FoodNet

Buckmaster's cookery

1887

Page 125

Presented as published in 1887. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
1. Put the milk, butter, sugar, and salt into a stew- pan over the fire. 2. As soon as the contents boil, withdraw the stewpan, and add the flour gradually. 3. Stir the whole well together with a wooden spoon | over the fire until it becomes a thick paste. 4. Add the flavouring and one egg, and mix thoroughly. 5. Add the other 2 eggs, and mix again. 6. Have a sauce- pan three parts full of hot fat. Drop pieces of the paste into the fat about the size of a pigeon’s egg. 7. Turn them about continually in the fat till they are more than double the size : when done they should be hollow balls, about the size of an orange. Dish them up in pyramid shape, and sprinkle castor sugar over them. If preferred the underside can be opened with a knife and a little preserve inserted. The next day they may be served cold for luncheon, cut in half, and the hollow of each filled with whipped cream of two colours. SALADS. Salads are a very simple and harmless luxury, and in summer they make an agreeable addition to our ordi- nary food ; if the vegetables are fresh and eaten with plenty of oil, salads are rarely unwholesome. In this country we are perfect savages in the making of salads. Salads. 285 The sauce is often served up in a bottle, and the flabby wet vegetables are heaped up on a dish. A salad properly prepared should be one of the most attrac- tive and elegant dishes on the table. There are several things necessary to secure good salads, and their variety is only limited by the ingenuity of the cook. The essential conditions of a salad are a good mayonaise sauce, young, fresh vegetables, freed from moisture, in a clean cloth. Young ladies in the country, where they have an abundance and variety of vegetables, might render a national service if they would turn a little attention to mixing salads as well as to croquet and skating rinks. If you wish to preserve the crispness and flavour of green vegetables for salads they should be gathered either early in the morning or late in the evening, and put in a cool damp place. To soak green vegetables in water to keep them fresh, or to keep up their appearance of freshness, is a mistake. Lettuce, which is the chief thing in most green salads, should be young; old leaves are too strong for a delicate salad; and if possible lettuce should never be washed or cut with a steel knife, but wiped with a clean cloth, the best way is to break the lettuce into the bowl, or to cut it with a silver knife. If you must wash the vegetables do it quickly, and thoroughly dry them in a clean cloth before putting into the salad bowl. A salad should never be prepared till it is wanted. A variety of vegetables may be used according to taste, but the fewer the better ; cress is often too thready to be used agreeably ; the chief vegetables are lettuce, endive, radishes, onions, basil, mustard, watercress, Bucbnaster s Cookery. 2S6