This is a delightful and nutritious soup, and since you are to have cold meat for dinner, you need not grudge the care of preparing it, even on Job’s birthday.
Your stuffed shoulder will be nearly as nice cold as hot. Garnish it tastefully with curled parsley and bleached lettuce-leaves.
Cook in boiling, salted water twenty-five minutes; drain well; add a liberal lump of butter, with pepper and salt to taste, and put into a deep dish.
Peel with a sharp knife; slice, and lay in a salad-bowl. Season with a dressing of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper in the proportions given on last Thursday.
Boil whole until a fork will pierce them. Peel quickly; crack, without breaking, each, by pressing it, and drop into a saucepan containing a large cup of milk, almost on the boil. When all the potatoes are in, add two tablespoonfuls of butter, with salt and pepper. Cover and heat—below the boiling point—until the potatoes begin to crumble. Pour into a deep dish.
Serve whole, upon china plates, with a knife for each.
You need not be ashamed of “cold meat on Monday,” even should John have “picked up” his unexpected friend on the street, when your bright coffee-urn, with the fragrant contents, flanked by a basket of sliced home-made cake, comes in as a reserved force.
Third Week. Tuesday. —— Brown Beef Soup. Veal Cutlets with Ham. String Beans. Chopped Potatoes. Lettuce. —— Graham Hasty Pudding. ——
3 lbs. of coarse, lean beef, cut into strips. 3 onions—small ones. 3 quarts of cold water. 1 teaspoonful mixed allspice and mace. Bunch of sweet herbs chopped. 1 teaspoonful Colgate’s essence of celery. Glass of brown sherry. Dripping. Toasted bread.
Fry the sliced onion brown in good dripping; then the beef, quickly. Put into a soup-pot, cover with the water; put on a tight lid, and stew four hours. Strain and press hard. Let the soup cool to throw up the fat. Skim, and return to the pot, with the salt, pepper, herbs, and spice. Simmer fifteen minutes; add wine and celery, and pour into a tureen upon dice of crisp, buttered toast.
2 lbs. veal cutlets without bone. 1½ lbs. of ham. Grated lemon-peel. Pepper and salt. 1 raw, beaten egg. Rolled cracker. Dripping or lard.
Boil the slices of ham ten minutes; let them get cold, and cut of the same size and shape as the strips of veal, viz., about three inches long by one and a half wide. Salt and pepper the veal; sprinkle each cutlet with a pinch of lemon-peel; roll in egg, then cracker, and fry to a good brown. Fry the ham in its own fat in another pan, and lay upon a hot dish, alternately with the cutlets.