TENCH. These are a fine flavoured fresh-water fish, and should be killed and dressed as soon as caught. They abound very much in the dykes of Lincolnshire. When they are to be bought, examine whether the gills are red and hard to open, the eyes bright, and the body stiff. The tench has a slimy matter about it, the clearness and brightness of which indicate freshness. The season for this delicate fish is July, August, and September. When to be dressed, put them into cold water, boil them carefully, and serve with melted butter and soy. They are also very fine stewed, or fricasseed, as follows. To fricassee tench white. Having cleaned your tench very well, cut off their heads, slit them in two, and if large, cut each half in three pieces, if small, in two: melt some butter in a stewpan, and put in your tench; dust in some flour, and pour in some boiling water, and a few mushrooms, and season it with salt, pepper, a bundle of sweet herbs, and an onion stuck with cloves: when this boils, pour in a pint of white wine boiling hot; let it stew till sufficiently wasted; take out the fish, and strain the liquor, saving the mushrooms; bind your fricassee with the yolk of three or four eggs beaten up with a little verjuice, some parsley chopped fine, and a little nutmeg grated; stir it all the time it boils, scum it very clean, pour your sauce over the fish, and send it to table.—To fricassee tench brown. Prepare your tench as in the other receipt; put some butter and flour into a stewpan, and brown it; then put in the tench with the same seasoning you did your white fricassee; when you have tossed them up, moisten them with a little fish broth; boil a pint of white wine, and put to your fricassee, stew it till enough, and properly wasted; then take the fish up, and strain the liquor, bind it with a brown cullis, and serve it up. If asparagus or artichokes are in season, you may boil these, and add them to your fricassee.
TENCH BROTH. Clean the fish, and set them on the fire with three pints of water; add some parsley, a slice of onion, and a few peppercorns. Simmer till the fish is broken, the broth become good, and reduced one half. Add some salt, and strain it off. Tench broth is very nutricious, and light of digestion.
THICK MILK. Beat up an egg, and add to it a tea spoonful of flour. Mix it smooth with a tea-spoonful of cold milk, and put to it a pint of boiling milk. Stir it over a slow fire till it boils, then pour it out, and add a little sugar and nutmeg. The saucepan should have a little cold water put into it first, to prevent the milk from burning at the bottom, or marbles boiled in it will answer the same purpose.
THICKENED GRAVY. To a quart of gravy allow a table-spoonful of thickening, or from one to two table-spoonfuls of flour, according to the thickness required. Put a ladleful of the gravy into a basin with the thickening, stir it up quick, add the rest by degrees, till it is all well mixed. Then pour it back into a stewpan, and leave it by the side of the fire to simmer for half an hour longer, that the thickening may be thoroughly incorporated with the gravy. Let it neither be too pale nor too dark a colour. If not thick enough, let it stew longer, or add to it a little glaze or portable soup. If too thick, it may be diluted with a spoonful or too of warm broth or water.
THICKENED SOUP. Put into a small stewpan three table-spoonfuls of the fat taken off the soup, and mix it with four table-spoonfuls of flour. Pour in a ladleful of the soup, mix it with the rest by degrees, and boil it up till it is smooth. This may be rendered more savoury by adding a little ketchup. The soup should be strained through a tammis.
THICKENING. Clarified butter is best for this purpose, or put some fresh butter into a stewpan over a slow clear fire. When it is melted, add fine flour sufficient to make it the thickness of paste. Stir it well together with a wooden spoon for fifteen or twenty minutes, till it is quite smooth, and the colour of a guinea. This must be done very gradually and patiently, or it will be spoiled. Pour it into an earthen pan, and it will keep good a fortnight in summer, and longer in winter. Particular attention must be paid in making it; if it gets any burnt smell or taste, it will spoil every thing it is put into. When cold, it should be thick enough to cut out with a knife, like a solid paste. This is a very essential article in the kitchen, and the basis of consistency in most made dishes, soups, sauces, and ragouts. In making this thickening, the less butter and the more flour is used the better. They must be thoroughly worked together, and the broth or soup added by degrees. Unless well incorporated, the sauce will taste floury, and have a greasy disagreeable appearance. To prevent this, it must be finished and cleansed, after it is thickened, by adding a little broth or warm water, and setting it by the side of the fire to raise any fat that is not thoroughly incorporated with the gravy, that it may be carefully removed as it comes to the top. Some cooks merely thicken their soups and sauces with flour, or the farina of potatoe; and others use the fat skimmings off the top of broth, as a substitute for butter.
THORNS AND SPLINTERS. To run prickles or thorns, such as those of roses, thistles, and chesnuts, or little splinters of wood or bone, into the hands, feet, or legs, is a very common accident, and provided any such substance be immediately extracted, it is seldom attended with any bad consequences. But the more certain prevention is a compress of linen dipped in warm water, and applied to the part, or to bathe it a little while in warm water. If the thorn or splinter cannot be extracted directly, or if any part of it be left in, it causes an inflammation, and nothing but timely precaution will prevent its coming to an abscess. A plaster of shoemaker's wax spread upon leather, draws these wounds remarkably well. When it is known that any part of the splinter remains, an expert surgeon would open the place and take it out; but if it be unobserved, as will sometimes happen when the substance is very small, till the inflammation begins, and no advice can at once be procured, the steam of water should be applied to it first, and then a poultice of bread crumb and milk, with a few drops of peruvian balsam. It is quite necessary that the injured part should be kept in the easiest posture, and as still as possible. If this does not soon succeed, good advice must be procured without delay, as an accident of this kind neglected, or improperly treated, may be the occasion of losing a limb. In this and all other cases of inflammation, a forbearance from animal food and fermented liquors, is always advisable.
THRUSH. This disorder in children affects the mouth and throat, and sometimes the stomach. In the former case it will be sufficient to cleanse the mouth with a little sage tea, sweetened with the honey of roses, and mixed with a dram of borax. In the latter, great benefit may be derived from a decoction of carrots in water, or an ounce of linseed boiled in a pint of water till reduced to a consistence, and sweetened with two ounces of honey, a table-spoonful of which may be given occasionally. This complaint may generally be prevented by a due attention to cleanliness, daily washing and bathing the child in lukewarm water, washing its mouth after it has been applied to the breast, giving it pure air, and removing any obstruction in the bowels by the use of manna or tamarinds.
THYME. These plants may be easily raised from seed, by slipping the roots and branches, and by cuttings; but the seed method is seldom practised, except with the second sort, or garden thyme. The seed should be sown in the early spring on light, rich, dry ground, which should be properly dug over, and the surface be made moderately smooth with the spade. As the seed is small, it should not be sown too thick, or be covered too deep: the seed is best sown while the ground is fresh stirred, either broad-cast on the surface, raking it in lightly, or in flat shallow drills, earthed over thinly: the plants appear in two or three weeks. It is necessary to be careful to keep them well weeded, giving occasional light waterings in dry weather; and by June they will require thinning, especially if the plants are to grow stocky, and with bushy full heads; in which case they should be set out to six or eight inches distance; when those thinned out may be planted in another place, in rows six or eight inches asunder, giving water till fresh rooted, keeping the whole clean from weeds by occasional hoeing between them in dry days, which will also stir the surface of the earth, and much improve the growth of the plants: they will be in perfection for use in summer, or early in autumn. Some think the common thyme best cultivated for kitchen use in beds or borders, in rows at least half a foot apart, employing for the purpose either the young seedling plants, which are fit to set out, or the root slips of old plants, each of which soon increase into plants of bushy growths proper for being cropped for the above use. It may also often be well cultivated as an edging to herbary and other compartments; in both of which methods the plants multiply exceedingly fast by offsets, and are abiding, furnishing the means of great future increase. Some should, however, always be annually raised from seed in the above manner, as such plants possess a stronger aromatic quality than those from old ones. When it is intended to increase any particular varieties, and continue them the same with certainty, it can only be effected by slips and cuttings. In respect to the offsets and slips, all the sorts multiply by offsets of the root and slips of the branches: the rooted slips are the most expeditious method, as the old plants increase into many offset stems rising from the root, each furnished with fibres; and by taking up the old plants in the spring, &c. and slipping or dividing them into separate parts, not too small, with roots to each, and planting them in beds of good earth, in rows half a foot asunder, giving water directly, and repeating it occasionally in dry weather till they have taken root, and begin to shoot at top; they soon grow freely, and form good bushy plants in two or three months. The strong slips of the branches without roots, succeed when planted any time in the early spring season in a shady border, in rows four or five inches distant, giving due waterings; and become good plants by autumn, when they may be planted out where they are to remain. The cuttings of the young branches grow readily, the same as the slips, when planted at the same season in a shady place, and well watered. The common thyme is in universal use as a pot-herb for various culinary purposes; it may also be employed in assemblage with other small plants, to embellish the fronts of flower-borders, shrubbery clumps, small and sloping banks, &c. placing the plants detached or singly, to form little bushy tufts, and in which the variegated sorts, and the silver thyme and lemon thyme particularly, form a very agreeable variety. The lemon thyme is also in much estimation for its peculiar odoriferous smell. Some of each of these sorts may also be potted, in order to be moved occasionally to any particular places as may be required, and under occasional shelter in severe winters, to preserve the plants more effectually in a lively state; likewise some of the mastick thyme. Spanish and Portugal thymes are also sometimes potted for the same purpose, and to place under the protection of a garden frame or greenhouse in winter, to continue them in a more fresh and lively growth; and sometimes some of the smaller thymes are sown or planted for edgings to particular beds or borders for variety, such as the lemon thyme, silver-leaved and variegated sorts; also occasionally the common thyme; and all kept low, close and regular, by clipping them at the sides and tops annually in the summer season. All the several sorts and varieties possess an aromatic quality, which principally resides in the leaves, whence it is imparted and affords a line agreeable fragrance. But the first three kinds are much the most noted and valued in kitchen gardens, and more especially the common thyme, which is so very useful as a culinary herb.
TIN COVERS. Properly to clean tin covers and pewter pots, get the finest whiting, which is only sold in large cakes, the small being mixed with sand. Powder and mix a little of it with a drop of sweet oil, rub the pots and covers well with it, and wipe them clean. Then dust over some dry whiting in a muslin bag, and rub the articles bright with dry leather. The last is to prevent rust, which must be carefully guarded against by wiping thoroughly dry, and setting them by the fire when they come from table. If covers are once hung up without wiping, the steam will be sure to rust the inside.