Tuesday 28 June 2016

11 September 1880 - Answers to Correspondents - Cookery

M.S.T. - 1. To make a "corn dodger," pour boiling water on one quart of Indian meal till all be wet, but no water about it. Add two tablespoonfuls of flour and one teaspoonful of salt. Mix well and spread it smoothly on a plate or pan previously heated and oiled. Then set on the fire, and as soon as able pass a knife under the paste to turn it; and lastly, stand it up before the fire to toast. 2. "Imperial" is very easily made. Take cream of tartar 1/2 oz, lemon peel 3 oz, white sugar 4 oz, boiling water 3 pints. Mix all together, cover, and leave it to cool. It is a good beverage in cases of fever, or for ordinary use in hot weather.

LOTTIE - "Frumenty," otherwise called "furmety" and "frumenty," is popular in counties besides Lincolnshire. It consists of wheat boiled first in water and then in milk, with a little admixture of flour. Sugar and spice are added, and sometimes currants, raisins, eggs and lemon peel.

JEMIMA - To make lemon-kali, use of powdered white sugar 1/2 lb, tartaric acid and carbonate of soda of each 1/4 lb, and 40 drops of essence of lemon. Add the latter to the sugar, and mix well. Then the other powder; and having dried it well, pass through a sieve, and keep in a closely-corked bottle. A teaspoonful will suffice for a small tumbler of water, until it concretes into small grains, like salt of tartar; and pearlash is of the some nature. Your writing is not at all well formed, and we should imagine that you have been more in the habit of writing in the German character.

KITTY - Water and cream ices are of many kinds respectively, and one example of each must suffice. A strawberry water-ice is made thus: Pick 1 lb of strawberries and 4 oz of red currants; bruise all together, with a gill of syrup, in a basin with a wooden spoon, and rub the fruit through a hair sieve into another basin. Then add a pint of syrup, freeze, and set up. To make the same fruit into cream-ice, bruise a pound of them with 8 oz of sifted white sugar, rub through a hair sieve, add the pulp to a pint of thick cream, freeze, and serve. To make current and raspberry cream-ice, bruise 1 lb of red currants and 1/2 lb of raspberries, with 10 oz of sifted sugar; stir in a sugar boiler on the fire until it begins to simmer; then rub the fruit through the sieve, mix the pulp with a pint of cream, and freeze it.

ZARA - 1. To pot shrimps, remove the tails from the shells of a quart of shrimps freshly boiled. Pound the shells in a mortar with 4 oz of clarified butter, a small blade of mace, a teaspoonful of anchovy, and a little cayenne pepper. Place all in a stewpan with a small quantity of bruised lobster spawn, and stir over the fire for about eight minutes. Then rub it through a coarse hair sieve, and then add the tails. Make all hot together and fill the pots, covering with clarified butter. Lay them by in a cool place. 2. To glaze either a tongue or ham, boil a shin of beef for twelve hours in eight or ten quarts of water, and draw the gravy from a knuckle of veal in the same way. Put in spices and herbs, and add all to the shin of beef. Boil till reduced to a quart, and, when required, warm a little and spread it over the tongue or ham with a feather. It will keep good for a year in a cold place.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS - 1. For a rich "Shrewsbury cake" take 1 lb of flour, 10 oz of finely-powdered loaf sugar, 10 oz of butter, 1/2 a nutmeg, grated, the same quantity of ground cinnamon, and two eggs. For a common one take 12 oz of flour, 4 oz of butter, 4 oz powdered loaf sugar, one egg, and sufficient milk to make a paste. If lightness be desired, add 1 dram of finely-powdered volatile salt. Rub the butter in with the flour till reduced to fine crumbs; and make a hollow, into which pour the milk, sugar, eggs, and spice. Make a moderately firm paste, roll out to about one-eighth of an inch in thickness; then divide into cakes with a round butter. Lay on buttered baking sheets, and bake in a cool oven.

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