1/2 lb. of Allinson bread cut in thin slices, eggs and milk as in Bun Pudding, 1 breakfastcupful of currants and sultanas mixed, 1 heaped-up teaspoonful of cinnamon, 2 oz. of butter, 2 oz. of chopped almonds, and sugar to taste. Soak the bread as directed in above recipe, add the fruit, which should be previously well washed, picked, and dried, and the cinnamon, almonds, and sugar. Dissolve part of the butter, add it to the rest of the ingredients, and mix them all well together. Butter a pie-dish with the rest of the butter, and bake the pudding in a moderate oven for 1 hour.
This, as the name implies, is a French recipe. It consists of ordinary grilled mushrooms, served in a sauce composed of oil or oiled butter, chopped up with parsley and garlic, thickened with the yolks of eggs.
Remove the stalks from 1 lb. of fresh strawberries, place them in a glass dish and scatter over 2 tablespoonfuls of pounded sugar; prepare 1 pint of custard with Allinson custard powder according to recipe given above, and while still hot pour carefully over the fruit, set aside to cool, and just before serving (which must not be until the custard has become quite cold) garnish the top with a few fine strawberries.
The juice of 6 oranges and of 1/2 a lemon, 6 eggs, 6 oz. of sugar, and 1 dessertspoonful of Allinson cornflour. Add enough water to the fruit juices to make 1-1/2 pints of liquid. Set this over the fire with the sugar; meanwhile smooth the cornflour with a little cold water, and thicken the liquid with it when boiling. Set aside the saucepan, (which should be an enamelled one) so as to cool the contents a little. Beat up the eggs, gradually stir into them the thickened liquid, and then proceed with the custard as in the previous recipe. This is a German sweet, and very delicious.
Like most soups that are either sweet or sour, this is a German recipe. Put a piece of butter, the size of a large egg, into a saucepan. Let it melt, then mix it with a tablespoonful of flour, and stir smoothly until it is lightly browned. Add gradually two pints of water, a pound of black cherries, picked and washed, and a few cloves. Let these boil until the fruit is quite tender, then press the whole through a sieve. After straining, add a little port, if wine is allowed--but the soup will be very nice without this addition--half a teaspoonful of the kernels, blanched and bruised, a tablespoonful of sugar, and a few whole cherries. Let the soup boil again until the cherries are tender, and pour all into a tureen over toasted sippets, sponge-cakes, or macaroons.
This is an Italian recipe. You must first wash, peel, and dry the mushrooms, and then soak them for some time in what is called a marinade, which is another word for pickle, of oil mixed with chopped garlic, pepper, and salt. They are then stewed in oil with plenty of chopped parsley over rather a brisk fire. Squeeze, a little lemon-juice over them and serve them in a dish surrounded with a little fried or toasted bread.
Proceed exactly as in the above recipe, only substituting white haricot beans for red. It is a great improvement to add a little boiling cream, but of course this makes the soup much more expensive. Some cooks add a spoonful of blanched, chopped parsley to this puree, and Frenchmen generally flavour this soup with garlic.
Take fifteen fresh eggs, break the yolks into one pan and the whites into another. Beat the yolks with a pound of sugar pounded very fine, scrape the peel of a lemon with a lump of sugar, dry that and pound it fine also; then throw into it the yolks, and work the eggs and sugar till they are of a whitish colour. Next whip the whites well and mix them with the yolks. Now sift half a pound of flour of potatoes through a silk sieve over the eggs and sugar. Have some paper cases ready, which lay on a plafond with some paper underneath. Fill the cases, but not too full; glaze the contents with some rather coarse sugar, and bake the whole in an oven moderately heated.
1/2 lb. of ground sweet almonds, 1 oz. of cocoa, 1 dessertspoonful of vanilla essence, 1/2 lb. of castor sugar, the white of 4 eggs. Whip the white of the eggs to a stiff froth, add the sugar, cocoa, vanilla, and almond meal, and proceed as in the previous recipe.
In making bread, a portion of mashed potato is sometimes added to the flour, and this addition improves the bread very much for some tastes; it also keeps it from getting dry quite so soon. At the same time it is not so nutritious as ordinary home-made bread. Boil the required quantity of potatoes in their skins, drain and dry them, then peel and weigh them. Pound them with the rolling-pin until they are quite free from lumps, and mix with them the flour in the proportion of seven pounds of flour to two and a half pounds of potatoes. Add the yeast and knead in the ordinary way, but make up the bread with milk instead of water. When the dough is well risen, bake the bread in a gentle oven. Bake it a little longer than for ordinary bread, and, when it seems done enough, let it stand a little while, with the oven-door open, before taking it out. Unless these precautions are taken, the crust will be hard and brittle, while the inside is still moist and doughy. This recipe is from "Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery."
