Crystallized fruits
Make a syrup of a pound of sugar and a gill of water. Boil, without stirring, until a drop put into iced water becomes immediately brittle. Remove the saucepan from the fire and set it at once in an outer pan of boiling water. Add to the syrup the juice of a quarter of a lemon. Run the prongs of a sharp pickle fork through each piece of fruit to be candied, and dip it in the hot syrup. Lay on buttered or waxed paper to dry.
Stuffed dates
Remove the stones from dates and fill with a mixture made as follows:
Put into an agate saucepan one cupful of granulated sugar and a gill of cold water, with half a saltspoonful of cream of tartar. Stir just long enough to dissolve the sugar, then boil, without touching, until a drop put into cold water can be formed into a soft ball. Remove from the fire immediately, skim off every particle of crust, if there be any upon the surface of the syrup, and pour the syrup into a bowl. When so cool and thick that the finger leaves a dent when pressed upon it, stir with a wooden spoon to a smooth white paste. When too stiff to stir with a spoon, work the mixture with the hands. This filling will keep for weeks. When you wish to use it, set the cup containing it in a pan of hot water until soft enough to handle.
Slippery-elm cough candy
Soak a good handful of dried slippery-elm bark in a pint of water all night. In the morning bring it to a boil, strain and press to get out all the mucilaginous matter, and put the liquid thus obtained over a slow fire with two cupfuls of sugar. Wet the sugar well with lemon juice before adding it to the slippery-elm tea. Simmer, stirring until the sugar dissolves. When the candy “ropes” pour it out into broad buttered tins and mark into squares. You may pull it white if you like. It is palatable and excellent for colds and coughs.
AFTERNOON TEA
In every respectable English dwelling, be it palace or cottage, tea is served between four and five o’clock every afternoon in the year. The crone in the almshouse takes hers direct from the hob in winter, and in summer hobbles with her black teapot, a teaspoonful of the precious leaves in the bottom, to the common kitchen to have it filled. Her betters in name and in worldly gear assemble about the tea equipage in drawing room or library, or in the family “parlor.”