Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper. Catharine Esther Beecher
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Flour Blanc-Mange.—Wet up six table-spoonfuls of flour to a thin paste with cold milk, and stir it into a pint of boiling milk. Flavor with lemon-peel or peach-leaves boiled in the milk. Add a pinch of salt, cool it in a mold, and eat with sweetened cream and sweetmeats.
Orange Marmalade.—Take two lemons and a dozen oranges; grate the yellow rinds of all the oranges but five, and set it aside. Make a clear sirup of an equal weight of sugar. Clear the oranges of rind and seeds, put them with the grated rinds into the sirup, and boil about twenty minutes till it is a transparent mass.
A simple Lemon Jelly, (easily made.)—One ounce of gelatine. A pound and a half of loaf-sugar. Three lemons, pulp, skin, and juice, grated.
Pour a quart of boiling water upon the isinglass, add the rest, mix and strain it, then add a glass of wine, and pour it to cool in some regular form. If the lemons are not fresh, add a little cream of tartar or tartaric acid.
Cranberry.—Pour boiling water on them, and then you can easily separate the good and the bad. Boil them in a very little water till soft, then sweeten to your taste. If you wish a jelly, take a portion and strain through a fine sieve.
Apple Ice, (very fine.)—Take finely-flavored apples, grate them fine, and then make them very sweet, and freeze them. It is very delicious.
Pears, peaches, or quinces also are nice, either grated fine or stewed and run through a sieve, then sweetened very sweet, and frozen. The flavor is much better preserved when grated than when cooked.
Whip Syllabub.—One pint of cream. Sifted white sugar to your taste. Half a tumbler of white wine. The grated rind and juice of one lemon. Beat all to a stiff froth.
Apple Snow.—Put six very tart apples in cold water over a slow fire. When soft, take away the skins and cores and mix in a pint of sifted white sugar; beat the whites of six eggs to a stiff froth, and then add them to the apples and sugar. Put it in a dessert-dish and ornament with myrtle and box.
Iced Fruit.—Take fine bunches of currants on the stalk, dip them in well-beaten whites of eggs, lay them on a sieve and sift white sugar over them, and set them in a warm place to dry.
Ornamental Froth.—The whites of four eggs in a stiff froth, put into the sirup of preserved raspberries or strawberries, beaten well together, and turned over ice-cream or blanc-mange. Make white froth to combine with the colored in fanciful ways. It can be put on the top of boiling milk, and hardened to keep its form.
To clarify Isinglass.—Dissolve an ounce of isinglass in a cup of boiling water, take off the scum, and drain through a coarse cloth. Jellies, candies, and blanc-mange should be done in brass and stirred with silver.
Blanc-Mange.—Two and a half sheets of gelatine broken into one quart of milk; put in a warm place and stir till it dissolves. An ounce and a half of clarified isinglass stirred into the milk. Sugar to your taste. A tea-spoonful of fine salt. Flavor with lemon, or orange, or rose-water. Let it boil, stirring it well, then strain it into molds.
Three ounces of almonds pounded to a paste and added while boiling is an improvement. Or filberts or hickory-nuts can be skinned and used thus. It can be flavored by boiling in it a vanilla bean or a stick of cinnamon. (Save the bean to use again.)
Apple Jelly.—Boil tart peeled apples in a little water till glutinous; strain out the juice, and put a pound of white sugar to a pint of the juice. Flavor to your taste, boil till a good jelly, and then put it into molds.
Orange Jelly.—The juice of nine oranges and three lemons. The grated rind of one lemon, and one orange, pared thin. Two quarts of water, and four ounces of gelatine broken up and boiled in it to a jelly. Add the above, and sweeten to your taste. Then add the whites of eight eggs, well beaten to a stiff froth, and boil ten minutes; strain and put into molds, first dipped in cold water. When perfectly cold, dip the mold in warm water, and turn on to a glass dish.
Floating Island.—Beat the yelks of six eggs with the juice of four lemons, sweeten it to your taste, and stir it into a quart of boiling milk till it thickens, then pour it into a dish. Whip the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and put it on the top of the cream.
A Dish of Snow.—Grate the white part of cocoa-nut, put it in a glass dish, and serve with oranges sliced and sugared, or with currant or cranberry jellies.
To clarify Sugar.—Take four pounds of sugar, and break it up. Whisk the white of an egg, and put it with a tumblerful of water into a preserving-pan, and add water gradually till you have two quarts, stirring well. When there is a good frothing, throw in the sugar, boil moderately, and skim it. If the sugar rises to run over, throw in a little cold water, and then skim it, as it is then still. Repeat this, and when no more scum rises, strain the sugar for use.
Candied Fruits.—Preserve the fruit, then dip it in sugar boiled to candy thickness, and then dry it. Grapes and some other fruits may be dipped in uncooked, and then dried, and they are fine.
Another Way.—Take it from the sirup, when preserved, dip it in powdered sugar, and set it on a sieve in an oven to dry.
To make an Ornamental Pyramid for a Table.—Boil loaf-sugar as for candy, and rub it over a stiff form made for the purpose, of stiff paper or pasteboard, which must be well buttered. Set it on a table, and begin at the bottom, and stick on to this frame with the sugar, a row of macaroons, kisses, or other ornamental articles, and continue till the whole is covered. When cold, draw out the pasteboard form, and set the pyramid in the centre of the table with a small bit of wax-candle burning with it, and it looks very beautifully.
CHAPTER XIX.
DRINKS AND ARTICLES FOR THE SICK AND YOUNG CHILDREN.
Drinks made of the juice of fruits and water are good for all who are in health. Various preparations of cocoa-nuts are so also. Tea is often made or adulterated with unhealthful articles. Coffee is usually drank so strong as to injure children and grown persons of delicate constitution. All alcoholic drinks are dangerous, because they are so generally mixed with harmful matter, and because they so often lead to excess, and then to ruin. The common-sense maxim is, when there is danger, choose the safest course. The Christian maxim is, “We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.”
Obedience to these two maxims would save thousands of young children and delicate persons from following the dangerous example of those “that are strong.”
To make Tea.—The safest tea is the black, as less stimulating than green; both excite the brain and nerves when strong. The chief direction is to have water boiling hot. First soak the tea in a very little hot water, and then add boiling water.
To make Coffee.—Roast it slowly in a tight vessel, and so it can be stirred often. To roast all equally a dark brown and have none burned, is the main thing. Keep it in a tight box, or, better, grind it fresh when used. Clear it by putting into it, when making, a fresh egg-shell crushed, or the white of an egg, or a small bit of fish-skin. Some filter, and some boil; and there are coffee-pots made for each method, and some that require nothing put in to clear the coffee. The aroma is retained just in proportion as the coffee is confined, both before making and also while making.
Fish-skin for Coffee.—Take it from codfish before cooking; have it nice and dry. Cut in inch squares, and take one for two quarts of coffee.
Cocoa.—The cracked is best. Put two table-spoonfuls of it into three pints of cold water. Boil an hour for first use, save the remnants and boil it again, as it is very strong. Do this several times. For ground