After having washed and picked over the berries, stew them well in a little water, just enough to cover them; when they burst open and become soft, sweeten them with plenty of sugar, mash them smooth (some prefer them not mashed); line your pie-plates with thin puff paste, fill them and lay strips of paste across the top. Bake in a moderate oven. Or you may rub them through a colander to free them from the skins.
One pint of shelled chestnuts, one quart of stock, one teaspoonful of lemon juice, one table-spoonful of flour, two of butter, salt, pepper. Boil the chestnuts in water for about three minutes; then plunge them into cold water, and rub off the dark skins. Put them on to cook with the stock, and boil gently until they will mash readily (it will take about an hour). Mash as fine as possible. Put the butter and flour in a sauce-pan and cook until a dark brown. Stir into the sauce, and cook two minutes. Add the seasoning, and rub all through a sieve. This sauce is for roast turkey. When, to be served with boiled turkey, use only a pint and a half of stock; rub the butter and flour together, and stir into the boiling mixture; rub through the sieve as before; add half a pint of cream to the sauce; return to the fire, boil up once, and serve. The chestnuts used are twice as large as the native fruit All first-class provision dealers and grocers keep them.
Larding is a simple operation. The pork should be firm and young (salt, of course). Cut thin, even slices parallel with the rind, and cut these in long, narrow strips that will fit into the needle. For beef, veal, turkey or chicken the strips should be about as large round as a lead pencil, and about three and a half inches long; and for birds, chops, and sweetbreads they should be about as large round as a match. Three slices are all that can be cut from one piece of pork, because when you get more than an inch away from the rind, the pork is so tender that it will break when in the needle. Put the strips in a bowl of broken ice, to harden. Have the meat, if beef or veal, free of skin and gristle. Put a strip (also called a lardoon) into the needle as far as it will go. With a skewer or knife draw a line on both sides of the meat and along the upper part. Thrust the needle into the meat at one of the side lines; and when it is about half way through to the top of the piece, press the steel slightly with the thumb and fore-finger, to hold the lardoon in place until it has entered the meat. Now push the needle through to the top, and gently draw it out, leaving about three-quarters of an inch of the strip exposed at both the side and upper part of the meat That part of the pork which is hidden should be half an inch under the surface. The needle's course is as if it started under the eaves of a gable roof and came out at the ridge-pole. Continue until all the rows are filled with lardoons. Two rows are enough for a fillet of beef. If the strips are too large for the needle they will be pressed out as soon as the lower part of the needle enters the meat.
Take a turkey, dress and truss it, then take down the breast-bone. To make Stuffing for the Breast. Take beef-suet, the liver shred fine, and bread-crumbs, a little lemon-peel, nutmeg, pepper and salt to your taste, a little shred parsley, a spoonful or two of cream, and two eggs. Put her on a spit and roast her before a slow fire; you may lard your turkey with fat bacon; if the turkey be young, an hour and a quarter will roast it. For the sauce, take a little white gravy, an onion, a few bread-crumbs, and a little whole pepper, let them boil well together, put to them a little flour and a lump of butter, which pour upon the turkey; you may lay round your turkey forc'd-meat-balls. Garnish your dish with slices of lemon.
In the first place, the eggs should be cold, and the platter on which they are to be beaten also cold. Allow, for the white of one egg, one small teacupful of powdered sugar. Break the eggs and throw a small handful of the sugar on them as soon as you begin beating; keep adding it at intervals until it is all used up. The eggs must not be beaten until the sugar has been added in this way, which gives a smooth, tender frosting, and one that will dry much sooner than the old way. Spread with a broad knife evenly over the cake, and if it seems too thin, beat in a little more sugar. Cover the cake with two coats, the second after the first has become dry, or nearly so. If the icing gets too dry or stiff before the last coat is needed, it can be thinned sufficiently with a little water, enough to make it work smoothly. A little lemon juice, or half a teaspoonful of tartaric acid, added to the frosting while being beaten, makes it white and more frothy. The flavors mostly used are lemon, vanilla, almond, rose, chocolate and orange. If you wish to ornament with figures or flowers, make up rather more icing, keep about one-third out until that on the cake is dried; then, with a clean glass syringe, apply it in such forms as you desire and dry as before; what you keep out to ornament with may be tinted pink with cochineal, blue with indigo, yellow with saffron or the grated rind of an orange strained through a cloth, green with spinach juice and brown with chocolate, purple with cochineal and indigo. Strawberry, or currant and cranberry juices color a delicate pink. Set the cake in a cool oven with the door open to dry, or in a draught in an open window.
With roast beef: tomato sauce, grated horse-radish, mustard, cranberry sauce, pickles. With roast pork: apple sauce, cranberry sauce. With roast veal: tomato sauce, mushroom sauce, onion sauce and cranberry sauce. Horse-radish and lemons are good. With roast mutton: currant jelly, caper sauce. With boiled mutton: onion sauce, caper sauce. With boiled fowls: bread sauce, onion sauce, lemon sauce, cranberry sauce, jellies. Also cream sauce. With roast lamb: mint sauce. With roast turkey: cranberry sauce, currant jelly. With boiled turkey: oyster sauce. With venison or wild ducks: cranberry sauce, currant jelly, or currant jelly warmed with port wine. With roast goose: apple sauce, cranberry sauce, grape or currant jelly. With boiled fresh mackerel: stewed gooseberries. With boiled blue fish: white cream sauce, lemon sauce. With broiled shad: mushroom sauce, parsley or egg sauce. With fresh salmon: green peas, cream sauce. Pickles are good with all roast meats, and in fact are suitable accompaniments to all kinds of meats in general. Spinach is the proper accompaniment to veal; green peas to lamb. Lemon juice makes a very grateful addition to nearly all the insipid members of the fish kingdom. Slices of lemon cut into very small dice and stirred into drawn butter and allowed to come to the boiling point, served with fowls, is a fine accompaniment.
Pour boiling water on a pint of bread crumbs; melt a tablespoonful of butter and stir in. When the bread is softened, add two eggs and beat thoroughly with the bread. Then put in a pint of the stewed fruit and sweeten to your taste. Fresh fruit of many kinds can be used instead of cranberries. Slices of peaches put in layers are delicious. Serve with sweet sugar sauce.
Take a little strong white gravy, with some of the whitest sellery you can get, cut it about an inch long, boil it whilst it be tender, and put it into the gravy, with two anchovies, a little lemon-peel shred, two or three spoonfuls of cream, a little shred mace, and a spoonful of white wine; thicken it up with flour and butter; if you dislike the sellery you may put in the liver as you did for chickens.
Soak a small loaf of bread; press out every drop of water, work into this one cup of suet shaved very fine, the yolks of six eggs, one cup of currants, one cup of raisins seeded, one-half cup of citron shredded fine, three-quarters cup of syrup, one wineglass of brandy, one cup of sifted flour and the stiffly-beaten whites of eggs last. Boil four hours in greased melon mold.
Make a force-meat of grated bread-crumbs, minced suet, sweet marjoram, grated lemon-peel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and beaten yolk of egg. You may add some grated cold ham. Light some writing paper, and singe the hairs from the skin of the turkey. Reserve the neck, liver, and gizzard for the gravy. Stuff the craw of the turkey with the force-meat, of which there should be enough made to form into balls for frying, laying them round the turkey when it is dished. Dredge it with flour, and roast it before a clear brisk fire, basting it with cold lard. Towards the last, set the turkey nearer to the fire, dredge it again very lightly with flour, and baste it with butter. It will require, according to its size, from two to three hours roasting. Make the gravy of the giblets cut in pieces, seasoned, and stewed for two hours in a very little water; thicken it with a spoonful of browned flour, and stir into it the gravy from the dripping-pan, having first skimmed off the fat. A turkey should be accompanied by ham or tongue. Serve up with it mushroom-sauce. Have stewed cranberries on the table to eat with it. Do not help any one to the legs, or drum-sticks as they are called. Turkeys are sometimes stuffed entirely with sausage-meat. Small cakes of this meat should then be fried, and laid round it. To bone a turkey, you must begin with a very sharp knife at the top of the wings, and scrape the flesh loose from the bone without dividing or cutting it to pieces. If done carefully and dexterously, the whole mass of flesh may be separated from the bone, so that you can take hold of the head and draw out the entire skeleton at once. A large quantity of force-meat having been prepared, stuff it hard into the turkey, restoring it by doing so to its natural form, filling out the body, breast, wings and legs, so as to resemble their original shape when the bones were in. Roast or bake it; pouring a glass of port wine into the gravy. A boned turkey is frequently served up cold, covered with lumps of currant jelly; slices of which are laid round the dish. Any sort of poultry or game may be boned and stuffed in the same manner, A cold turkey that has not been boned is sometimes sent to table larded all over the breast with slips of fat bacon, drawn through the flesh with a larding needle, and arranged in regular form.
