfluous moisture. If the meat be rather too dry for pies, it will make the better pudding.
1½ cups prepared flour.
6 eggs—whites and yolks beaten separately.
Whip the eggs and stir the yolks into the mince-meat. Beat them in hard for two or three minutes until thoroughly incorporated. Put in the whites and the flour, alternately beating in each instalment before adding the next. Butter a large mould very well; put in the mixture, leaving room for the swelling of the pudding, and boil five hours steadily. If the boiling should intermit one minute, there will be a heavy streak in the pudding. Six hours’ boiling will do no harm.
Turn out upon a hot dish; pour brandy over it and light just as it goes into the dining-room. Eat with rich sauce. I know of no other pudding of equal excellence that can be made with so little trouble as this, and is as apt to “turn out well.”
If you have no mince-meat in the house, you can buy an admirable article, ready made, at any first-class grocery store. It is put up in neat wooden cans (which are stanch and useful for holding eggs, starch, etc., after the mince-meat is used up) and bears the stamp, “Atmore’s Celebrated Mince Meat.”
And what is noteworthy, it deserves to be “celebrated.” It has never been my good fortune to meet with any othermademince-meat that could compare with it.
1 heaping cup of prepared flour.
2 cups of rich milk.
½ cup of butter.
Juice of 1 lemon and half the grated peel.
4 table-spoonfuls of sugar.
5 eggs—whites and yolks beaten separately and very light.
Chop the butter into the flour. Scald the milk and stir into it while still over the fire, the flour and butter. When it begins to thicken, add it, gradually, to the beaten yolks and sugar. Beat all up well and turn out to cool in a broad dish. It should be cold when you whip in the stiffened whites. Butter a mould; pour in the mixture, leaving abundance of room for thesouffléto earn its name—and steam one hour and a half, keeping the water under the steamer at a fast, hard boil.
When done, dip it into cold water for an instant, let it stand one minute, after you take it out of this, and turn out upon a hot dish.
Eat with brandy sauce.
1 quart of milk.
3 table-spoonfuls corn-starch, wet with cold milk.
1 cup powdered sugar.
½ cup strawberry jam, or sweet fruit jelly.
6 eggs—beaten very light.
Flavoring to taste.
Boil the milk, and stir in the corn-starch. Stir one minute and pour into a bowl containing the yolks, the whites of two eggs and half the sugar. Whip up for two or three minutes and put into a nice baking-dish, buttered. Set in a pan of boiling water and bake halfan hour, or until firm. Just before withdrawing it from the oven, cover with jelly or jam, put on dexterously and quickly, and this, with améringuemade of the reserved whites and sugar. Shut the oven until theméringueis set and slightly colored.
Eat cold, with cream.
1 cup prepared flour.
2 cups of milk.
5 eggs.
3 table-spoonfuls powdered sugar.
Bitter almond flavoring.
½ pound crystallized orglacécherries.
A pinch of salt.
Scald the milk, and stir into it the flour, wet up with a cup of the milk. Boil one minute, stirring well up from the bottom of the farina-kettle; mix in the yolks beaten light with the sugar, flavor, and let it get perfectly cold. Then whip the whites until you can cut them with a knife, and beat, fast and hard, into the custard. Butter a mould thickly; strew with the cherries until the inside is pretty well covered; put in the mixture—leaving room for puffing—and boil for an hour and a half.
Dip into cold water; take it out and let it stand, after the lid is removed, a full minute, before turning it out.
Eat warm with wine, or lemon sauce.
12 square (penny) sponge-cakes—stale.
5 eggs.
1 cup milk.
2 glasses sherry.
½ cup of powdered sugar.
Put the cakes in the bottom of a buttered pudding-dish; pour the wine over them, and cover while you make the custard. Heat the milk and pour over the yolks of the eggs, beaten and strained, and half the sugar. Return to the fire, and stir until quite thick. Pour this upon the soaked cakes, slowly, that they may not rise to the top; put in the oven, and when it is again very hot, spread above it the whites whisked stiff with the rest of the sugar.
Bake ten minutes, or until theméringueis lightly browned and firm. Serve in the baking-dish.
Eat cold. It will be found very nice.
6 or 7 fine juicy apples.
1 cup fine bread-crumbs.
4 eggs.
1 cup of sugar.
2 table-spoonfuls butter.
Nutmeg and a little grated lemon-peel.
Pare, core and slice the apples, and stew in a covered farina-kettle, without a drop of water, until they are tender. Mash to a smooth pulp, and, while hot, stir in butter and sugar. Let it get quite cold, and whip in, first the yolks of the eggs, then the whites—beatenverystiff—alternately with the bread-crumbs. Flavor, beat hard three minutes, until all the ingredients are reduced to a creamy batter, and bake in a buttered dish, in a moderate oven. It will take about an hourto cook it properly. Keep it covered until ten minutes before you take it out. This will retain the juices and prevent the formation of a crust on the top.
Eat warm with “bee-hive sauce.”
½ cup raw rice.
1 pint of milk.
6 eggs.
4 table-spoonfuls powdered sugar.
1 table-spoonful butter.
Soak the rice in warm water enough to cover it well for two hours. Put it over the fire in the same water, and simmer in a farina-kettle until the rice is dry. Add the milk, shaking up the rice—notstirring it—and cook slowly, covered, until tender throughout. Stir in the butter, then the yolks of the eggs, beaten and strained, whatever flavoring you may desire, and when these have cooled somewhat, the whipped whites. Bake in a handsome pudding-dish, well buttered, half an hour.
Eat warm—not hot—orverycold.
3 cups of milk.
5 eggs.
1 large table-spoonful butter.
3 table-spoonfuls sugar.
4 table-spoonfuls Bermuda arrowroot, wet up with cold milk.
Vanilla or other flavoring.
Heat the milk to a boil, and stir into this the arrowroot. Simmer, using your spoon freely all the time, until it thickens up well. Put in the butter; take from the fire and beat into it the yolks and sugar, previously whipped together. Stir hard and put in the whites, whiskedverystiff, and the flavoring.
Butter a neat baking-dish; put in the mixture and bake half an hour.
Sift powdered sugar over it, and serve immediately.
5 eggs—whites and yolks beaten separately.
2 table-spoonfuls of arrowroot wet up in 4 table-spoonfuls cold water.
4 table-spoonfuls powdered sugar.
Rose-water flavoring.
Beat the sugar into the whipped yolks, and into the whites, little by little, the dissolved arrowroot. Flavor and whisk all together. Butter a neat mould, pour in the mixture until half way to the top, and bake half an hour.
If quite firm, and if you have a steady hand, you may turn it out upon a hot dish. It then makes a handsome show. It is safer to leave it in the baking-dish. It must be served at once. It is very nice.
1 quart of milk.
16 table-spoonfuls of flour.
4 eggs beaten very light.
Salt to taste.
Stir until the batter is free from lumps, and bake in two buttered pie plates, or very shallow pudding-dishes.
1 pint of milk.
2 eggs, beaten light.
1 dessert-spoonful butter, rubbed in the flour.
¼ teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in hot water.
½ teaspoonful of cream of tartar, sifted in the flour.
A pinch of salt.
Flour enough for thin batter.
6 apples—well flavored and slightly tart.
Pare and core the apples and put them in a buttered pudding-dish. Pour the batter over them and bake three-quarters of an hour. Eat hot with hard sauce.
The baking-dish of “ye olden time” was never comely; often positively unsightly. Dainty housewives pinned napkins around them and wreathed them with flowers to make them less of an eyesore. In this day, the pudding-maker can combine the æsthetic and useful by using the enameled wares ofMessrs. Lalange and Grosjean, 89 Beekman Street, New York. The pudding-dishes made by them are pretty in themselves, easily kept clean; do not crack or blacken under heat, and are set on the table in handsome stands of plated silver that completely conceal the baking-dish. A silver rim runs around the top and hides even the edge of the bowl. They can be had, with or without covers, and are invaluable for macaroni, scallops, and many other “baked meats.” Saucepans and kettles of every kind are made in the same ware by this firm.
Not even so-called pastry is more ruthlessly murdered in the mixing and baking than that class of desserts the generic name of which stands at the head of this bake. Heavy, sour, sticky and oleaginous beyond civilized comparison, it is no marvel that the compound popularly known and eaten as “fritter” has become a doubtful dainty in the esteem of many, the object of positive loathing to some.
I do not recommend my fritters to dyspeptics and babies, nor as a standing dish to anybody. But that they can be made toothsome, spongy and harmless, as well as pleasant to those blessed with healthy appetites and unimpaired digestions, I hold firmly and intelligently.
Two or three conditions are requisite to this end. The fritters must be quickly made, thoroughly beaten, of right consistency,—andthey must not lie in the fat the fraction of a minute after they are done. Take them up with a perforated spoon, or egg-beater, and lay on a hot sieve or cullender to drain before serving on the dish that is to take them to the table. Moreover, the fat must be hissing hot when the batter goes in if you would not have them grease-soaked to the very heart. Line the dish in which they are served with tissue-paper fringed at the ends, or a clean napkin to absorb any lingering drops of lard.
2 cups of milk.
2 cups of prepared flour.
3 table-spoonfuls sugar.
4 eggs, very well beaten.
A little salt.
½ tea-spoonful of cinnamon.
Beat the sugar into the yolks; add the milk, salt and seasoning, the flour and whites alternately. Beat hard for three minutes.
Have ready plenty of lard in a deep frying-pan or Scotch kettle; make very hot; drop in the batter in table-spoonfuls, and fry to a good brown. Be careful not to scorch the lard, or the fritters will be ruined in taste and color.
Throw upon a warm sieve or cullender as fast as they are fried, and sift powdered sugar over them.
Eat hot with lemon sauce.
12 stale rusks.
5 eggs.
4 table-spoonfuls white sugar.
2 glasses best sherry.
Pare all the crust from the rusk, and cut each into two pieces if small—into three if large. The slices should be nearly an inch thick. Pour the wine over them; leave them in it two or three minutes, then lay on a sieve to drain. Beat the sugar into the yolks (which should first be whipped and strained), then the whites. Dip each slice into this mixture and fry in boiling lard to a light golden brown.
Drain well; sprinkle with powdered sugar mingled with cinnamon, and serve hot, with or without sauce.
3 cups stale bread-crumbs.
1 quart of milk.
4 eggs.
Salt and nutmeg to taste.
3 table-spoonfuls prepared flour.
Scald the milk and pour it over the crumbs. Stir to a smooth, soft batter, add the yolks, whipped and strained, the seasoning, the flour—then, the whites whisked very stiff. Mix well, and fry, by the table-spoonful, in boiling lard. Drain; serve hot and eat with sweet sauce.
2 cups dry, fine bread-crumbs.
2 table-spoonfuls prepared flour.
2 cups of milk.
½ pound currants, washed and well dried.
5 eggs whipped very light, and the yolks strained.
½ cup powdered sugar.
1 table-spoonful butter.
½ teaspoonful mixed cinnamon and nutmeg.
Boil the milk and pour over the bread. Mix and put in the butter. Let it get cold. Beat in, next, the yolks and sugar, the seasoning, flour and stiff whites; finally, the currants dredged whitely with flour. The batter should be thick.
Drop in great spoonfuls into the hot lard and fry. Drain them and send hot to table.
Eat with a mixture of wine and powdered sugar.
2 heaping cups of prepared flour.
5 eggs—beaten stiff. Strain the yolks.
½ cup cream.
Grated peel of half a lemon.
½ cup powdered sugar.
1 teaspoonful mingled nutmeg and cinnamon.
A little salt.
Beat up the whipped and strained yolks with the sugar; add the seasoning and cream; the whites, at last the flour, worked in quickly and lightly. It should be a soft paste, just stiff enough to roll out. Pass the rolling-pin once or twice over it until it is about three-quarters of an inch thick. Cut into small, circular cakes with a tumbler or cake-cutter; drop into the hot lard and fry. They ought to puff up like crullers. Drain on clean, hot paper. Eat warm with a sauce made of—
Juice of 2 lemons.
Grated peel of one.
1 cup of powdered sugar.
1 glass wine.
Whites of 2 eggs beaten stiff.
8 or 10 fine pippins or greenings.
Juice of 1 lemon.
3 cups prepared flour.
6 eggs.
3 cups milk.
Some powdered sugar.
Cinnamon and nutmeg.
A little salt.
Pare and core the apples neatly, leaving a hole in the centre of each. Cut crosswise into slices half an inch thick. Spread these on a dish and sprinkle with lemon-juice and powdered sugar.
Beat the eggs light, straining the yolks, and add to the latter the milk and salt, the whites and the flour, by turns. Dip the slices of apple into the batter, turning them until they are thoroughly coated, and fry, a few at a time, in hot lard. Throw upon a warm sieve as fast as you take them out, and sift powdered sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg over them.
These fritters require dexterous handling, but if properly made and cooked, are delicious.
Eat with wine sauce.
2 cups of milk.
Nearly a cup raw rice.
3 table-spoonfuls sugar.
¼ pound raisins.
3 eggs.
1 table-spoonful butter.
1 table-spoonful flour.
Nutmeg and salt.
Soak the rice three hours in enough warm water to cover it well. At the end of this time, put it into a farina-kettle, set in an outer vessel of hot water, and simmer until dry. Add the milk and cook until it is all absorbed. Stir in the butter and take from the fire. Beat the eggs very light with the sugar, and when therice has cooled, stir these in with the flour and seasoning. Flour your hands well and make this into flat cakes. Place in the middle of each two or three raisins which have been “plumped” in boiling water. Roll the cake into a ball enclosing the raisins, flour well and fry in plenty of hot lard.
Serve on a napkin, with sugar and cinnamon sifted over them. Eat with sweetened cream, hot or cold.
3 cups milk.
2 cups best Indian meal.
½ cup flour.
4 eggs.
½ teaspoonful soda, dissolved in hot water.
1 teaspoonful cream of tartar, sifted in flour.
1 table-spoonful sugar.
1 table-spoonful melted butter.
1 teaspoonful salt.
Beat and strain the yolks; add sugar, butter, milk and salt, the soda-water, and then stir in the Indian meal. Beat five minuteshardbefore adding the whites. The flour, containing the cream of tartar, should go in last. Again, beat up vigorously. The batter should be just thick enough to drop readily from the spoon. Put into boiling lard by the spoonful. One or two experiments as to the quantity to be dropped for one fritter will teach you to regulate size and shape.
Drainverywell and serve at once. Eat with a sauce made of butter and sugar, seasoned with cinnamon.
Some persons like a suspicion of ginger mixed in thefritters, or in the sauce. You can add or withhold it as you please.
1 quart of flour.
1 cup of milk.
½ cup of yeast.
2 table-spoonfuls sugar.
4 eggs.
2 table-spoonfuls of butter.
A little salt.
Some fine, ripe freestone peaches, pared and stoned.
Sift the flour into a bowl; work in milk and yeast, and set it in a tolerably warm place to rise. This will take five or six hours. Then beat the eggs very light with sugar, butter and salt. Mix this with the risen dough, and beat with a stout wooden spoon until all the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated. Knead vigorously with your hands; pull off bits about the size of an egg; flatten each and put in the centre a peach, from which the stone has been taken through a slit in the side. Close the dough upon it, make into a round roll and set in order upon a floured pan for the second rising. The balls must not touch one another. They should be light in an hour. Have ready a large round-bottomed Scotch kettle or saucepan, with plenty of lard—boiling hot. Drop in your peach-pellets and fry more slowly than you would fritters made in the usual way. Drain on hot white paper; sift powdered sugar over them and eat hot with brandy sauce.
You can make these of canned peaches or apricots wiped dry from the syrup.
6 table-spoonfuls mashed potato—very fine.
½ cup good cream.
5 eggs—the yolks light and strained—the whites whisked very stiff.
2 table-spoonfuls powdered sugar.
2 table-spoonfuls prepared flour.
Juice of 1 lemon. Half the grated peel.
½ teaspoonful nutmeg.
Work the cream into the potato; beat up light and rub through a sieve, or very fine cullender. Add to this the beaten yolks and sugar. Whip to a creamy froth; put in the lemon, flour, nutmeg, and beat five minutes longer before the whites are stirred in. Have your lard ready and hot in the frying-pan. Drop in the batter by the spoonful and fry to a light brown. Drain on clean paper, and serve at once.
Eat with wine sauce.
1 cup cream.
5 eggs—the whites only.
2 full cups prepared flour.
1 saltspoonful nutmeg.
A pinch of salt.
Stir the whites into the cream in turn with the flour, put in nutmeg and salt, beat all up hard for two minutes. The batter should be rather thick. Fry in plenty of hot sweet lard, a spoonful of batter for each fritter. Drain and serve upon a hot, clean napkin.
Eat with jelly sauce. Pull, not cut them open.
8 small round rolls, stale and light.
1 cup rich milk.
2 table-spoonfuls sugar.
1 teaspoonful mixed nutmeg and cinnamon.
Beaten yolks of 3 eggs.
1 cupful powdered crackers.
Pare every bit of the crust from the rolls with a keen knife, and trim them into round balls. Sweeten the milk with the sugar, put in the spice; lay the rolls upon a soup-plate, and pour the milk over them. Turn them over and over, until they soak it all up. Drain for a few minutes on a sieve; dip in the beaten yolks, roll in the powdered cracker, and fry in plenty of lard.
Drain and serve hot with lemon-sauce.
They are very good.
6 or 8 square (penny) sponge-cakes.
1 cup cream, boiling hot, with a pinch of soda stirred in.
4 eggs, whipped light.
1 table-spoonful corn-starch, wet up in cold milk.
¼ pound currants, washed and dried.
Pound the cakes fine, and pour the cream over them. Stir in the corn-starch. Cover for half an hour, then beat until cold. Add the yolks—light and strained, the whipped whites, then the currants thickly dredged with flour. Beat all hard together. Drop in spoonfuls into the boiling lard; fry quickly; drain upon a warmed sieve, and send to table hot.
The syrup of brandied fruit makes an excellent sauce for these.
1 quart sweet milk.
2 glasses white wine.
1 teaspoonful liquid rennet.
5 eggs, whipped light.
4 table-spoonfuls prepared flour.
2 table-spoonfuls powdered sugar.
Nutmeg to taste.
Scald the milk, and pour in the wine and rennet. Take from the fire, cover, and let it stand until curd and whey are well separated. Drain off every drop of the latter, and dry the curd by laying for a few minutes upon a soft, clean cloth. Beat yolks and sugar together, whip in the curd until fully mixed; then the flour, nutmeg and whites. The batter should be smooth, and rather thick.
Have ready some butter in a small frying-pan; drop in the fritters a few at a time, and fry quickly. Drain upon a warm sieve, lay within a dish lined with white paper, or a clean napkin; sift powdered sugar over them, and eat with jelly sauce.
Odd as the receipt may seem in the reading, the fritters are most palatable. In the country, where milk is plenty, they may be made of cream—unless, as is too often the case, the good wifewillsave all the cream for butter.