Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt Book / Designed as a Supplement to Her Treatise on Domestic Economy

by Catharine Esther Beecher

If you have the beef gravy of yesterday, use it instead of butter, and put in less pepper, salt, butter, and water, and only one spoonful of butter.

If tomatoes are liked, peel and slice two large ones, and add with the potatoes and turnips.

Let a housekeeper try this, and then vary it to her own taste, or the taste of her family, and then write the exact proportions for the use of all the future cooks of her family.

Gravy for a Mutton Hash, or Venison Hash.

For a dish for six persons, take a tea-cup and a half of boiling water, and slice fine one small onion (say one an inch in diameter) into it, to give a slight flavor of onion, and thus hide the strong mutton taste. Mix a thin paste made with a heaping teaspoonful of flour, wet with a great spoonful of water, stir it in, and let it boil three minutes, adding a half a teaspoonful of black pepper, and rather more salt. Then set it where it will keep hot, but not boil, till wanted.

Cut the mutton into half-inch mouthfuls, leaving out most of the fat. Cut up the same number of mouthfuls of cold boiled potatoes, and half as much cold boiled turnips, and slice in two large peeled tomatoes, or cold boiled parsnip, or both. Mix them in a tin pan the size of a dining plate, stir two great spoonfuls of butter into the gravy, and, if you like, a great spoonful of tomato catsup, and pour it on to the hash. Cover it with a plate, and set it to heat ten minutes on the stove, or on a trivet over coals.

If you do not put in vegetables, take less water, salt, and pepper. If you do not put in onion, put in a wine-glass of currant, plum, or grape jelly, or squeeze in some lemon juice when you add the butter, and leave out the catsup, or not, as you like. Modify to suit your taste, and then write the proportions exactly, for all future cooks of your family.

To prepare a Veal Hash.

Take a tea-cup of boiling water in a sauce-pan, and mix in an even teaspoonful of flour wet with a spoonful of cold water, and let it boil five minutes. Then add, not quite half a teaspoonful of black pepper, as much salt, and two great spoonfuls of butter, and set it where it will keep hot, but not boil.

Chop the veal very fine, and mix with it, while chopping, half as much stale bread crumbs. Put it in a tin pan and pour the gravy on to it, and let it heat on a stove or trivet ten minutes.