snowynight

Take small tomatoes, scald and peel them, then cut a slice from the stem end. Place them, the cut side down, on slices of buttered[Pg 42] bread, put them in a buttered baking tin, season with salt and pepper, bake ½ an hour. Serve with cold roast beef.

This is a very delicious dish, and is often served as an entrée at first-class dinners.

They are made from what are known as cup mushrooms. It is best to pick mushrooms, as far as possible, the same size, the cup being about two inches in diameter. Peel the mushrooms very carefully, without breaking them, cut out the stalks close down with a spoon, scoop out the inside of the cup, so as to make it hollow. Now peel the stalks and chop them up with all the scooped part of the mushroom, with, supposing we are making ten cups, a piece of onion as big as the top of the thumb down to the first joint.To this add a brimming teaspoonful of chopped parsley, or even a little more, a saltspoonful of dried thyme, or half this quantity of fresh thyme. Fry all this in a frying-pan, in a little butter. The aroma is delicious.

Then add sufficient dried bread-crumbs that have been rubbed through a wire sieve to make the whole into a moist paste, fill each of the cups with this mixture so that the top is as convex as the cup of the mushroom, having first seasoned the mixture with a little pepper, salt, and lemon-juice. Shake some fine bread-raspings over the top so as to make them of a nice golden-brown colour, pour a little drop of oil into a baking-tin, place the mushrooms in it, and bake them gently in an oven till the cup part of the mushroom becomes soft and tender, but take care they do not cook till they break. Now take them out carefully with an egg-slice, and place them on a dish—a silver dish is best for the purpose-and place some nice, crisp, fried parsley round the edge.

Chop sufficient cold chicken to make a half pint, add the juice of half a lemon, two tablespoonfuls of melted butter or olive oil, twelve walnuts chopped very fine, a half teaspoonful of paprika and a half teaspoonful of salt. Put this mixture between thin slices of buttered bread, trim the crusts and cut into fingers.

’Tis no one thing; it is not fruit, nor root,
Nor poorly limited with head or foot.
Donne.

Take Tin Ice-Pots, fill them with any Sort of Cream you like, either plain or sweeten’d, or Fruit in it; shut your Pots very close; to six Pots you must allow eighteen or twenty Pound of Ice, breaking the Ice very small; there will be some great Pieces, which lay at the Bottom and Top: You must have a Pail, and lay some Straw at the Bottom; then lay in your Ice, and put in amongst it a Pound of Bay-Salt; set in your Pots of Cream, and 93 lay Ice and Salt between every Pot, that they may not touch; but the Ice must lie round them on every Side; lay a good deal of Ice on the Top, cover the Pail with Straw, set it in a Cellar where no Sun or Light comes, it will be froze in four Hours, but it may stand longer; than take it out just as you use it; hold it in your Hand and it will slip out. When you wou’d freeze any Sort of Fruit, either Cherries, Rasberries, Currants, or Strawberries, fill your Tin-Pots with the Fruit, but as hollow as you can; put to them Lemmonade, made with Spring-Water and Lemmon-Juice sweeten’d; put enough in the Pots to make the Fruit hang together, and put them in Ice as you do Cream.

Quarter, pare, core, and stew your Pippins in a Pipkin, upon very hot embers, close covered, a whole day, for they must stew softly, then put to them some whole Cinamon, six Cloves, and sugar enough to make them sweet, and some Rose-water, and when they are stewed enough, take them off the fire, and take all the Spice from them, and break them small like Marmalade, having your Coffins ready made, not above an inch deep, fill them with it, and lay on a very thin cover of puffe paste, close and fit, so bake them, serve them in cold, but you must take heed you doe not over-bake them.

Exceedingly nice cheese-cakes can be made from remains of cold potatoes, and can be made very cheap by increasing the quantity of potatoes used.

Take a quarter of a pound of butter, four eggs, two fresh lemons, and half a pound of lump sugar.First of all rub off all the outsides of two lemons on to the sugar; oil the butter in a tin in the oven and melt the sugar in it; squeeze the juice of the two lemons, and take care that the sugar is thoroughly dissolved before you begin to mix all the ingredients together. Now beat up the eggs very thoroughly and mix the whole in a basin. This now forms a very rich mixture indeed, a good-sized teaspoonful of which would be sufficient for the interior of an ordinary-sized cheese-cake, but a far better plan is to make a large cheese-cake, or rather cheese-cake pudding, in a pie-dish by adding cold boiled potatoes.

The plainness or richness of the pudding depends entirely upon the amount of potatoes added. The pie-dish can be lined with a little puff paste round the edge, if preferred, or the pudding can be sent to table plain. It should be baked in the oven till the top is nicely browned. It can be served either hot or cold, but, in our opinion, is nicer cold. If the lemons are very fresh and green—if the pudding is sent to table hot—you will often detect the smell of turpentine. If a large quantity of potatoes is added more sugar will be required.

Take a hundred and fifty fine large oysters, and pick off carefully the bits of shell that may be sticking to them. Lay the oysters in a deep dish, and then strain the liquor over them. Put them into an iron skillet that is lined with porcelain, and add salt to your taste. Without salt they will not be firm enough. Set the skillet on hot coals, and allow the oysters to simmer till they are heated all through, but not till they boil. Then take out the oysters and put them into a stone jar, leaving the liquor in the skillet. Add to it a pint of clear strong vinegar, a large tea-spoonful of blades of mace, three dozen whole cloves, and three dozen whole pepper corns. Let it come to a boil, and when the oysters are quite cold in the jar, pour the liquor oh them.

They are fit for use immediately, but are better the next day. In cold weather they will keep a week.

If you intend sending them a considerable distance you must allow the oysters to boil, and double the proportions of the pickle and spice.

Ingredients: Lamb's sweetbread, butter, onions, stock, Chablis, salt, lemon, herbs, cocks' combs, fowls' livers.

Cut up equal quantities of lamb's sweetbreads, cocks' combs, fowls' livers in pieces about the size of a filbert, flour and fry them slightly in butter and a small bit of onion, add half a glass of Chablis, a cup of good stock, and a bunch of herbs. Reduce the sauce, and thicken it with a tablespoonful of butter and flour fried together. Make a border of Risotto all'Italiana (No. 190), and put the sweetbread, &c., together with the sauce in the centre.

Milk, buttermilk, or even skim-milk, will serve for this purpose.

To every pint of milk, mix a piled-up table-spoonful of flour, and stir the mixture while boiling on the fire for ten minutes; season with a little salt, and eat it with bread or a boiled potato.

This kind of food is well adapted for the breakfast of women and children, and is far preferable to a sloppy mess of tea, which comes to more money.