A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl, Caroline French Benton [good books for 7th graders TXT] 📗

Mashed Potatoes

6 large potatoes. 1/2 cup hot milk. Butter the size of a hickory-nut. 3 teaspoonfuls salt. 3 shakes of pepper.

Peel and boil the potatoes till tender; then turn off the water and stand them on the back of the stove with a cover half over them, where they will keep hot while they get dry and floury, but do not let them burn; shake the saucepan every little while. Heat the milk with the butter, salt, and pepper in it; mash the potatoes well, either with the wooden potato-masher or with a wire one, and put in the milk little by little. When they are all free from lumps, put them through the potato-ricer, or pile them lightly in the tureen as they are. Do not smooth them over the top.

Sweet Potatoes

If they are large, scrub them well and bake in a hot oven for about forty minutes. If they are small, make them into—

Creamed Sweet Potatoes

Boil the potatoes, skin them, and cut them up in small slices. Make a cup of cream sauce, mix with them, and put them in the oven for half an hour.

Scalloped Sweet Potatoes

Boil six potatoes in well-salted water till they are tender; skin them, slice them thin, and put a layer of them in a buttered baking-dish; sprinkle with brown sugar, and put on more potatoes and more sugar till the dish is full. Bake for three-quarters of an hour.

Beets

Wash the beets but do not peel them. Boil them gently for three-quarters of an hour, or till they can be pierced easily with a straw. Then skin them and slice in a hot dish, dusting each layer with a little salt, pepper, and melted butter. Those which are left over may have a little vinegar poured over them, to make them into pickles for luncheon.

Once Margaret made something very nice by a recipe her Pretty Aunt put in her book. It was called—

Stuffed Beets

1 can French peas. 6 medium-sized beets.

Boil the beets as before and skin them, but leave them whole. Heat the peas after the juice has been turned off, and season them with salt and pepper. Cut off the stem end of each beet so it will stand steadily, and scoop a round place in the other end; sprinkle each beet with salt and pepper, and put a tiny bit of butter down in this little well, and then fill it high with the peas it will hold.

Creamed Cabbage

1 small cabbage. 1 cup cream sauce.

Take off the outside leaves of the cabbage; cut it up in four pieces, and cut out the hard core and lay it in cold, salted water for half an hour. Then wipe it dry and slice it, not too fine, and put it in a saucepan; cover it with boiling water with a teaspoonful of salt in it, and boil hard for fifteen minutes without any cover. While it is cooking, make a cup of cream sauce. Take up the cabbage, press it in the colander with a plate till all the water is out; put it in a hot covered dish, sprinkle well with salt, and pour the cream sauce over. This will not have any unpleasant odor in cooking, and it will be so tender and easy to digest that even a little girl may have two helpings.

If you like it to look green, put a tiny bit of soda in the water when you cook it.

Lima Beans

Shell them and cook like peas; pour over them a half-cup of cream sauce, if you like this better than having them dry.

Peas

Shell them and drop them into a saucepan of boiling water, into which you have put a teaspoonful of salt and one of sugar. Boil them till they are tender, from fifteen minutes, if they are fresh from the garden, to half an hour or more, if they have stood in the grocer's for a day or two. When they are done they will have little dents in their sides, and you can easily mash two or three with a fork on a plate. Then drain off the water, put in three shakes of pepper, more salt if they do not taste just right, and a piece of butter the size of a hickory-nut, and shake them till the butter melts; serve in a hot covered dish.

String Beans

Pull off the strings and cut off the ends; hold three or four beans in your hand and cut them into long, very narrow strips, not into square pieces. Then cook them exactly as you did the peas.

Stewed Tomatoes

6 large tomatoes. 1 teaspoonful of salt. 1 teaspoonful of sugar. 1 pinch soda. 3 shakes of pepper. Butter as large as an English walnut.

Peel and cut the tomatoes up small, saving the juice; put together in a saucepan with the seasoning, the soda mixed in a teaspoonful of water before it is put in. Simmer twenty minutes, stirring till it is smooth, and last put in half a cup of bread or cracker crumbs, or a cup of toast, cut into small bits. Serve in a hot, covered dish.

Asparagus

Untie the bunch, scrape the stalks clean, and put it in cold water for half an hour. Tie the bunch again, and cut enough off the white ends to make all the pieces the same length. Stand them in boiling water in a porcelain kettle, and cook gently for about twenty minutes. Lay on a platter on squares of buttered toast, and pour over the toast and the tips of the asparagus a cup of cream sauce. Or do not put it on toast, but pour melted butter over the tips after it is on the platter. To make it delicious, mix the juice of a lemon with the butter.

Sometimes put a little grated cheese on the ends last of all.

Onions

Peel off the outside skin and cook them in boiling, salted water till they are tender; drain them, put them in a baking-dish, and pour over them a tablespoonful of melted butter, three shakes of pepper, and a sprinkling of salt, and put in the oven and brown a very little. Or, cover them with a cup of white sauce instead of the melted butter, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, but do not put in the oven.

Corn

Strip off the husks and silk, and put in a kettle of boiling water and boil hard for fifteen minutes; do not salt the water, as salt makes corn tough. Put a napkin on a platter with one end hanging over the end; lay the corn on and fold the end of the napkin over to keep it warm.

Canned Corn

Turn the corn into the colander and pour water through it a moment. Heat a cup of milk with a tablespoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of salt, and three shakes of pepper, and mix with the corn and cook for two minutes. Or, put in a buttered baking-dish and brown in the oven. Many people never wash corn; it is better to do so.

Sometimes Margaret had boiled rice for dinner in place of potatoes, and then she looked back at the recipe she used when she cooked it for breakfast, and made it in just the same way. Very often in winter she had—

Macaroni

6 long pieces of macaroni. 1 cup white sauce. 1/2 pound of cheese. Paprika and salt.

Break up the macaroni into small pieces, and boil fifteen minutes in salted water, shaking the dish often. Pour off the water and hold the dish under the cold-water faucet until all the paste is washed off the outside of the macaroni, which will take only a minute if you turn it over once or twice. Butter a baking-dish, put in a layer of macaroni, a good sprinkle of salt, then a very little white sauce, and a layer of grated cheese, sprinkled over with a tiny dusting of paprika, or sweet red pepper, if you have it; only use a tiny bit. Then cover with a thin layer of white sauce, and so on till the dish is full, with the last layer of white sauce covered with an extra thick one of cheese. Bake till brown.

Margaret's mother got this rule in Paris, and she though it a very nice one.

After the soup, meat, and vegetables at dinner came the salad; for this Margaret almost always had lettuce, with French dressing, as mayonnaise seemed too heavy for dinner. Sometimes she had nice watercress; once in a long time she had celery with mayonnaise.

Corn-starch Pudding

1 pint of milk. 2 heaping tablespoonfuls of corn-starch. 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar. Whites of three eggs. 1/2 teaspoonful vanilla.

Beat the whites of the eggs very stiff. Mix the corn-starch with half a cup of the milk, and stir till it melts. Mix the rest of the milk and the sugar, and put them on the fire in the double boiler. When it bubbles, stir up the corn-starch and milk well, and stir them in and cook and stir till it gets as thick as oatmeal mush; then turn in the eggs and stir them lightly, and cook for a minute more. Take it off the stove, mix in the vanilla, and put in a mould to cool. When dinner is ready, turn it out on a platter and put small bits of red jelly around it, or pieces of preserved ginger, or a pretty circle of preserved peaches, or preserved pineapple. Have a pitcher of cream to pass with it, or have a nice bowl of whipped cream. If you have a ring-mould, let it harden in that, and have the whipped cream piled in the centre after it is on the platter, and put the jelly or preserves around last.

Chocolate Corn-starch Pudding

Use the same rule as before, but put in one more tablespoonful of sugar. Then shave thin two squares of Baker's chocolate, and stir in over the teakettle till it melts, and stir it in very thoroughly before you put in the eggs. Instead of pouring this into one large mould, put it in egg-cups to harden; turn these out carefully, each on a separate plate, and put a spoonful of whipped cream by each one.

Cocoanut Corn-starch Pudding

Make the first rule; before you put in the eggs, stir in a cup of grated cocoanut, with an extra spoonful of sugar, or a cup of that which comes in packages without more sugar, as it is already sweetened. Serve in a large mould, or in small ones, with cream.

Baked Custard

2 cups milk. Yolks of two eggs. 2 tablespoonfuls of sugar. A little nutmeg.

Beat the eggs till they are light; mix the milk and sugar till the sugar melts; put the two together, and put it into a nice baking-dish, or into small cups, and dust the nutmeg over the tops. Bake till the top is brown, and till when you put a knife-blade into the custard it comes out clean.

Cocoanut Custard

Add a cup of cocoanut to this rule and bake it in one dish, stirring it up two or three times from the bottom, but, after it begins to brown, leaving it alone to finish. Do not put any nutmeg on it.

Tapioca Pudding

2 tablespoonfuls tapioca. Yolks of two eggs. 1/2 cup of sugar. 1 quart of milk.

Put the tapioca into a small half-cup of water and let it stand one hour. Then drain it and put it in the milk in the double boiler, and cook and stir it till the tapioca looks clear, like glass. Beat the eggs and mix the sugar with them, and beat again till both are light, and put them with the milk and tapioca and cook three minutes, stirring all the time. Then take it off the fire and add a saltspoonful of salt and a half-teaspoonful of vanilla, and let it get perfectly cold.

Floating Island

1 pint milk. 3 eggs. One-third cup of sugar.

Put the milk on the stove to heat in a good-sized pan. Beat the whites of the eggs