Select the largest, thickest and fattest, the females being the best; they should be alive when brought from market. Wash and put them alive into boiling water, add a little salt, and boil them until thoroughly done, or from ten to fifteen minutes, after which take off the shell, extract the meat, and remove carefully the sand-bag and gall; also all the entrails; they are unfit to eat, and are no longer used in cooking terrapins for the best tables. Cut the meat into pieces, and put it into a stewpan with its eggs, and sufficient fresh butter to stew it well. Let it stew till quite hot throughout, keeping the pan carefully covered, that none of the flavor may escape, but shake it over the fire while stewing. In another pan make a sauce of beaten yolk of egg, highly flavored with Madeira or sherry, and powdered nutmeg and mace, a gill of currant jelly, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and salt to taste, enriched with a large lump of fresh butter. Stir this sauce well over the fire, and when it has almost come to a boil take it off. Send the terrapins to the table hot in a covered dish, and the sauce separately in a sauce tureen, to be used by those who like it, and omitted by those who prefer the genuine flavor of the terrapins when simply stewed with butter. This is now the usual mode of dressing terrapins in Maryland, Virginia, and many other parts of the South, and will be found superior to any other. If there are no eggs in the terrapin, "egg balls" may be substituted. (See recipe.)
Make the "French Cream" recipe, and divide into three parts, leaving one part white, color one pink with cochineal syrup, and the third part color brown with chocolate, which is done by just letting the cream soften and stirring in a little finely grated chocolate. The pink is colored by dropping on a few drops of cochineal syrup while the cream is warm and beating it in. Take the white cream, make a flat ball of it, and lay it upon a buttered dish, and pat it out flat until about half an inch thick. If it does not work easily, dip the hand in alcohol. Take the pink cream, work in the same way as the white and lay it upon the white; then the chocolate in the same manner, and lay upon the pink, pressing all together. Trim the edges off smooth, leaving it in a nice, square cake, then cut into slices or small cubes, as you prefer. It is necessary to work it all up as rapidly as possible.
1/2 loaf thinly sliced bread 1 cup cheese 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon cayenne 1/4 cup fat 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 1/2 cup cooked celery knob or celery
Mix all ingredients except milk and bread. Spread on bread. Pile in baking dish. Pour milk over the mixture. Bake in a moderate oven until firm in center. Serve hot.
Cut cold boiled potatoes into pieces as large as the end of your finger; put them into a pan on the back of the stove with enough milk to cover them, and let them stand till they have drunk up all the milk; perhaps they will slowly cook a little as they do this, but that will do no harm. In another saucepan or in the frying-pan put a tablespoonful of butter, and when it bubbles put in a tablespoonful of flour, and stir till they melt together; then put in two cups of hot milk, and stir till it is all smooth. Put in one teaspoonful of salt, and last the potatoes, but stir them only once while they cook, for fear of breaking them. Add one teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and put them in a hot covered dish. You can make another sort of potatoes when you have finished creaming them in this way, by putting a layer of them in a deep buttered baking-dish, with a layer of white sauce over the top, and break-crumbs and bits of butter for a crust. Brown well in a hot oven. When you do this, remember to make the sauce with three cups of milk and two tablespoonfuls of flour and two of butter, and then you will have enough for everything.
The mackerel is one of the most beautiful of fish, being known by its silvery whiteness. It sometimes attains to the length of twenty inches, but usually, when fully grown, is about fourteen or sixteen inches long, and about two pounds in weight. To carve a baked mackerel, first remove the head and tail by cutting downward at 1 and 2; then split them down the back, so as to serve each person a part of each side piece. The roe should be divided in small pieces and served with each piece of fish. Other whole fish may be carved in the same manner. The fish is laid upon a little sauce or folded napkin, on a hot dish, and garnished with parsley.
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.
Put sixteen yolks with half a pound butter melted, grate in the rinds of two Seville oranges, beat in half pound of fine Sugar, add two spoons orange water, two of rose-water, one gill of wine, half pint cream, two naples biscuit or the crumbs of a fine loaf, or roll soaked in cream, mix all together, put it into rich puff-paste, which let be double round the edges of the dish; bake like a custard.
Take some slices of a rump (or any other tender piece) of beef, and beat them with a paste pin, season them with nutmeg, pepper and salt, and rub them over with the yolk of an egg; make a little forc'd-meat of veal, beef-suet, a few bread crumbs, sweet-herbs, a little shred mace, pepper, salt, and two eggs, mixed all together; take two or three slices of the beef, according as they are in bigness, and a lump of forc'd-meat the size of an egg; lay your beef round it, and roll it in part of a kell of veal, put it into an earthen dish, with a little water, a glass of claret, and a little onion shred small; lay upon them a little butter, and bake them in an oven about an hour; when they come out take off the fat, and thicken the gravy with a little butter and flour; six of them is enough for a side dish. Garnish the dish with horseradish and pickles. You may make olives of veal the same way.
Boil a cup of rice soft in hot water. Shake it now and then, but do not stir it. Drain it, add a little milk in which a beaten egg has been mixed, one teaspoon of butter, and a little pepper and salt. Simmer for five minutes, and if the rice has not absorbed all the milk, drain it again. Put the rice around a dish, smooth it into a wall, wash it over with the yolk of a beaten egg, and put it into the oven until firm. Take the strained juice and pulp of seven or eight tomatoes, season with pepper, a little salt and sugar, and one-half of a chopped-up onion; stew for twenty minutes, then stir in one tablespoon of butter and two tablespoons of fine bread crumbs. Stew three or four minutes to thicken, and then pour the tomatoes into the dish, in the middle of the rice, and serve.
