The housekeeper's guide to preserved meats, fruits, vegetables, &c

plain pudding, however, can be made i as follows. Proceed as in making j an ordinary suet pudding — that is, I take a quarter of a pound of suet, chop it up fine, and mix it with half | a pound of flour. Add a dessert- j spoonful of powdered ginger and a j quarter of a pound of coarse brown sugar. Mix it all well together, moisten it with water, and tie it up in a cloth and boil it in the ordinary way. When ginger pudding is made in a basin and turned out on to a dish, a very nice sweet sauce can be poured round it, made by thickening a quarter or half a pint of water with a little arrowroot. This should be sweetened with brown sugar, ; and a few drops of essence of ginger ' should be added to the sauce. A still j further improvement can be made to j the sauce by adding a tablespoonful of 1 rum. The sauce can also, of course, be | coloured pink with a few drops of i cochineal. Ground ginger is also one of j the ingredients used in making ‘ ‘ beer- ! cup.” It is many years since I have tasted “ beer-cup,” but in my early college days it was constantly served in hall, as men were fined a “ beer-cup ” for bad carving and other offences. As far as I can recollect “beer-cup” is made by adding to say a quart of good strong beer, about half an ounce of | brown sugar, a large piece of darkly- j toasted bread, a small quantity of brown ginger, and some grated nutmeg. This “beer-cup” was served cold, and j handed round with the cheese. Perhaps j a more common form in which ground ginger is served with beer is “ hot spiced ale,” which is made by heating some good strong beer, not too much, and adding a small quantity of sugar, nutmeg, and ground ginger. Another kind of “hot ale” flavoured with nutmeg and ginger is made by adding to hot beer two or three well beaten-up eggs. This is sometimes called “ egg flip.” GINGER, PRESERVED. — Preserved ginger is an extremely nice dessert dish. There is West Indian preserved ginger and China preserved ginger. Preserved ginger is used occasionally for cooking purposes, and is one of the principal ingredients in that very highclass pudding known as ginger pudding. The ingredients of ginger pudding, if wished very rich, are as follows : — Eight ounces of preserved ginger, six ounces of flour, six eggs, six ounces of sugar, six ounces of butter, and a pint of cream. As, however, the cream is very expensive, and, indeed, sometimes cannot be obtained at all, cooks can substitute for a pint of cream a pint of milk in which a tablespoonful of Swiss milk has been dissolved. When, however, they use this very good substitute for cream in making all kinds of puddings they should bear in mind that Swiss milk contains a considerable quantity of sugar, and therefore they should add less sugar to the pudding. Should, therefore, in the receipt I have just given, milk and Swiss milk be used for cream, it will be as well to add four ounces of sugar instead of six. The cream, sugar, and butter should be put into a small stewpan, and one or two pinches of salt added to it. It should remain there till it begins to simmer, and as soon as it does so take the stew pan off the fire and add the whole of the flour, stirring it up as quickly as possible, so as to avoid getting it lumpy.