Take a fat Pig and scald him, and cut off his head, slit him and trusse him up like a Lamb, then being slit through the middle, and flawed, then parboyle him a little, then draw him with parsley as you do a Lamb, then roast it and dridge it, and serve it up with Butter, Pepper, and Sugar.
Take a pint of split peas and put them in soak overnight in some cold water, and throw away those that float, as this shows that there is a hole in them which would be mildewy. Take two onions, a carrot, a small head of celery, and boil them with the peas in from three pints to two quarts of water till they are tender. This will be from four to five hours. When the peas are old and stale even longer time should be allowed. Then rub the whole through a wire sieve, put the soup back into the saucepan, and stir it while you make it hot or it will burn. In ordinary cookery, pea soup is invariably made from some kind of greasy stock, more especially the water in which pickled pork has been boiled. In the present instance we have no kind of fat to counteract the natural dryness of the pea-flour. We must therefore add, before sending to table, two or three ounces of butter. It will be found best to dissolve the butter in the saucepan before adding the soup to be warmed up, as it is then much less likely to stick to the bottom of the saucepan and burn. Fried or toasted bread should be served with the soup separately, as well as dried and powdered mint. The general mistake people make is, they do not have sufficient mint.
Bluefish, young cod, mackerel, salmon, large trout, and all other fish, when they weigh between half a pound and four pounds, are nice for broiling. When smaller or larger they are not so good. Always use a double broiler, which, before putting the fish into it, rub with either butter or a piece of salt pork. This prevents sticking. The thickness of the fish will have to be the guide in broiling. A bluefish weighing four pounds will take from twenty minutes to half an hour to cook. Many cooks brown the fish handsomely over the coals and then put it into the oven to finish broiling. Where the fish is very thick, this is a good plan. If the fish is taken from the broiler to be put into the oven, it should be slipped on to a tin sheet, that it may slide easily into the platter at serving time; for nothing so mars a dish of fish as to have it come to the table broken. In broiling, the inside should be exposed to the fire first, and then the skin. Great care must be taken that the skin does not burn. Mackerel will broil in from twelve to twenty minutes, young cod (also called scrod) in from twenty to thirty minutes, bluefish in from twenty to thirty minutes, salmon, in from twelve to twenty minutes, and whitefish, bass, mullet, etc., in about eighteen minutes. All kinds of broiled fish can be served with a seasoning of salt, pepper and butter, or with any of the following sauces: bearer noir, maître d' hôtel, Tartare, sharp, tomato and curry. Always, when possible, garnish with parsley or something else green.
One dozen thoroughly cleaned birds; stuff each with an oyster, put them into a yellow dish, and add two ounces of boiled salt pork and three raw potatoes cut into slices; add a pint of oyster liquor, an ounce of butter; salt and pepper; cover the dish with a crust and bake in moderate oven.
Cut up a slice of a fillet of veal, about half an inch thick, into squares of three inches. Mix up a little salt pork, chopped with bread crumbs, one onion, a little pepper, salt, sweet marjoram, and one egg well beaten; put this mixture upon the pieces of veal, fastening the four corners together with little bird skewers; lay them in a pan with sufficient veal gravy or light stock to cover the bottom of the pan, dredge with flour and set in a hot oven. When browned on top, put a small bit of butter on each, and let them remain until quite tender, which will take twenty minutes. Serve with horse-radish.
In boiling beet-roots be careful not to break them, or else they will bleed and lose their colour. When the beet-root is boiled and cold, peel it, and cut it into thin slices. It can be dressed with oil and vinegar, or vinegar only, adding pepper and salt. Some persons dress beet-root with a salad-dressing in which cream is used instead of oil; but never use cream and oil. To mix cream and oil is like mixing bacon with butter.
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.
Soak two quarts of dried or split peas overnight. In the morning take three pounds of the lean of fresh beef, and a pound of bacon or pickled pork. Cut them into pieces, and put them into a large soup-pot with the peas, (which must first be well drained,) and a table-spoonful of dried mint rubbed to powder. Add five quarts of water, and boil the soup gently for three hours, skimming it well, and then put in four heads of celery cut small, or two table-spoonfuls of pounded celery seed. It must be boiled till the peas are entirely dissolved, so as to be no longer distinguishable, and the celery quite soft. Then strain it into a tureen, and serve it up with toasted bread cut in dice. Omit the crust of the bread. Stir it up immediately before it goes to table, as it is apt to settle, and be thick at the bottom and thin at the top.
Parboil three or four of the largest sweet-breads you can get. This should be done as soon as they are brought in, as few things spoil more rapidly if not cooked at once. When half boiled, lay them in cold water. Prepare a force-meat of grated bread, lemon-peel, butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg mixed with beaten yolk of egg. Cut open the sweet-breads and stuff them with it, fastening them afterwards with a skewer, or tying them round with packthread. Have ready some slips of bacon-fat, and some slips of lemon-peel cut about the thickness of very small straws. Lard the sweet-breads with them in alternate rows of bacon and lemon-peel, drawing them through with a larding-needle. Do it regularly and handsomely. Then put the sweet-breads into a Dutch oven, and bake them brown. Serve them up with veal gravy flavoured with a glass of Madeira, and enriched with beaten yolk of egg stirred in at the last.
Trim a short fillet, and cut a deep incision in the side, being careful not to go through to the other side or the ends. Fill this with one cupful of veal, prepared as for quenelles, and the whites of three hard-boiled eggs, cut into rings. Sew up the openings, and bind the fillet into good shape with broad bands of cotton cloth. Put in a deep stew-pan two slices of ham and two of pork, and place the fillet on them; then put in two calf's feet, two stalks of celery and two quarts of clear stock. Simmer gently two hours and a half. Take up the fillet, and set away to cool. Strain the stock, and set away to harden. When hard, scrape of every particle of fat, and put on the fire in a clean sauce-pan, with half a slice of onion and the whites of two eggs, beaten with four table-spoonfuls of cold water. When this boils, season well with salt, and set back where it will just simmer for half an hour; then strain through a napkin. Pour a little of the jelly into a two-quart charlotte russe mould (half an inch deep), and set on the ice to harden. As soon as it is hard, decorate with the egg rings. Add about three spoonfuls of the liquid jelly, to set the eggs. When hard, add enough jelly to cover the eggs, and when this is also hard, trim the ends of the fillet, and draw out the thread. Place in the centre of the mould, and cover with the remainder of the jelly. If the fillet floats, place a slight weight on it. Set in the ice chest to harden. When ready to serve, place the mould in a pan of warm water for half a minute, and then turn out the fillet gently upon a dish. Garnish with a circle of egg rings, each of which has a stoned olive in the centre. Put here and there a sprig of parsley.
