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Cookery (Cut some recently boiled new)
Cut some recently boiled new potatoes in slices, put them into a stewpan with a gill of cream, 4 ounces of fresh butter, a very little nutmeg, pepper and salt, and the juice of half a lemon; set them to boil on the stove fire, toss them well together, and dish them up with crôutons.
Green Peas, Plain.
Put the peas into boiling water, some salt, and a bunch of green mint; keep them boiling briskly for about twenty minutes, and when done, drain them in a colander, dish them up with chopped boiled mint on the top, and send some small pats of very fresh butter separately on a plate.
Stewed Peas.
Put 1 quart of young peas into a pan, with 4 ounces of butter, and plenty of cold water; rub the peas and butter together with the fingers, until well mixed, then pour off the water, and put the peas into a stewpan, with a couple of cabbage lettuces. shred small, a bunch of green onions and parsley, a dessertspoonful of pounded sugar, and a little salt; put the lid on, and set the peas to stew very gently over a slow fire for about half an hour; when done, if there appears to be much liquor, boil it down quickly over the fire. Next put about 2 ounces of fresh butter on a plate, with a dessertspoonful of flour, and knead them together; put this into the peas, and toss the whole together over the stove fire until well mixed; dish the peas up, garnished round with pastry, and serve.
Asparagus with White Sauce.
Pick the loose leaves from the heads, and scrape the stalks clean, wash them in a pan of cold water, tie them up in bundles of about 20 in each, keeping all the heads turned the same way; cut the stalks even, leaving them about 8 inches long.
Put the asparagus in hot water with a small handful of salt in it, to boil for about twenty minutes, and when done, drain them carefully upon a napkin to avoid breaking off the heads; dish them up on a square thick piece of toasted bread dipped in the water they have been boiled in, and send to table with some white sauce, separately in a sauce-boat. Spinach with Butter.
Pick all the stalks from the spinach, wash it in several waters, and drain it upon a sieve; throw it into a stewpan of hot water with a handful of salt, and keep it boiling until it becomes thoroughly tender and soft to the touch; then drain it in a colander, immerse it in cold water, and afterwards squeeze all the water from it. The spinach must next be carefully turned over with the point of a knife, to remove any straws or stalks that may have been overlooked; it should then be chopped or pounded in a mortar, rubbed through a coarse wire sieve, and placed in a stewpan with about 2 ounces of butter, a little salt, and grated nutmeg; stir the spinach over a stove fire with a wooden spoon until it becomes quite warm, then add a gravyspoonful of good sauce, a small piece of glaze, and about 4 ounces of fresh butter. Work the whole together, with a wooden spoon, until well mixed, then pile the spinach up in the centre of the dish, garnish it round with croutons, and serve.
Macaroni a l'Italienne.
First, put 2 large tablespoonfuls of good tomato-sauce into a stewpan, and boil it over the stove fire; then add 2 pats of fresh butter with as much glaze, and work the whole well together; next, strew a layer of the macaroni on the bottom of the dish, then pour some of the sauce over it, and strew some grated Parmesan cheese over this; and so on, repeating the same until the dish is full enough; strew some grated cheese over the top, put the macaroni in the oven for five minutes, and then serve while it is quite hot.
Macaroni with Cream.
Boil 1 pound of macaroni, and when done, cut it up in three-inch lengths, and put it into a stewpan with 4 ounces of fresh butter, 4 ounces of grated Parmesan cheese, and a similar quantity of Gruyère cheese also grated, and 1 gill of good cream; season with pepper and salt, and toss the whole well together over the stove fire, until well mixed and quite hot, then shake it up for a few minutes to make the cheese spin, so as to give it a fibrous appearance, when drawn up with a fork. The macaroni, when dished up, may be garnished round the base with pastry, and then served.
Macaroni au Gratin.
Cut the macaroni up as above, put it into a stewpan with of a pound of grated cheese (Parmesan and Gruyère in equal quantities), 4 ounces of fresh butter, and 1 tablespoonful of good Béchamel sauce; season with pepper and salt, toss the whole together over the fire until well mixed, then pile it up in the centre of a border of a fried croutons of bread (previously stuck round the bottom of the dish); strew the surface with fine bread-crumbs, and grated Parmesan cheese, in equal proportions; run a little melted butter through the holes of a spoon, over the top of the macaroni, and then put it into the oven to be baked of a bright yellow color; it should then be served quite hot.
Indian Sandwiches.
Cut the breast of a roast fowl or pheasant in very small, square, dice-like pieces, and place these on a plate; take about 4 ounces of red tongue or lean ham, and 4 anchovies (previously washed and filleted), cut these also in small dice, and place them with the chicken. Next, put 2 spoonsful of sauce, and a dessertspoonful of curry paste into a stewpan, boil them over the stove, stirring it meanwhile, until reduced to the consistency of a thick sauce; then add the chicken, etc., and the juice of a lemon, mix the whole well together, and use this preparation in the following manner: Cut some thin slices of the crumb of a sandwich-loaf, and with a circular tin cutter, about an inch and a half in diameter, stamp out 24 croutons; fry these in clarified butter to a bright yellow color, drain them on a napkin, and place one-half on a baking-sheet covered with clean paper; spread a thick layer of the above preparation on each of these, and then cover them with the remaining 12 croutons. Next, grate 4 ounces of fresh Parmesan, and mix these with a pat of butter into a paste, divide it in 12 parts, roll each into a round ball, and place 1 of these on the top of each sandwich; about ten minutes before sending to table, put them in the oven to be warmed thoroughly, pass the red-hot salamander over them, to color them of a bright yellow; dish them up on a napkin, and serve. Italian Salad.
Break up the macaroni in 3-inch lengths, and put it on to boil in hot water, with a pat of butter, a little pepper and salt; when done, drain Boil 2 heads of fine white cauliflower, a similar it on a napkin, and as soon as the moisture is portion of asparagus-points, French beans, cut in absorbed, dish it up in the following manner: | diamonds, a few new potatoes (which after being
A run of vegetable and pasta side dishes from the grand nineteenth-century service tradition, written for cooks who had a stove-top range, a mortar and a salamander. The quantities of butter are not typographical errors, and the boiling times are the chief thing to ignore.
- A gillFive fluid ounces in British measure, about 140 ml, so a little over half a US cup. It appears in the creamed potatoes and the macaroni with cream, and in both cases the cream is there to bind rather than to flood, so err on the low side.
- GlazeMeat stock reduced until it sets to a sticky brown syrup — what a modern kitchen would call demi-glace or a commercial glace de viande. A teaspoon dissolved in a little water does the work of the "small piece of glaze" in the spinach and macaroni. It also means those dishes are not vegetarian.
- Boiling timesTwenty minutes for green peas and twenty for asparagus belong to an era of older, starchier produce. Modern peas need three to five minutes, thin asparagus four to six, thick spears eight at most. Cook to tenderness and taste rather than to the clock.
- Croûtons here are not salad croutonsThroughout these receipts a croûton is a shape of bread — round, triangular or heart-shaped — fried in clarified butter and stood round the edge of the dish as a border. The "pastry" garnish for the peas and creamed macaroni is unspecified in the text, but most likely means small baked puff-pastry fleurons, the same idea in a different material.
- Stewed peasThe rubbing of raw peas and butter together under cold water is the old French petits pois à la française: it coats each pea in fat so it steams rather than boils. Keep the pan tightly covered and the heat genuinely low, and check at fifteen minutes rather than thirty. The butter-and-flour paste at the end is a beurre manié and must not boil hard afterwards or it will taste pasty.
- SpinachPounding in a mortar and passing through a wire sieve is now a food processor, though a brief pulse is enough — over-processing makes it slack. Squeezing every drop of water out is the step that actually matters; wet spinach will not take up the butter.
- Macaroni au gratin and à l'italienne"Five minutes in the oven" and "baked of a bright yellow" both assume a hot oven with a working top heat; the book names no temperature, so go hot, or finish under the broiler. The macaroni of the period was a thick, hollow tube sold in long rods, which is why it is cut into three-inch lengths; large rigatoni or ziti are closer than elbows.
- "Make the cheese spin"The recipe keeps the pan over the stove fire and shakes it until the cheese pulls into fibrous strands when drawn up with a fork. Gentle heat is the safer modern route: keep the mixture below a simmer, since hard boiling will make the fat break out and leave the cheese greasy rather than silky.
- SalamanderA cast-iron plate on a handle, heated red in the fire and passed over the surface to brown it. A broiler set high, or a kitchen torch for the cheese balls on the Indian sandwiches, does the same job.
- YieldsNone are stated. The Italian salad quantities are cut off mid-sentence in the original text, so it cannot be followed as printed. As a guide, a pound of macaroni with a gill of cream and half a pound of cheese serves six to eight as a side; the Indian sandwiches make twelve.
These pages come out of the mid-century tradition of grand English service associated with Charles Elmé Francatelli and Alexis Soyer — vegetables treated as composed dishes, mounted on toast or piled inside a border of fried bread and sent up with a sauce apart. Mackenzie's Ten Thousand Receipts was a compendium rather than an original work, gathering household chemistry, medicine and cookery between the same boards, and the cookery section reprints professional practice for a domestic reader. The macaroni receipts are worth noting: Parmesan and Gruyère together, tomato sauce, Béchamel and a gratin finish show that Italian pasta had been absorbed into the Anglo-French kitchen repertoire well before it was a household staple in either Britain or America. "Indian Sandwiches" reflects the same appetite from the other direction — curry paste, by this period available ready-made, worked into a devilled chicken and anchovy mixture for a savoury course, the small hot dish served near the end of a formal dinner that is generally traced to English rather than French usage.