Pick the beans, wash them, and steep them over night in boiling water, just covering them. Allow 2 or 3 oz. of beans for each person. In the morning, let them cook gently in the water they are steeped in with the addition of a little butter, until quite soft, which will be in about 2 hours. The beans should be cooked in only enough water to keep them from burning, therefore, when it boils away, add only just sufficient for absorption. The sauce is made thus: 1 pint of milk, 1 tablespoonful of Allinson fine wheatmeal, a handful of finely chopped parsley, the juice of 1/2 a lemon, pepper and salt to taste. Boil the milk and thicken it with the flour, which should first be smoothed with a little cold milk, then last of all add the lemon juice, the seasoning, and the parsley. This dish should be eaten with potatoes and green vegetables.
Use cold fish and potatoes, if there are any in the larder; if not, boil a piece of blue smoked cod in some water for five minutes. Flake it up free from skin and bone and put it into a basin; mash up the potatoes and mix them in with the pepper and salt. Bind into a paste with an egg; rub some dripping on a baking sheet, turn the mixture on to it and shape into the letter S, brush over with egg or milk, and bake till brown. Slip it off on to a hot dish, and garnish with parsley.
Fillet the fish, put the bones in a saucepan, and just cover them with water. When they boil, skim well, and add the tomatoes sliced up, the peppercorns and vegetables; boil quickly without the lid for half an hour, then strain, rubbing the pulp of the tomatoes through with the liquor. Make a smooth sauce with half a pint of this liquor, the butter, and the flour; if the colour is not good add a few drops of cochineal. Fold the fillets of fish neatly, and bake in the oven with a little lemon juice, and covered with a buttered paper. Arrange them on a dish and pour the sauce over. Serve hot.
Soak herring a few hours, when washed and cleaned, bone and chop. To one herring take one onion, one sour apple, a slice of white bread which has been soaked in vinegar, chop all these; add one teaspoon oil, a little cinnamon and pepper. Put on platter in shape of a herring with head at top and tail at bottom of dish, and sprinkle the chopped white of a hard-boiled egg over fish and then the chopped yolk.
Cut the ham round, and lay it in water all night, boil it tender as you would do for eating, take off the skin, strew over it a little pepper, and bake it in a deep dish, put to it a pint of water, and half a pound of butter; you must bake it in puff-paste; but lay no paste in the bottom of the dish; when you send it to the table send it without a lid. It is proper for a top or bottom dish either summer or winter.
Make the sauce of cream if you have it, and if not use a very heaping tablespoonful of butter in the white sauce. Keep this hot.
Drain off the oyster-juice and wash the oysters by holding them under the cold-water faucet. Strain the juice and put the oysters back in it, and put them on the fire and let them just simmer till the edges of the oysters curl; then drain them from the juice again and drop them in the sauce, and add a little more salt (celery-salt is nice if you have it), and just a tiny bit of cayenne pepper. You can serve the oysters on squares of buttered toast, or put them in a large dish, with sifted bread-crumbs over the top and tiny bits of butter, and brown in the oven. Or you can put them in small dishes as they are, and put a sprig of parsley in each dish.
Soak Allinson wholemeal bread in cold milk and water until soft, then rub smooth, grate 1 onion, beat up 1 egg, and add a few flavouring herbs, and pepper and salt to taste. Mix the whole together, put in a pie-dish, place a few small pieces of butter on the top, and bake about 1/2 hour, or until done. Eat with vegetables and potatoes.
Having boiled the crabs, extract all the meat from the shell, cut it fine, and season it to your taste with nutmeg, salt, and cayenne pepper. Add a bit of butter, some grated bread crumbs, and sufficient vinegar to moisten it. Fill the back-shells of the crab with the mixture; set it before the fire, and brown it by holding a red-hot shovel or a salamander a little above it. Cover a large dish, with small slices of dry toast with the crust cut off. Lay on each slice a shell filled with the crab. The shell of one crab will contain the meat of two.
Take a fat rump of young beef and cut off the fag end, lard the low part with fat bacon, and stuff the other part with shred parsley; put it into your pan with two or three quarts of water, a quart of Claret, two or three anchovies, an onion, two or three blades of mace, a little whole pepper, and a bunch of sweet herbs; stew it over a slow fire five or six hours, turning it several times in the stewing, and keep it close cover'd; when your beef is enough take from it the gravy, thicken part of it with a lump of butter and flour, and put it upon the dish with the beef. Garnish the dish with horse-radish and red-beet root. There must be no salt upon the beef, only salt the gravy to your taste. You may stew part of a brisket, or an ox cheek the same way.
Six pounds of a shin of veal, one fowl, three table-spoonfuls of butter, four stalks of celery, two onions, one blade of mace, one stick of cinnamon, eight quarts of cold water, salt, pepper. Wash and cut the veal and fowl into small pieces. Put the butter in the bottom of the soup pot and then put in the meat. Cover, and cook gently (stirring often) half an hour, then add the water. Let it come to a boil, then skim and set back where it will boil gently for six hours. Add the vegetables and spice and boil one hour longer. Strain and cool quickly. In the morning take off all the fat. Then turn the jelly gently into a deep dish, and with a knife scrape off the sediment which is on the bottom. Put the jelly into a stone pot and set in a cold place. This will keep a week in cold weather and three days in warm.
