1 cup of chopped meat. 1 cup of boiling water. 1 teaspoonful of chopped parsley. 1/2 teaspoonful of salt. 1 teaspoonful of lemon juice, or 1/2 teaspoonful Worcestershire sauce. Butter the size of a hickory-nut. 2 cups hot mashed potato.
If the potato is cold, put half a cup of hot milk in it, beat it up well, and stand it on the back of the stove. Then mix all the other things with the meat, and put it in the frying-pan and let it cook till it seems rather dry. Butter a baking-dish, and cover the sides and bottom with a layer of potato an inch thick. Put the meat in the centre and cover it over with potato and smooth it. Put bits of butter all over the top, and brown it in the oven. Serve with this a dish of chow-chow, or one of small cucumber pickles.
1 cup of white sauce. 1 cup of chopped meat. 2 eggs. Teaspoonful of chopped parsley. Half a teaspoonful minced onion.
Put the parsley and onion in the meat, and mix with the white sauce. Beat the yolks of the eggs and stir in, and cook one minute, and then cool. Beat the whites of the eggs and fold in, and bake half an hour, or a little more, in a deep, buttered baking-dish. You must serve this immediately, or it will fall.
Make the corn-meal mush the day before you need it, and when it has cooked half an hour put it in a bread-tin and smooth it over; stand away overnight to harden. In the morning turn it out and slice it in pieces half an inch thick. Put two tablespoons of lard or nice drippings in the frying-pan, and make it very hot. Dip each piece of mush into a pan of flour, and shake off all except a coating of this. Put the pieces, a few at a time, into the hot fat, and cook till they are brown; have ready a heavy brown paper on a flat dish in the oven, and as you take out the mush lay it on this, so that the paper will absorb the grease. When all are cooked put the pieces on a hot platter, and have a pitcher of maple syrup ready to send to the table with them.
Another way to cook corn-meal mush is to have a kettle of hot fat ready, and after flouring the pieces drop them into the fat and cook like doughnuts. The pieces have to be rather smaller to cook in this way than in the other.
1 lobster, or the meat from 1 can. 1 large cup of white or cream sauce.
Take the lobster out of the shell and clean it; Bridget will have to show you how the first time. Or, if you are using canned lobster, pour away all the juice and pick out the bits of shell, and find the black string which is apt to be there, and throw it away. Cut the meat in pieces as large as the end of your finger, and heat it in the sauce till it steams. Put in a small half-teaspoonful of salt, a pinch of cayenne, and a squeeze of lemon. Do not put this in a large dish, but in small ones, buttered well, and serve at once. Stand a little claw up in each dish.
6 large tomatoes. 1 cup bread-crumbs. 1/2 teaspoonful of salt. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 slice of onion.
Put the butter in the frying-pan, and when it bubbles put in the bread-crumbs, the salt and onion, with a dusting of pepper, and stir till the crumbs are a little brown and the onion is all cooked; then take out the onion and throw it away. Wipe the tomatoes with a clean wet cloth, and cut out the stem and a round hole or little well in the middle; fill this with the crumbs, piling them up well on top; put them in a baking-dish and stand them in a hot oven; mix a cup of hot water with a tablespoonful of butter, and every little while take out the baking-dish and wet the tomatoes on top. Cook them about half an hour, or till the skins get wrinkled all over. Serve them in the dish they are cooked in, if you like, or put each one on a small plate, pour some of the juice in the baking-dish over it, and stick a sprig of parsley in the top.
6 hard-boiled eggs. 1 cup cream or white sauce. 1 cup fine bread-crumbs. Salt and pepper.
Cook the eggs twenty minutes, and while they are cooking make the white sauce, and butter one large or six small dishes. Peel the eggs and cut them into bits as large as the end of your finger. Put a layer of bread-crumbs on the bottom of the dish, then a layer of egg, then a sprinkling of salt, pepper, and bits of butter, then a layer of white sauce. Then more crumbs, egg, and seasoning, till the dish is full, with crumbs on top. Put bits of butter over all and brown in the oven.
Boil six potatoes in well-salted water till they are tender; skin them, slice them thin, and put a layer of them in a buttered baking-dish; sprinkle with brown sugar, and put on more potatoes and more sugar till the dish is full. Bake for three-quarters of an hour.
Cook six eggs twenty minutes, and while they are on the fire make a cup of white sauce, as before: one tablespoonful of butter, melted, one of flour, one cup of hot milk, a little salt; cook till smooth. Peel the eggs and cut the whites into pieces as large as the tip of your finger, and put the yolks through the potato-ricer. Mix the eggs white with the sauce, and put in a hot dish, with the yellow yolks over the top. Or, put the whites on pieces of toast, which you have dipped in part of the white sauce, and put the yolks on top, and serve on a small platter.
Another nice way to cream eggs is this: Cook them till hard, and cut them all up into bits. Make the white sauce, and into it stir the beaten yolk of one egg, just after taking it from the fire. Mix the eggs with this, and put in a hot dish or on toast. You can sprinkle grated cheese over this sometimes, for a change.
1 quart of boiling water. 4 tablespoonfuls of cereal. 1 teaspoonful of salt.
When you are to use a cereal made of oats or wheat, always begin to cook it the night before, even if it says on the package that it is not necessary. Put a quart of boiling water in the outside of the double boiler, and another quart in the inside, and in this last mix the salt and cereal. Put the boiler on the back of the kitchen range, where it will be hardly cook at all, and let it stand all night. If the fire is to go out, put it on so that it will cook for two hours first. In the morning, if the water in the outside of the boiler is cold, fill it up hot, and boil hard for an hour without stirring the cereal. Then turn it out in a hot dish, and send it to the table with a pitcher of cream.
The rather soft, smooth cereals, such as farina and cream of rice, are to be measured in just the same way, but they need not be cooked overnight; only put on in a double boiler in the morning for an hour.
1 cup of rice. 2 cups of boiling water. 1 teaspoonful of salt.
Pick the rice over, taking out all the bits of brown husk; fill the outside of the double boiler with hot water, and put in the rice, salt, and water, and cook forty minutes, but do not stir it. Then take off the cover from the boiler, and very gently, without stirring, turn over the rice with a fork; put the dish in the oven without the cover, and let it stand and dry for ten minutes. Then turn it from the boiler into a hot dish, and cover. Have cream to eat on it. If any rice is left over from breakfast, use it the next morning as--
