WHITE SAUCE. This favourite sauce is equally adapted to fowls, fricassee, rabbits, white meat, fish, and vegetables; and it is seldom necessary to purchase any fresh meat to make it, as the proportion of that flavour is but small. The liquor in which fowls, veal, or rabbit have been boiled, will answer the purpose; or the broth of whatever meat happens to be in the house, such as necks of chickens, raw or dressed veal. Stew with a little water any of these, with a bit of lemon peel, some sliced onion, some white peppercorns, a little pounded mace or nutmeg, and a bunch of sweet herbs. Keep it on the fire till the flavour is good; then strain it, and add a little good cream, a piece of butter, a very little flour, and salt to your taste. A squeeze of lemon may be added after the sauce is taken off the fire, shaking it well. Yolk of egg is often used in fricassee, cream is better, as the former is apt to curdle.
WHITE SOUP. Take a scrag of mutton, a knuckle of veal, after cutting off as much meat as will make collops, two or three shank bones of mutton nicely cleaned, and a quarter of very fine undressed lean gammon of bacon. Add a bunch of sweet herbs, a piece of fresh lemon peel, two or three onions, three blades of mace, and a dessert-spoonful of white pepper. Boil all in three quarts of water, till the meat falls quite to pieces. Next day take off the fat, clear the jelly from the sediment, and put it into a nice tin saucepan. If maccaroni be used, it should be added soon enough to get perfectly tender, after soaking in cold water. Vermicelli may be added after the thickening, as it requires less time to do. Prepare the thickening beforehand thus: blanch a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds, and beat them to a paste in a marble mortar, with a spoonful of water to prevent their oiling. Then mince a large slice of cold veal or chicken, and beat it with a piece of stale white bread; add all this to a pint of thick cream, a bit of fresh lemon peel, and a blade of pounded mace. Boil it a few minutes, add to it a pint of soup, and strain and pulp it through a coarse sieve. This thickening is then fit for putting to the rest, which should boil for half an hour afterwards.—To make a plainer white soup, boil a small knuckle of veal, till the liquor is reduced to three pints. Add seasoning as above, and a quarter of a pint of good milk. Two spoonfuls of cream, and a little ground rice, will give it a proper thickness. The meat and the soup may both be served together.—Another. Take a scrag or knuckle of veal, slices of undressed gammon of bacon, onions, mace, and simmer them in a small quantity of water, till it is very strong. Lower it with a good beef broth made the day before, and stew it till the meat is done to rags. Add cream, vermicelli, a roll, and almonds.
WHITE WINE WHEY. Set on the fire half a pint of new milk; the moment it boils up, pour in as much sound raisin wine as will completely turn it, and until it looks clear. Let it boil up, then set the saucepan aside till the curd subsides, and do not stir it. Pour the whey off, add to it half a pint of boiling water, and a little lump sugar. The whey will thus be cleared of milky particles, and may be made to any degree of weakness.
WHITINGS. These may be had almost at any time, but are chiefly in season during the first three months of the year. In choosing them, the firmness of the body and fins is chiefly to be looked to; and in places where there is no regular supply of fish, it will be found an accommodation to dry them for keeping. The largest are best for this purpose. Take out the gills, the eyes, and the entrails, and remove the blood from the backbone. Wipe them dry, salt the inside, and lay them on a board for the night. Hang them up in a dry place, and after three or four days they will be fit to eat. When to be dressed, skin and rub them over with egg, and cover them with bread crumbs. Lay them before the fire, baste with butter till sufficiently browned, and serve them with egg sauce.
WHITLOWS. As soon as the disorder is apparent, the finger affected is to be plunged into warm water, or the steam of boiling water may be applied to it. The application must be very frequently repeated the first day, and the complaint will soon be dispersed. Unfortunately however it is too generally supposed, that such slight attacks can have only slight consequences, and hence they are too apt to be neglected till the complaint has considerably increased. But in this state no time should be lost in resorting to skilful advice, as the danger attending these small tumours is much greater than is usually imagined.
WHOLE RICE PANCAKES. Stew half a pound of whole rice in water till it is very tender, and let it stand in a basin to cool. Break it small, put to it half a pint of scalded cream, half a pound of clarified butter, a handful of flour, a little nutmeg and salt, and five eggs well beaten. Stir these well together, and fry them in butter or lard. Serve them up with sugar sifted over them, and a Seville orange or lemon cut and laid round the dish. This preparation may be made into a pudding, either baked or boiled, and with currants added or not, as approved. Three quarters of an hour will bake it, and an hour will boil it.
WHOLE RICE PUDDING. Stew very gently a quarter of a pound of whole rice, in a pint and a half of new milk. When the rice is tender, pour it into a basin, stir in a piece of butter, and let it stand till quite cool. Then put in four eggs, a little salt, some nutmeg and sugar. Boil it an hour in a basin well buttered.
WILD DUCKS. A wild duck, or a widgeon, will require twenty or twenty-five minutes roasting, according to the size. A teal, from fifteen to twenty minutes; and other birds of this kind, in proportion to their size, a longer or a shorter time. Baste them with butter, and take them up with the gravy in, sprinkling a little over them before they are quite done. Serve them up with shalot sauce in a boat, or with good gravy, and lemons cut in quarters.
WILD FOWL. Season with salt and pepper, and put a piece of butter into each; but the flavour is best preserved without stuffing. To take off the fishy taste which wild fowl sometimes have, put an onion, salt, and hot water, into the dripping pan, and baste them with this for the first ten minutes: then take away the pan, and baste constantly with butter. Wild fowl require much less dressing than tame: they should be served of a fine colour, and well frothed up. A rich brown gravy should be sent in the dish; and when the breast is cut into slices, before taking off the bone, a squeeze of lemon, with pepper and salt, is a great improvement to the flavour.
WILTSHIRE BACON. The way to cure Wiltshire bacon is to sprinkle the flitch with salt, and let the blood drain off for twenty-four hours. Then mix a pound and a half of coarse sugar, the same quantity of bay salt, not quite so much as half a pound of saltpetre, and a pound of common salt. Rub this mixture well on the bacon, turning it every day for a month: then hang it to dry, and afterwards smoke it ten days. The quantity of salts above mentioned is sufficient for the whole hog.