Plain Calf’s Head Soup.
Wash a calf’s head (cleaned with the skin on), in three waters, and soak one hour in salted water. Then put on to boil in five quarts of cold water. Cook until the meat slips easily from the bones. Take out the head, remove the bones, and throw back into the soup. Set aside three-quarters of the meat—the best portions—for to-morrow’s dinner. Chop the ears and other refuse parts fine; season with salt, pepper, onion, sweet marjoram, a teaspoonful of ground cloves, and as much allspice—even spoonfuls. Mix all up well, return to the soup and boil down to three quarts. Mash the brains and make into force-meat balls with raw egg, seasoning and enough flour to hold them together; roll in flour and set in a cool place until wanted. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan with two tablespoonfuls of browned flour wet up with cold water, and stir together five minutes. Strain the soup, put back two quarts over the fire, stir in the thickening of flour and butter, boil up and put in the force-meat balls. Simmer ten minutes, add the juice of a lemon, and a glass of brown sherry, and pour out. The reserved quart of “stock” is for another day’s soup. Do not put the calf’s tongue into the soup. It is indispensable in to-morrow’s ragoût.
Boiled Mutton.
The best part for boiling is the leg. Put on in boiling water and cook, allowing fifteen minutes to the pound. Make a sauce by taking out a cupful of liquor when it is nearly done, cooling it until you can take off the fat, then heating again in a saucepan and stirring into it one tablespoonful of butter, two teaspoonfuls of flour, wet up with cold water. Stir for five minutes, putting in a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and after another boil, take from the fire before you put in the juice of a lemon.
In this, as in other cases where the liquor in which meat is boiled is to be used for broth, salt slightly while cooking, sprinkling all over lightly with salt the moment you take it from the fire. Serve the sauce in a boat.
Minced Cabbage.
Boil a firm head of cabbage, quartered, in two waters, throwing the first away after ten minutes’ cooking and putting in more as hot, and a little salted. When it is tender all through, drain and chop quite fine, seasoning with salt, pepper, and a liberal portion of butter. Serve hot in a vegetable dish.
String Beans.
Open a can of string beans an hour before they are to be used. Cut them into short pieces when you are ready to cook them; turn off the liquor and cover them with cold water. Put into a pot with a bit of salt pork a little more than an inch square. Boil slowly until tender, strain, season with pepper, and serve hot, with the pork on top of the pile of beans.