Thursday 5 May 2016

19 June 1880 - Answers to Correspondents - Cookery

A SUBSCRIBER - 1. Pink blancmange is coloured with prepared cochineal, to be procured from a chemist. 2. A good recipe for a sponge-cake - Place 8 eggs into one side of the scales, and their weight of pounded loaf-sugar in the other; and the weight of 5 of the eggs of good dry flour. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs, beat the former, and put them into a saucepan with the sugar, letting them remain over the fire til lukewarm, stirring them well. Then place them in a basin, add one tablespoonful of brandy, and the grated rind of one lemon, and stir all together; dredging in the flour very gradually. Whisk the whites of the eggs to a stiff froth, and stir them in the whole mixture. Then beat all for 15 minutes, and place it in a buttered mould which has been sprinkled over with a little sifted sugar, and bake the cake in a quick oven for an hour and a half. You may flavour with a few drops of essence of almonds, if you prefer that to the lemon peel.

PRIMROSE - To make vegetable marrow jam; the marrows should be pared, seeds taken out, and cut into pieces about the size of walnuts. To 1lb of fruit add 3/4lb of sugar dissolved in cold water, and boil with a muslin bag containing a little ground ginger and a few cloves After it has boiled sufficiently add a few drops of essence of lemon.

DEWDROP (Surry) - "Sir Watkin's Pudding" is a good one. Take 1/2lb of beef suet, chop finely, 1/2lb white sugar pounded, 1/2lb bread crumbs, the rind and juice of two lemons, and the yolks and whites of two eggs, well beaten; mix all thoroughly together, and boil for four hours. Serve with wine sauce.

DAISY (Guildford) - "Hominy" is the inside part of the Indian corn. It is used as a vegetable, and puddings. As a vegetable, boil it for four hours in plenty of water, and strain through a colander. Use instead of potatoes. For a pudding, mix the boiled hominy with milk, two eggs, raisins, and a little suet; tie up in a basin, and boil for two hours. To be eaten with sugar and melted butter or treacle.

SCOTCH LASSIE should make her rhubarb wine at once, while it is plentiful. Extract the juice by bruising it and leaving it for some time in cold water. To make 10 gallons of wine, it will need 50lbs of rhubarb, and 37lbs of fine moist sugar. The tub should hold from 15 to 20 gallons, and to the proportions specified 4 gallons of water should be added and well stirred, and a blanket should be laid over it, while standing for 24 hours. Then draw off the juice through a tap low in the side of the tub, add another couple of gallons of water to the pulp, stir well, leave it to settle again for an hour or two, draw off and mix the two liquors together, and in it dissolve the sugar. Then cleanse the tub, return the wine to it, and cover with a blanket, keeping the temperature of the apartment not below 60 Fahrenheit, and leave for 48 hours, or at least till there is an appearance of fermentation, and draw off into a 10 gallon cask, which must be filled to the bung-hole with water, and as the fermentation proceeds and as the wine diminishes, it must be filled-up daily during ten or twelve days. The bung may then be put in, and a gimlet hole made at the side fitted with a spile. This latter should be removed every two or three days during ten days, to allow the carbonic acid gas to escape. Pour in at the vent hole a little liquor once a week, during a month, and then at intervals of a month till the end of December, when it should be drawn off the lees, the turbid part being strained off through flannel. This should be done on a fine frosty day. Clean the cask, return the pure wine, dissolving one drachm of isinglass into it, stir all together, and bung up the cask till March. A clean dry day should be chosen for bottling it. Use champagne bottles for ordinary ones will not be sufficiently strong and the corks secured with wire. 

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