A WASHINGTON PUDDING.—Pick, and wash clean half a pound of Zante currants; drain them, and wipe them in a towel, and then spread them out on a flat dish, and place them before the fire to dry thoroughly. Prepare about a quarter of a pound or half a pint of finely-grated bread-crumbs. Have ready a heaping tea-spoonful of powdered mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg mixed. When the currants are dry, dredge them thickly on all sides with flour, to prevent their sinking or clodding in the pudding while baking. Cut up in a deep pan half a pound of the best fresh butter, and add to it half a pound of fine white sugar, powdered. Stir the butter and sugar together, with a wooden spaddle, till they are very light and creamy. Then add a table-spoonful of wine, and a table-spoonful of brandy. Beat in a shallow pan eight eggs till perfectly light, and as thick as a good boiled custard. Afterwards, mix with them, gradually, a pint of rich milk and the grated bread-crumbs, stirred in alternately. Next, stir this mixture, by degrees, into the pan of beaten butter and sugar; and add the currants, a few at a time. Finish with a table-spoonful of strong rose-water, or a wine-glass full, if it is not very strong. Stir the whole very hard. Butter a large deep white dish; or two of soup-plate size. Put in the batter. Set it directly into a brisk oven, and bake it well. When cold, dredge the surface with powdered sugar. Serve it up in the dish in which it was baked. You may ornament the top with bits of citron cut into leaves and forming a wreath; or with circles of preserved strawberries.
This will be found a very fine pudding. It must be baked in time to become quite cold before dinner.
For currants, you may substitute raisins of the best quality; seeded, cut in half, and well dredged with flour.
Instead of rose-water you may stir in the yellow rind (finely grated) of one large lemon, or two small ones, and their juice also.
NEW WAY OF WASHING SILK.—For ribbons, cravats, and other small articles of silk, put a sufficiency of the best fresh camphine oil into a large basin, and press and squeeze the things well through it, without either soap or water. Then squeeze them, till as dry as you can get them: open them out; and having washed the basin, put into it some fresh camphine, and wash the articles through that in the same manner as before. Have hot irons ready, and as the things come out of the second camphine, (after well squeezing and shaking them, but not rinsing,) spread them open on the ironing-sheet, and iron them smoothly and evenly on the wrong side. Do each article, as soon as it has had the second washing, as they should remain wet as short a time as possible.
There is no way of washing silk things that will make them look so well as this. It injures no colour, but rather brightens all, and gives the silk just the right degree of stiffness, besides making it very clean and fresh. When done, hang them in the open air for a while. A silk dress may be washed in this manner, putting the camphine into a large queensware-foot-bath. It should not go into a vessel of either wood or metal. The dress must first be taken entirely apart; but it will look so well when washed and ironed, that you will not regret the trouble.
Camphine generally sells at about fifty cents a gallon, sometimes lower.