Hilda's diary of a Cape housekeeper

To I tin of Indian corn add 2 tablespoonfuls of mayonnaise sauce, J pint whipped cream, pepper and salt to taste, and sufficient aspic to set it. Line a mould with aspic jelly, and fill with the mixture. Turn out when cold. A salad of mixed vegetables done in this way would be very nice, especially if the carrots, turnips, etc. were stamped with a fancy vegetable cutter into pretty shapes. Green mealies can also be prepared by stripping off the leaves or hairy part ; lay a few of the leaves at the bottom of the saucepan, then lay the mealies on them, sprinkle with salt and cover with more leaves. Fill the saucepan with cold water and boil for an hour. They are very popular when grilled, and sent up very hot on a napkin, to be eaten (bone fashion) with butter. You can make an excellent tomato sauce, which you will find useful in a great number of dishes, from the following recipe — TOMATO SAUCE. YELLOW PEACH PICKLE Feb. Tomato Sauce. — This recipe for tomato sauce is Miss Foster’s, and handed down to her by her grandmother, Mrs. Brown. Take 8 lbs tomatoes, wipe them and cut them up, and sprinkle | lb. kitchen salt, over them. Next day boil in an enamelled saucepan, adding — 8 large onions, sliced. 1 garlic. 1 8 red chillies. 2 ozs. ginger, just cracked. I tablespoonful of mixed allspice and mace. 4 bottles of vinegar (a “ bottle ” holds breakfastcups). Boil all till quite soft, then strain through a colander and boil again a few minutes, lastly, bottle and cork. This sauce will keep a year. This month we also lay in a stock of tomato jam made from a recipe in p. 179 of Hildas Where is it, also grape jam and brandied grapes, for both which recipes are at p. 84 in the same book. February 3.— Yellow Peach Pickle.— The yellow or apricot peach is very plentiful the latter end of this month. If you live in any of the suburbs of Cape Town, the coloured women bring baskets of them to your door and sell them at \s. 6d. a hundred. This peach is also grown in the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies, and it makes an excellent preserve or jam. A recipe to preserve it in the Huguenot way, which the old Cape colonists knew so well, will be found at p. 178 in Htldcis Where ts it, and the following, which is not in that book, is also from an old Cape family recipe for pickling the yellow peach. First you peel and slice the fruit (say 50 peaches, which will make a good quantity) into four or five pieces each, and sprinkle a little Feb. COWSLIP WINE IN 1750 salt on each layer of peaches as you put them in a bowl, where you leave them for a day or two. Then drain the sliced peaches and put them on a clean cloth to dry for a day or two — not more — in the sun. (Perhaps an oven would do if there were no sun ?) Next take 4 or 5 onions, cut them in slices, and fry a light-brown colour in olive oil ; lastly, take 2 bottles of good vinegar and put into an enamelled saucepan with i dozen red chillies, a tablespoonful of cracked ginger, a few cloves of garlic, a large tablespoonful of turmeric, to give it a good yellow colour, and you may add 25 small onions if wished. Boil these ingredients, stirring well. Pour the boiling vinegar, in which all the ingredients are, on the peaches, and let them boil up, put in a large jar and stir well. The next day bottle for use.