Minced cod-fish, drest with eggs, parsnips, onions, butter, &c.; sausages; boiled potatoes—Indian cakes; rolls.
In cold weather, small hominy, boiled, is often introduced at breakfast tables—also indian mush, to be eaten with butter and molasses. We subjoin a receipt for pumpkin mush, an excellent and wholesome breakfast dish.
PUMPKIN MUSH.—Pour into a clean pot, two quarts or more of good milk, and set it over the fire. Have ready some pumpkin stewed very soft and dry; mashed smooth, and pressed in a cullender till all the liquid has drained off. Then measure a large pint of the stewed pumpkin; mix with it a piece of fresh butter, and a tea-spoonful of ground ginger. Stir it gradually into the milk, as soon as it has come to a boil. Add, by degrees, a large pint or more of indian-meal, a little at a time, stirring it in, very hard, with the mush-stick. If you find the mush too thin, as you proceed, add, in equal portions, more pumpkin and more indian-meal, till it becomes so thick you can scarcely stir it round. After it is all thoroughly mixed, and has boiled well, it will be greatly improved by diminishing the fire a little, or hanging the pot higher up, so as to let it simmer an hour or more. Mush can scarcely be cooked too much. Eat it warm with butter and molasses, or with rich milk. It is very good at luncheon in cold weather.
After boiling small hominy, drain off the water, and leave the dish uncovered. If covered up, the condensation of the steam will render the hominy thin and washy.
BREAKFAST PARTIES.—Black tea; green tea; coffee; chocolate; hot cakes of various sorts; omelets; birds; game; oysters, stewed, fried, and pickled; cold tongue; cold ham; biscuit sandwiches; boned turkey, cold; potted or pickled lobster; raised French pie; pigeon, partridge, or moorfowl pie; mushrooms fried, broiled, or stewed; jellies; marmalade; honey; fresh fruit, or sweetmeats, according to the season; a large almond sponge-cake. The table decorated with flowers.
At a breakfast party the dress of the ladies should be more simple than at a dinner or a supper party.
ECONOMICAL DINNERS FOR SMALL FAMILIES.—The receipts for these plain dishes are generally to be found in Miss Leslie’s “Directions for Cookery,” a work to which the present book is supplemental.
SPRING.—Boiled ham; spinach; asparagus; poke; potatoes[369-*]—Rhubarb pie.