Sparrows
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons. pint of milk, the same of water, 2 oz. of butter, 1/2 lb. of flour, a teacupful of bread-crumbs, salt. AVERAGE COST, 4d.
Make the flour and milk into a thick batter, with salt to taste, and drop this in small spoonfuls into boiling water, and boil about 5 minutes. They are done when they float. Melt the butter in a pan, and fry in it the bread-crumbs; then pour these over the sparrows in a dish, and serve quickly.
TIME.-5 to 10 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Spinach, To Boil. (English Mode.) -INGREDIENTS for dish for 8 persons.-2 pailfuls of spinach, 2 heaped tablespoonfuls of salt, 1 oz. of butter, pepper to taste. AVERAGE COST, 8d. 389 SPINACH, FRENCH MODE.
Pick the spinach carefully, and see that no stalks or weeds are left amongst it; wash it in several waters, and, to prevent it being gritty, act in the following manner:
Have ready two large pans or tubs filled with water; put the spinach into one of these, and thoroughly wash it; then with SPINACH GARNISHED WITH CROUTONS. the hands, take out the spinach, and put it into the other tub of water (by this means all the grit will be left at the bottom of the tub); wash it again, and should it not be perfectly free from dirt, repeat the process, Put it into a very large saucepan, with about 1/2 pint of water, just sufficient to keep the spinach from burning, and the above proportion of salt. Press it down frequently with a wooden spoon, that it may be done equally; and when it has boiled for rather more than 10 minutes, or until it is perfectly tender, drain it in a colander, squeeze it quite dry, and chop it finely. Put the spinach into a clean stewpan, with the butter and a seasoning of pepper; stir the whole over the fire until quite hot; then put it on a hot dish, and garnish with sippets of toasted bread. TIME.-10 to 15 minutes to boil the spin ach, 5 minutes to warm with the butter.
SEASONABLE. - Spring spinach from March to July; winter spinach from Novem ber to March.
Note. Grated nutmeg, pounded mace, lemon-juice may also be added to enrich the flavour; and poached eggs are also frequently SPINACH AND EGGS. served with spinach; they should be placed on the top of it, and it should be garnished with sippets of toasted bread.
Spinach dressed with Cream, à la Française. - INGREDIENTS for dish for 8 persons.-2 pailfuls of spinach, 2 tablepoonfuls of salt, 2 oz. of butter, 8 tablepounded sugar, a very little grated nutmeg. spoonfuls of cream, 1 small teaspoonful of AVERAGE COST, 1s. 2d.
Boil and drain the spinach; chop it fine, and put it into a stewpan with the butter; stir it over a gentle fire, and, when the butter has dried away, add the remaining ingredients, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Previously to pouring in the cream, boil it first, in case it should curdle.
Serve on a hot dish, and garnish either with sippets of toasted bread or leaves of puff-paste.
TIME.-10 to 15 minutes to boil the spinach; 10 minutes to stew with the cream.
SEASONABLE. Spring spinach from March to July; winter spinach from November to March.
Despite the heading, no birds are involved: these "sparrows" are boiled flour dumplings of the German Spatzen type, dressed with browned crumbs. The page also runs on into three spinach recipes, so the conversions below cover both.
- The nameNothing here is poultry or game. The dish is a batter dumpling, and the heading appears to be a literal rendering of the German Spatzen, "little sparrows" — a name usually explained by the ragged shape of the spoonfuls, though that explanation is traditional rather than documented.
- What the water is forThe ingredient list gives a pint of milk and "the same of water," but the method uses only milk in the batter. The water is the cooking liquid — a pint is far too little to boil dumplings in, so use a wide pan of well-salted water and treat the pint as a slip of the pen.
- Batter consistency is the hingeHalf a pound of flour (about 1¾ cups) to a pint of milk (2½ cups by imperial measure) gives a slack batter that will disperse. Hold back most of the milk and add it until the batter just falls thickly from the spoon and holds its shape; an egg, standard in Swabian practice, gives more reliable results.
- Cooking timeFive minutes is generous for small spoonfuls. They rise when set, as the recipe says; give them a further minute after they float, then lift them out rather than leaving them to swell and soften.
- The crumbsA teacupful is roughly 2/3 cup of crumbs (a teacup being usually reckoned at about a quarter-pint), and 2 oz of butter is 4 tablespoons. Fry the crumbs slowly to a nut brown — this browned-crumb dressing is the whole flavour of the dish, and pale crumbs make it dull.
- YieldWritten for four as a side or supper dish. It makes a substantial plateful; served alone it wants something sharp alongside, such as stewed apple or braised cabbage.
- "2 pailfuls of spinach"A kitchen pail was a large and unstandardised measure, so the recipe's quantity for eight people cannot be pinned down precisely, but it amounts to several pounds of untrimmed leaf. That cooks down drastically; modern bagged spinach at 1 lb per two to three servings is the sensible measure.
- Spinach timings and temperatureTen to fifteen minutes' boiling belongs to older, coarser winter spinach. Young leaf needs two or three minutes in the water clinging to it after washing. The two-tub washing method, though, is still the best way to leave grit behind.
- A garbled lineThe cream recipe's ingredient list has scrambled in printing: read it as 2 oz butter, 8 tablespoonfuls of cream, a small teaspoonful of pounded sugar and a very little nutmeg. Boiling the cream first, as directed, does help it hold in the pan.
"Sparrows" here is a piece of Victorian translation: German and Austrian cooks made Spatzen or Spätzle, small irregular dumplings of flour, milk and egg dropped into boiling water, and the name is generally traced to the untidy bird-like shape of the pieces rather than to any bird in the pot. Their appearance in an English household book reflects how the later, much-expanded editions of Beeton absorbed continental dishes wholesale, often keeping a literal rendering of the foreign name and leaving the reader to work out what was meant. The dressing of butter-fried breadcrumbs poured over at the last moment is the standard central European finish for boiled dumplings and noodles, and the fourpenny cost noted for four people shows why such a dish earned its place — flour, milk and a little butter, filling and cheap, in a book that quoted a price for almost everything.