The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual Part 64

A steel, and a Small mortar.

+-----+---+----+----+ 5 13 21 1 +---+----+----+ 6 14 22 +-----+---+----+----+ 7 15 23 2 +---+----+----+ 8 16 24 +-----+---+----+----+ 9 17 25 3 +---+----+----+ 10 18 26 +-----+---+----+----+ 11 19 27 4 +---+----+----+ 12 20 28 +-----+---+----+----+

N.B. The portable magazine of taste, alluded to in page 44, may be furnished with a four-ounce bottle for Cognac (No. 471), a ditto for Curacoa (No. 474), an ounce bottle for essence of anchovy (No. 433), and one of like size for mushroom catchup.

_Toast and Water._--(No. 463.)

Cut a crust of bread off a stale loaf, about twice the thickness toast is usually cut: toast it carefully until it be completely browned all over, but not at all blackened or burnt; pour as much boiling water as you wish to make into drink, into the jug; put the toast into it, and let it stand till it is quite cold: the fresher it is the better.

_Obs._--A roll of thin fresh-cut lemon, or dried orange-peel, or some currant-jelly (No. 475*), apples sliced or roasted, &c. infused with the bread, are grateful additions. N.B. If the boiling water be poured on the bread it will break it, and make the drink grouty.

N.B. This is a refres.h.i.+ng summer drink; and when the proportion of the fluids is destroyed by profuse perspiration, may be drunk plentifully.

Let a large jug be made early in the day, it will then become warmed by the heat of the air, and may be drunk without danger; which water, cold as it comes from the well, cannot in hot weather. _Or_,

To make it more expeditiously, put the bread into a mug, and just cover it with boiling water; let it stand till cold, then fill it up with cold spring-water, and pour it through a fine sieve.

_Obs._--The above is a pleasant and excellent beverage, grateful to the stomach, and deserves a constant place by the bed-side.

_Cool Tankard, or Beer Cup._--(No. 464.)

A quart of mild ale, a gla.s.s of white wine, one of brandy, one of capillaire, the juice of a lemon, a roll of the peel pared thin, nutmeg grated at the top (a sprig of borrage[294-*] or balm), and a bit of toasted bread.

_Cider Cup_,--(No. 465.)

Is the same, only subst.i.tuting cider for beer.

_Flip._--(No. 466.)

Keep grated ginger and nutmeg with a little fine dried lemon-peel, rubbed together in a mortar.

To make a quart of flip:--Put the ale on the fire to warm, and beat up three or four eggs, with four ounces of moist sugar, a tea-spoonful of grated nutmeg or ginger, and a quartern of good old rum or brandy. When the ale is near to boil, put it into one pitcher, and the rum and eggs, &c. into another; turn it from one pitcher to another till it is as smooth as cream.

N.B. This quant.i.ty I styled _one yard of flannel_.

_Obs._--The above is set down in the words of the publican who gave us the receipt.

_Tewahdiddle._--(No. 467.)

A pint of table beer (or ale, if you intend it for a supplement to your "night cap"), a table-spoonful of brandy, and a tea-spoonful of brown sugar, or clarified syrup (No. 475); a little grated nutmeg or ginger may be added, and a roll of very thin-cut lemon-peel.

_Obs._--Before our readers make any remarks on this composition, we beg of them to taste it: if the materials are good, and their palate vibrates in unison with our own, they will find it one of the pleasantest beverages they ever put to their lips; and, as Lord Ruthven says, "this is a right gossip's cup that far exceeds all the ale that ever Mother Bunch made in her life-time." See his Lords.h.i.+p's _Experiments in Cookery_, &c. 18mo. London, 1654, p. 215.

_Sir Fleetwood Shepherd's Sack Posset._--(No. 467*.)

"From famed Barbadoes, on the western main, Fetch sugar, ounces four--fetch sack from Spain, A pint,--and from the eastern Indian coast Nutmeg, the glory of our northern toast; O'er flaming coals let them together heat, Till the all-conquering sack dissolve the sweet; O'er such another fire put eggs just ten, New-born from tread of c.o.c.k and rump of hen: Stir them with steady hand and conscience p.r.i.c.king To see the untimely end of ten fine chicken: From s.h.i.+ning shelf take down the brazen skillet,-- A quart of milk from gentle cow will fill it.

When boiled and cold, put milk and sack to eggs, Unite them firmly like the triple league, And on the fire let them together dwell Till Miss sing twice--you must not kiss and tell-- Each lad and la.s.s take up a silver spoon, And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon."

_To bottle Beer._--(No. 468.)

When the briskness and liveliness of malt liquors in the cask fail, and they become dead and vapid, which they generally do soon after they are tilted; let them be bottled.

Be careful to use clean and dried bottles; leave them unstopped for twelve hours, and then cork them as closely as possible with good and sound new corks; put a bit of lump sugar as big as a nutmeg into each bottle: the beer will be ripe, _i. e._ fine and sparkling, in about four or five weeks: if the weather is cold, to put it up the day before it is drunk, place it in a room where there is a fire.

Remember there is a sediment, &c. at the bottom of the bottles, which you must carefully avoid disturbing; so pour it off at once, leaving a wine-gla.s.sful at the bottom.

? If beer becomes hard or stale, a few grains of carbonate of potash added to it at the time it is drunk will correct it, and make draught beer as brisk as bottled ale.

_Rich Raspberry Wine or Brandy._--(No. 469.)

Bruise the finest ripe raspberries with the back of a spoon; strain them through a flannel bag into a stone jar, allowing a pound of fine powdered loaf sugar to each quart of juice; stir it well together, and cover it down; let it stand for three days, stirring it up each day; pour off the clear, and put two quarts of sherry, or one of Cognac brandy, to each quart of juice; bottle it off: it will be fit for the gla.s.s in a fortnight.

N.B. Or make it with the jelly, No. 479.

_Liqueurs._--(No. 471.)

We have very little to tell from our own experience, and refer our reader to "_Nouvelle Chimie du Gout et de l'Odorat, ou l'Art du Distillateur, du Confiseur, et du Parfumeur, mis a la portee de tout le Monde_." Paris, 2 tom. 8vo. 1819.

Next to teaching how to make good things at home, is the information where those things may be procured ready made of the best quality.

It is in vain to attempt to imitate the best foreign liqueurs, unless we can obtain the pure vinous spirit with which they are made.

Johnson and Co., foreign liqueur and brandy merchants to his majesty and the royal family, No. 2, Colonnade, Pall Mall, are justly famous for importing of the best quality, and selling in a genuine state, seventy-one varieties of foreign liqueurs, &c.

_Curacoa._--(No. 474.)

Put five ounces of thin-cut Seville orange-peel, that has been dried and pounded, or, which is still better, of the fresh peel of a fresh shaddock, which may be bought at the orange and lemon shops in the beginning of March, into a quart of the finest and cleanest rectified spirit; after it has been infused a fortnight, strain it, and add a quart of syrup (No. 475), and filter. See the following receipt:

_To make a Quart of Curacoa._

To a pint of the cleanest and strongest rectified spirit, add two drachms and a half of the sweet oil of orange-peel; shake it up: dissolve a pound of good lump sugar in a pint of cold water; make this into a clarified syrup (No. 475): which add to the spirit: shake it up, and let it stand till the following day: then line a funnel with a piece of muslin, and that with filtering-paper, and filter it two or three times till it is quite bright. This liqueur is an admirable cordial; and a tea-spoonful in a tumbler of water is a very refres.h.i.+ng summer drink, and a great improvement to punch.

_Clarified Syrup._--(No. 475.)

Break into bits two pounds (avoirdupois) of double refined lump sugar, and put it into a clean stew-pan (that is well tinned), with a pint of cold spring-water; when the sugar is dissolved, set it over a moderate fire: beat about half the white of an egg, put it to the sugar before it gets warm, and stir it well together. Watch it; and when it boils take off the sc.u.m; keep it boiling till no sc.u.m rises, and it is perfectly clear; then run it through a clean napkin: put it into a close stopped bottle; it will keep for months, and is an elegant article on the sideboard for sweetening.

_Obs._--The proportion of sugar ordered in the above syrup is a quarter pound more than that directed in the Pharmacopia of the London College of Physicians. The quant.i.ty of sugar must be as much as the liquor is capable of keeping dissolved when cold, or it will ferment, and quickly spoil: if kept in a temperate degree of heat, the above proportion of sugar may be considered the basis of all syrups.