The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887), Hugo Ziemann [world of reading .TXT] 📗

The best way to cook eggs for an invalid is to drop them, or else pour boiling water over the egg in the shell and let it stand for a few minutes on the back of the stove.

OYSTER TOAST.

Make a nice slice of dry toast, butter it and lay it on a hot dish. Put six oysters, half a teacupful of their own liquor, and half a cupful of milk, into a tin cup or basin, and boil one minute. Season with a little butter, pepper and salt, then pour over the toast and serve.

MULLED JELLY.

Take one tablespoonful of currant or grape jelly, beat with it the white of one egg and a teaspoonful of sugar; pour on it a teacupful of boiling water, and break in a slice of dry toast or two crackers.

CUP CUSTARD.

Break into a coffeecup an egg, put in two teaspoonfuls of sugar, beat it up thoroughly, a pinch of salt and a pinch of grated nutmeg; fill up the cup with good sweet milk, turn it into another cup, well buttered, and set it in a pan of boiling water, reaching nearly to the top of the cup. Set in the oven, and when the custard is set, it is done. Eat cold.

CLAM BROTH.

Select twelve small, hard-shell clams, drain them and chop them fine; add half a pint of clam juice or hot water, a pinch of cayenne, and a walnut of butter; simmer thirty minutes, add a gill of boiled milk, strain, and serve. This is an excellent broth for weak stomachs.

MILK OR CREAM CODFISH.

This dish will often relish when a person is recovering from sickness, when nothing else would. Pick up a large tablespoonful of salt codfish very fine, freshen it considerably by placing it over the fire in a basin, covering it with cold water as it comes to a boil; turn off the water and freshen again if very salt, then turn off the water until dry, and pour over half a cupful of milk or thin cream, add a bit of butter, a sprinkle of pepper, and a thickening made of one teaspoonful of flour or cornstarch, wet up with a little milk; when this boils up, turn over a slice of dipped toast.

CRACKER PANADA.

Break in pieces three or four hard crackers that are baked quite brown, and let them boil fifteen minutes in one quart of water; then remove from the fire, let them stand three or four minutes, strain off the liquor through a fine wire sieve, and season it with sugar.

This is a nourishing beverage for infants that are teething, and with the addition of a little wine and nutmeg, is often prescribed for invalids recovering from a fever.

BREAD PANADA.

Put three gills of water and one tablespoonful of white sugar on the fire, and just before it boils add two tablespoonfuls of the crumbs of stale white bread, stir it well, and let it boil three or four minutes, then add one glass of white wine, a grated lemon and a little nutmeg; let it boil up once, then remove it from the fire, and keep it closely covered until it is wanted for use.

SLIPPERY-ELM TEA.

Put a teaspoonful of powdered slippery-elm into a tumbler, pour cold water upon it, and season with lemon and sugar.

TOAST WATER, OR CRUST COFFEE.

Take stale pieces of crusts of bread, the end pieces of the loaf, toast them a nice, dark brown, care to be taken that they do not burn in the least, as that affects the flavor. Put the browned crusts into a large milk pitcher, and pour enough boiling water over to cover them; cover the pitcher closely, and let steep until cold. Strain, and sweeten to taste; put a piece of ice in each glass.

This is also good, drank warm with cream and sugar, similar to coffee.

PLAIN MILK TOAST.

Cut a thin slice from a loaf of stale bread, toast it very quickly, sprinkle a little salt over it, and pour upon it three tablespoonfuls of boiling milk or cream. Crackers split and toasted in this manner, are often very grateful to an invalid.

LINSEED TEA.

Put one tablespoonful of linseed into a stewpan with half a pint of cold water; place the stewpan over a moderate fire, and when the water is quite warm, pour it off, and add to the linseed half a pint of fresh cold water, then let the whole boil three or four minutes; season it with lemon and sugar.

POWDERS FOR CHILDREN.

A very excellent carminative powder for flatulent infants may be kept in the house, and employed with advantage whenever the child is in pain or griped, dropping five grains of oil of anise-seed and two of peppermint on half an ounce of lump sugar, and rubbing it in a mortar, with a drachm of magnesia, into a fine powder. A small quantity of this may be given in a little water at any time, and always with benefit.

FOR CHILDREN TEETHING.

Tie a quarter of a pound of wheat flour in a thick cloth and boil it in one quart of water for three hours; then remove the cloth and expose the flour to the air or heat until it is hard and dry; grate from it, when wanted, one tablespoonful, which put into half a pint of new milk, and stir over the fire until it comes to a boil, when add a pinch of salt and a tablespoonful of cold water and serve. This gruel is excellent for children afflicted with summer complaint.

Or brown a tablespoonful of flour in the oven or on top of the stove on a baking tin; feed a few pinches at a time to a child and it will often check a diarrhoea. The tincture of "kino"—of which from ten to thirty drops, mixed with a little sugar and water in a spoon, and given every two or three hours, is very efficacious and harmless—can be procured at almost any druggist's. Tablespoon doses of pure cider vinegar and a pinch of salt, has cured when all else failed.

BLACKBERRY CORDIAL.

This recipe may be found under the head of COFFEE, TEA, BEVERAGES. It will be found an excellent medicine for children teething, and summer diseases.

ACID DRINKS.

1. Peel thirty large Malaga grapes, and pour half a pint of boiling water upon them; cover them closely and let them steep until the water is cold.

2. Pour half a pint of boiling water upon one tablespoonful of currant jelly, and stir until the jelly is dissolved.

3. Cranberries and barberries may be used in the same way to make very refreshing acid drinks for persons recovering from fevers.

DRAUGHTS FOR THE FEET.

Take a large leaf from the horse-radish plant, and cut out the hard fibres that run through the leaf; place it on a hot shovel for a moment to soften it, fold it, and fasten it closely in the hollow of the foot by a cloth bandage.

Burdock leaves, cabbage leaves, and mullein leaves, are used in the same manner, to alleviate pain and promote perspiration.

Garlics are also made for draughts by pounding them, placing them on a hot tin plate for a moment to sweat them, and binding them closely to the hollow of the foot by a cloth bandage.

Draughts of onions, for infants, are made by roasting onions in hot ashes, and, when they are quite soft, peeling off the outside, mashing them, and applying them on a cloth as usual.

POULTICES.

A Bread and Milk Poultice.—Put a tablespoonful of the crumbs of stale bread into a gill of milk, and give the whole one boil up. Or, take stale bread crumbs, pour over them boiling water and boil till soft, stirring well; take from the fire and gradually stir in a little glycerine or sweet oil, so as to render the poultice pliable when applied.

A Hop Poultice.—Boil one handful of dried hops in half a pint of water, until the half pint is reduced to a gill, then stir into it enough Indian meal to thicken it.

A Mustard Poultice.—Into one gill of boiling water stir one tablespoonful of Indian meal; spread the paste thus made upon a cloth and spread over the paste one teaspoonful of mustard flour. If you wish a mild poultice, use a teaspoonful of mustard as it is prepared for the table, instead of the mustard flour.

Equal parts of ground mustard and flour made into a paste with warm water, and spread between two pieces of muslin, form the indispensable mustard plaster.

A Ginger Poultice.—This is made like a mustard poultice, using ground ginger instead of mustard. A little vinegar is sometimes added to each of these poultices.

A Stramonium Poultice.—Stir one tablespoonful of Indian meal into a gill of boiling water and add one tablespoonful of bruised stramonium seeds.

Wormwood and Arnica are sometimes applied in poultices. Steep the herbs in half a pint of cold water and when all their virtue is extracted stir in a little bran or rye meal to thicken the liquid; the herbs must not be removed from the liquid.

This is a useful application for sprains and bruises.

Linseed Poultice.—Take four ounces of powdered linseed and gradually sprinkle it into a half pint of hot water.

A REMEDY FOR BOILS.

An excellent remedy for boils is water of a temperature agreeable to the feelings of the patient. Apply wet linen to the part affected and frequently renew or moisten it. It is said to be the most effectual remedy known. Take inwardly some good blood purifier.

CURE FOR RINGWORMS.

Yellow dock, root or leaves, steeped in vinegar, will cure the worst case of ringworm.