Break half a pound of macaroni into inch-lengths, and cook twenty minutes in boiling salted water. Meantime, take a cup of broth from your soup; strain, boil, and skim it, and slice into it four ripe tomatoes. Stew tender, and strain through net or tarlatan, into a saucepan. Season well; stir into it a great spoonful of butter rolled in flour. Simmer five minutes; put the macaroni into a deep dish, sprinkling grated cheese over each layer, and pour the hot sauce over it, opening the mass with a fork, to let it reach the lower layers.
Lima Beans.
Shell, lay in cold water fifteen minutes, and cook from twenty-five to thirty minutes in salt boiling water. Drain well; season with pepper, salt, and butter.
Fried Cucumbers.
Pare, cut into lengthwise slices, more than a quarter of an inch thick, and lay for half an hour in ice-water. Wipe each piece dry; sprinkle with pepper and salt, and dredge with flour. Fry to a light brown in good dripping or butter. Drain well, and serve hot.
Lemon Trifle.
- 1 large sliced sponge cake.
- 1 quart of milk.
- 3 eggs.
- 5 heaping tablespoonfuls of sugar.
- 1 teaspoonful extract of lemon.
- 1 lemon—all the juice and half the rind finely grated.
Heat the milk, stir in four tablespoonfuls of sugar into the beaten yolks and pour the hot milk upon it, by degrees, stirring well. Return to the custard-kettle, and stir until it begins to thicken. Flavor, and pour, quite hot, upon the sliced cake laid in the bottom of a deep dish. If the dish be of glass, roll it in hot water before cake and custard go in. Put a heavy saucer on the cake to keep it from rising, and let it cool. When perfectly cold, heap upon it a méringue of the beaten whites, whipped up with the other tablespoonful of sugar, the lemon-juice and rind. Set on ice until wanted.
First Week. Thursday.