The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) Part 56

_Maria Parloa_.

VEAL HASH ON TOAST.

Take a teacupful of boiling water in a saucepan, stir in an even teaspoonful of flour, wet in a tablespoonful of cold water, and let it boil five minutes; add one-half teaspoonful of black pepper, as much salt and two tablespoonfuls of b.u.t.ter, and let it keep hot, but not boil. Chop the veal fine and mix with it half as much stale bread crumbs. Put it in a pan and pour the gravy over it, then let it simmer ten minutes. Serve this on b.u.t.tered toast.

CODFISH ON TOAST. (Cuban Style.)

Take a teacupful of freshened codfish picked up fine. Fry a sliced onion in a tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter; when it has turned a light brown, put in the fish with water enough to cover it; add half a can of tomatoes, or half a dozen of fresh ones. Cook all nearly an hour, seasoning with a little pepper. Serve on slices of dipped toast, hot.

Very fine.

Plain creamed codfish is very nice turned over dipped toast.

HALIBUT ON TOAST.

Put into boiling salted water one pound of fresh halibut; cook slowly for fifteen minutes, or until done; remove from the water and chop it fine; then add half a cup of melted b.u.t.ter and eight eggs well beaten.

Season with salt and pepper.

Place over the fire a thick-bottomed frying pan containing a tablespoonful of cold b.u.t.ter; when it begins to melt, tip the pan so as to grease the sides; then put in the fish and eggs and stir one way until the eggs are cooked, but not _too_ hard. Turn over toast dipped in hot salted water.

CHICKEN HASH WITH RICE TOAST.

Boil a cup of rice the night before; put it into a square, narrow bread-pan, set it in the ice-box. Next morning cut it in half inch slices, rub over each slice a little warm b.u.t.ter and toast them on a broiler to a delicate brown. Arrange the toast on a warm platter and turn over the whole a chicken hash made from the remains of cold fowl, the meat picked from the bones, chopped fine, put into the frying pan with b.u.t.ter and a little water to moisten it, adding pepper and salt.

Heat hot all through. Serve immediately.

APPLE TOAST.

Cut six apples into quarters, take the core out, peel and cut them in slices; put in the saucepan an ounce of b.u.t.ter, then throw over the apples about two ounces of white powdered sugar and two tablespoonfuls of water; put the saucepan on the fire, let it stew quickly, toss them up, or stir with a spoon; a few minutes will do them. When tender cut two or three slices of bread half an inch thick; put in a frying pan two ounces of b.u.t.ter, put on the fire; when the b.u.t.ter is melted put in your bread, which fry of a nice yellowish color; when nice and crisp take them out, place them on a dish, a little white sugar over, the apples about an inch thick. Serve hot.

CAKES.

SUGGESTIONS IN REGARD TO CAKE-MAKING.

Use none but the best materials, and all the ingredients should be properly prepared before commencing to mix any of them. Eggs beat up much lighter and sooner by being placed in a cold place sometime before using them; a small pinch of soda sometimes has the same effect. Flour should always be sifted before using it. Cream of tartar or baking powder should be thoroughly mixed with the flour; b.u.t.ter be placed where it will become moderately soft, but _not_ melted in the least, or the cake will be sodden and heavy. Sugar should be rolled and sifted; spices ground or pounded; raisins or any ether fruit looked over and prepared; currants, especially, should be nicely washed, picked, dried in a cloth and then carefully examined, that no pieces of grit or stone may be left amongst them. They should then be laid on a dish before the fire to become thoroughly dry; as, if added damp to the other ingredients, cakes will be liable to be heavy.

Eggs should be well beaten, the whites and yolks separately, the yolks to a thick cream, the whites until they are a stiff froth. Always stir the b.u.t.ter and sugar to a cream, then add the beaten yolks, then the milk, the flavoring, then the beaten whites, and, lastly, the flour.

If fruit is to be used, measure and dredge with a little sifted flour, stir in gradually and thoroughly.

Pour all in well-b.u.t.tered cake-pans. While the cake is baking care should be taken that no cold air enters the oven, only when necessary to see that the cake is baking properly; the oven should be an even, moderate heat, not too cold or too hot; much depends on this for success. Cake is often spoiled by being looked at too often when first put into the oven. The heat should be tested before the cake is put in, which can be done by throwing on the floor of the oven a tablespoonful of new flour. If the flour takes fire, or a.s.sumes a dark brown color, the temperature is too high and the oven must be allowed to cool; if the flour remains white after the lapse of a few seconds, the temperature is too low. When the oven is of the proper temperature the flour will slightly brown and look slightly scorched.

Another good way to test the heat, is to drop a few spoonfuls of the cake batter on a small piece of b.u.t.tered letter paper, and place it in the oven during the finis.h.i.+ng of the cake, so that the piece will be baked before putting in the whole cake; if the little drop of cake batter bakes evenly without burning around the edge, it will be safe to put the whole cake in the oven. Then, again, if the oven seems too hot, fold a thick brown paper double, and lay on the bottom of the oven; then after the cake has risen, put a thick brown paper over the top, or b.u.t.ter well a thick white paper and lay carefully over the top.

If, after the cake is put in, it seems to bake too fast, put a brown paper loosely over the top of the pan, care being taken that it does not touch the cake, and do not open the door for five minutes at least; the cake should then be quickly examined, and the door shut carefully, or the rush of cold air will cause it to fall. Setting a _small dish_ of hot water in the oven, will also prevent the cake from scorching.

To ascertain when the cake is done, run a broom straw into the middle of it; if it comes out clean and smooth, the cake will do to take out.

Where the recipe calls for baking powder, and you have none, you can use cream of tartar and soda in proportion to one level teaspoonful of soda, two heaping teaspoonfuls of cream of tartar.

When sour milk is called for in the recipe, use only soda. Cakes made with mola.s.ses burn much more easily than those made with sugar. Never stir cake after the b.u.t.ter and sugar is creamed, but beat it down from the bottom, up and over; this laps air into the cake batter, and produces little air cells, which cause the dough to puff and swell when it comes in contact with the heat while cooking.

When making most cakes, especially sponge cake, the flour should be added by degrees, stirred very slowly and lightly, for if stirred hard and fast it will make it porous and tough.

Cakes should be kept in tight tin cake-cans, or earthen jars, in a cool, dry place.

Cookies, jumbles, ginger-snaps, etc., require a quick oven; if they become moist or soft by keeping, put again into the oven a few minutes.

To remove a cake from a tin after it is baked, so that it will not crack, break or fall, first b.u.t.ter the tin well all around the sides and bottom; then cut a piece of letter paper to exactly fit the tin, b.u.t.ter that on both sides, placing it smoothly on the bottom and sides of the tin. When the cake is baked, let it remain in the tin until it is _cold_; then set it in the oven a minute, or just long enough to warm the tin through. Remove it from the oven; turn it upside down on your hand, tap the edge of the tin on the table and it will slip out with ease, leaving it whole.

If a cake-pan is too shallow for holding the quant.i.ty of cake to be baked, for fear of its being so light as to rise above the pan, that can be remedied by thoroughly greasing a piece of thick glazed letter paper with soft b.u.t.ter. Place or fit it around the sides of the b.u.t.tered tin, allowing it to reach an inch or more above the top. If the oven heat is moderate the b.u.t.ter will preserve the paper from burning.

FROSTING OR ICING.

In the first place, the eggs should be cold, and the platter on which they are to be beaten also cold. Allow, for the white of one egg, one small teacupful of powdered sugar. Break the eggs and throw a small handful of the sugar on them as soon as you begin beating; keep adding it at intervals until it is all used up. The eggs must _not_ be beaten until the sugar has been added in this way, which gives a smooth, tender frosting, and one that will dry much sooner than the old way.

Spread with a broad knife evenly over the cake, and if it seems too thin, beat in a little more sugar. Cover the cake with two coats, the second after the first has become dry, or nearly so. If the icing gets too dry or stiff before the last coat is needed, it can be thinned sufficiently with a little water, enough to make it work smoothly.

A little lemon juice, or half a teaspoonful of tartaric acid, added to the frosting while being beaten, makes it white and more frothy.

The flavors mostly used are lemon, vanilla, almond, rose, chocolate and orange. If you wish to ornament with figures or flowers, make up rather more icing, keep about one-third out until that on the cake is dried; then, with a clean gla.s.s syringe, apply it in such forms as you desire and dry as before; what you keep out to ornament with may be tinted pink with cochineal, blue with indigo, yellow with saffron or the grated rind of an orange strained through a cloth, green with spinach juice and brown with chocolate, purple with cochineal and indigo. Strawberry, or currant and cranberry juices color a delicate pink.

Set the cake in a cool oven with the door open to dry, or in a draught in an open window.

ALMOND FROSTING.

The whites of three eggs, beaten up with three cups of fine, white sugar. Blanch a pound of sweet almonds, pound them in a mortar with a little sugar, until a fine paste, then add the whites of eggs, sugar and vanilla extract. Pound a few minutes to thoroughly mix. Cover the cake with a very thick coating of this, set in a cool oven to dry, afterwards cover with a plain icing.

CHOCOLATE FROSTING.

The whites of four eggs, three cups of powdered sugar and nearly a cup of grated chocolate. Beat the whites a very little, they must not become white, stir in the chocolate, then put in the sugar gradually, beating to mix it well.

PLAIN CHOCOLATE ICING.

Put into a shallow pan four tablespoonfuls of sc.r.a.ped chocolate, and place it where it will melt gradually, but not scorch; when melted, stir in three tablespoonfuls of milk or cream and one of water; mix all well together, and add one scant teacupful of sugar; boil about five minutes, and while hot, and when the cakes are nearly cold, spread some evenly over the surface of one of the cakes; put a second one on top, alternating the mixture and cakes; then cover top and sides, and set in a warm oven to harden. All who have tried recipe after recipe, vainly hoping to find one where the chocolate sticks to the cake and not to the fingers, will appreciate the above. In making those most palatable of cakes, "Chocolate Eclairs," the recipe just given will be found very satisfactory.