Take one or two sheep’s kidneys, skin and split them. Lay each half, flat side down, in a frying pan with an ounce of butter or dripping, heated. Place on a quick fire, add one or two slices of onion cut thin, pepper and salt. Remove from the fire and cut the kidneys up. Place again on the stove, add a teaspoonful of bovril, a little Worcester sauce (one teaspoonful), mix smoothly a dessertspoonful of flour with water, add half a breakfast-cup of hot water to the kidneys. Stir and keep boiling twenty minutes, and serve hot, either alone or within a wall of freshly mashed potatoes.
31. Kidneys in Onions
To those who are fond of an onion there is hardly a more appetising dish than onions prepared in the following manner. Take four or five decent-sized sound onions. Small Spanish are the best. Cut rather a deep slice off the top after removing the outer skin. You can then take the centre out; say you remove half the onion leaving about four of the thicknesses. Have ready two or three sheep’s kidneys prepared in the following manner: Skin each kidney and split it. Sprinkle lightly pepper and salt on the split side. Put into a frying pan a little dripping or butter, lay the kidney flat side first in the boiling fat, place the pan on a quick fire and fry lightly, turning twice. As onion requires a lot of cooking it is best to put the prepared onion cases into boiling dripping and cook in a quick oven twenty-five minutes. Then place the kidney (half in each onion) and replace in the oven in the baking tin another ten minutes. Care should be taken not to overcook the kidney so that the gravy runs into the onion as it finishes cooking. Serve very hot in a stone dish.
32. Jugged Hare
Cut the hare up. Rub the pieces in flour. Put one and a half ounces of butter into a large enamelled frying pan, and lightly fry the hare for ten minutes. Then place your hare in a stone jar with one Spanish onion stuck with three cloves, some salt, a piece of loaf sugar, and a little finely scraped carrot. Add two glasses of port wine and a little Worcester sauce. Cover the jar with a plate and stand in a quick oven for three hours. Dish into a flat dish, garnish all round with half slices of lemon and serve with currant jelly.
33. Yorkshire Pudding for Baked Beef or Mutton
Separate the white of one egg from the yolk. Put the latter in an earthenware bowl and stir it lightly. Beat the white separately with a freshly cleaned knife in a plate. It is most important that a perfectly clean knife be used or the white of the egg will not rise. Beat it to a stiff froth and stir it into the yolk of the egg; and only afterwards add half a teacupful of milk and a little pepper and salt.
Stir in a breakfast-cupful of self-raising flour vigorously and work it perfectly smooth. If it is not then quite the consistency of very thick cream add a little milk to make it so. Turn into a baking tin and bake under the meat, which would be already three parts cooked then. Do not forget to turn most of the fat out of the baking tin before the pudding is poured in. Three-quarters of an hour is the time required for cooking a Yorkshire pudding.
34. Welsh Rarebit
Take half a pound of good Cheddar cheese, not too strong, and cut it into a flat meat dish with pepper and salt. Pour over a sufficient quantity of bottled ale to fill the dish. Stand in a quick oven and bake until the cheese is all melted. Have ready some buttered toast about a quarter of an inch thick. Remove the cheese from the dish leaving the beer and spread the cheese lightly on the toast. Replace in the oven, and serve very hot. The object of the beer is to flavour the cheese only and if the cheese were to be cooked in a frying pan over the fire it would absorb all the beer and be rendered very bitter.