A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes | Page 3

not only effect a great saving in your expenditure, but you would also insure a more substantial and wholesome kind of food; it would be free from potato, rice, bean or pea flour, and alum, all of which substances are objectionable in the composition of bread. The only utensil required for bread-making would be a tub, or trough, capable of working a bushel or two of flour. This tub would be useful in brewing, for which you will find in this book plain and easy directions.
I have pointed out the necessity of procuring these articles for cooking purposes, and with the injunction to use great care in keeping them thoroughly clean, I will at once proceed to show you their value in a course of practical and economical cookery, the soundness and plainness of which I sincerely hope you will all be enabled to test in your own homes.
COOKERY BOOK.
No. 1. BOILED BEEF.
This is an economical dinner, especially where there are many mouths to feed. Buy a few pounds of either salt brisket, thick or thin flank, or buttock of beef; these pieces are always to be had at a low rate. Let us suppose you have bought a piece of salt beef for a Sunday's dinner, weighing about five pounds, at 6-1/2_d._ per pound, that would come to 2_s._ 8-1/2_d._; two pounds of common flour, 4_d._, to be made into suet pudding or dumplings, and say 8-1/2_d._ for cabbages, parsnips, and potatoes; altogether 3_s._ 9_d._ This would produce a substantial dinner for ten persons in family, and would, moreover, as children do not require much meat when they have pudding, admit of there being enough left to help out the next day's dinner, with potatoes.
No. 2. HOW TO BOIL BEEF.
Put the beef into your three or four gallon pot, three parts filled with cold water, and set it on the fire to boil; remove all the scum that rises to the surface, and then let it boil gently on the hob; when the meat has boiled an hour and is about half done, add the parsnips in a net, and at the end of another half hour put in the cabbages, also in a net. A piece of beef weighing five or six pounds will require about two hours' gentle boiling to cook it thoroughly. The dumplings may, of course, be boiled with the beef, etc. I may here observe that the dumplings and vegetables, with a small quantity of the meat, would be all-sufficient for the children's meal.
No. 3. ECONOMICAL POT LIQUOR SOUP.
A thrifty housewife will not require that I should tell her to save the liquor in which the beef has been boiled; I will therefore take it for granted that the next day she carefully removes the grease, which will have become set firm on the top of the broth, into her fat pot; this must be kept to make a pie-crust, or to fry potatoes, or any remains of vegetables, onions, or fish. The liquor must be tasted, and if it is found to be too salt, some water must be added to lessen its saltness, and render it palatable. The pot containing the liquor must then be placed on the fire to boil, and when the scum rises to the surface it should be removed with a spoon. While the broth is boiling, put as many piled-up table-spoonfuls of oatmeal as you have pints of liquor into a basin; mix this with cold water into a smooth liquid batter, and then stir it into the boiling soup; season with some pepper and a good pinch of allspice, and continue stirring the soup with a stick or spoon on the fire for about twenty minutes; you will then be able to serve out a plentiful and nourishing meal to a large family at a cost of not more than the price of the oatmeal.
No. 4. POTATO SOUP FOR SIX PERSONS.
Peel and chop four onions, and put them into a gallon saucepan, with two ounces of dripping fat, or butter, or a bit of fat bacon; add rather better than three quarts of water, and set the whole to boil on the fire for ten minutes; then throw in four pounds of peeled and sliced-up potatoes, pepper and salt, and with a wooden spoon stir the soup on the fire for about twenty-five minutes, by which time the potatoes will be done to a pulp, and the soup ready for dinner or breakfast.
No. 5. PEA SOUP FOR SIX PERSONS.
Cut up two and a-half pounds of pickled pork, or some pork cuttings, or else the same quantity of scrag end of neck of mutton, or leg of beef, and put any one of these kinds of meat into a pot with a gallon of water, three pints