Read Ebook: A little cook book for a little girl by Benton Caroline French

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Ebook has 271 lines and 13233 words, and 6 pages

he bunch again, and cut enough off the white ends to make all the pieces the same length. Stand them in boiling water in a porcelain kettle, and cook gently for about twenty minutes. Lay on a platter on squares of buttered toast, and pour over the toast and the tips of the asparagus a cup of cream sauce. Or do not put it on toast, but pour melted butter over the tips after it is on the platter. To make it delicious, mix the juice of a lemon with the butter.

Sometimes put a little grated cheese on the ends last of all.

Onions

Peel off the outside skin and cook them in boiling, salted water till they are tender; drain them, put them in a baking-dish, and pour over them a tablespoonful of melted butter, three shakes of pepper, and a sprinkling of salt, and put in the oven and brown a very little. Or, cover them with a cup of white sauce instead of the melted butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, but do not put in the oven.

Corn

Strip off the husks and silk, and put in a kettle of boiling water and boil hard for fifteen minutes; do not salt the water, as salt makes corn tough. Put a napkin on a platter with one end hanging over the end; lay the corn on and fold the end of the napkin over to keep it warm.

Canned Corn

Turn the corn into the colander and pour water through it a moment. Heat a cup of milk with a tablespoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of salt, and three shakes of pepper, and mix with the corn and cook for two minutes. Or, put in a buttered baking-dish and brown in the oven. Many people never wash corn; it is better to do so.

Sometimes Margaret had boiled rice for dinner in place of potatoes, and then she looked back at the recipe she used when she cooked it for breakfast, and made it in just the same way. Very often in winter she had--

Macaroni

Break up the macaroni into small pieces, and boil fifteen minutes in salted water, shaking the dish often. Pour off the water and hold the dish under the cold-water faucet until all the paste is washed off the outside of the macaroni, which will take only a minute if you turn it over once or twice. Butter a baking-dish, put in a layer of macaroni, a good sprinkle of salt, then a very little white sauce, and a layer of grated cheese, sprinkled over with a tiny dusting of paprika, or sweet red pepper, if you have it; only use a tiny bit. Then cover with a thin layer of white sauce, and so on till the dish is full, with the last layer of white sauce covered with an extra thick one of cheese. Bake till brown.

Margaret's mother got this rule in Paris, and she though it a very nice one.

After the soup, meat, and vegetables at dinner came the salad; for this Margaret almost always had lettuce, with French dressing, as mayonnaise seemed too heavy for dinner. Sometimes she had nice watercress; once in a long time she had celery with mayonnaise.

DESSERTS

Corn-starch Pudding

Beat the whites of the eggs very stiff. Mix the corn-starch with half a cup of the milk, and stir till it melts. Mix the rest of the milk and the sugar, and put them on the fire in the double boiler. When it bubbles, stir up the corn-starch and milk well, and stir them in and cook and stir till it gets as thick as oatmeal mush; then turn in the eggs and stir them lightly, and cook for a minute more. Take it off the stove, mix in the vanilla, and put in a mould to cool. When dinner is ready, turn it out on a platter and put small bits of red jelly around it, or pieces of preserved ginger, or a pretty circle of preserved peaches, or preserved pineapple. Have a pitcher of cream to pass with it, or have a nice bowl of whipped cream. If you have a ring-mould, let it harden in that, and have the whipped cream piled in the centre after it is on the platter, and put the jelly or preserves around last.

Chocolate Corn-starch Pudding

Use the same rule as before, but put in one more tablespoonful of sugar. Then shave thin two squares of Baker's chocolate, and stir in over the teakettle till it melts, and stir it in very thoroughly before you put in the eggs. Instead of pouring this into one large mould, put it in egg-cups to harden; turn these out carefully, each on a separate plate, and put a spoonful of whipped cream by each one.

Cocoanut Corn-starch Pudding

Make the first rule; before you put in the eggs, stir in a cup of grated cocoanut, with an extra spoonful of sugar, or a cup of that which comes in packages without more sugar, as it is already sweetened. Serve in a large mould, or in small ones, with cream.

Baked Custard

Beat the eggs till they are light; mix the milk and sugar till the sugar melts; put the two together, and put it into a nice baking-dish, or into small cups, and dust the nutmeg over the tops. Bake till the top is brown, and till when you put a knife-blade into the custard it comes out clean.

Cocoanut Custard

Add a cup of cocoanut to this rule and bake it in one dish, stirring it up two or three times from the bottom, but, after it begins to brown, leaving it alone to finish. Do not put any nutmeg on it.

Tapioca Pudding

Put the tapioca into a small half-cup of water and let it stand one hour. Then drain it and put it in the milk in the double boiler, and cook and stir it till the tapioca looks clear, like glass. Beat the eggs and mix the sugar with them, and beat again till both are light, and put them with the milk and tapioca and cook three minutes, stirring all the time. Then take it off the fire and add a saltspoonful of salt and a half-teaspoonful of vanilla, and let it get perfectly cold.

Floating Island

Put the milk on the stove to heat in a good-sized pan. Beat the whites of the eggs very stiff, and as soon as the milk scalds,--that is, gets a little wrinkled on top,--drop spoonfuls of the egg on to it in little islands; let them stand there to cook just one minute, and then with the skimmer take them off and lay them on a plate. Put the milk where it will keep hot but not boil while you beat the yolks of the eggs stiff, mixing in the sugar and beating that, too. Pour the milk into the bowl of egg, a little at a time, beating all the while, and then put it in the double boiler and cook till it is as thick as cream. Take it off the fire, stir in a saltspoonful of salt and half a teaspoonful of vanilla, and set it away to cool. When it is dinner-time, strain the custard into a pretty dish and slip the whites off the top, one by one. If you like, you can dot them over with very tiny specks of red jelly.

Cake and Custard

Make a plain boiled custard, just as before, with--

Beat the eggs and sugar, add the hot milk, and cook till creamy, put in the salt and vanilla, and cool. Then cut stale cake into strips, or split lady-fingers into halves, and spread with jam. Put them on the sides and bottom of a flat glass dish, and gently pour the custard over.

Brown Betty

Peel, core, and slice six apples. Butter a baking-dish and sprinkle the inside all over with fine bread-crumbs. Then take six very thin slices of buttered bread and line the sides and bottom of the dish. Put a layer of apples an inch thick, a thin layer of brown sugar, six bits of butter, and a dusting of cinnamon, another layer of crumbs, another of apples and sugar, and so on till the dish is full, with crumbs and butter on top, and three tablespoonfuls of molasses poured over. Bake this one hour, and have hard sauce to eat with it.

Lemon Pudding

Wet the corn-starch with half a cup of the milk, and heat what is left. Stir up the corn-starch well, and when the milk is hot put it in and stir; then boil five minutes, stirring all the time. Melt the butter, and put that in with a pinch of salt, and cool it. Beat the yolks of the eggs, and add the sugar, the juice of both lemons, and the grated rind of one, pour into the milk, and stir well; put in a buttered baking-dish and bake till slightly brown. Take it out of the oven; beat the whites of two eggs with a tablespoonful of granulated sugar, and pile lightly on top, and put in the oven again till it is just brown. This is a very nice rule.

Rice Pudding with Raisins

Wash the rice and the raisins and stir everything together till the sugar dissolves. Then put it in a baking-dish in the oven. Every little while open the door and see if a light brown crust is forming on top, and, if it is, stir the pudding all up from the bottom and push down the crust. Keep on doing this till the rice swells and makes the milk all thick and creamy, which it will after about an hour. Then let the pudding cook, and when it is a nice deep brown take it out and let it get very cold.

Bread Pudding

Crumb the bread evenly and soak in the milk till soft. Beat it till smooth, and put in the beaten yolks of the eggs, the sugar, vanilla, and salt, and last the beaten white of the egg. Put it in a buttered pudding-dish, and stand this in a pan of hot water in the oven for fifteen minutes. Take it out and spread its top with jam, and cover with the beaten white of the other egg, with one tablespoonful of granulated sugar put in it, and brown in the oven. You can eat this as it is, or with cream, and you may serve it either hot or cold.

Sometimes you can put a cup of washed raisins into the bread-crumbs and milk, and mix in the other things; sometimes you can put in a cup of chopped almonds, or a little preserved ginger. Orange marmalade is especially nice on bread pudding.

Orange Pudding

Make just like Lemon Pudding, but use three oranges instead of two lemons.

Cabinet Pudding

Beat the eggs, add the sugar, and stir them into the milk, which must be very hot but not boiling; stir till it thickens, and then take it from the fire. Put a layer of washed raisins in the bottom of a mould, then a layer of slices of stale cake or lady-fingers, then more raisins around the edge of the mould, and more cake, till the mould is full. Pour the custard over very slowly, so the cake will soak well, and bake in a pan of water in the oven for an hour. This pudding is to be eaten hot, with any sauce you like, such as Foamy Sauce.

Cut-up figs are nice to use with the raisins, and chopped nuts are a delicious addition, dropped between the layers of the cake.

Cottage Pudding

Beat the yolk of the egg light, add the sugar and butter mixed, then put in the milk, the flour, the whites of the eggs beaten stiff, and last of all the baking-powder, and stir it up well. Put in a greased pan and bake nearly half an hour. If you want this very nice, put in half a cup of chopped figs, mixed with part of the flour.

Serve with Foamy Sauce.

Prune Whips

This was a cooking-school rule which the Pretty Aunt put in, because she said it was the best sort of pudding for little girls to make.

Cook the prunes till soft, take out the stones, and mash the prunes fine. Beat the white of the egg very stiff, mix in the sugar and prunes, and bake in small buttered dishes. Serve hot or cold, with cream.

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