Rice flummery may be flavoured by boiling in the first pint of milk a stick of cinnamon and a handful of bitter almonds or peach-kernels all broken up.
The custard should then be flavoured also with cinnamon and bitter almonds boiled in the custard milk.
Flummery may be coloured green by boiling in the last milk, spinach juice extracted by pounding in a mortar some raw spinach, or some pistachio nuts.
To colour it red, mix with the milk the juice of a beet that has been boiled, scraped, cut up and pounded. Or boil in the milk a very small muslin bag with alkanet tied up in it.
MERINGUED APPLES.—Pare and core (with a tin apple-corer) some fine large pippin apples, but do not quarter or slice them. Wash them separately in cold water, and then with the water still remaining about the surface of the apples, stand them up in a deep baking-dish, but do not place them so near each other as to touch. Pour into the bottom of the dish just water enough to prevent their burning, set them into a close oven, and bake them till they are perfectly tender all through, but not to break; as they must on no account lose their shape. When done, take them out; remove them to a flat china dish; and set them immediately to cool, clearing off any juice that may be about them. When quite cold, fill up the hole from whence the cores were extracted with thick marmalade or fruit jelly. Have ready a meringue or icing made of beaten white of egg, thickened with finely powdered loaf-sugar and flavoured with lemon-juice, or extract of roses. In making a meringue the usual proportion is the whites of four eggs to a pound of powdered sugar. The white of egg must first be whisked to a stiff firm froth, and the sugar then beaten into it, gradually, a spoonful at a time; the flavouring being added at the last. When the apples are quite cold cover them all over with the meringue, put on in table-spoonfuls, beginning at the top of each apple and then spreading it down evenly with a broad-bladed knife dipped frequently into a bowl of cold water. The meringue must be put on very smoothly and of equal thickness all over. Then dredge the surface with finely powdered loaf-sugar sifted in from a very small sieve. Set them into a rather cool oven, and as soon as the meringue is hardened, take them out.
Fine large free-stone peaches may be meringued in this manner. To extract the stones of peaches loosen them carefully all round with a sharp, narrow-pointed knife. You may then easily thrust them out, without breaking the peaches, which for this purpose should not be over-ripe.
CHOCOLATE CREAM.—Scrape down a quarter of a pound of the best chocolate, or of Baker’s prepared cocoa. Put it into a marble mortar. Pour on by degrees as much boiling water as will dissolve it, and beat it well for about a quarter of an hour. Then sweeten it with four table-spoonfuls of powdered loaf-sugar. Add, gradually, a pint and a half of rich cream. Mill it with a chocolate mill, or a little tin churn; or beat it hard with rods. As the froth rises, take it off and lay it on the inverted bottom of a sieve that is placed in a deep pan. When done, take the liquid that has drained through the sieve, and put a portion of it in the bottom of each glass. Then fill the glasses with the froth, heaping it high on the top, and set it in a cool dry place till wanted.