For Lemon cream. Take a quart of lemonade made very sweet, strain it, and put it in a saucepan on the fire. Add the yolks of eight eggs beaten, and stir it always one way till it is of a proper thickness. Serve it in custard-glasses, or in a cream-dish. To make the lemonade, dissolve five ounces of sugar in two pints of boiling water, having previously, with part of the sugar, rubbed the yellow rind off a lemon; then add the juice of three lemons. Some persons put the lemon and sugar into a jug, and pour the boiling water upon them.
Rice flummery, which is a very nice side dish, is made by mixing a quarter of a pound of ground rice with a little cold milk, and then adding a pint of hot milk which has been boiled with a stick of cinnamon and a bit of lemon-peel; add sugar to the taste, and, if required, a few drops of essence of almonds. Boil it up, stirring it carefully, and then pour it into a mould.
Dutch flummery is made by boiling two ounces of isinglass in three half-pints of water very gently for half an hour. Strain the liquor, and add a few lumps of sugar which have been rubbed on the rind of two lemons, and the juice of three lemons strained; then beat the yolks of seven eggs, and add them gradually. Put the whole over the fire, and stir it carefully, all one way, till it boils, and then pour it into a mould, or put it first into a basin to settle before putting it into the mould. The whites of the eggs beaten up to a froth will look very pretty over preserves; or they may be coloured with some kind of preserve, to form a dish.
The following is a receipt to make Rice cream, which was sent to me by a friend, and is said to be most excellent. Take a quarter of a pound of ground rice, one quart of cream, the peel of a lemon, and a small piece of butter. Put all into a stewpan, and place it over the fire, stirring it carefully till it boils, when it should be of about the same thickness as bread sauce. After boiling two minutes, add a spoonful of prepared isinglass, and turn it out, as you would any other cream. Send it to table with a little raspberry or currant syrup.
Blancmange may be made quickly by boiling, or rather simmering, two ounces of isinglass in three pints of milk till it is dissolved, which will be in about half an hour. Then strain it into a pint and a half of cream; sweeten it, and add a little peach-water, to give the flavour of almonds. Let it boil up once, and then stand a few minutes to settle before it is put into the moulds. Use tin moulds, and set them in cold pump-water changing the water when it becomes warm, and the blancmange will very soon be quite firm.
I will now give you a few miscellaneous receipts, and then I think you will have had enough; for I know, as far as my own experience goes, I have always felt perplexed, when I have taken up a cookery book, by the great number of receipts which I found in it, and all of which appeared to me so excellent that I knew not which to choose. I have, naturally enough, supposed you to have the same feeling; and thus, in what I have written, I have endeavoured as much as possible to save you the trouble of selection, by giving you only such dishes as I either know to be good myself, or which have been given to me by friends I can fully rely upon. But I am forgetting your receipts; they are as follow:—
To make Potato flour or starch, to serve also instead of arrow-root. Peel and wash the potatoes, cutting out all the specks; then grate or rasp them into a pan of water; stir it up well, and let it remain for about ten hours, or till all the flour is settled down. Then pour off the water with the fibrous parts of the potatoes, and put some fresh water to the flour, which, as it settles very hard, must be well stirred and strained into another pan, where let it remain till it is again settled down, and so do till the water is quite clear, which will be in four or five times mixing in fresh water; once straining is sufficient. When clear enough, break the flour up into a dish, and dry it gently before the fire; it takes a good while, as it must be thoroughly dried and broken into a fine powder. It may then be put away for use, and keeps a long time. Very small potatoes answer the purpose as well as large; and, when persons grow them, it uses up those that are too small for boiling. Ten ounces and a half of starch have been produced from very small potatoes, which weighed only seven pounds and a half before peeling them. When this flour is made on a large scale, the potatoes may be washed, and then ground in a cider-mill without paring.
To pickle Lemons. Grate off the rind, then lay them in salt for six days; boil vinegar with a little turmeric, and pour over them boiling; let them stand till next day; then boil in best vinegar, mace, shallots, anchovy, Cayenne pods, and cloves; boil the lemons and liquor together two minutes, and cover them close up. In a few days they will be fit for use, and are much admired with fish, cutlets, or cold meat.
Mixture for India Pickle. One gallon of vinegar, a quarter of a pound of garlic, half a pound of salt, a quarter of a pound of ginger, two ounces of white mustard seed, and two teaspoonfuls of Cayenne pepper; mix all well together. Any vegetables, such as small onions, cauliflowers, French beans, radish pods, and gherkins, may be laid in salt three days, dried, and put into the above mixture, and it is an excellent pickle for general use.
Cucumber Vinegar. Pare and slice fifteen large cucumbers, and three or four onions, a few shallots, and a clove or two of garlic. Then put a layer of slices of cucumber in a deep jar, and strew over it some pepper and salt, and a little Cayenne pepper; then a layer of onions and shallots, with pepper and salt as before; repeating alternate layers of cucumbers and onions till the jar is about half full, when three pints of vinegar is to be poured on the whole. After standing four days the vinegar is strained off, and is ready for use. It is a great improvement to cold meat.