A BROWN BETTY.—
Pare, core, and slice thin some fine juicy apples. Cover with the apples the bottom of a large deep white-ware dish. Sweeten them well with plenty of brown sugar; adding grated lemon or orange peel. Strew over them a thick layer of bread-crumbs, and add to the crumbs a very few bits of fresh butter. Then put in another layer of cut apples and sugar, followed by a second layer of bread-crumbs and butter. Next more apples and sugar; then more bread-crumbs and butter; repeat this till the dish is full, finishing it with bread-crumbs. Bake it till the apples are entirely done and quite soft. Send it to table hot. It will be improved (if in the country at cider-making season) by adding to each layer of apples a very little sweet unfermented cider, fresh from the press.
This pudding is in some places called an Apple Pandowdy. We believe it is Brown Betty in the South; Pandowdy in the North. It is a good plain pudding if the butter is fresh and sweet, and not too much of it. The apples must be juicy and not sweet. Sweet apples never cook well.
SWEETENED SWEET POTATOS.—
The sweet potatos should be all about the same size, or else so large as to require splitting. Boil them till, on probing them with a fork, you find them soft all through. Peel off the skin, and trim off the sharp points of each end. Place them in a large baking dish, and lay among them some pieces of fresh butter; sprinkle powdered sugar profusely over them and among them, especially in the vacancies between the potatos. Set the dish into a moderate oven, and bake slowly till the butter and sugar are all melted and blended together, forming a nice crust. They should be eaten not with the meat, but after it. They make a good supper or luncheon dish, and a plain dessert at dinner for plain-living people.
Sufficient butter and sugar will make the crust like a thick syrup, when broken. They should be cooked this way only when in the height of their season, and perfectly fresh and nice. When sweet potatos are old enough to decay at the ends, give them up. Large sweet potatos may be first boiled; then peeled and sliced thick, sprinkled thick with sugar, and fried in fresh butter or lard; the lard well drained from them as they are taken up. Eat them with meat.
They are good boiled very soft, peeled and sent to table mashed, (while hot) with fresh butter—or made into thick flat cakes, and browned on the top.
It is a great waste to bake sweet potatos whole. If baked enough, (as they seldom are) they "go all to skin."