5. Peel tart apples, and grate them in a dish, and grate in as much stale bread. Beat up two eggs in a pint or pint and a half of milk, and make it quite sweet, and flavor with rose water, or grated lemon, or orange peel, and pour it in and mix it well. Then bake it, and eat it either as a pudding for dinner, or as an article for the tea-table, to be eaten cold and with cream. If you have quinces, grate in one-third quince, and add more sugar, and it is a great improvement. Various berries can be stewed and mixed with bread crumbs, and cooked in this way.
6. Peel apples (or prepare any other fruit), and put them in layers in a stone or earthen jar with a small mouth. Intermix quinces if you have them. Scatter sugar between each layer in abundance. Cover the mouth with wheat dough, and set the jar in with the bread, and let it remain all night, and it makes a most healthful and delicious dish. Some place raw rice in alternate layers with the fruit. Children are very fond of this dish thus prepared with rice, and it is very little trouble, and nothing can be more healthful.
7. Peel and core apples (or take peaches, or pears, or damsons), and allow half a pound of sugar to a pound of fruit. Clarify the sugar, by adding water and the beaten white of an egg, and stirring and skimming it. Boil the fruit in the syrup all day very slowly, mashing and stirring often, till it is a thick, smooth paste. If it has skins in it, it must be strained through a colander. Put it in buttered pans to cool. Then lay it in a dry, cool place. It can be cut in slices for the tea-table. Quinces make the best. Apples, with the juice and some of the peel of lemons or oranges, are fine. This is called Fruit Cheese.
8. Boil down new sweet cider to one half the original quantity. Stew peeled and cored apples, with one quarter as many quinces, in this cider, till it is a very dark color. If well boiled, it will keep a year in jars, and is called Apple Butter.
9. The following mode of cooking dried fruits is the best. Take dried peaches, quinces, or apples, and put them to swell in cold water for several hours. Peaches must be very thoroughly washed. Then put them into a stewing kettle, with a great deal of water, and a pint of brown sugar to each pound of fruit. Cover them, and let them simmer very slowly for several hours, till the water is boiled down to as much liquid as you wish.
Peaches have a finer flavor when dried with the skin on, as fully ripe peaches cannot be pared and dried. When finely flavored, peaches have a solid pulp; when ripe they should be pared and then dried, and such are much the best for cooking in the above way.
They will, when cooked thus, be preferred by every body to the finest and most expensive sweetmeats.
10. The following is the best and cheapest method of making the finest Apple Jelly. Grapes and damsons can be made the same way.
Take the best pippins, and wipe them, taking out stem and eye. Cut them in thin slices, without paring or quartering, as the chief flavor is in the peel, and the jelly part is in the cores.
Put them in a preserving kettle, and put in just water enough to cover them, and boil them very soft. Then mash and strain through a jelly-bag made of coarse flannel. Put the liquid into the kettle, with a pint of brown sugar to each pint of the liquid, and add the juice and rind of a lemon cut in slices. Beat up the white of one egg, and stir in very thoroughly. Boil up three times, throwing in some cold water to stop it from running over. Then let it stand quiet on the hearth half an hour. Try it, and if not hard enough, let it boil till it will turn to jelly on cooling. Then skim off the scum, and pour off the clear jelly, and strain the sediment through the jelly-bag. Then put it in glasses. It can be boiled down, and make elegant apple candy.