1/2 lb. of fine wheatmeal, 1/4 lb. of butter, 5 eggs, 1/2 lb. of castor sugar, 1-1/2 oz. of Allinson cocoa, 1 dessertspoonful of vanilla essence. Proceed as in recipe of "Madeira Cake," adding the cocoa and flavouring with vanilla.
and as I have the recipe direct from Mrs C. Leigh Hunt Wallace, the inventor of this kind of bread, I am able to pass it on at first hand. Ten ounces wheatmeal, 1 large egg (weighing 2 ozs.), 1 gill milk and 1 gill water, the whole to be made into a batter, the white of egg being beaten separately to a stiff froth and incorporated with the batter very thoroughly but very quickly; the whole to be baked in 1 lb. cake or loaf tin, the tin being very hot and thoroughly oiled or buttered before the batter is turned into it. Put for 50 minutes in a very hot part of the oven (350 degrees to 380 degrees fahr.) and keep in another 50 minutes to soak. I can vouch for the excellence of this bread, and may say that I have managed it with very little difficulty. I use a gas oven and loaf pans made of black steel, as these take and retain the heat much better than tins. If any amateur, however, is doubtful as to how this loaf should be, she cannot do better than send for a sample loaf or two to the Wallace Bakery, 465 Battersea Park Road, London, S.W. There is also a depot in Edinburgh--Messrs Richards & Co., 7 Dundas Street, where these can be got. By comparing one's own achievements with these, one will be the better able to attain the desired result. In case any may think this egg bread sounds expensive, I may say that it is exceedingly economical to use; a small loaf going much farther than a large one of the ordinary puffed-up kind.
Pour a pint of cream upon one and a half cupfuls of sugar; let it stand until the whites of three eggs have been beaten to a stiff froth; add this to the cream and beat up thoroughly; grate a little nutmeg over the mixture and bake without an upper crust. If a tablespoonful of sifted flour is added to it, as the above Custard Pie recipe, it would improve it.
Take a large cupful of yellow meal and a teacupful of cooking molasses and beat them well together; then add to them a quart of boiling milk, some salt and a large tablespoonful of powdered ginger, add a cupful of finely-chopped suet or a piece of butter the size of an egg. Butter a brown earthen pan and turn the pudding in, let it stand until it thickens; then as you put it into the oven, turn over it a pint of cold milk, but do not stir it, as this makes the jelly. Bake three hours. Serve warm with hard sauce. This recipe has been handed down from mother to daughter for many years back in a New England family.
This is the most important of all the sauces with which we have to deal. The great mistake made by the vast majority of women cooks is that they will use milk. They thicken a pint of milk with a little butter and flour, and then call it melted butter, and, as a rule, send to table enough for twenty persons when only two or three are dining. As butter sauce will be served with the majority of vegetables, we would call the attention of vegetarians to the fact that, as a rule, ordinary cookery-books take for granted that vegetables will be served with the meat. When therefore vegetables are served separately, and are intended to be eaten with bread as a course by themselves, some alteration must be made in the method of serving them. Again, vegetarians should bear in mind that, except in cases where poverty necessitates rigid economy, a certain amount of butter may be considered almost a necessity, should the meal be wished to be both wholesome and nourishing. Francatelli, who was chef-de-cuisine to the Earl of Chesterfield, and was also chief cook to the Queen and chef at the Reform Club, and afterwards manager of the Freemasons' Tavern, in writing on this subject observes:--"Butter sauce, or, as it is more absurdly called, melted butter, is the foundation of the whole of the following sauces, and requires very great care in its preparation. Though simple, it is nevertheless a very useful and agreeable sauce when properly made. So far from this being usually the case, it is too generally left to assistants to prepare, as an insignificant matter; the result is therefore seldom satisfactory. When a large quantity of butter sauce is required, put four ounces of fresh butter into a middle-sized stew-pan, with some grated nutmeg and minionette pepper; to these add four ounces of sifted flour, knead the whole well together, and moisten with a pint of cold spring water; stir the sauce on the fire till it boils, and after having kept it gently boiling for twenty minutes (observing that it be not thicker than the consistency of common white sauce), proceed to mix in one pound and a half of sweet fresh butter, taking care to stir the sauce quickly the whole time of the operation. Should it appear to turn oily, add now and then a spoonful of cold spring water; finish with the juice of half a lemon, and salt to palate; then pass the sauce through a tammy into a large bain-marie for use." We have quoted the recipe of the late M. Francatelli in full, as we believe it is necessary to refer to some very great authority in order to knock out the prejudice from the minds of many who think that they not only can themselves cook, but teach others, but who are bound in the chains of prejudice and tradition which, too often, in the most simple recipes, lead them to follow in the footsteps of their grandmothers. Real butter sauce can be made as follows, on a small scale:--Take a claret-glass of water, and about a small teaspoonful of flour mixed with rather more than the same quantity of butter, and mix this in the water over the fire till it is of the consistency of very thin gruel. If it is thicker than this, add a little more water. Now take any quantity of butter, and gradually dissolve as much as you can in this thin gruel, adding say half an ounce at a time, till the sauce becomes a rich oily compound. After a time, if you add too much butter, the sauce will curdle and turn oily, as described by Francatelli. Of course, in everyday life it is not necessary to have the butter sauce so rich, still it is simply ridiculous to thicken a pint of milk, or a pint of water, with a little butter and flour, and then call it butter sauce or melted butter. Suppose we have a large white cabbage, like those met with in the West of England, and we are going to make a meal off it in conjunction with plenty of bread. Suppose the cabbage is sufficiently large for six persons, surely half a pound of butter is not an excessive quantity to use in making butter sauce for the purpose. Yet prejudice is such that if we use half a pound of butter for the butter sauce, housekeepers consider it extravagant. On the other hand, if the butter were placed on the table, and the six persons helped themselves, and ate bread and butter with the cabbage and finished the half-pound, it would not be considered extravagant. Of course, this is simply prejudice. A simple way of making melted butter is as follows:--Take half a pint of cold water, put it in a saucepan, and add sufficient white roux, or butter and flour mixed, till it is of the consistency of thin gruel. Now gradually dissolve in this, adding a little piece at a time, as much butter as you can afford; add a suspicion of nutmeg, a little pepper and salt, and a few drops of lemon-juice from a fresh lemon, if you have one in use.
Fillet the fish, wash and trim them, roll them lightly up with the skin inside. Rub a baking sheet with some butter or dripping. Put on the rolls of fish close together. Squeeze over them some lemon juice, cover with a piece of buttered paper, and bake in the oven for twenty minutes or until they look milk white. Dish them carefully, make the white sauce by recipe given, season it with pepper, salt, and half a teaspoonful of lemon juice. Chop half a teaspoonful of parsley very finely and stir it in, pour over the fish, and serve.
These little pancakes may be filled with the fruit filling in following recipe; or with a poppy seed filling using one cup of seed and adding one cup of sugar, moistening with one-half cup of water. The recipe given for the dough makes only six blintzes and where more are required double or triple the quantities given to make amount desired. For Purim, fold blintzes in triangular shapes. Fry as directed.
Raspberry, blackberry and strawberry juice may be made by following the recipe for grape juice but doubling the quantity of sugar. For currant juice use four times as much sugar as for grape juice.
Scrub and wash as many carrots as are required. Cook them in a little water or steam them until quite tender, then slice them and place them in a saucepan. Make a white sauce as directed in the recipe for "Onions and white sauce," and stir into it a handful of finely-chopped parsley. Pour the sauce over the carrots, and let them simmer for ten minutes. Serve very hot with baked potatoes.
