Really old recipes.
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To preserve white Pear Plumbs:—Take pear plumbs when they are yellow, before they are too ripe; give them a slit in the seam, and prick them behind; make your water almost scalding hot, and put a little sugar to it to sweeten it, and put in your plumbs and cover them close; set them on the fire to coddle, and take them off sometimes a little, and set them on again: take care they do not break; have in readiness as much double-refin'd sugar boiled to a height as will cover them, and when they are coddled pretty tender, take them out of that liquor, and put them into your preserving-pan to your syrup, which must be but blood-warm when your plumbs go in. Let them boil till they are clear, scum them and take them off, and let them stand two hours; then set them on again and boil them, and when they are thoroughly preserved, take them up and lay them in glasses; boil your syrup till 'tis thick; and when 'tis cold, put in your plumbs; and a month after, if your syrup grows thin, you must boil it again, or make a fine jelly of pippins, and put on them. This way you may do the pimordian plumb, or any white plumb, and when they are cold, paper them up.
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BUBBLE AND SQUEAK.
When you happen to have some cold boiled salt beef, cut this up in slices; fry it on both sides, and dish it up round some cabbages or any dressed vegetables ready to hand, which must be chopped up, seasoned with pepper and salt, and fried.
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RICE AND APPLES.
Ingredients, one pound of rice, twelve apples, two ounces of sugar. Tie up the rice very loose in a pudding-cloth, so as to admit that while boiling it may have sufficient room to swell out to five times its original quantity. While the rice is boiling, which will take about one hour, peel the apples, and put them in a saucepan with nearly half-a-pint of water, a bit of butter, lemon-peel, and the sugar, and stew them on the fire till dissolved, stirring them while boiling for a few minutes. When your rice pudding is done and turned out on its dish, pour the apple-sauce over it. This cheap kind of rice pudding may also be eaten with all kinds of fruits, prepared in the same manner as herein directed for apples.
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TO MAKE ELDER WINE.
Ingredients, two gallons of elderberries, two quarts of damsons, eight pounds of raw sugar, at 4-1/2_d._ per pound, two gallons of water, two ounces of ginger, one ounce of cloves, and half a pint of fresh yeast. To make this quantity of elder wine, you must have a copper, a tub, a large canvas or loose flannel bag, and a five-gallon barrel. First, crush the elderberries and damsons thoroughly in the pot or copper in which they are to be boiled; then add the water, and keep stirring all together as it boils, until the fruit is well dissolved; then use a wooden bowl or a basin to pour the whole into a loose flannel bag, steadily fixed across two stout sticks, resting safely on two chairs, or, if you have one, a large coarse sieve instead. When all the liquor has passed through into the tub, put the dregs back into the copper, to be boiled up with a couple of quarts of water, and then to be strained to the other liquor. The next part of the process is to put the whole of the elderberry juice back into the clean pot or copper, with the sugar, and the spice, well bruised with a hammer; stir all together, on the fire, and allow the wine to boil gently for half an hour, then pour it into the clean tub to cool; the half-pint of yeast must then be added, and thoroughly mixed by stirring. At the end of two days, skim off the yeast which, by that time, will have risen to the surface. The elder wine must now be put into the barrel, and kept in the cellar with the bung-hole left open for a fortnight; at the end of this time, a stiff brown paper should be pasted over the bung-hole, and after standing for a month or six weeks, the wine will be ready for use. To be obliged to buy all the ingredients for making elder wine, would render it a matter of great difficulty—perhaps, in some cases, an impossibility; but, remember, that when living in the country, where in some parts elderberries grow in the hedge-rows, you may have them for the trouble of gathering them, in which case the elder wine would be cheaper, and more easily within your means.
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Orange Sweetmeats
Put the oranges in salt and water and simmer them for a short time. Then remove them from the salt water and boil them in fresh until tender. Beat them into paste with an equal weight of sugar.
Then boil the paste until it is ready to candy, pour it into plates, dry it and cut into suitable shape.A good mood is like a balloon, one prick is all it takes to ruin it.
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A good mood is like a balloon, one prick is all it takes to ruin it.
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Cinnamon Fried Cakes
Separate the yolk and white of an egg and beat each separately. Place a quarter of a cupful of rich milk in a bowl and add the egg yolk, a quarter of a teaspoonful each of salt and ground cinnamon, one tablespoonful of sugar, two tablespoonfuls of melted shortening and three-quarters of a cupful of flour sifted with one and a quarter teaspoonfuls of baking powder. Beat well, add the stiffly whipped egg white and enough additional flour to make a stiff dough. Roll out thin, cut in diamonds and fry in deep, hot fat. Roll while warm in powdered sugar and ground cinnamon. -
Chicken Croquettes
Stir a pint of fine-chopped chicken into a cup and a quarter of sauce, made of one-third cup of flour, three tablespoons butter, a cup of chicken stock and a quarter of a cup of cream; season with a few drops of onion juice, a teaspoon of lemon juice, half teaspoon celery salt, salt and pepper. When thoroughly chilled form into cylindrical shapes; add egg and bread crumbs and fry in deep fat. Serve surrounded with cooked peas and figures stamped from cooked slices of carrot, seasoned with salt, paprika and butter. -
TO MAKE SCRAPPLE.
Some of the pieces that will not do for any other purpose will make scrapple. Boil them in plenty of water, season with pepper and salt, take out all the bones, and strain the liquor; put the liquor back in the pot and thicken with Indian meal; stir it till done; turn it into bowls to cool; cut in slices and fry. Send hot to the table. -
Cream Cheese
Take a quart of cream, or, if not desired very rich, add thereto one pint of new milk; warm it in hot water till it is about the heat of milk from the cow; add a small quantity of rennet (a tablespoonful is sufficient); let it stand till thick, then break it slightly with a spoon, and place it in a frame in which you have previously put a fine canvas-cloth; press it slightly with a weight; let it stand a few hours, then put a finer cloth in the frame; a little powdered salt may be put over the cloth. It will be ready for use in a day or two. -
Jam Fritters
Take 4oz. of flour, 1 tablespoonful brown sugar, 1 gill of milk, 1 dessertspoonful baking powder and jam. Put the flour, baking powder, and sugar into a basin and mix together. Make a hole in the centre of the flour and pour in enough cold milk to make a creamy batter. Beat well. Melt a little dripping in a frying pan, and pour in sufficient batter to cover the bottom of the pan (thinly). When one side of the batter is slightly browned, turn it over and cook the other side. Put a spoonful of jam in the centre of the batter and roll it over. Repeat the process till all the batter is used. These fritters must be served very hot and immediately they are made.
SELECT EXTRACTS FROM AN EARLY RECEIPT-BOOK -
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To make a Spread-Eagle pudding:—Cut off the crust of three half-penny rolls, then slice them into your pan; then set three pints of milk over the fire, make it scalding hot, but not boil; so pour it over your bread, and cover it close, and let it stand an hour; then put in a good spoonful of sugar, a very little salt, a nutmeg grated, a pound of suet after 'tis shred, half a pound of currants washed and picked, four spoonfuls of cold milk, ten eggs, but five of the whites; and when all is in, stir it, but not till all is in; then mix it well, butter a dish; less than an hour will bake it.
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Cheese Loaf
From 1918:
6 potatoes
3 cupfuls milk
3 medium sized onions
½ cupful buttered crumbs
2 teaspoonful salt
12 tablespoonful grated cheese
¼ teaspoonful pepperPeel and slice thin the potatoes and onions.
Place potatoes, onions, grated cheese and seasonings, in alternate layers, in a baking dish. Add the milk to cover, and scatter buttered bread crumbs and grated cheese on top. Bake in a moderate oven one and a half hours.
Here is another nutritious, well balanced and very palatable dish to serve in our meatless menus.
In this recipe the cheese and milk form the chief source of protein. The combination of the onions, cheese and potatoes gives a very pleasing flavor.
The recipe will serve six people and costs only 26 cents. -
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HOW TO COOK PIGEON – PIGEON RECIPES
Pigeons are more popular articles of diet than is generally supposed. Many people regard them principally as belonging to invalid dietary, but this is quite an erroneous view to take. One might just as correctly catalogue them as fare for epicures. They certainly are popular with epicures, and they are excellent “light diet” for the convalescent’s tray. But conceding all this, yet we must also allow that pigeons are considered to be good eating by just the average and robust appetite.
How best to cook them? There are many ways, but one of the very best is to follow Norwegian custom and cook them as they cook ptarmigan. The following is a recipe given by Mrs. C. W. Earle In her delightful gardening book, which contains so many dainty home and cookery notes amongst its plant and flower lore. “Stew them quite fresh,” she advises, “in an earthenware stewpan (with the livers, etc., chopped up inside them), in good stock with a lot of vegetables cut up, especially onion and a bunch of herbs, which is removed before serving. Serve with a hot compote of cherries (bottled or dried) or cranberries, instead of the usual red currant jelly.” This is a somewhat sumptuous dish – if one serves it with the hot compote. Otherwise it is perfectly simple – as simple as stewed chicken. When preparing it for the invalid’s tray, or as a dish for people with delicate digestions, it is as well, nay wiser to leave out the cherry compote altogether, and to exercise discretion in the choice of vegetables. Shallot might be substituted for onion, and fresh green peas or little pieces of cauliflower for the less digestible root, vegetables, carrot, turnip, etc. Four pigeons jugged will make a good and sufficient dish for six people, provided of course their appetites be nothing extraordinary.
An English cookery book suggests they be soaked in wine for an hour or two before being prepared for the casserole dish or earthenware jar. This suggestion may be unfavourably received by the thrifty housewife, who considers pigeons without wine as unnecessary extravagances (when one can do very well on rabbit-o!), but there are purses and purses. Therefore, the housewife, intent on serving a recherché little dinner will do well indeed to soak her pigeons in wine for an hour or two as a preliminary step in the cooking process.
While they are soaking she can prepare her stuffing as follows: Mix together a few breadcrumbs, a little minced bacon, a little sage, and a chopped onion; add a well beaten egg, and stuff the bodies of the pigeons with this, fastening up securely so that none of it escapes to be lost in the pot. Finally, lift the birds out of the wine, lay them, carefully stuffed, in a deep casserole dish or stewpan, and cover with a pint of good gravy. Let them simmer for an hour when they will be tender and delicious. They may then be sent to table, with the gravy thickened, or they may be further improved by lifting them from the stewpan, draining them free from gravy, egg and breadcrumbing them, and baking them in the oven for about ten minutes. Butter should be used for basting purposes, or their delicate flavour will be spoiled. Again return the pigeons to the gravy, which must be so reduced in quantity that it does not touch their breasts, otherwise the raspings will be soggy. Allow all to almost reach simmering point, and to remain at that for half an hour. Serve with red currant jelly.
The above recipe gives a dish that is particularly tempting to an invalid’s appetite. Moreover, it is a very nourishing and stimulating dish. But, if it be objected that the flavour of wine is too strong, the birds need not be soaked in wine, but merely a table spoonful or so added to the gravy.
To roast pigeons, prepare them with a stuffing like the one just named, or try one made with a few breadcrumbs, a little butter, pepper and salt to taste, and some chopped parsley. This is suitable for those who dislike the onion flavouring. Put a ball of this stuffing or forcemeat inside each bird, and make it secure. Truss firmly with the legs forward, the wings to the side, and points turned over the back, and pass string round the skewers. Baste with butter or lard, and cook in a strictly moderate oven, covering them with a piece of grease-proof paper. They will take about 20 minutes to cook. Serve with plenty of good gravy and red currant jelly.
The pigeon ranks neither as game nor as poultry. One must just count it as bird, and its mission on the diet list to relieve monotony, and particularly to furnish a delicate and nourishing food for those unable to digest sterner stuff. For the rest, it may become either game or poultry, according to the treatment the cook metes out to it. Jugged it suggests hare, stewed it may imitate ptarmigan, or roast it may pass in the same category as chicken. However, grilled it remains plain bird – or pigeon – of no set class at all.
To prepare pigeons for the griller, first split the birds down the back, and flatten them out with a tight rolling pin or cutlet “bat.” Skewer into shape. Then brush them over with butter, season with pepper and salt, and grill for from 15 to 20 minutes, turning frequently. Serve with mushroom or tomato sauce.
In England and the northern hemisphere the average housewife, with the strictly limited purse, may be in no better position than her sister in Australia as regards choice of foods. But the better to do housekeeper appears to be infinitely richer as regards power to choose. She may buy game and birds we in Australia know little of. We have hare, and wild duck; yes, and quail and pigeons. But just dip into any English cookery book, ancient or modern. You will find there the cook is informed how to deal with larks, black cock, grouse, partridge, ortolans, pheasant, snipe, venison, widgeon, woodcock, etc. Such things would strangely embarrass the average Australian cook, who often enough is perplexed how to deal with pigeon, wild duck, quail, and those very queer things, muttonbirds. -
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many recipes that are over 80 years old...
Mix. Bake @ 350 deg. for 1 1/2 hours
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 cup prepared mustard
1/2 cup margarine
Will keep indefinitely in refrigerator.How much of this were realistic in a ordinary household before WW2?
/cybnis
