The English Housekeeper: Or, Manual of Domestic Management / Containing advice on the conduct of household affairs and practical instructions concerning the store-room, the pantry, the larder, the kitchen, the cellar, the dairy; the whole being intended for the use of young ladies who undertake the superintendence of their own housekeeping

by Anne Cobbett

A Bride's Pie.

Boil 2 calf's feet quite tender, and chop the meat. Chop separately 1 lb. suet and 1 lb. apples, quite fine; mix these with the meat, add ½ lb. currants, ½ lb. raisins (chopped fine), ¼ oz. cinnamon, 2 drachms nutmeg, and mace (all pounded), 1 oz. candied citron and lemon peel, sliced thin, a wine-glass of brandy, and of Madeira. Line a tin pan with puff paste, put in the mince, cover with a paste, and ornament it.

Maigre Mince Meat.

To 6 lbs. currants add 3 lbs. raisins, 2 oz. cloves, 1½ oz. mace and 1 nutmeg, 3 lbs. fine powdered sugar, the rinds of 2 lemons, and 24 sharp apples, all these ingredients chopped or pounded separately, and then mixed together; add a pint of brandy. Let it stand a day or two, and stir it from the bottom once or twice a day. It will keep in a dry place, for months. Add butter or suet, when you make it into pies, also citron, if you like.

Note.—Mince meat is improved by the currants being plumped in brandy. Raisins should be chopped very fine.

CHAPTER XX.

PUDDINGS.

Practice, which, generally speaking, is every thing in cooking, will not ensure success in making puddings, unless the ingredients be good.

For pudding crust, nothing is so good as veal suet finely shred, though beef suet and beef marrow make light crust. Fresh dripping is also very good. Lard is not so good, for either meat or fruit puddings. Meat puddings (or dumplings, as they are called, in some of the counties in England) are generally liked, and are, either in crust or in batter, an economical dish, when made of the trimmings of beef or mutton, or the coarser parts of meat, which, though very good, would not so well admit of any other species of cooking. The meat should be quite fresh, and a due mixture of fat and lean. A piece of kidney, cut in bits, will enrich the gravy of beef steak or hare pudding. The crust for these puddings should be less rich, and thicker than for fruit puddings. Puddings will not be light unless the flour be fresh, and dried before the fire.

The number of eggs must be regulated by their size, for a small egg is but half a large one. Break them separately into a tea-cup, and put them into the basin one by one; by this means you ascertain their freshness before you mix them together, for if one be the least stale, it will spoil any number with which it may be mixed. Beat them well, the two parts separately, and strain them to the other ingredients.