Grapes and damsons should have water put in when first boiled, as the flavor is thus more perfectly extracted. Frost grapes make an elegant jelly, as do the wild plum, by this method. In summer these jellies are fine for effervescing drinks, with some good wine vinegar mixed with them.
Fruit Custards.
A pint and a half of fruit stewed and strained, cooled and sweetened.
Six eggs well beaten, and stirred into a quart of milk.
Mix the above and flavor with spice, and bake in cups or a deep dish twenty minutes, or half an hour, according to the size. It is good cold.
It may be boiled in a tin pail in boiling water.
Modes of preparing Rice for the Dinner or Tea Table.
Pick over and wash the rice, and boil it fifteen minutes in water with salt in it. Rice is very poor unless the salt is cooked into it. Then pour off the water, and pour in good rich milk, and let it simmer slowly till the rice is soft. There should be milk just sufficient to make the rice of a pudding consistency, so that it can be put in cups and turned out without losing its form.
1. Fill a tea-cup with this rice, and invert it in a platter or shallow large pudding dish, and fill the dish with cups of rice inverted. On the summit of each mound thus made, make an opening with a teaspoon, and lay a pile of jelly or sweetmeats. Then pour into the dish a custard made of two eggs and a pint of milk, boiled in a tin pail in boiling water. This looks very pretty, and is excellent.
If you have cream, take half milk and half cream, and pour into the dish, instead of the custard.