VINTAGE RECIPES

[Welland Telegraph  December 1900]

Candied Chestnuts

Shell as many chestnuts as will be required and drop them into boiling water, allow them to cook briskly for fifteen minutes, strain and rub off the thin outer skin. Dip each chestnut in white of egg and roll in white powdered sugar. When all are coated lay them on a sheet of white paper in a moderate oven to harden. Prepared in this way they are delicious.

Boil six sweet potatoes, slice them the round way. Place a layer in a baking dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, add small pieces of butter. Now add a layer of oysters and of cracker crumbs, then sweet potatoes, etc. until the dish is full. Pour over this one teacupful of oyster liquor and bake about twenty minutes.

One pint of hot boiled potatoes, a generous half cupful of cream or milk, two tablespoonfuls of butter, the whites of four eggs and yolk of one, salt and pepper to taste. Beat the potato very light and fine. Add the seasoning, milk and butter and lastly the froth. Turn into a buttered escalop dish. Smooth with a knife and brush over with the yolks of the eggs, which have been well beaten. Brown quickly and serve. It will take ten minutes.

Scald 1 pt milk and add 1 pt water, let cool, dissolve 1 yeast cake in a little warm water, add the milk, also 1 teaspoon salt and the same of sugar. Beat thoroughly and stir in sufficient flour to make a dough, after which beat for 10 minutes. Knead on the board until soft and spongy, adding a little flour. Let rise, form into loaves, having floured the hands to prevent the dough from sticking to them, and let rise three hours. Bake in a moderate oven.

Take a nice rabbit, cut it up in small pieces and lay it in cold water thirty minutes, then take it out of that water and put it in a kettle with hot water enough to cover the rabbit; add a little salt, pepper and two onions; let it boil twenty minutes, have ready a deep pudding dish, put the rabbit onto it, take a teaspoonful of flour, wet it and pour into the hot water the rabbit has been taken from to thicken it; when it boils up once pour over the rabbit; add a piece of butter the size of an egg, salt to taste; now put over this a nice crust made with one cup of milk, one half cup of lard, one heaping teaspoonful of baking powder and flour enough to roll out; put over the rabbit and bake half an hour in a slow oven.

Put three pints of washed cranberries in a granite stewpan having a tight cover. On top of them put three cups of granulated sugar and three gills of water. Cover and after they begin to boil cook them ten minutes closely covered and do not stir them. If they are inclined to boil over, draw the pan back a little or lift the cover for an instant and press the fruit down under the syrup. The skins will be soft and tender and the berries will not lose their shape if they are not stirred. When cool the whole mass will be jellied slightly. A convenient way to remember these proportions is by this formula,- Half as much sugar as fruit. and half as much water as sugar.

Six buttered crackers rolled fine and soaked in three pints of milk. Cream one-quarter of a cup of butter with one cup of sugar, add half a teaspoonful of salt. one teaspoonful of mixed spice and six well beaten eggs. Stir it all into the milk and add one pound of the best raisins. Bake in a deep pudding dish well greased with cold butter. Bake very slowly in a moderate oven three hours. Stir several times during the first hour to keep the raisins from settling.

Cut the beef into thinnest slices possible with a particularly sharp knife; put it in a salad bowl with alternate slight sprinklings of salt and pepper; make a top layer of strips of anchovies, smoked herring, capers, sliced gherkins and finely chopped chervil, chives, small onions, etc. Pour over this a plain salad seasoning of pepper, salt, mustard, tarragon vinegar and oil, well beaten up and serve without disturbing the arrangement of the dish.

Wash and cut a French turnip into half or three-quarter inch slices then pare and put the slices together again, and cut into slices then at right angles, making cubes or dice. Cook in boiling salted water until tender. Drain very dry, and keep hot and partially uncovered on the back of the range until ready to serve; then drain again, and turn into a dish and pour prepared butter over them. For one quart of the turnips allow one heaped tablespoonful of butter, rub it to a cream in a bowl, add half a teaspoonful of pepper and a saltspoonful of pepper. Pour this over the hot turnips and garnish with a little parsley.

Take one quart liquid oysters, drain and put the liquor from the oysters in a stewpan and add one half as much water, teaspoonful of salt, one fourth teaspoonful of pepper, a teaspoonful each of butter and rolled cracker for each person to be served. Put on the stove and let boil. Then pour in the oysters.Let come to the boiling point. Have bowls ready with one and one-half tablespoonfuls of cold milk for each person. Pour the stew on this and serve. Never boil the milk.