VINTAGE RECIPES

[Welland Telegraph 1900]

Asparagus Soup

Cut the tender points off three bunches of asparagus and break the rest of the stalks into little pieces. Cook the stalks (not the points) until perfectly tender in a little boiling water. Drain, rub the pulp into a colander, and add three pints of milk. The tips should be cooked for 15 minutes in slightly salted, boiling water, and then add to the asparagus pulp and milk. Let it all boil up, season to taste, thicken with a little flour and pour into a hot tureen. Serve immediately with squares of toasted bread.

Use only the young, tender stalks of asparagus, and cut them in inch pieces, cook them gently in salted boiling water until done. Drain off the water and lay the asparagus on slices of buttered toast. Thicken 1 cup boiling milk with 2 teaspoons flour, rubbed into one tablespoon butter. When quite smooth and thick remove from the fire, add the beaten yolk of an egg, and pour over the asparagus and toast.

Cut off enough heads in 2-inch lengths to make three pints. Cook in a little boiling water until tender, drain, add 1/2 cup cream, season to taste and serve hot.

Wash and cook in bunches until thoroughly tender, drain, untie the bunches, lay the stalks neatly on hot buttered toast and pour over them a cream dressing made as follows,–Let a pint of sweet cream come to a boil, season to taste, and thicken with one teaspoon flour rubbed smooth in a little cold cream.

Asparagus and peas are very nice served together. Break the asparagus in inch pieces, pod the peas, look them over carefully and put together in boiling water to cook until tender. They should be of proportionate age to cook evenly. Only sufficient water to cook them in should be used. When done, if too dry, add a cupful of milk and thicken with a teaspoon of flour. If fluid enough, thicken with a teaspoon of flour, add a small lump of butter and season to taste.

Pick over and wash half a pint of good rice, and boil it in one quart of water till it is quite soft. Then drain it, and mix with it one quart of rich sweet milk; next add half a pound of raisins cut in bits; set this over a brisk fire, and stir it frequently till it boils, When it boils hard, stir in alternately two beaten eggs, and flour large tablespoons of brown sugar; let it continue boiling ten minutes longer; then take it from the fire, and send to the table hot

Put four dessertspoonfuls of coffee into a jug, with a few grains of salt, which softens the water, pour on one quart of boiling water, cover over and place at side of the fire for ten minutes, then pour a few cupfuls gently backward and forward to clear it; cover it again, and let it settle for ten minutes; then strain it through fine muslin, add three small tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar, one one half pint of cold milk and one half pint of cream, or if more convenient, all milk; place on ice for about six hours before required and at the last moment put in a pitcher with a large piece of ice.

To one pound of chopped beef add half a pound of chopped bacon. Mix well season with pepper. The bacon will make the beef salt enough Make into round flat cakes and boil or fry. If fried have a very hot frying pan with half butter and lard just enough to keep the meat from burning. Serve hot. Good for warm weather dinner..

Rub one ounce of loaf sugar upon the rind of a lemon, crush and dissolve it in two tablespoonfuls of milk. Add three dessertspoonfuls of flour, two ounces of clarified butter, and two well beaten eggs. Stir all over the fire for a minute. Take a  pound of good pastry, divide it into six or eight pieces, and roll each one out into a round shape about the size of a saucer, spread a little of the mixture on one half of the round, fold the other half over, fasten the edges securely and bake in a buttered tin in a moderate oven, Sift a little sugar over it. This is sufficient for six or eight turnovers.

An inexpensive dessert is made of cherries and bread. Stone the cherries and stew gently for a few minutes and sweeten to taste. Cut a  few slices of bread that is two days old. Fresh bread would not answer. Butter these slices liberally and cover the bottom of a pudding dish with them. Add a layer of the warm stewed cherries. Add another layer of buttered bread, and so alternate until the fruit is used. Then bake. This pudding may be eaten either cold or warm.

Put a small pot of red currant jelly into a stewpan, together with a dozen cloves, a stick of cinnamon, the rind of two oranges, a piece of glaze, and a large gravy spoonful of reduced brown sauce; moisten with half a pint of Burgandy wine, boil gently on the fire for twenty minutes; pass the sauce through a tammy into a bain-marie, add the juice of the two oranges, and just before sending to table boil the same. The juice is especially appropriate with red deer or roebuck, when prepared in a marinade and larded,

Boil one quart of sweet milk with a large stick of cinnamon broken up in it. When the milk has boiled, take it from the fire and set it aside to cool. Beat very light six eggs, and stir them by degrees into the milk when it is quite cold, and add gradually quarter of a pound of white sugar. Fill some cups with it, put the cups in a large pan and pour around them boiling water to reach nearly to the tops of the cups. Put the pan into a moderate oven and bake twenty minutes, Send them to table cold. You may bake the whole in one large dish if you prefer.