For shortening; use drippings and mix with goose, duck or chicken fat. In the fall and winter, when poultry is plentiful and fat, save all drippings of poultry fat for pie-crust. If you have neither, use rendered beef fat. Take one-half cup of shortening, one and one-half cups of flour. Sifted pastry flour is best. If you have none at hand take two tablespoons of flour off each cup after sifting; add a pinch of salt. With two knives cut the fat into the sifted flour until the shortening is in pieces as small as peas. Then pour in six or eight tablespoons of cold water; in summer use ice-water; work with the knife until well mixed (never use the hand). Flour a board or marble slab, roll the dough out thin, sprinkle with a little flour and put dabs of soft drippings here and there, fold the dough over and roll out thin again and spread with fat and sprinkle with flour, repeat this and then roll out not too thin and line a pie-plate with this dough. Always cut dough for lower crust a little larger than the upper dough and do not stretch the dough when lining pie-pan or plate. If fruit is to be used for the filling, brush over top of the dough with white of egg slightly beaten, or sprinkle with one tablespoon of bread crumbs to prevent the dough from becoming soggy. Put in the filling, brush over the edge of pastry with cold water, lay the second round of paste loosely over the filling; press the edges together lightly, and trim, if needed. Cut several slits in the top crust or prick it with a fork before putting it in place. Bake from thirty-five to forty-five minutes until crust is a nice brown. A gas stove is more satisfactory for baking pies than a coal stove as pies require the greatest heat at the bottom. The recipe given above makes two crusts. Bake pies having a cooked filling in a quick oven and those with an uncooked filling in a moderate oven. Let pies cool upon plates on which they were made because slipping them onto cold plates develops moisture which always destroys the crispness of the lower crust.
Take some dry, hard cheese and some dry crusts of bread. Pour a little boiling milk over the bread, cover it down till quite soft, then beat it with a fork; grate up the cheese and beat it in with the yolk of an egg and some pepper and salt. Beat the white of the egg to a stiff froth and stir it lightly in, pour into a buttered pie-dish and bake in a quick oven for twenty minutes. Serve hot.
Mince the onion, parsley, and bacon very finely, and put them into a basin with the seasoning and crumbs, and mix thoroughly. Butter a dish in which the fish can be both cooked and served. Spread half the seasoning on it, wash and dry the fish and lay it on this bed of seasoning; spread the rest of the seasoning on the top, pour over gently the gravy. Cover with a few raspings and put the butter on in tiny pieces. Put it into a quick oven and bake from 15 to 20 minutes, according to the thickness of the fish. Pin a paper collar round the dish, and serve at once.
To two pounds of chopped beef take three egg yolks, three tablespoons of parsley, three tablespoons of melted chicken-fat, four heaping tablespoons of soft bread crumbs, one-half teaspoon of kitchen bouquet, two teaspoons of lemon juice, grated peel of one lemon, one teaspoon of salt, one-half teaspoon of onion-juice and one teaspoon of pepper. Mix and bake twenty-five minutes in a quick oven with one-fourth cup of melted chicken-fat, and one-half cup of boiling water. Baste often.
The best cutlets are those taken from the leg or fillet. Cut them about half an inch thick, and as large as the palm of your hand. Season them with pepper and salt. Grate some stale bread, and rub it through a cullender, adding to it chopped sweet marjoram, grated lemon-peel, and some powdered mace or nutmeg. Spread the mixture on a large flat dish. Have ready in a pan some beaten egg. First dip each cutlet into the egg, and then into the seasoning on the dish, seeing that a sufficient quantity adheres to both sides of the meat. Melt in your frying-pan, over a quick fire, some beef-dripping, lard, or fresh butter, and when it boils lay your cutlets in it, and fry them thoroughly; turning them on both sides, and taking care that they do not burn. Place them in a covered dish near the fire, while you finish the gravy in the pan, by first skimming it, and then shaking in a little flour and stirring it round. Pour the gravy hot round the cutlets, and garnish with little bunches of curled parsley. You may mix with the bread crumbs a little saffron.
Take a quarter of a peck of the finest flour, rub into it three quarters of a pound of fresh butter, till 'tis like grated bread, something more than half a pound of sugar, half a nutmeg, and half a race of ginger grated; three eggs, yolks and whites beaten very well, and put to them half a pint of thick ale-yeast, three or four spoonfuls of sack. Make a hole in your flour, and pour in your yeast and eggs, and as much milk just warm, as will make it into a light paste. Let it stand before the fire to rise half an hour; then make it into a dozen and half of wigs; wash them over with eggs just as they go into the oven; a quick oven, and half an hour will bake them.
Beat the yolks and whites of two eggs separately. Add to this two cups of flour, of which one is a full cup of white and three-quarters of the corn-meal. This must be sifted three times. Put into this flour two teaspoons of baking-powder, together with a pinch of salt. Mix the prepared flour with a little boiling water, adding the eggs; also a little sugar may be put in, if desired. Then add enough tepid milk to make the mixture into a batter, after which pour into your pans; or, if corn-bread is desired, into the plain pan (thin). Bake in a quick oven. This quantity makes a dozen muffins. Butter your pan well, or the small gem-pans, according to which is used, and in so doing heat the pan a little.
To half a peck of flour, put a full jill of new yeast, and a little salt, make it with new milk (warmer than from the cow) first put the flour and barm together, then pour in the milk, make it a little stiffer than a seed-cake, dust it and your hands well with flour, pull it in little pieces, and mould it with flour very quick; put it in the dishes, and cover them with a warm cloth (if the weather requires it) and let them rise till they are half up, then set them in the oven, (not in the dishes, but turn them with tops down upon the peel;) when baked rasp them.
Take two pounds of treacle, two pounds and a quartern of flour, and ounce of beat ginger, three quarters of a pound of sugar, two ounces of coriander seeds, two eggs, a pennyworth of new ale with the yeast on it, a glass of brandy, and two ounces of lemon-peel, mix all these together in a bowl, and set it to rise for half an hour, then put it into a tin to bake, and wet it with a little treacle and water; if you have a quick oven an hour and a half will bake it.
Home-made bread is not so much used now as it was years back. Most housekeepers have found by experience that it is a waste both of time and money. There are very few houses among the middle classes which possess an oven capable of competing with any chance of success with a baker's oven. There are, however, many vegetarians who believe in what is called whole-meal bread. A good deal of the whole-meal bread sold as such has been found to be adulterated with substances very unwholesome to ordinary stomachs. We may mention saw-dust as one of the ingredients used for the purpose. Again, if you attempt to make whole-meal bread into loaves, you will find great difficulty in baking the loaves. This whole-meal is a very slow conductor of heat, and the result will probably be that the outside of the loaf will be very hard while the inside will be too underdone to be eaten. Consequently, should you wish to have home-made whole-meal bread, it is far best to bake it in the form of a tea-cake or flat-cake. We cannot do better, in conclusion, than quote what Sir Henry Thompson says on this subject:--"The following recipe," he says, "will be found successful, probably, after a trial or two, in producing excellent, light, friable, and most palatable bread: To two pounds of coarsely ground or crushed whole-meal, add half a pound of fine flour and a sufficient quantity of baking powder and salt; when these are well mixed, rub in two ounces of butter, and make into dough with half milk and water, or with all milk if preferred. Make rapidly into flat cakes like 'tea-cakes,' and bake without delay in a quick oven, leaving them afterwards to finish thoroughly at a lower temperature. The butter and milk supply fatty matters, in which the wheat is somewhat deficient; all the saline and mineral matters of the husk are retained; and thus a more nutritive form of bread cannot be made. Moreover, it retains the natural flavour of the wheat, in place of the insipidity which is characteristic of fine flour, although it is indisputable that bread produced from the latter, especially in Paris and Vienna, is unrivalled for delicacy, texture, and colour. Whole meal may be bought; but mills are now cheaply made for home use, and wheat may be ground to any degree of coarseness desired."
