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Confectionery (Pare the peaches carefully)
Pare the peaches, carefully removing all decay.
Lay in a shallow dish and cover with white sugar.
When a syrup has formed, remove the fruit and put into jars; put the syrup in a new tin pan, and place over the fire; when it comes to a boil, remove and pour into the jars hot, and fill up with the best white brandy. When cold seal up carefully. 73. Orange Marmalade.
One dozen good-sized oranges-those with the bitter skin are considered the best, or Sicily, if preferred; cut them in two, take off the peel, and boil it in water until tender enough to run a straw through; cut it up fine, add the pulp and juice of the oranges (carefully removing all the white skin), and the juice and grated skin of two lemons.
Add the weight of the whole in white sugar, and boil for a short time till clear-say from twenty minutes to half an hour.
Eighteen good-sized Sicily oranges make about 4 quarts of marmalade. 74. Mock-Turtle Soup made of Beans.
Take 1 pint of black Mexican beans, wash them and put them to soak in some water over night.
In the morning put them, with a bunch of potherbs and about 3 quarts of water into a pot, and boil till thoroughly done; strain through a colander into the liquor they were boiled in; let them simmer, add pepper and salt, with a lump of butter the size of an egg, 2 tablespoonfuls of walnut catsup; have ready 2 hard-boiled eggs chopped fine, put them into the tureen, and turn your soup over them; if you have some lemon or wine it will improve it. 75. J. R. K.'s Chicken Croquets.
Boil an ordinary-sized chicken, skin it and cut it up fine. Take a dessertspoonful of butter and the same of flour, mix well together and put into a saucepan with the yolk of an egg; add 3 spoonfuls of chicken broth and 3 of cream, and let it thicken to a boil; throw in the chicken, and after boiling a few moments put it away to cool. Roll out the croquets to the required size in egg and then in fine cracker, and fry in very hot lard. 76. Corn Bread.
To 1 quart of milk add 5 eggs beaten light, a small teaspoonful of baking soda, and a little salt; stir in sufficient corn meal to make a stiff batter, pour in a deep pan well greased, and bake; when done it should be two inches thick. Eat while hot. 77. Plain Corn Pone.
To a quart of white corn meal add a little salt and sufficient milk to make a dough, divide into two pones or loaves, making each an inch and a half thick, and bake in a quick oven. 78. Tapioca Pudding.
Take a pound of tapioca, pour on 1½ pints of water, and let it soak over night; pare and core 10 apples, taking care not to break them, and place in a deep pan; sweeten and flavor the tapioca with wine or essence of vanilla, and pour on the apples; if it does not cover them add a little more water; when the apples are cooked sufficiently the pudding is done. Eat with cream. 79. Currant Pudding.
To 3 cups of flour add 1½ cups of sugar, 2 eggs, a pound of suet cut fine, a pound of currants, and nutmeg to suit the taste. Make in a stiff batter and boil in a bag two hours. To be eaten with butter sauce. 80. Italian Mode of Cooking Veal Cutlets.
For a cutlet weighing 1½ pounds take 2 onions, slice and parboil, pour off the water, and brown with butter; season and flour the cutlet and place in the pan with the onions, adding sufficient butter to fry nicely; slice 2 tomatoes, and when the cutlet is done place them under it, and let the whole remain over the fire until the tomatoes are well cooked, then remove the cutlet and tomatoes, and add to the gravy the juice of 1/2 a lemon and a little flour; after dishing the whole upon a meat dish, sprinkle a little parsley cut fine. This is a delicious way of cooking cutlets; beef can be done in the same manner. 81. To cook Frogs.
Put the hind legs in salt and water over night, wipe them dry with a cloth, pepper and salt them, then sprinkle a little flour over them, and fry in hot lard to a light brown.
This page is a run of numbered receipts printed without breaks, beginning with brandied peaches and ending with frog legs. Each stands alone; the notes below follow the same order.
- Brandied peaches, and what preserves themNothing here is cooked but the syrup. The keeping power comes from the sugar, the fruit's own acidity and the spirit, so the jars must be genuinely full of brandy rather than topped off with a splash. Treat the result as a refrigerator preserve; for a shelf-stable canned peach, use a current tested recipe with a measured processing time.
- "A new tin pan"Most likely specified because worn tinned pans exposed the iron beneath and blackened acid fruit. Any stainless or enamelled pan does the job now. Avoid bare aluminium or unlined copper with the citrus and peach syrups.
- Marmalade: weigh, then boil to a temperature"The weight of the whole in white sugar" means equal weights of prepared fruit, juice and peel to sugar. Twenty minutes to half an hour is about right, but judge by a thermometer at 220F or a cold-plate test rather than the clock. Eighteen oranges giving four quarts works out at a little under half a pint of marmalade per orange.
- Black Mexican beans and walnut catsupThe beans are black turtle beans, sold everywhere now. Walnut catsup is a thin, dark, salty condiment made from green walnuts and still sold by a few British firms; mushroom ketchup or a smaller quantity of Worcestershire gives the same savoury depth. Starting from three quarts of water, the finished soup will be somewhat less after boiling.
- Croquette mixture must be coldThe hinge of the chicken croquettes. A dessertspoon each of butter and flour with six spoonfuls of liquid is a very soft binding, so the mixture has to be chilled several hours until firm before shaping. "Fine cracker" is cracker crumbs; fry at 360-375F, in oil if you prefer, until browned through.
- Corn bread and the sodaA teaspoon of baking soda needs an acid to work against. With sweet milk it will taste soapy, so either use buttermilk or sour milk, or substitute two teaspoons of baking powder. Five eggs to a quart of milk puts this close to a spoonbread; bake at 400F for 35-45 minutes in a deep greased pan.
- "A quick oven"For the corn pone, 425-450F. The loaves are dense and an inch and a half thick, so allow 30-40 minutes and check that the centre is set.
- Tapioca pudding: far more liquid than statedA pound of pearl tapioca will not hydrate in a pint and a half of water, and the recipe quietly admits it ("if it does not cover them add a little more water"). Expect to need considerably more water, and note that modern quick-cooking or minute tapioca behaves nothing like the overnight-soaked pearl sort. A moderate oven, around 350F, until the apples are tender suits it.
- Boiled currant puddingA pound of suet to three cups of flour is a rich Victorian batter. Flour the cloth well, tie loosely to allow swelling, and keep the water at a steady boil for the full two hours, topping up so the bag stays covered. Butter sauce here will have been a sweet one, not a savoury sauce.
- Frog legsBuy farmed frog legs, usually frozen and imported. Collecting wild frogs is regulated or prohibited in many places, and several native species are protected. The overnight salt soak is for firming and cleaning, not curing.
The mock turtle soup is the most telling entry: real turtle soup, made from the green sea turtle, was the luxury dish of the nineteenth-century public dinner, and "mock turtle" conventionally imitated it with a boiled calf's head, whose gelatinous meat stood in for turtle. A bean version is an imitation of an imitation, with chopped hard-boiled egg and walnut catsup supplying richness and dark savour, and it shows how far the name had drifted from the animal. The green turtle is now protected under international agreement, which puts the original permanently out of reach.