First Week. Thursday.
Dundee Broth.
- 3 lbs. of mutton cut into strips.
- 2 lbs. of bones cracked.
- 1 carrot.
- 2 turnips.
- 2 onions.
- Bunch of herbs.
- Handful of chopped cabbage.
- Pepper and salt.
- ¼ lb. of barley.
- 4 quarts of cold water.
Put on the meat, bones, and sweet herbs, to stew in four quarts of water. Do not disturb for four hours. Meanwhile, pare and cut the vegetables into dice, and boil until tender in just enough water to cover them. Drain this off and throw it away. Cover the vegetables with cold water, a little salt, and let them stand until you have strained the soup. This should be allowed to cool to throw up the fat. Skim it with care; put back over the fire. Salt and pepper, boil up, and skim again before putting in the vegetables, without the water in which they have been standing. The barley should, all this time, be soaking in warm water, just deep enough to cover it. Turn it now, with the water in which it has lain, into the soup. Let all simmer together one hour, and serve the vegetables in the soup.
Baked Calf’s Head.
Take out the brains and set aside. Wash the head carefully. It should, of course, be cleaned with the skin on. Soak it in cold, salted water, one hour, then in hot water ten minutes. Boil in three quarts of cold water for about an hour after the water begins to bubble. Take it out, saving the liquor when you have salted it, as stock for to-morrow’s soup. Plunge the head into cold water for five minutes. Wipe carefully, put into your dripping-pan, brush it over with beaten egg, sprinkle with bread-crumbs, and bake until nicely browned, basting three times with butter. Make a gravy of a cupful of the liquor, seasoned and thickened. Fry strips of ham, about an inch wide by four inches long, almost crisp in their own fat, and having laid the head upon a flat dish, dispose these about it. Serve a piece with each plate of the head.
French Beans and Fried Brains.
Open a can of string-beans one hour at least before they are to be cooked. Cut into short pieces, cover with hot water, and stew thirty minutes, but not until they break. Drain well; stir into them two tablespoonfuls of melted butter, in which have been mixed salt, pepper, and a tablespoonful of lemon-juice. Heap within a deep dish, and garnish with the brains.
Wash the brains and lay in cold salt and water for an hour, then boil ten minutes. Leave in very cold water until firm—say a quarter of an hour. Wipe, and chop fine, add a little parsley, pepper and salt; make into small cakes by flouring your hands; dip in beaten egg, then in cracker-crumbs, and fry in hot dripping. Drain thoroughly.