Take six pounds of the lean of fresh beef, cut from the bone. Stick it over with four dozen cloves. Season it with a tea-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of pepper, a tea-spoonful of mace, and a beaten nutmeg. Slice half a dozen onions; fry them in butter; chop them, and spread them over the meat after you have put it into the soup-pot. Pour in five quarts of water, and stew it slowly for five or six hours; skimming it well. When the meat has dissolved into shreds, strain it, and return the liquid to the pot. Then add a tumbler and a half, or six wine glasses of claret or port wine. Simmer it again slowly till dinner time. When the soup is reduced to three quarts, it is done enough. Put it into a tureen, and send it to table.
This is the old-fashioned recipe that our mothers used to make, and it can be kept for weeks in an earthen jar, closely covered, first dipping letter paper in brandy and placing over the top of the cake before covering the jar. Beat to a cream one pound of butter with one pound of sugar, after mixing well with the beaten yolks of twelve eggs, one grated nutmeg, one glass of wine, one glass of rose-water. Then stir in one pound of sifted flour and the well-beaten whites of the eggs. Bake a nice light brown.
Put two middle-sized lobsters into boiling salt and water. When they are half boiled, take the meat from the shell, cut it into very small pieces, and put it into a pie dish. Break up the shells, and stew them in a very little water with half a dozen blades of mace and a wine-glass of vinegar. Then strain off the liquid. Beat the coral in a mortar, and thicken the liquid with it. Pour this into the dish of lobster to make the gravy. Season it with cayenne, salt, and mushroom catchup, and add bits of butter. Cover it with a lid of paste, made in the proportion of half a pound of butter to a pound of flour, notched handsomely, and ornamented with paste leaves. Do not send it to table till it has cooled.
Take three jills of whole rice; wash it, and boil it in a pint of milk. When it is soft, mix in a quarter of a pound of butter, and set it aside to cool; and when it is quite cold, stir it into another pint of milk. Prepare a pound and a half of raisins or currants; if currants, wash and dry them; if raisins, seed them and cut them in half. Dredge them well with flour, to prevent their sinking; and prepare also a powdered nutmeg; a table-spoonful of mixed mace and cinnamon powdered; a wine glass of rose water; and a wine glass of brandy or white wine. Beat six eggs very light, and stir them into the mixture, alternately with a quarter of a pound of sugar. Then add by degrees the spice and the liquor, and lastly, stir in, a few at a time, the raisins or currants. Put the pudding into a buttered dish and bake it an hour and a half. Send it to table cool. You may make this pudding of ground rice, using but half a pint instead of three jills.
The best for baking are the large late ones, commonly called pound pears. Pare them, cut them in half, and take out the cores. Lay them in a deep white dish, with a thin slip of fresh lemon-peel in the place from which each core was taken. Sprinkle them with sugar, and strew some whole cloves or some powdered cinnamon-among them. Pour into the dish some port wine. To a dozen large pears you may allow half a pound of sugar, and a pint of wine. Cover the dish, with a large sheet of brown paper tied on; set it in a moderate oven, and let them bake till tender all through which you may ascertain by sticking a broom twig through them. They will he done in about an hour, or they may probably require more time; but you must not let them remain long enough in the oven, to break or fall to pieces. When cool, put them up in a stone jar. In cold weather they will keep a week. To bake smaller pears, pare them, but leave on the stems, and do not core them. Put them into a deep dish with fresh lemon, or orange-peel; throw on them some brown sugar or molasses; pour in at the bottom a little water to keep them from burning; and bake them till tender throughout.
Stir one cup of powdered white sugar and one-half cup of butter together, till perfectly light; beat the yolks of three eggs till very thick and smooth; sift three cups of flour and stir it into the beaten eggs with the butter and sugar; add a teaspoonful of mixed spice (nutmeg, mace and cinnamon) and half a glass of rose-water or wine; stir the whole well and lay it on your paste-board, which must first be sprinkled with flour; if you find it so moist as to be unmanageable, throw in a little more flour; spread the dough into a sheet about half an inch thick and cut it out in round cakes with a biscuit-cutter; lay them in buttered pans and bake about five or six minutes; when cold, spread over the surface of each cake a liquor of fruit jelly or marmalade; then beat the whites of three or four eggs till they stand alone; beat into the froth, by degrees, a sufficiency of powdered loaf sugar to make it as thick as icing; flavor with a few drops of strong essence of lemon, and with a spoon heap it up on each cake, making it high in the centre; put the cakes into a cool oven, and as soon as the tops are colored a pale brown, take them out.
These nuts are in the best state for pickling when the shell is soft, and when they are so young that the outer skin can be penetrated by the head of a pin. They should be gathered when the sun is hot upon them. If you have a large quantity, the easiest way to prepare them for pickling is to put them into a tub with sufficient lye to cover them, and to stir and rub them about with a hickory broom, till they are clean and smooth on the outside. This is much less trouble than scraping them, and is not so likely to injure the nuts. Another method is to scald them, and then to rub off the outer skin. Put the nuts into strong salt and water for nine or ten days; changing the water every other day, and keeping them closely covered from the air. Then drain and wipe them, (piercing each nut through in several places with a large needle,) and prepare the pickle as follows:--For a hundred large nuts, take of black pepper and ginger root of each an ounce; and of cloves, mace and nutmeg of each a half ounce. Pound all the spices to powder, and mix them well together, adding two large spoonfuls of mustard seed. Put the nuts into jars, (having first stuck each of them through in several places with a large needle,) strewing the powdered seasoning between every layer of nuts. Boil for five minutes a gallon of the best white wine vinegar, and pour it boiling hot upon the nuts. Secure the jars closely with corks and leathers. You may begin to eat the nuts in a fortnight. Walnuts may be pickled in the same manner.
Take twelve small Carps, and one great one, all Male Carps, draw them and take out all the Melts, flea the twelve small Carps, cut off their Heads and take out their Tongues and take the fish from the bones of the flead Carps, and twelve Oysters, two or three yelks of Hard eggs, mash altogether, season it with Cloves, Mace and Salt, and make thereof a stiffe searce, add thereto the yolks of foure or five Eggs to bind it, fashion that first into bals or Lopings as you please, lay them into a deep Dish or Earthen Pan, and put thereto twenty or thirty great Oysters, two or three Anchoves, the Milts and Tongues of your twelve Carps, halfe a pound of fresh butter, the Liquor of your Oysters, the juyce of a Lemon or two; a little White-wine some of Corbilion wherein your great Carpe is boyled, and a whole Onyon, so set them a stewing on a soft fire and make a hoop therewith; for the great Carp you must scald him and draw him, and lay him for half an hour with the other Carps Heads in a deep Pan with so much White wine Vinegar as will cover and serve to boyle him, and the other Heads in; put therein Pepper, whole Mace, a race of Ginger, Nutmeg, Salt sweet Herbs, an Onyon or two sliced, a Lemon; when you boyle your Carps, poure your Liquor with the Spice into the Kettle wherein you will boyle him; when it is boyled put in your Carp, let it not boyle too fast for breaking; after the Carp hath boyled a while put in the Head, when it is enough take off the Kettle, and let the Carps and the Heads keep warme in the Liquor till you goe to dish them. When you dresse your Bisque, take a large Silver dish, set it on the fire, lay therein Sippets of bread, then put in a Ladle-full of your Corbilion, then take up your great Carp and lay him in the midst of the Dish, then range the twelve heads about the Carp, then lay the searce of the Carp, lay that in, then your Oysters, Milts, and Tongues, then poure on the Liquor wherein the searce was boyled, wring in the juyce of a Lemon and two Oranges; Garnish your Dish with pickled Barberries, Lemons and Oranges, and serve it very hot to the Table.
Take six hard-boiled eggs, cut lengthwise, remove yolk and add to same: one dessertspoon of melted butter, Cayenne pepper, salt and chopped parsley. Mash this mixture very fine and refill the whites of the eggs and turn over on platter. *Sauce.*--One tablespoon of butter, one tablespoon of flour, a pinch of Cayenne pepper, salt and one pint of milk. Stir this mixture continually until it thickens; beat the yolk of one egg and pour the hot gravy over the same. Dress with chopped parsley and eat very hot. Sherry wine can be added if desired.
