Boil potatoes, peal and pound them, add yolks of eggs, wine and melted butter work with flour into paste, shape as you please, bake and pour over these melted butter, wine and sugar.
Put into a bowl an ounce of isinglass; (in warm weather you must take an ounce and a quarter;) pour on as much rose water as will cover the isinglass, and set it on hot ashes to dissolve. [Footnote: You may make the stock for blanc-mange without isinglass, by boiling four calves' feet in two quarts of water till reduced one half, and till the meat is entirely to rags. Strain it, and set it away till next day. Then clear it from the fat and sediment; cut it into pieces and boil it with the cream and the other ingredients. When you take it from the fire, and strain it into the pitcher, keep stirring it till it gets cold.] Blanch a quarter of a pound of shelled almonds, (half sweet and half bitter,) and beat them to a paste in a mortar, (one at a time,) moistening them all the while with a little rose water. Stir the almonds by degrees into a quart of cream, alternately with half a pound of powdered white sugar; add a large tea-spoonful of beaten mace. Put in the melted isinglass, and stir the whole very hard. Then put it into a porcelain skillet, and let it boil fast for a quarter of an hour. Then strain it into a pitcher, and pour it into your moulds, which must first be wetted with cold water. Let it stand in a cool place undisturbed, till it has entirely congealed, which will be in about five hours. Then wrap a cloth dipped in hot water round the moulds, loosen the blanc-mange round the edges with a knife, and turn it out into glass dishes. It is best to make it the day before it is wanted. Instead of using a figure-mould, you may set it to congeal in tea-cups or wine glasses. Blanc-mange may be coloured green by mixing with the cream a little juice of spinage; cochineal which has been infused in a little brandy for half an hour, will colour it red; and saffron will give it a bright yellow tinge.
Take six quarts of rye meal; stir and mix it well into a barrel of strong hard cider of the best kind; and then add a gallon of whiskey. Cover the cask, (leaving the bung loosely in it,) set it in the part of your yard that is most exposed to the sun and air; and in the course of four weeks (if the weather is warm and dry) you will have good vinegar fit for use. When you draw off a gallon or more, replenish the cask with the same quantity of cider, and add about a pint of whiskey. You may thus have vinegar constantly at hand for common purposes. The cask should have iron hoops. A very strong vinegar may be made by mixing cider and strained honey, (allowing a pound of honey to a gallon of cider,) and letting it stand five or six months. This vinegar is so powerful that for common purposes it should be diluted with a little water. Vinegar may be made in the same manner of sour wine.
Put into the saucepan one pint of red or white wine, the first preferred. Add two heaping tablespoons of sugar, a piece of rind of lemon or orange, and a small stick of cinnamon. Put it onto the fire and stir until the sugar is dissolved. When the wine boils, strain it through some cheese-cloth and pour it into glasses, and serve hot.
Take two or more chickens, as you would have your dish in bigness, cut them up as you do for eating, and flat them a little with a paste-pin; fry them a light-brown, and put them into your stew-pan with a little gravy, a spoonful or two of white wine, a little nutmeg and salt; thicken it up with flour and butter. Garnish your dish with sippets and crisp parsley.
This soup is a summer soup and is to be eaten cold. Cook two tablespoons of sago in one cup of boiling water until tender, add more as water boils down. Put one quart of large red or black cherries, one cup of claret, one tablespoon of broken cinnamon, one-fourth cup of sugar, and one-half lemon sliced fine, up to boil and let boil fifteen minutes; add the cooked sago, let boil up and pour very gradually over the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. Serve cold. Raspberry, strawberry, currant, gooseberry, apple, plum or rhubarb soups are prepared the same way, each cooked until tender and sweetened to taste. The juice of lemon may be used instead of the wine.
This is an essentially Flemish soup. One uses carp, eels, tench, roach, perches, barbel, for the real waterzoei is always made of different kinds of fish. Take two pounds of fish, cut off the heads and tails, which you will fry lightly in butter, adding to make the sauce a mixed carrot and onion, three cloves, a pinch of white pepper, a sprig of parsley, one of thyme, a bay-leaf; pour in two-thirds of water and one-third of white wine till it more than covers the ingredients and let it simmer for half- an-hour. Then the pieces of fish must be cut an equal size, and they are placed to cook quickly in this liquor for twenty minutes. Five minutes before serving add a lemon peeled and cut into slices and the pips removed. Some people bind the sauce with breadcrumbs grated and browned. You serve, with this dish, very thin slices of bread and butter. For English tastes, the heads and tails should be removed when dressing the dish.
Braise three pounds of beef upon twenty little onions, ten mushrooms, and two glasses of red wine, salt, pepper, thyme and bay-leaf; cook for one and one-half hours with not too hot a fire. After that, place the beef on an oval dish; keep it hot; stir two tablespoonfuls of demi-glaze into the vegetables and let it boil up. Cut some slices of the beef, and strain the sauce over all.
Take a middling turbot-head, pretty well cut off, wash it clean, take out the gills, season it pretty well with mace, pepper and salt, so put it into a deep dish with half a pound of butter, cover it with a light puff-paste, but lay none in the bottom; when it is baked take out the liquor and the butter that it was baked in, put it into a sauce-pan with a lump of fresh butter and flour to thicken it, with an anchovy and a glass of white wine, so pour it into your pie again over the fish; you may lie round half a dozen yolks of eggs at an equal distance; when you have cut off the lid, lie it in sippets round your disk, and serve it up.
