Virginia Cookery-book

Take a large slice of the nicest stale light bread and cut it up into half -inch cubes ; put the bread into a china bowl, and sprinkle over it a table-spoonful of white sugar, and drop in half a dozen grains of allspice ; pour over all a teacupful of boiling water, and cover up close. In five minutes it will be ready for use, and is very nice. In some cases a flavoring of wine and nutmeg is preferred to the allspice. I have known a person relish panada who could eat no other soft food. Panada, No. 2. Toast very nicely a slice of stale baker's bread ; butter it, and cut it up into small squares, and set aside in the bottom of a small tureen or bowl ; set on the fire a teacupful of fresh milk, and while it is boiling beat up very light the yolk of an egg to which add a salt-spoonful of salt and a little pepper, if the patient can use it. As soon as the milk boils, pour it hot over the egg stirring all the while, and in two minutes take it boiling from the fire and pour it upon the buttered toast in the tureen ; cover it up close, and as soon as the toast has swelled you may serve it up. Rusk Panada. Boil two rusks for half an hour in a pint of water ; strain off the water, and beat the rusks up until smooth ; then add half a pint of milk ; return to the fire in a stewpan, adding a dessert-spoonful of sugar, a table-spoonful of wine, and a little grated nutmeg ; let all simmer together for ten minutes, when the dish will be ready to serve. Caudle. (Lady Cast) Beat an egg (yolk and white together), and stir it into a pint of thin, cold gruel of either groats or oatmeal ; set it on the fire, adding wine, sugar, and spices, as permitted to the patient. Rice Caudle. Rub a table-spoonful of ground rice into a pint of water by degrees ; boil it till smooth and thick ; sweeten with a table-spoonful of white sugar, and flavor with a slight sprinkling of nutmeg. If too thick dilute it. This is nourishing food for teething children, and a gill of pure milk boiled with it renders it yet more so. Flour Caudle. Put on half a pint of new milk to boil in a small stewpan, and rub two teaspoonfuls of flour into half a pint of cold water ; as soon as the milk boils up, stir the flour and water into it, and stir constantly over a slow fire until the mixture is well thickened, which will be in about fifteen minutes. (To be used when astringent food is required.) Hard Biscuit for Invalids. Work a pound of flour into a stiff paste with two ounces of butter, and as much skimmed milk as will leave it stiff enough to roll ; add half a teaspoonful of salt, and beat it with a rolling-pin until very smooth. Roll it very thin, and cut it into round biscuits. Bake them six minutes. • Crisp Biscuits. Knead well into a stiff dough a light quart of flour, the yolk of an egg and half a gill of milkk ; add a very little salt. When well kneaded until very smooth, cut it into small, thin biscuits. Bake them in a slow oven until they are crisp. Mush. Have ready a clean saucepan, and into it put a pint of boiling water ; drop in a teaspoonful of butter, and sprinkle in sifted corn-meal with one hand, while you stir the mixture with the other ; add a pinch of salt ; keep stirring, and adding meal all the time until the mush is as thick as you like it, and perfectly smooth. No food can be more simple and digestible. With the addition of cream many persons are very fond of it, and sugar, too, may be added at pleasure. By this same recipe make the mush that, when fried, is always considered an indispensable part of the dish of fried chickens, and is never missing at any dinner-party given in Virginia during the early summer months.