Chicken with spaghetti: Stir four sliced onions in two ounces of butter till very soft, add one quart of peeled tomatoes; stew chicken in water until tender, and pick to pieces. Add enough of the gravy to make a quart, put with the onions and tomatoes. Let it stew fifteen minutes gently. Put into boiling water 2½ pounds of spaghetti and a handful of salt, boil twenty minutes or until tender; drain this and put in a layer on a platter sprinkled with grated cheese, and pour the stew on it. Fill the platter with these layers, reserving the best of the chicken to lay on top.
The old negro cooks made a delicious confection known as confection cake. Those who lived to tell of having eaten it declared that it was a dream. It certainly leads to dreams, and bad ones, but it is worth a nightmare:—
1½ cups of sugar, 2½ cups of flour, ½ cup of butter, ½ cup of sweet milk, whites of six eggs, 3 small teaspoons of baking powder. Bake in two or three layers on a griddle.
Filling: 1 small cocoanut grated, 1 pound almonds blanched, and cut up not too fine, 1 teacup of raisins chopped, 1 teacup of citron chopped, 4 eggs, whites only, 7 tablespoonfuls of pulverized sugar to each egg.
Mix this destructive substance well in the froth of egg, and spread between the layers of cake when they are hot; set it a few minutes in the oven, but do not burn it, and you have a delicious and profoundly indigestible dessert. You will be able to write Sartor Resartus, after eating of it freely.
Walnut Cake: 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 6 eggs, 4 cups of flour, 1 cup of milk, 2 teaspoonfuls of yeast powder.
This is also baked in layers, and awaits the dynamite filling which is to blow you up:—
Walnut Filling: 2 cups of brown sugar, 1 cup of cream, a piece of butter the size of an egg. Cook twenty minutes, stirring all the time; when ready to take off the stove put in one cup of walnut meats. After this has cooked a few minutes longer, spread between the layers, and while both cake and filling are hot.
Perhaps a few menus may be added here to assist the memory of her "who does not know what to have for dinner:"—
| Tomato Soup. | ||
| Golden Sherry. | Whitefish broiled. | Claret. |
| Mashed potatoes. | ||
| Round of beef braisé, | Madeira. | |
| with glazed onions. | ||
| Champagne. | Roast plover with cress. | Château Yquem. |
| Chiccory Salad. | ||
| Custard flavoured with vanilla. | ||
| Cheese. | Cordials. | |
| Chambertin. | Fruit. | |
| Coffee. | ||