A china or metal coffee-pot should always be scalded twice before coffee is transferred to it, from the vessel in which it has been made.
COCOA.—The cocoa which is put up solid in close packages, and usually sold at a shilling a paper, is far superior to the chocolate that is manufactured into squares or cakes, and which is too frequently adulterated with lard and meal. Baker’s prepared cocoa is excellent. When you intend having it for drinking, shave down, or cut fine a sufficient quantity of the cocoa; allowing about half the contents of a paper to a quart of water, if you wish it very strong, and three pints of water for moderate strength. Then put the cocoa into a clean sauce-pan or a tin pot with a spout. Measure the water from a kettle that is boiling hard at the time; and when you have the proper quantity pour it scalding hot on the cocoa. Cover it closely; place it over the fire; and let it boil till it is all dissolved into the same consistence, and quite smooth, and free from the smallest lumps. While boiling, you must several times take off the lid, and with a spoon stir the cocoa down to the bottom. Then transfer it to your chocolate pot, which must be twice scalded with boiling water. Send it to table as hot as possible, adding milk and sugar to the cups when poured out. Eat with it dry toast; unbuttered rolls; milk-biscuit; or sponge-cake.
TO KEEP ORANGE-JUICE.—The oranges must be large and ripe. To increase the quantity of juice, roll each orange under your hand on a table, or with your foot upon a clean hearth-stone. Then cut them in half, and score each half with four deep notches, so that when squeezed the juice may run out more freely. Squeeze them through a strainer into a large bowl. To each pint of juice allow a pound of the best loaf-sugar, broken small. Cover the bowl, and let it stand undisturbed all night. In the morning remove all the scum that has risen to the surface, and pour the liquid through a funnel into clean, well-dried pint bottles; into each of which you have previously put a table-spoonful of the best white brandy. Cork each bottle tightly, and tie down a thin wet leather closely over each cork. Keep the bottles in a dry place. You will find this preparation excellent for flavouring, when fresh oranges are not to be had.
Lemon-juice may be kept in the same manner, for flavouring or for punch.
TO PRESERVE LEMON-JUICE FOR A VOYAGE.—Select only the best and freshest lemons. One that is in the least tainted will spoil the whole. Roll every lemon under your hand upon a table to increase the juice. Then squeeze them well through a strainer. To every quart of juice add an ounce of cream of tartar. Let it stand three days, (stirring it frequently,) and then filter it through thin muslin pinned tightly on the bottom of a sieve. Put it into pint-bottles; filling up the neck of each bottle with a little of the best olive oil. The corks must be put in very tightly, and then sealed. When you open a bottle, avoid shaking it; and carefully pour off the olive oil that is on the top of the lemon-juice.