The Aunts' Cook Book

Pick over 1 quart pea beans, cover with cold water, and soak over night. In morning, drain, cover with fresh water and heat slowly (keeping water below boiling point), and cook until skins will burst — which is best determined by taking a few beans on the tip of a spoon and blowing on them, when skins will burst if sufficiently cooked. Beans thus tested should be thrown away. Drain beans, throwing bean water out of doors, not in the sink. Scald rind of ^ pound of fat salt pork, scrape, remove 3^ inch slice and put in bottom of bean-pot. Cut through rind of remaining pork every J^ inch, making cuts 1 inch deep. Put beans in pot and bury pork in beans, leaving rind exposed. Mix one tablespoonful of salt, 1 tablespoonful molasses and 3 tablespoonfuls sugar; add one cup boiling water, and pour over beans. Then add enough more boiling water to cover beans. Cover bean-pot, put in oven and bake slowly 6 or 8 hours, uncovering the last hour of cooking, that rind may become brown and crisp. Add water as needed. 54 Eggs and Entrees » Aunt Robbie's 'Uncle Ben's Hominy Souffle 1 cupful fine hominy (hominy dessert spoonful butter grits) 2 eggs beaten separately 2 cupfuls water ^ teaspoonful salt 1 cup milk Boil hominy in water for 1 hour in double boiler. Heat milk with butter. Stir while hot into hominy when latter is cool. Add yolks of eggs and salt. Stir in whites of eggs and bake half hour in hot oven. Serve at once. Aunt Emery's Bread and Cheese Dish Butter slices and pieces of left-over bread. Line bottom of baking dish with them. Cover with layer of cheese. Repeat process till dish is full. Pour in milk to cover whole. Sprinkle top with salt, paprika and finely chopped parsley. Bake ^ hour or till top begins to brown. Aunt Robbie's Creamed Chestnuts (for the chafing-dish) Have 2 cups of chestnuts boiled and shelled. Put them into the chafing-dish with 2 cups of cream and cook till thoroughly heated (about 10 minutes). Add a batter made of a tablespoonful of flour thoroughly mixed with a little water. Cook till sauce is thick. Season and serve. Aunt Robbie's 'Uncle Harry's Oranges' Pare oranges and loosen pulp from inner skins that divide partitions but leave each orange in one piece so that it appears like a whole orange. Make syrup of 2 cups sugar 3^ cup water Eggs and Entrees 55 Boil 5 minutes. When cold add red vegetable coloring matter and ]/^ cup of wine. Wine used by originator of this recipe is a home-made deep red Concord wine, very sweet and suitable for a cordial. Great-Great-Grand-Mother Holden's Apple-Sauce Pare and quarter enough good cooking apples to fill a small stone-ware jar. Add ^ to 2l pint, according to size of jar, of sugar and a 34 of a pint of water. Cover tightly. Set in the oven as soon as the evening meal is served and let it remain until next morning. Keep low fire. The long, slow cooking gives a deep red color to the apples and a flavor different from any other method. The younger of the dedicatees of this volume was extremely fond, as a small girl, of eggs and chicken in any form. "Kay/'said her aunt to her one day, " In your first incarnation you must have been a chicken." Followed a series of questions and explanations as to the theosophical theory of reincarnation. Satisfied, the young person remarked, "Yes, I probably was a chicken, and I enjoyed is so much that I am trying my best to be one again in my next carnation." <«i 'While one eloquent young woman declared, to loud cries of " 'ear, 'earl** that rice pudding and bone chips would produce more eggs to the square hen than any other kind of food." Diary of a goose girl Kate Douglass Wiggin,