Boil some potatoes, rub them through a sieve, add pepper, salt, and a tablespoonful of cream to a pound of potatoes, rub through a tammy again. Chop a shallot, a spring or two of parsley and mix them in, sprinkling in at the same time a dust of nutmeg and a dessertspoonful of grated cheese. Place the puree in a dish to be baked, and before setting it in the oven sprinkle on the top some bread-crumbs, and cheese grated and mixed and one or two pats of salt butter. Bake till it is a golden brown.
[Elise et Jean.]
Cook some young peas and some carrots (scraped and shaped into cones) in separate pans. Then put them together in an earthenware close covered pan to simmer together in butter and gravy, the first water having been well drained from them. Season with pepper and salt and let them cook gently for ten or twelve minutes; do not uncover the pot to stir it, but shake it every now and then to prevent the contents from burning.
[Amie inconnue.]
Take as many white September cabbages as you wish, trim them, cut in halves, remove the stalks, wash them very thoroughly and shred them pretty finely. Procure an earthenware crock and put in a layer of cabbage, sprinkle it with coarse salt, whole pepper, and juniper berries. Fill up the crock in this way, put on the lid, and keep it down closely with weights. It will be ready in about six weeks' time, when the fermentation has taken place. It is good with pork or bacon.
Take any cold boiled spinach—though people generally eat all that there is—and mix it thickly with the yolk of egg and a little rice flour; you may add a little powdered sugar. Have ready some boiling fat, and drop spoonfuls of the spinach into it. If the fat is hot enough the fritters will puff out. Drain them quickly and serve very hot.
Shred some red cabbage, to half a pound of it add two medium sized apples, minced finely without core or skin, a bit of fat bacon, season with pepper, salt, vinegar, which should be tarragon vinegar, and put it to simmer in some gravy or milk and water. It should cook for an hour over a gentle fire. Cook separately some green cabbage, cleaned, boiled till tender in salted water, chopped, then put back on a gentle fire with salt, pepper, a dust of nutmeg, and some fat or butter. Let it heat and mix well, and then serve the two colors side by side in the same dish; the red cabbage has a sour and the green has a nutty flavor which is very agreeable.
Put a couple of eggs on to boil hard, while you make a thick mayonnaise sauce. Cut some beetroot, some cucumber, some cold potato, some tomato into slices. Peel your eggs, and slice them, and build up little piles of the different things, till about two inches high. Between each slice you will sprinkle grated breadcrumbs, pepper, salt, a tiny scrap of chopped raw shallot, parsley, all mixed in a cup. Finish with the rounded ends of white of egg on the top, put lettuce round and pour the dressing over it.
Make a batter of a beaten egg, a dust of rice flour, pepper, salt and as much cream as you can give. Roll out this batter so thinly that you can almost see through it. Cut it into rounds and put on it any cooked vegetables that you have, but they must be highly seasoned. Cold potatoes will do if they are done with mustard, vinegar, or a strong boiled sauce. Fold over the paste, press it together at the edges, and fry in hot fat.
Take some fillets of haddock, or cod or hake, and poach them gently in milk and water. Meanwhile, prepare a good white sauce, and in another pan a thick tomato sauce, highly seasoned, colored with cochineal if need be, and as thick as a good cream. Lay the fillets when cooked one each on a plate, put some of the white sauce round it, and along the top put the tomato sauce which must not run down. A sprig of chervil is to be placed at each end of the fillet.
[Seulette.]
Put the fins, skin, trimmings of skate into water enough to cook them, with pepper and salt and simmer for half an hour. Strain it through a fine sieve. Make a brown sauce of butter and flour, pepper, salt, adding a little milk, about a teacupful for a pound of skate, then squeeze in the juice of half a lemon, and if you have it, a glass of white wine. Take the skate, cut it in pieces, simmer it in salted water; when cooked, strain away the water, dish the fish, pouring over it the above sauce. Decorate with strips of lemon peel laid in a lattice-work down the center.
[Une epiciere.]
Any fish is good if dressed in this way. Make a brown sauce, well flouring it with salt, pepper, and dried herbs. Mince and fry a shallot and add it, then a large glass of red wine, a few drops of lemon juice. Cook some fish roe, sieve it, and stir it into the sauce. Take your fish and simmer it in milk and water till cooked, then heat it up quickly in the sauce to serve.
This is fillets of herring, laid in a bowl with slices of apple, beetroot, cold potatoes, and cold cooked sprouts, covered with the ordinary salad dressing. If the fish is salted, let it soak first of all in milk to take away the greater part of the salt. This is a winter dish, but the same sort of thing is prepared in summer, substituting cold cooked peas, cauliflower, artichokes, beans, with the fish.
[Amie reconnaissante.]
This popular sauce is composed of melted butter thickened with yolk of egg and flavored with mustard; it is used greatly for fish.
If you have a small piece of very good beef, such as rump steak or fillet of beef, it is more economical to cut it into squares, and grill it lightly at a clear fire. Have ready some squares of toast, buttered and hot, lay these on a hot dish with a bit of steak on the top, and on the top of that a slice of tomato much peppered and salted and a small pile of horse-radish. This makes a pretty dish and can be varied by using capers or chopped gherkins instead of horse-radish. It is a great saving to cut meat, bread, etc., in squares instead of rounds.
[Une amie au convent.]
A dish that I have done for those who like curry flavoring is the following. Take any cold cooked vegetables, and cutting them in small pieces, roll them in a thick white sauce which you have strongly flavored with curry. Put it aside to get firm. If you are in a hurry you can bind with the yolk of an egg in the flour and make a thick batter in that way. Form into cutlets and fry as you would a real cutlet. The same thing can be done with macaroni or spaghetti that is already cooked, with cold fish or anything that is insipid to the taste.
[Une amie au convent.]
Use either sheep or pigs' kidneys. Cut them longways, so as to be able to take out the threads from the inside of them. Put some butter on to fry over a brisk fire and when it is browned, but not burnt, put in the kidneys for three or four minutes. Take them out and keep them hot for a minute while you add to the butter they were cooked in a soupspoonful of Madeira wine, a good dust of chopped parsley, a little cayenne pepper and salt. Mix it well, and if too thick add a little gravy. Pour the sauce over the kidneys and finish with a powdering of chopped parsley. Fried potatoes are eaten with this dish.
[Mme. Vanderbelle Genotte.]
Any part of pork or veal is good done in this way. Take your pieces of meat and fry them in butter till they are a good golden brown color. Put them in a pan, covering them with water, and adding a sliced onion, a bay leaf, a whole carrot, a leek, pepper, salt,—let it all simmer gently over a slow fire till the meat is cooked but not boiled. Take the pieces from the liquor and pass it through a sieve. Mix a little rice flour in a cup of cold water, stirring well. Drop in the juice of half a lemon and the beaten yolk of an egg, which stir round quickly. Put in the meat again for a moment and serve it with boiled potatoes.
Put in an earthenware pot three shallots, finely minced; take a bit of garlic, cut it close and rub it round the side of the pot; put in as well a lump of butter, pepper and salt, and some rather fat gravy. Divide the loin and put six chops in to simmer for three quarters of an hour on a moderate fire, covering the pot with the lid. Before you serve it, stir in a little lemon juice and stir up the sauce. To be served with Cauliflower à la Aerschot as follows: Cut your cauliflower into medium pieces, seeing that it is very clean, while you have some salted water boiling up. Put in the pieces, boil till tender, then drain them on a sieve. Put leaves and trimming of the vegetable into the pot to simmer and serve as basis for a vegetable soup. Make a good white sauce, adding the yolk of an egg, and flavoring it with nutmeg. Put the vegetable on a dish and pour over the sauce, letting it stand for a few moments by the fire before it is eaten.
[Madame Herman Noppen.]
Boil the tongue in salted water till the outer skin will peel off. Take this off, then put the tongue back in the liquor to simmer while you prepare the same. Take a piece of butter the size of an egg, melt it and mix it with two dessertspoonfuls of ground rice, add some of the liquor, pepper, and salt, stir well, so that it makes a good cream; drop in the yolks of two eggs, always stirring, and a little lemon juice. Serve the tongue whole with this sauce poured over it and spinach done in the following way: Wash the spinach in running water till every bit of grit has gone. Put some water on to boil, salt it well, and throw in the spinach which you have freed from mid-rib and stalk. The water must be boiling and the fire brisk. When tender, pass the spinach through the sieve, then put a bit of butter into an enameled saucepan, then the spinach, which heat for six minutes, add a little pepper. Serve it with the tongue, and you can garnish as well with little croutons of bread fried in butter.
[Madame Herman Noppen.]
If you have only a little piece of veal or other cold meat, you can make a very presentable dish in the following way: Cut a thin slice of meat and spread on each side of it a layer of mashed potatoes to which you have added some tomato sauce. Beat up an egg and dip the slices and potato into it, lay them in fine breadcrumbs and fry them till a good golden color in plenty of fat. Send them to table under a hot cover.
[Pour la Patrie.]
If you are obliged to make a hot dish in a hurry and have only a piece of inferior meat, there is no better way of using it than by dressing it in the Brabant way, which is rather expensive. Clean and cook some mushrooms, and when fried lightly, add them and their liquor to your beef, cut up in small pieces, but not minced. Add pepper, salt, a dust of spices, or an onion with three or four cloves in it, and a half bottle of good red wine. Stew all together for at least twenty minutes, take out the onion and cloves, and serve in the dish it was cooked in which should be an earthenware pot.
[Pour la Patrie.]
Cut some slices of cold mutton or lamb, removing every bit of fat and skin that you can, unless that destroys the firmness of the slice. Prepare a salad of lettuce, and if you cannot give a mayonnaise sauce, add to the lettuce plenty of sliced cucumber, for that keeps the mutton moist. Put the salad on each slice and roll the meat over as tightly as you can. Lay the rolls closely together in a dish and sprinkle a very little salad dressing over them. This way of doing meat is very useful for taking to picnics, or for taking on a long journey.
[Pour la Patrie.]
Half a pound of sausage meat of any kind that you like. Make some rounds of paste, lay the meat on half of each round and fold over. Steam for quarter of an hour, or stew in plenty of gravy.
[Pour la Patrie.]
Roll some cooked sausage meat in mashed potatoes, making a roll for each person. Brush the potatoes over with milk and put them to bake till nicely browned. Decorate with gherkins on each roll of butter.
[Pour la Patrie.]
Take any cold meat that you have, free it from fat and skin and cut it in rounds like a five-franc piece. If you have some lean bacon or ham, a little of that should be added. I should tell you first of all to put some rice on to boil in boiling water. Make a sauce of flour and butter in a pan, adding gravy if you happen to have it, but failing that, use water and vinegar in equal parts to thin it; season with pepper and salt and a small spoonful of anchovy sauce. When the sauce is heating, put in the meat and cover the pan, let it all heat for twelve minutes and then place meat and sauce in the middle of a dish. By this time the rice may be tender. Drain it well and put it as a border to the stew.
[Aimee.]
Put a piece of butter in a stewpan, with an onion cut in pieces, a few cloves, salt and pepper, a tablespoonful of shredded parsley, and if you have it some good gravy or meat juice and water. Throw into the sauce some cold meat, preferably underdone, and after it has simmered for fifteen minutes take a cut onion and rub with it the bottom of the dish that you are going to use. Take a good glass of red wine, such as Burgundy and mix it with the yolk of an egg, stir this into the stew and serve up in a couple of minutes.
[Madame Groubet.]
Take a fireproof dish, and after sprinkling it with breadcrumbs put in it a layer of roast veal in slices, a layer of mashed potatoes, a layer of veal kidney, partly cooked, and cut into pieces and lastly a layer of potato. Cover the whole with a bechamel sauce into which you have stirred some grated cheese; put it to bake in the oven. Then make a brown sauce with any veal or kidney gravy that you have, and cook some mushrooms in it with pepper and salt; the sauce is to be served with the grenadine.
Slice an onion and fry it in butter till it is brown; add pieces of pork and of mutton freed from fat and skin; cover them with water and throw into it any kinds of vegetables that you may have; but particularly sliced carrots and turnips and green cabbages; put it in the oven to cook. In another saucepan boil some white haricot beans, salt, and pepper, until they are tender, when they must be added to the stew with a small quantity of the liquor that they have been boiled in.
Take two pigeons, two cabbages, four slices of fried bacon, an ounce of butter, a large wineglassful of sherry, and some gravy. Truss your pigeons and cook them in butter for ten minutes in a fireproof dish. Then take them out, cut them into neat pieces. Meanwhile have the cabbages boiled in salted water. Drain them. Cut them in small pieces and roll some up in each slice of bacon; lay the pigeons on top, pouring over them the liquor they were cooked in and half the wine. Put all in the oven for ten minutes—pour in the rest of the wine and leave for another ten minutes before serving. If you have stock to add to this it is an improvement, or put half a teaspoonful of meat extract to half a pint of water.
[Une refugiee.]
If you have a few inches of a big sausage cut it into as thick slices as you can—fry them and lay them in a circle on a dish with a poached egg on each. Little dinner breads are good when soaked in milk, stuffed with sausage meat, and fried. It can be used to stuff cucumber, or eggplants, but you should then crumble up the meat and bind it with the yolk of a raw egg.
[Mme. Georgette.]
Braise your shoulder of lamb; that is, put it in a closely covered stewpan, in a good brown sauce or gravy with the vegetables, to be served with it. It is the lid being closed that makes the meat take some flavor from the vegetables. To do it in the Belgian way, take some good white turnips, wash them and scrape them, put small ones in whole, large ones cut in half. Take some small cabbages, trim off without leaves, cut them in half, remove the stalk, make a hollow in the center and fill it with forcemeat of any kind; but sausage meat is good. Place the stuffed cabbages round the meat to cook gently at the same time.
[Madame Vershagen.]
Take a whole fillet of beef, trim it neatly and set it in a braising pan to cook very slowly in some good brown sauce to which you have added a pint of stock. Put in neatly shaped carrots and turnips and some balls made of mashed potato already fried. Keep hot in two sauceboats a puree of Brussels sprouts and a puree of onions. These are prepared by cooking the vegetables in water, then chopping fine, and rubbing through a sieve with cream, or with a little good milk, pepper, and salt. To serve the fillet, lay it on a dish with the carrots and turnip, potato cakes round; pour over it the rest of the brown sauce from the pan; then add in heaps the onion puree and the sprouts puree.
[Madame Vershagen.]
An inferior part of beef may be made to taste excellent if it is braised; that is, simmered with the cover on slowly, in company with onions (already fried) and well washed pieces of carrots and whole turnips. Put on also some small cabbages cut in halves, and if you can give it, a glass of good red wine.
[Une refugiee.]
Stew your beef, say three pounds of steak, in some gravy, adding to a pint of liquor a level teaspoonful of white sugar. Throw in a handful of the dried apricots, but be sure you wash them well first. This dish is generally accompanied by leeks, first blanched for a few moments, and then put in the stew. Flavor with salt, pepper, and the rind of half a lemon which remove before you serve the stew. For English taste the sugar could be omitted.
[Seulette.]
This must be begun at least three hours before it will be required. Take two ounces of pearl barley, wash it well, and put it in cold water enough to cover it, for an hour. Take a pound of good steak, shred it in small pieces, and put it in an enameled saucepan with a quart of cold water and a sprinkle of salt. Strain the water from the barley and add this last to the meat, and let it simmer for two hours. Then strain off the liquor and pound the meat and barley in a mortar, rub it through a sieve; when it is a smooth puree put it back into the pan with its liquor and a gill of cream. Let it simmer again for a moment and serve it in a cup with a lid to it.
[Madame A. F.]
Cut out some rounds of bread a good deal larger than a poached egg would be. While these are frying, make a puree of Brussels sprouts. Boil them till tender, squeeze in a cloth. Rub them through a sieve and make into a very thick puree with cream, pepper and salt. Poach a fresh egg for each crouton, and slip it on, very quickly, put some of the green puree round, and serve under a hot cover.
If you have some little breads over, cut each one in four, soak the pieces in milk sweetened and flavored with vanilla, for three hours. When they are well soaked roll them for a moment in grated and dried breadcrumbs, and dip them for a moment in boiling fat, just as you would do croquettes. Sift some white sugar over them and serve very hot.
[Madame M.]
When you have quince preserves by you this is a quickly prepared dish. Make a good custard with a pint of rich milk, four eggs and a little essence of almonds and two ounces of powdered sugar. Put your quince preserve at the bottom of a fireproof circular dish and fill up with custard. Put it to bake for half or hour or till set. When set add some more quince (heated) on the top with some chopped almonds and serve hot. The same dish can be done with apples, which should be stewed, flavored with the rind of a half lemon, and passed through a sieve. Apple puree is put on the top in the same way, and it is decorated with some thin lemon peel cut into stars.
[Chef reconnaissant.]
Put half a pound of rice in hot milk till it has absorbed all it can and is tender. Beat lightly the yolks of three eggs, beating in a lump of fresh butter the size of a pullet's egg; add powdered sugar and the whites of the eggs well beaten. Put the rice into this mixture and place all in a mold. Cook it gently for twenty-five minutes. Meanwhile take some very perfect yellow plums, skin and stone them and heat them in half a bottle of light white wine that you have seasoned with a little spice. Turn out the rice, put the yellow plums on the top and pour round the sauce, strained through muslin. Very good cold.
Butter first of all your pancakes, and you should have proper pancake saucers fit to go to table. Heat half a pint of sweetened milk and melt a quarter of a pound of salt butter with it. When well melted pour it into a basin and sprinkle in nearly three ounces of flour. Beat up the yolks of three large or four small eggs and incorporate them, then add the whites well beaten. Put a spoonful or two on each saucer and set to bake in the oven for ten minutes and when done place each saucer on a plate with a good lump of apricot jam on each. If you have no pancake saucers, put the apricot preserve on one half of each pancake and fold it up.
[Jean O.]
To a large wineglassful (say a glass for champagne wine) of new Madeira add the yolks only of two eggs. Put in a very clean enamel saucepan over the fire and stir in powdered sugar to your taste. Whisk it over the fire till it froths, but do not allow it even to simmer. Use for Genoese cakes and puddings.
[Madame Groubet.]
Jellies that are very well flavored can be made with fresh fruit, raspberries, strawberries, apricots, or even rhubarb, using the proportions of one ounce of gelatine (in cold weather) to every pound of fruit puree. In hot weather use a little less gelatine. As the fruit generally gives a bad color, you must use cochineal for the red jellies and a little green coloring for gooseberry jellies. The gelatine is of course melted in the fruit puree and all turned into a mold. You can make your own green coloring in this way. Pick a pound of spinach, throwing away the stalks and midrib. Put it on in a pan with a little salt and keep the cover down. Let it boil for twelve minutes. Then put a fine sieve over a basin and pour the spinach water through it. Strain the spinach water once or twice through muslin; it will be a good color and will keep some time. Orange and lemon jellies are much more wholesome when made at home than those made from bought powders. To the juice of every six oranges you should add the juice of one lemon, and you will procure twice as much juice from the fruit if, just before you squeeze it, you let it soak in hot water for three or four minutes.
[Pour la Patrie.]
Take a slice or two of plain sponge cake and cut out rounds two inches across. Then whip up in a basin the whites only of four eggs, coloring them with the thinner part of strawberry jam. As a rule this jam is not red enough, and you must add a little cochineal. Put the pink mixture in high piles on the cakes.
[Pour la Patrie.]
This sweet is liked by children who are tired of rice pudding. Boil your rice and when tender mix in with it the juice of a boiled beetroot to which some sugar has been added. Turn it into a mold and when cold remove it and serve it with a spoonful of raspberry preserve on the top or with some red plums round it.
[Pour la Patrie.]
Take some of the best French preserved prunes, and remove the stones. Soak them in orange curaçoa for as long a time as you have at your disposal. Then replace each stone by a blanched almond, and place the prunes in small crystal dishes.
[Pour la Patrie.]
Take some Madeleine cakes and scoop them out to form baskets. Fill these with stoned cherries both white and black that you have soaked in a good liqueur—cherry brandy is the best but you may use maraschino. Place two long strips of angelica across the top and where these intersect a very fine stoned cherry.
[Pour la Patrie.]
It often happens that you have among the strawberries a quantity that are not quite good enough to be sent to table as dessert, and yet not enough to make jam of. Put these strawberries on to heat, with some brown sugar, and use them to fill small pastry tartlets. Pastry cases can be bought for very little at the confectioner's. Cover the top of the tartlet when the strawberry conserve is cold with whipped cream.
[Pour la Patrie.]
Break the yolk of an egg in a basin and be sure that it is very fresh; beat it up, adding a little powdered sugar, and then, drop by drop, enough of the best Madeira to give it a strong flavor. This makes a nice sweet served in glass cups and it is besides very good for sore throats.
[Pour la Patrie.]
You will get at the confectioner's small round cakes that are smooth on the top; they are plain, and are about two and one-half inches across. Take one and cut it in halves, separating the top from the bottom. Cut the top pieces right across; you have now two half moons. Put some honey along the one straight edge of each half moon and stick it by that on the lower piece of cake, a little to one side. Do the same with the second half moon, so that they both stick up, not unlike wings. Fill the space between with a thick mixture of chopped almonds rolled in honey, and place two strips of angelica poking forward to suggest antennae. A good nougat will answer instead of the honey.
[Pour la Patrie.]
Take half a pint of rich cream and mix with it a small glassful of Madeira wine or of good brandy. Pick over some fine cherries and strawberries, stoning the cherries, and taking out the little center piece of each strawberry that is attached to the stalk. Lay your fruit in a shallow dish and cover it with the liquor and serve with the long sponge biscuits known as "langues de chat" (Savoy fingers).
[Amitie aux Anglais.]
To make a nice sweet in a few minutes can be easily managed if you follow this recipe. Make a custard of rich milk and yolks of eggs, sweeten it with sugar, flavored with vanilla, and if you have a little cream add that also. Then grate down some of the best chocolate, as finely as you can, rub it through coarse muslin so that it is a fine powder. Stir this with your custard, always stirring one way so that no bubbles of air get in. When you have got a thick consistency like rich cream, pour the mixture into paper or china cases, sprinkle over the tops with chopped almonds. There is no cooking required.