Smelts should be wiped with a clean cloth, coated with beaten egg, rolled in bread raspings, and fried in butter. Serve fresh lemon cut in slices and thin brown bread and butter with them.
A dish of carrots for eating with boiled beef is nice done in the Flemish mode:
Pare the carrots and cut them in strips lengthwise, and then cut them up precisely as you would kidney beans; put them in a stewpan with well-fitting lid, add to them a good spoonful of beef dripping and a little pepper and salt. Cover closely and let them cook in their own steam for an hour or more, seeing that they do not catch on the bottom. Pour the fat off and add a few drops of vinegar just before dishing up.
Ptarmigan are rather dry birds and they require a thin piece of bacon wrapping round them before roasting, also to be frequently basted. Let them do rather quickly, so as to be nicely browned, but they will take rather less than an hour. Serve good gravy and bread sauce with them.
Apple Fritters.—For frying these a good depth of boiling lard is necessary if they are to be done successfully. Take the cores out of large apples, and pare them thinly. Cut across in slices not too thin. Dip each slice in batter made from the whisked whites of two eggs, a spoonful of flour, a pinch of salt, and enough salad oil to make it like thick cream. When fried drain each ring on kitchen paper and sprinkle with castor sugar. Pile high on a paper doyley.
And now as to the directions for the making of orange marmalade. The following plan is one I have pursued for several years and it has always produced excellent marmalade:
To every twelve Seville oranges allow two lemons; slice them across, rind and pulp, as thinly as ever it is possible to do with the sharpest of knives. Pick out the pips as you go along, but put these in a basin instead of throwing them away, for it is surprising what amount of gluten clings to the pips, which is lost if they are not saved. When all the fruit has been cut up into lined earthenware pans, cover it with water until the vessels have as much as they will hold. Set these aside out of the way of dust, and let them stand so for twenty-four hours. After this boil fruit and water together for perhaps two hours, but gently so that it does not burn; then turn it back again into the vessels and let it stand for another twenty-four hours. After this it should be stirred up and weighed, and to every pound of fruit and liquor allow a pound of lump sugar; when the pulp has boiled for about an hour the second time, the sugar may be put in, and then constant stirring will be necessary and faster boiling. From the time the sugar is added half-an-hour’s boiling ought to suffice. Put it into hot jars, but do not tie down until it is cold.