The old method of boiling coffee is still practised by at least one- half the housekeepers in this country. The coffee is sometimes boiled with an egg, which makes it perfectly clear, and also enriches it. When an egg is not used a small piece of salt fish skin is boiled with the coffee to clear it. Directions for making: A small cupful of roasted and ground coffee, one-third Mocha and two-thirds Java; a small egg, shell and all, broken into the pot with the dry coffee. Stir veil with a spoon, and then pour on three pints of boiling water. Let it boil from five to ten minutes, counting from the time it begins to boil. As soon as it has boiled enough, pour in a cupful of cold water, and turn a little of the coffee into a cup, to see that the nozzle of the pot is not filled with grounds. Turn this back, and let the coffee stand a few moments to settle, taking care that it does not boil again. The advantages of boiled coffee are that when the egg is used the yolk gives a very rich flavor, and when the milk or cream is added the coffee has a rich, yellow look, which is pleasing. It has also a peculiar flavor, which many people prefer to the flavor gained by any other process. The disadvantages are that the egg coats the dry coffee, and when the hot water is added the coating becomes hard, and a great deal of the best of the coffee remains in the grounds after boiling. Also, in boiling, much of the fine flavor is lost in the steam that escapes from the pot.
You can buy very nice, fresh crab meat in tins, and the shells also. A very delicious dish is made by mixing a cup of rich cream sauce with the crab meat, seasoning it well with salt and pepper and putting in the crab-shells; cover with crumbs, dot with butter, and brown in the oven. This is a nice thing to have for a company luncheon.
Take a little of the liquor that comes from the pike when you take it out of the oven, put to it two or three anchovies, a little lemon-peel shred, a spoonful or two of white wine, or a little juice of lemon, which you please, put to it some butter and flour, make your sauce about the thickness of cream, put it into a bason or silver-boat, and set in your dish with your pike, you may lay round your pike any sort of fried fish, or broiled, if you have it; you may have the same sauce for a broiled pike, only add a little good gravy, a few shred capers, a little parsley, and a spoonful or two of oyster and cockle pickle if you have it.
Cut cold, cooked salmon into dice. Heat about a pint of the dice in half a pint of cream. Season to taste with cayenne pepper and salt. Fill the shells and serve. Cold, cooked fish of any kind may be made into patties in this way. Use any fish sauce you choose--all are equally good.
Take a cucumber and cut it in pieces two inches long, then peel away the dark green skin for one inch, leaving the other inch as it was. Set up each piece on end, scoop it out till nearly the bottom and fill up with bits of cold salmon or lobster in mayonnaise sauce. Cold turbot or any other delicate fish will do equally well or a small turret of whipped cream, slightly salted, should be piled on top. This dish never fails to please.
Six large potatoes, one pint and one cupful of milk, two table- spoonfuls of butter, a small slice of onion (about the size of a silver quarter), one pint of cooked salt codfish, salt, pepper, one large table-spoonful of flour. Pare the potatoes and boil half an hour; then drain off the water, and mash them light and fine. Add the salt, pepper, one table-spoonful of butter, and the cupful of milk, which has been allowed to come to a boil. Beat very thoroughly, and spread a thin layer of the potatoes on the centre of a hot platter. Heap the remainder around the edge, making a wall to keep in the cream and fish, which should then be poured in. Garnish the border with parsley, and serve. To prepare the fish: Put the pint of milk on to boil with the onion. Mix flour and butter together, and when well mixed, add two table- spoonfuls of the hot milk. Stir all into the boiling milk, skim out the onion, add the fish, and cook ten minutes. Season with pepper, and if not salty enough, with salt. This is a nice dish for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Prepare the asparagus as before directed. Season a quart of cooked salmon with one teaspoonful of salt, one-third of a teaspoonful of pepper, three table-spoonfuls of oil, one of vinegar and two of lemon juice. Let this stand in the ice chest at least two hours. Arrange the salmon in the centre of the dish and the asparagus points around it. Cover the fish with one cupful of mayonnaise dressing. Garnish the dish with points of lemon. Green peas can be used instead of asparagus.
Bake three layers of almond tart and flavor it with a wine glass of arrack. When baked, scrape part of the cake out of the thickest layer, not disturbing the rim, and reserve these crumbs to add to the following filling: Boil one-half pound of sugar in one-fourth cup of water until it spins a thread. Add to this syrup a wine glass of rum, and the crumbs, and spread over the layers, piling one on top of the other. Another way to fill this cake is to take some crab-apple jelly or apple marmalade and thin it with a little brandy.
Ices are too often regarded as expensive luxuries, and show how completely custom rules the majority of our housekeepers. There are many houses where the dinner may consist daily of soup, fish, entrees, joint, game, and wine, and yet, were we to suggest a course of ices, the worthy housekeeper would hesitate on the ground of extravagance. It is difficult to argue with persons whose definition of economy is what they have always been accustomed to since they were children, and whose definition of extravagance is anything new. The fact remains, however, that there is many a worthy signor who sells ices in the streets at a penny each, and manages to make a living out of the profit not only for himself, but for his signora as well. Under these circumstances, the manufacture of these "extravagances" is worthy of inquiry. Ices can be made at home very cheaply with an ice machine, which can now be obtained at a, comparatively speaking, small cost. With a machine there is absolutely no trouble, and directions will be given with each machine, so that any details here, which vary with the machine, will be useless. Ices can be made at home without a machine with a little trouble, and, to explain how to do this, it is necessary to explain the theory of ice-making, which is exceedingly simple. We will not allude to machines dependent on freezing-powders, but to those which rely for their cold simply on ice and salt mixed. We will suppose we want a lemon-water ice, i.e., we have made some very strong and sweet lemonade, and we want to freeze it. It is well known that water will freeze at a certain temperature, called freezing-point. By mixing chopped ice and salt and a very little water together, a far greater degree of cold can be immediately produced, viz., a thermometer would stand at 32 degrees below freezing-point were it to be plunged into this mixture. An ice machine is a metal pail placed in another pail much larger than itself. The "sweet lemonade" is placed in the middle pail, and chopped ice and salt placed outside it. The proportion of ice to salt should be double the weight of the former to the latter. It is now obvious that if we have filled two pails, the one with "the sweet lemonade," and the other with the ice and salt, very soon our lemonade will be a solid block of ice. To prevent this it must be constantly stirred, and, as the lemonade would of course freeze first against the sides of the pail, these sides must be constantly scraped. Inside the inner pail, consequently, there is a stirrer, which, by means of a handle, continually scrapes the side of the pail. It is obvious that if the stirrer is fixed, and the pail itself made to revolve, that is the same as if the pail were fixed and the stirrer made to revolve. To make lemon-water ice, therefore, place the lemonade in the inner pail, surrounded with chopped ice and salt, two parts of the former to one of the latter, turn the handle, and in a few minutes the ice is made. Now, suppose you have not got a machine, proceed as follows: Take an empty, clean, round coffee-tin (the larger the better). [We mention coffee-tin as the most probable one to be in the house, but any round tin will do.] Get a clean piece of wood, the same width as the inside diameter of the tin, only it must be a great deal longer. We will suppose the tin rather more than a foot deep and five inches in diameter. Our piece of wood, which should be clean and smooth, must be nearly five inches wide, say a quarter of an inch thick, and about two feet long. Next get a small tub, say nine inches deep, place the round tin in the middle, with the sweet lemonade inside; next place the piece of wood upright in the tin, so that the wood touches the bottom. Next surround the tin with chopped ice and salt up to the edge of the tub, fill it as high as you can, and then cover it round with a blanket, i.e., cover the ice and salt. Now get someone to hold the wooden board steady; take the tin in your two hands, and turn it round and round, first one way and then another. In a very short time you will find the tin to contain lemon-water ice. The following hints, rather than recipes, for making ices, i.e., for making the liquid, which must be frozen as directed above, are given, not because they are the best recipes, but because cream, which is the basis of all first-class ices, is often too expensive to be used constantly. Of course, real cream is far superior to any substitute.
Take cold roast or corned beef. Put it into a wooden bowl and chop it fine. Mix with it about twice the quantity of hot mashed potatoes well seasoned with butter and salt. Beat up an egg and work it into the potato and meat, then form the mixture into little cakes the size of fish balls. Flatten them a little, roll in flour or egg and cracker crumbs, fry in butter and lard mixed, browning on both sides. Serve piping hot.
