Books and My Food: With Literary Quotations and Original Recipes for Every ..

UNLIKE other broiled meats, pork tenderloin should be cooked several minutes before it is eaten. Broil over a good fire for about twenty to twenty-five minutes, turn every two minutes. Lay upon a hot dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper and with lemon juice, and dot here and there with bits of butter. Cover closely and allow to stand for ten minutes before serving. Hot unsweetened apple-sauce should be passed with this dish, indigestible but good. OCTOBER 31ST "A collection of cooling refreshments, — ^wine, fruit, cakes." — Charlotte Brontë ("Shirley"). TO make nut wafers, cream a quarter of a cup of butter, beat in one egg and one cup of sugar, and keep beating till smooth. Add a scant teaspoonful of vanilla, or half a teaspoonful of almond extract, and a cupful of chopped nuts. Then stir in one cup of well-sifted flour in which has been mixed a small teaspoonful of baking powder. Drop in small spoonfuls on a buttered pan and bake in hot oven. NOVEMBER ist "A smoking soup, here came in, borne by the smiling host. 'Behold a potage of my fashion I' says my landlord, laying down the dish." — ^Thackeray ("The Virginians"). FOR pepper-pot soup, to three quarts of water put vegetables according to the season — ^in summer, peas, lettuce, and spinach; in winter, carrots, turnips, celery, and onions at any time of year. Cut them small and stew with two pounds of the neck of mutton or with a fowl till quite tender. On first boiling, skim. Half an hour before serving add the meat of a lobster. Season with salt and cayenne pepper. A small quantity of rice should be put in with the meat. This is an old-fashioned English recipe, and is very good, very rich, and very warming on a bitter night in winter when cold blows the blast. NOVEMBER 2d ''Nobody ever dreamed such soup as was put upon the table directly afterwards; or such fish; or such side-dishes; or such a top and bottom; or such a course of birds and sweets." — Charles Dickens ("Martin Chuzzlewit"). THERE are many people to whom the delights of codfish tongues are unknown, but they are a great delicacy. Wash a dozen or more; put them over the fire in cold water, a tablespoonful of salt, a sliced onion, and half a lemon, sliced. Let them come to a boil quickly ; when they have boiled one minute, set them away to cool in an earthenware dish in the water they were boiled in. When cool dip them in milk, roll them in sifted bread-crumbs, then fry them in hot butter till they are a delicate brown, turning them as they brown. Serve them with tomato or other piquant sauce. NOVEMBER 30 "Soon he and Gerard and Margaret were supping royally on broiled venison."— Charles Reade ("The Cloister and the Hearth"). A VENISON Steak is cut from the leg or from the shoulder-blade, the latter having a superior flavor. Broil rare, and serve with a sauce made by melting a tablespoonful of currant jelly in a glassful of hot Madeira, to which a teaspoonful of lemon juice has been added. Pepper and salt the steak lightly before pouring the sauce over it. NOVEMBER 4th "Fetch up the venison and the sweet sauce, — you may leave the water gruel till I ring for it." — Charles Reade ("It Is Never Too Late To Mend "). CURRANT- JELLY sauce is an old favorite to serve with venison or mutton. To one tablespoonful of butter add one of flour, browned in the oven ; cook together till they bubble and begin to darken, when a cupful of consomme or brown soup-stock should be poured in slowly. To darken still more add a few drops of caramel. Just before taking from the fire stir in half a cup of currant jelly. NOVEMBER 5th "Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those 'tame vilatic fowl'); capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive them." — Charles Lamb {" Essays of Elia").