Boil some rice till it will press closely together. Fill some teacups with it, pressing the rice well down; then leave a hole in the middle and pour into each hole a small raw egg, yolk, and white. Set the tea-cups to cook in the oven, and when the eggs are just set and no more, press on them some more rice. Turn them out of the teacups, and if you have rubbed the inside of the cups with a little butter this will be easy, and sprinkle over the top of each mold plenty of chopped parsley. Do not forget salt and pepper to season the ingredients. [Pour la Patrie.]
Take four pounds of brisket, season with salt, pepper and ginger, add three tablespoons of tomatoes and an onion cut up. Cover with water in an iron pot and a close-fitting cover, put in oven and bake from three to four hours.
1/4 box gelatine. 1/2 pint of milk. 1 pint thick cream. 1/2 cup powdered sugar. 1 small teaspoonful vanilla.
Put the gelatine in the milk and stand on the stove till the gelatine is dissolved, stirring often. Then take it off, and beat with the egg-beater till cold. Beat the cream with the egg-beater till perfectly stiff, put in the sugar and vanilla, and mix with the milk, and set on ice in a mould. When you wish to use it, turn out and put lady-fingers split in halves all around it.
Four eggs, three-fourths of a cupful of pastry flour, half a cupful of powdered sugar. Have the bottom of three large baking pans covered with paraffin paper or sheets of buttered note paper. Beat the yolks of the eggs and the sugar to a froth. Beat the whites to a stiff, dry froth, and add to the yolks and sugar. Add the flour, and stir quickly and gently. Pour the mixture into the pastry bag, and press it through on to the paper in the shape and of the size you wish. When all the mixture has been used, sprinkle powdered sugar on the cakes, and bake from twelve to sixteen minutes in a very slow oven. Caution. The mixture must be stirred, after the flour is added, only enough to mix the flour lightly with the sugar and eggs. Much stirring turns the mixture liquid. If the oven is hot the fingers will rise and fall, and if too cool they will spread. It should be about half as hot as for bread. You will not succeed in using the pastry bag the first time, but a little practice will make it easy to get the forms wished. There are pans especially for baking lady-fingers. They are quite expensive.
Cut a young chicken down the back; wash and wipe dry; season with salt and pepper; put in a dripping-pan and bake in a moderate oven three-quarters of an hour. This is much better for traveling lunch than when seasoned with butter. All kinds of poultry and meat can be cooked quicker by adding to the water in which they are boiled a little vinegar or a piece of lemon. By the use of a little acid there will be a considerable saving of fuel, as well as shortening of time. Its action is beneficial on old tough meats, rendering them quite tender and easy of digestion. Tainted meats and fowls will lose their bad taste and odor if cooked in this way, and if not used too freely no taste of it will be acquired.
Unless you are provided with proper and convenient utensils and materials, the difficulty of preparing cakes will be great, and in most instances a failure; involving disappointment, waste of time, and useless expense. Accuracy in proportioning the ingredients is indispensable; and therefore scales and weights, and a set of tin measures (at least from a quart down to a jill) are of the utmost importance. A large sieve for flour is also necessary; and smaller ones for sugar and spice. There should be a marble mortar, or one of lignum vitae, (the hardest of all wood;) those of iron (however well, tinned) are apt to discolour the articles pounded in them. Spice may be ground in a mill kept, exclusively for that purpose. Every kitchen should be provided with spice-boxes. You should have a large grater for lemon, cocoa-nut, &c., and a small one for nutmeg. Butter and sugar cannot be stirred together conveniently without a spaddle or spattle, which is a round stick flattened at one end; and a deep earthen pan with sides nearly straight. For beating eggs, you should have hickory rods or a wire whip, and broad shallow earthen pans. Neither the eggs, nor the butter and sugar should be beaten, in tin, as the coldness of the metal will prevent them from becoming light. For baking large cakes, the pans (whether of block tin or earthen) should have straight sides; if the aides slope inward, there will be much difficulty in icing the cake. Pans with a hollow tube going up from the centre, are supposed to diffuse the heat more equally through the middle of the cake. Buns and some other cakes should be baked in square shallow pans of block tin or iron. Little tins for queen cakes, &c. are most convenient when of a round or oval shape. All baking pans, whether large or small, should be well greased with butter or lard before the mixture is put into them, and should be filled but little more than half. You should have at least two dozen little tins, that a second supply may be ready for the oven, the moment the first is taken out. You will also want tin cutters for cakes that are rolled out in dough. All the utensils should be cleaned and put away as soon as they are done with. They should be all kept together, and, if possible, not used for any other purposes. [Footnote: All the utensils necessary for cake and pastry-making, (and for the other branches of cooking,) may be purchased in Philadelphia; at Gideon Cox's household store in Market street, No. 335, two doors below Ninth. Every thing of the sort will be found there in great variety, of good quality, and at reasonable prices.] As it is always desirable that, cake-making should be commenced at an early hour, it is well on the day previous to ascertain if all the materials are in the house; that there may be no unnecessary delay from sending or waiting for them in the morning. Wastefulness is to be avoided in every thing; but it is utterly impossible that cakes can be good (or indeed any thing else) without a liberal allowance of good materials. Cakes are frequently rendered hard, heavy, and uneatable by a misplaced economy in eggs and butter; or tasteless and insipid for want of their due seasoning of spice, lemon, &c. Use no flour but the best superfine; if the flour is of inferior. quality, the cakes will he heavy, ill-coloured, and unfit to eat. Even the best flour should always be sifted. No butter that is not fresh and good; should ever be put into cakes; for it will give them a disagreeable taste which can never be disguised by the other ingredients. Even when of excellent quality, the butter will be improved by washing it in cold, water, and squeezing and pressing it. Except for gingerbread, use only white sugar, (for the finest cakes the best loaf,) and have it pulverized by pounding it in a mortar, or crushing it on the paste-board with the rolling-pin. It should then be sifted. In mixing butter and sugar, sift the sugar into a deep pan, cut up the butter in it, set it in a warm place to soften, and then stir it very hard with the spaddle, till it becomes quite light, and of the consistence of cream. In preparing eggs, break them one at a time, into a saucer, that, in case there should be a bad one among them, it may not spoil the others. Put them into a broad shallow pan, and beat them with rods or with a wire whisk, not merely till they froth, but long afterwards, till the froth subsides, and they become thick and smooth like boiled custard. White of egg by itself may be beaten with small rods, or with a three-pronged fork, or a broad knife. It is a very easy process, and should be continued till the liquid is all converted into a stiff froth so firm that it will not drop from the rods when held up. In damp weather it is sometimes difficult to get the froth stiff. The first thing to be done in making cake, is to weigh or measure all the ingredients. Next sift the flour, powder the sugar, pound or grind the spice, and prepare the fruit; afterwards mix and stir the butter and sugar, and lastly beat the eggs; as, if allowed to stand any time, they will fall and become heavy. When all the ingredients are mixed together, they should be stirred very hard at the last; and (unless there is yeast in the cake) the sooner it is put into the oven the better. While baking, no air should be admitted to it, except for a moment, now and then, when it is necessary to examine if it is baking properly, For baking; cakes, the best guide is practice and experience; so much depending on the state of the fire, that it is impossible to lay down any infallible rules. If you bake in a Dutch oven, let the lid be first heated by standing it up before the fire; and cover the inside of the bottom with sand or ashes, to temper the heat. For the same purpose, when you bake in a stove, place bricks under the pans. Sheets of iron without sides will be found very useful for baking small flat cakes. For cakes of this description, the fire should be brisk; if baked slowly, they will spread, lose their shape, and run into each other. For all cakes, the heat should be regular and even; if one part of the oven is cooler than another, the cake will bake imperfectly, and have heavy streaks through it. Gingerbread (on account of the molasses) is more apt to scorch and burn than any other cake; therefore it should he baked with a moderate fire. It is safest, when practicable, to send all large cakes to a professional baker's; provided they can be put immediately into the oven, as standing will spoil them. If you bake them at home, you will find that they are generally done when they cease to make a simmering noise; and when on probing them to the bottom with a twig from a broom, or with the blade of the knife, it comes out quite clean. The fire should then be withdrawn, and the cake allowed to get cold in the oven. Small cakes should be laid to cool on an inverted sieve. It may be recommended to novices in the art of baking, to do every thing in little tins or in very shallow pans; there being then less risk than with a large thick cake. In mixing batter that is to be baked in small cakes; use less proportion of flour. Small cakes should be kept' closely covered in stone jars. For large ones, you should have broad stone pans with close lids, or else tin boxes. All cakes that are made with yeast should be eaten quite fresh; so also should sponge cake. Some sorts may be kept a week; black cake much longer.
This spice cake is economical, easy to make and delicious, three qualities which must appeal to the housewife. Cream one cup of brown sugar and one-half cup of butter (or a little less of any butter substitute). Add one-half teaspoon of ground cloves and ground cinnamon, one cup of sour milk; one teaspoon of baking- soda, two cups of flour and one cup of raisins chopped. Have ready a warm oven and bake three-quarters of an hour.
1 cup butter. 1 cup sugar. 1 cup molasses. 1 cup milk. 1 cup currants. 1 cup raisins. 1 egg. 1 teaspoonful soda. 2 teaspoonfuls mixed spices. 3 cups flour.
Wash and dry the currants. Buy the seeded raisins and wash these, too, and then chop them. Cream the butter and sugar, add the egg beaten well without separating, then the molasses with the soda stirred in it, then the milk, then the cinnamon and cloves. Measure the flour, and then take out a half-cup of it, and stir in the raisins and currants, to keep them from going to the bottom of the cake when it is baked. Stir these in, add the rest of the flour, and beat well. Bake in two buttered bread-pans.
