Cassell's dictionary of cookery

Sicilian Biscuits.- — Pound half a stick of vanilla, and work it up thoroughly with six ounces of powdered and sifted sugar and two ■weU-beaten eggs. Put the mixture into a copper saucepan, and stir it briskly over a gentle fire until it is warm. Pour it out, and continue stirring until cold. Add five ounces of flour, and mix aU thoroughly together. FiU a biscuit-forcer with the batter, and press it out in fancy shapes upon a baking-sheet. Cover the surface of the biscuits with finelypowdered sugar, and bake in a gentle oven. Time to bake, about a quarter of an hour. Probable cost. Is. 4d. per pound. Sicilian Sauce, for Fowls, Turkeys, &C. — Cut four ounces of lean ham into dice, and simmer gently in a quarter of a pint of water till it is reduced to half the quantity. Strain, stir it into a quarter of a pint of strong stock, then simmer it again with a slice of lemon-rind and pulp, together half an inch thick, half a tea-spoonful of coriander-seed, and a pinch of powdered mace. At the end of eight or ten minutes add a stick of celery, a pinch of cayenne, and a clove of garlic. If the flavoirr is objected to, the latter article can be omitted, and a shallot or a small onion substituted for it. Simmer all gently together for twenty minutes. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter, add a glassful of light wine, and let the sauce boil tiU it coats the spoon. Time altogether, one hour and three-quarters. Sufficient for a good-sized fowl. Sick, Cooking for the.— On this subject we have extracted the following observations, which cannot be too widely read, from Miss Florence Nightingale's " Notes on Nursing:" — " I wiU mention one or two of the most common errors among those in charge of sick respecting sick diet. One is the belief that beef-tea is the most nourishing of all articles. Now just try and boil down a pound of beef into beef -tea ; evaporate your beef-tea, and see what is left of your beef. You will find that there is barely a tea-spoonful of solid nourishment to half a pint of water in beef-tea. It is quite true that by mincing the beef and then stewing it you can get a larger quantity of solid in the liquor ; but then it is not beef -tea, and there are many patients who could not take it. There is a certain nourishing quaUty in beef -tea — we do not know what — as there is in tea ; it may safely be given in almost any inflammatory disease, but is little to be depended upon with the healthy or convalescent where much nom-ishment is required. Again, it is an ever-ready saw that an egg is equivalent to a pound of meat, whereas it is not so at all. Also, it is seldom noticed with how many patients, particularly of nervous or bilious temperament, eggs disagree. All puddings made with eggs are distasteful to them in consequence. An egg whipped up with wine is often the only form in which they can take this kind of nourishment. Again, if the patient is able to eat meat, it is supposed that to give him meat is the only thing needful for his recovery : whereas scorbutic sores have been actually known to appear among sick persons living in the midst of plenty in England, which could be traced to no other source than this, viz., that the nurse, depending on meat alone, had allowed the patient to be without vegetables for a considerable time, these latter being so badly cooked that he always left them untouched