The Rural cook book

Spoon Corn Bread. — Put a quart of milk, or half milk and half water, in a double boiler. Add four large kitchen spoonfuls of white cornmeal, and stir and cook five minutes. Remove from the fire and let it cool, stirring it once or twice as it cools. Then add two or three eggs beaten with two tablespoon fuls of wheat flour, one tablespoonful of butter and a scant teaspoonful of salt. Mix well, then pour into a greased baking dish, and bake 35 minutes. Serve immediately in dish in which it is baked, with a folded napkin wrapped around the dish. Susan's Cornbread. — One cup white flour, one-half cup yellow cornmeal, one-half teaspoonful salt, one tablespoonful sugar, two teaspoonfuls baking powder. Sift dry ingredients, then mix with one beaten egg and enough sweet milk to make a thin batter, stirring in at the last a piece of butter the size of a walnut melted. Pour into a wellgreased shallow pan and bake in a quick oven. Crackling Bread. — One quart of cornmeal — three pints make more dough — a pint of buttermilk, a teaspoonful of soda, a big pinch of salt, a pint of brown cracklings left from making lard, warm water. Crush the cracklings with a rolling pin, heat them and stir in the dough, which must be thick enough to mold well (thin with the warm water). Mold the bread with the hands in small oblong pones about three inches thick, putting the pones as you mold them in hot, well-greased pans. Bake in a hot oven until brown. Crumb-loaf. — Beat two eggs with a pinch of salt added; add a cupful of sweet milk and a quarter of a cupful of sugar. Stir in enough bread crumbs to make a medium thick batter, then add flour enough to thicken like corn bread. Sift a teaspoonful of baking powder in with the flour. Bake to a rich, crisp brown and serve hot. Fine for either breakfast or supper. Egg Bread. — Two eggs, one pint of buttermilk, three pints of cornmeal, one-half pint of lard, one teaspoonful of soda, a pinch of salt, sweet milk or sweet cream. Stir the soda in the buttermilk until it boils up, mix the bread quickly, adding a sufficient quantity of sweet milk or sweet cream to make a rather thin batter; beat in the eggs, and add the lard, melted and liot, last. Pour quickly into frying hot greased baking pans and bake quickly to a delicate brown. This bread will be a ■ golden yellow and as light as cake. Swedish Breakfast Bread. — Add one-third cup butter, one-fourth cup sugar, and one-half teaspoon salt to one cup scalded milk. When lukewarm, add one-third yeast-cake dissolved in one-fourth cup lukewarm milk, one egg, well beaten, one-half cup raisins, stoned and cut in pieces, and fiour to make a stiff batter. Cover and let rise over night; in morning cut down and spread in buttered dripping-pan, one-half inch thick. Cover and let rise again. Before baking brush over with beaten egg and cover with the following mixture : Melt three tablespoons butter, add one-third cup sugar, and one teaspoon cinnamon. When sugar is partially melted, add three tablespoons flour. Bake in a moderate oven, and cut in squares for serving. Beaten Biscuits. — One quart of sifted fiour, one tablespoonful of lard, one-half pint cold water. Put the flour and salt in a bowl, rub the lard in with the hands, add the water gradually. Work and knead until smooth and elastic. Then put the dough on a block and pound it with a mallet, rolling pin or ax for one hour until full of bubbles. The old-fashioned rule was to "hit it SOO licks." Form into small round cakes, stick with a fork here and there, and bake in a moderately quick oven about 20 minutes. They should be brown on top, white on the sides, and extremely white inside.