SWEETMEAT PANCAKES.—
Take a large red beet-root that has been boiled tender; cut it up and pound it in a mortar till you have sufficient juice for colouring the pancakes. Then make a batter as in the preceding receipt, and stir into it at the last enough of the beet juice to give it a fine pink colour. Or instead of the beet juice, you may use a little cochineal dissolved in a very small quantity of brandy. Fry the pancakes in a pan greased with lard or fresh butter; and as fast as they are done, spread thickly over them raspberry jam or any sort of marmalade. Then roll them up nicely, and trim off the ends. Lay them, side by side, on a large dish, and strew powdered sugar over them. Send them to table hot, and eat them with sweetened cream.
PLAIN CUSTARDS.
Tie together six or eight peach leaves, and boil them in a quart of milk with a large stick of cinnamon broken up. If you cannot procure peach leaves, substitute a handful of peach-kernels or bitter almonds, or a vanilla bean split in pieces. When it has boiled hard, strain the milk and set it away to cool. Beat very light eight eggs, and stir them by degrees into the milk when it is quite cold, (if warm, the eggs will curdle it, and cause whey at the bottom,) and add gradually a quarter of a pound of sugar. Fill your cups with it; set them in a Dutch oven, and pour round them boiling water sufficient to reach nearly to the tops of the cups. Put hot coals under the oven and on the lid, (which must be previously heated by standing it up before a hot fire,) and bake the custards about fifteen minutes. Send them to table cold, with nutmeg grated over each. Or you may bake the whole in one large dish.
SOFT CUSTARDS—
Are made in the above manner, except that to a quart of milk you must have twelve yolks of eggs, and no whites. You may devote to this purpose the yolks that are left when you have used the whites for cocoa-nut or almond puddings, or for lady cake or maccaroons.
BOILED CUSTARDS.—
Beat eight eggs very light, omitting the whites of four. Mix them gradually with a quart of cold milk and a quarter of a pound of sugar. Put the mixture into a saucepan with a bunch of peach leaves, or a handful of broken up peach-kernels or bitter almonds; the yellow peel of a lemon, and a handful of broken cinnamon; or you may boil in it a vanilla bean. Set it on hot coals, and simmer it slowly, stirring it all the time. As soon as it comes to a boil, take it immediately off the fire, or it will curdle and be lumpy. Then strain it: add a table-spoonful of rose-water, and put it into glass cups. You may lay in the bottom of each cup a maccaroon soaked in wine. Grate nutmeg over the top, and send it to table cold. Eat it with tarts or sweetmeats.