Miss Leslie's Complete Cookery / Directions for Cookery, in Its Various Branches

by Eliza Leslie

CINNAMON CAKE.—

Take as much of the very best and lightest bread-dough as will weigh a pound. The dough must have risen perfectly, so as to have cracked all over the surface. Put it into a pan, and mix into it a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, melted in half a pint of milk, adding a well-beaten egg, and sufficient flour to enable you to knead the dough over again. Then mix in a heaping tea-spoonful of powdered cinnamon. Next, take a yeast-powder. In one cup, melt the soda or contents of the blue paper, in as much lukewarm water as will cover it; and, when thoroughly melted, mix it into the dough. Immediately after, having dissolved in another cup the tartaric acid, or contents of the white paper, stir that in also, and knead the dough a little while, till the whole is well mixed. Spread the dough thick and evenly in a square pan greased with lard or fresh butter, and with a knife make deep cuts all through it. Having previously prepared in a bowl a mixture of brown sugar, moistened with butter, and highly flavoured with powdered cinnamon, in the proportion of four heaping table-spoonfuls of sugar to two large spoonfuls of butter and one heaped tea-spoonful of cinnamon. Fill the cuts with this mixture, pressing it down well into the dough. Bake the cake half an hour or more, in a rather quick oven. When done, set it to cool; and when cold, cut it in squares, and sift powdered white sugar over it. It is best the day it is baked.

You may, previous to baking, form the dough into separate round cakes; and in placing them in the pan, do not lay them so near each other as to touch.

By bespeaking it in time, you can get risen bread dough from your baker. For two pounds of dough you must double the proportions of the above ingredients.

THAWING FROZEN MEAT, &c.—

If meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, or any other article of food, when found frozen, is thawed by putting it into warm water or placing it before the fire, it will most certainly spoil by that process, and be rendered unfit to eat. The only way is to thaw these things by immersing them in cold water. This should be done as soon as they are brought in from market, that they may have time to be well thawed before they are cooked. If meat that has been frozen is to be boiled, put it on in cold water. If to be roasted, begin by setting it at a distance from the fire; for if it should not chance to be thoroughly thawed all through to the centre, placing at first too near the fire will cause it to spoil. If it is expedient to thaw the meat or poultry the night before cooking, lay it in cold water early in the evening, and change the water at bed-time. If found crusted with ice in the morning, remove the ice, and put the meat in fresh cold water; letting it lie in it till wanted for cooking.

Potatoes are injured by being frozen. Other vegetables are not the worse for it, provided they are always thawed in cold water.

KEEPING MEAT, &c., IN SUMMER.—

In summer, meat, poultry, fish, fruit, &c., should always be kept in ice, from the time they are brought from market till it is time to cook them. Families, who have not an ice-house, should have two refrigerators; one for meat and poultry, the other for milk, butter, and fruit. If the three last articles are kept in the same refrigerator with meat and poultry, the milk, butter and fruit will imbibe a bad taste.

A barrel of salt fish should never be kept in the same cellar with other articles of food. The fish-smell will injure them greatly, and render them unwholesome; milk and butter particularly.

It is best to buy salt fish a little at a time, as you want it. A fish-barrel in the cellar will sometimes vitiate the atmosphere of the whole lower story of the house, and, indeed, may be smelt immediately on entering the door. In this case, let the barrel and its contents be conveyed to the river and thrown in; otherwise, its odour may produce sickness in the family.

Avoid eating anything that is in the very least approaching to decomposition. Even sour bread and strong butter are unwholesome as well as unpalatable. If the bread is sour, or the butter rancid, it is because (as the French, in such cases, unceremoniously say) "putrefaction has commenced." Fortunately, the vile practice (once considered fashionable) of eating venison and other game when absolutely tainted, is now obsolete at all good tables. Persons who have had opportunities of feasting on fresh-killed venison, just from the woods, and at a season when the deer have plenty of wild berries to feed on and are fat and juicy, can never relish the hard, lean, black haunches that are brought to the cities in winter.