1215. Pumpkin Pie.—Stew the pumpkin dry, and make it like squash pie, only season rather higher. In the country, where this real Yankee pie is prepared in perfection, ginger is almost always used with other spices. There, too, part cream, instead of milk, is mixed with the pumpkin, which gives it a richer flavor.
1216. Rhubarb Stalks, or Persian Apple—Is the earliest ingredient for pies, which the spring offers. The skin should be carefully stripped, and the stalks cut into small bits, and stewed very tender. These are dear pies, for they take an enormous quantity of sugar: seasoned like apple pies. Gooseberries, currants, &c., are stewed, sweetened, and seasoned like apple pies, in proportions suited to the sweetness of the fruit; there is no way to judge but by your own taste. Always remember, it is more easy to add seasoning, than to diminish it.
1217. Superlative Mince-meat, for Pies.—Take four large lemons, with their weight of golden pippins, pared and cored, of jar-raisins, currants, candied citron and orange-rind, and the finest suet, and a fourth-part more of pounded sugar. Boil the lemons tender, chop them small; but be careful first to extract all the pips; add them to the other ingredients, after all have been prepared with great nicety, and mix the whole well with from three to four glasses of good brandy. Apportion salt and spice by the preceding receipt. We think that the weight of one lemon, in meat, improves this mixture; or, in lieu of it, a small quantity of crushed macaroons, added just before it is baked.
1218. Rolls.—Rub into a pound of sifted flour, two ounces of butter; beat the whites of three eggs to a froth, and add a table-spoonful of good yeast, a little salt, and sufficient warm milk to make a stiff dough. Cover and put it where it will be kept warm, and it will rise in an hour. Then make it into rolls, or round cakes; put them on a floured tin, and bake in a quick oven or stove. They will be done in ten or fifteen minutes.
1219. To make Yeast in the Turkish manner.—Take a small tea-cupful of split or bruised peas, and pour on it a pint of boiling water, and set it in a vessel all night on the hearth, or any warm place. The next morning the water will have a froth on it, and be good yeast, and will make as much bread as two quartern loaves.