GRE- DIENTS
2 oz. of powdered sugar, and 1/2 a pint of water.
Place the sugar in a stewpan over a slow fire until it begins to melt, keeping it stirred with a wooden spoon until it becomes black, when add the water, and let it dissolve. Cork closely, and use a few drops when required.
Note. In France, burnt onions are made use of for the purpose of browning. As a general rule, rule, the process of browning is to be disapt to impart a slightly unpleasant flavour to the stock, and consequently all soups made from it.
Brussels - Sprouts, Boiled.
INGREDIENTS.-To each 1/2 gallon of water allow 1 heaped tablespoonful of salt; a very small piece of soda. AVERAGE COST, 2d. per lb.
Clean the sprouts from insects, nicely wash them, and pick off any dead or discoloured leaves from the outsides; put them into a saucepan of boiling water, with salt and soda soda in the above proportion; keep the pan uncovered, and let them boil quickly over a brisk fire until tender; BRUSSELS SPROUTS. drain, dish, and serve with a tureen of melted butter, or with a maître d'hôtel sauce poured over them. Another mode of serving them is, when they are dished, to stir in about 1 oz. of butter and a seasoning of pepper and salt. They must, however, be sent to table very quickly, as, being so very small, this vegetable soon cools.
BUNS, BATH.
TIME. From 9 to 12 minutes after the water boils.
SEASONABLE from November to March.
Bubble-and-Squeak. (Cold Meat Cookery.) - INGREDIENTS. slices of cold boiled beef, butter, cabbage, 1 A few thin sliced onion, pepper and salt to taste.
AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the cold beef, 3d.
Fry the slices of beef gently in a little butter, taking care not to dry them up.
Lay them on a flat dish, and cover with fried greens. The greens may be prepared from cabbage sprouts or green savoys. They should be boiled till tender, well drained, minced, and placed till quite hot in a fryingpan, with butter, a sliced onion, and seasoning of pepper and salt.
When the onion is done, it is ready to serve.
TIME.-Altogether, hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Bullock's Heart, To Dress a. -INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 to 8 persons. - 1 heart , stuffing of veal forcemeat. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Put the heart into warm water to soak for 2 hours; then wipe it well with a cloth, and, after cutting off the lobes, stuff the inside with a highly-seasoned forcemeat.
Fasten it in, by means of a needle and coarse thread; tie the heart up in paper, and set it before a good fire, being very particular to keep it well basted, or it will be dry, there being very little of its own fat. Two or three minutes before dishing, remove the paper, baste well, and serve with good gravy and red-currant jelly or melted butter. If the heart is very large, it will require 2 hours, and, covered with a caul, may be baked as well as roasted.
TIME.-Large heart, 2 hours.
SEASONABLE all the year.
Note. This is an excellent family dish, is very savoury, and, though not seen at many good tables, may be recommended for its cheapness and economy.
This page is a run of adjacent entries from the G-section reprint, jumbled by the scanner: the tail of a browning (caramel colouring) recipe, then boiled Brussels sprouts, bubble-and-squeak, and a stuffed bullock's heart. Each stands on its own, and each needs a different adjustment.
- The browning is burnt sugar, and it must go darkTwo ounces of sugar melted dry until genuinely black, then let down with half a pint of water, gives the dark colouring Victorian cooks used to darken pale stock. Stop at amber and you have caramel syrup that will sweeten the soup; the point is to take it past sweetness. Add the water off the heat and at arm's length, since it will spit violently. The garbled line is the book's own general disapproval of browning, on the ground that it is "apt to impart a slightly unpleasant flavour to the stock, and consequently all soups made from it."
- Leave the soda out of the sproutsThe pinch of soda was there to fix the green colour. It does that by breaking down cell walls, which softens the sprouts to mush and destroys most of their vitamin C. Salted boiling water, uncovered, with no soda is the modern equivalent.
- Nine to twelve minutes is too longNine to twelve minutes may be longer than you want -- that timing suits sprouts larger than the ones usually sold now. Tight modern sprouts of an inch or so are done in five to seven minutes boiling, less if halved. Test with a knife tip at the stem end rather than by the clock.
- "Melted butter" is a sauce, not melted butterIn Beeton, melted butter means the standard English butter sauce: a white roux slackened with water or milk. Maitre d'hotel sauce is the same thing finished with lemon juice and chopped parsley. If you simply pour warm butter over the sprouts you have made the second variation the recipe offers, not the first.
- Bubble-and-squeak is a fry-up of leftoversThe garbled ingredient line is a few thin slices of cold boiled beef, butter, cabbage, one sliced onion, and seasoning. "Altogether, hour" in the original is half an hour. Cook the onion in the pan with the minced greens until it loses its rawness, and keep the beef slices barely warmed through, since reheated boiled beef toughens fast.
- The bullock's heart needs a butcher's orderA whole beef heart runs 4 to 5 lb and is rarely on display; ask for it in advance. Trim the tough vessels and the hard white fibre at the top, which is most likely what "cutting off the lobes" refers to, and soak it as directed to draw out blood.
- Roasting it now means an ovenThe recipe has the heart set before a good fire, wrapped in paper, and notes that, covered with a caul, it may be baked as well as roasted. In a covered roasting tin in a moderate oven (around 325F) the two hours given for a large heart should still be about right. Heart is almost entirely lean muscle, so basting is not optional; without it the meat goes to leather.
- Veal forcemeatBeeton's standard version is breadcrumbs, chopped suet, lemon rind, parsley, lemon thyme, pounded mace, and egg to bind, with ham or lean bacon added. Any well-seasoned bread stuffing will serve the same purpose of keeping the cavity moist.
- Costs and yieldThe prices in pence are 1860s figures and are useful only as a sign of how cheap these dishes were. The heart is given as serving six to eight, which is optimistic for a small one; four to six is more realistic once trimmed.
Boiled beef and greens fried together the next morning was a fixture of English kitchens long before Beeton wrote it down, and the name is generally traced to the sound of the mixture as it cooks and spits in the pan. Beeton files it under "Cold Meat Cookery," a heading that runs right through the Book of Household Management and reflects the arithmetic of a Victorian middle-class household: a large joint on Sunday had to be made to reappear, without waste and without looking like the same dinner twice. The bullock's heart belongs to the same economy from the other end, an organ meat the book itself admits is "not seen at many good tables" but recommends for cheapness. The browning entry is a reminder of what mid-century cooks expected soup to look like, and the note that French kitchens burnt onions instead of sugar is Beeton doing what she often does, comparing English practice with continental.