The Virginia Housewife eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 154 pages of information about The Virginia Housewife.

The Virginia Housewife eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 154 pages of information about The Virginia Housewife.

Scald a pint of oysters, and strain them through a sieve; then wash some more in cold water, and take off their beards; put them in a stew-pan, and pour the liquor over them; then add a large spoonful of anchovy liquor, half a lemon, two blades of mace, and thicken it with butter rolled in flour.  Put in half a pound of butter, and boil it till it is melted—­take out the mace and lemon, and squeeze the lemon juice into the sauce; boil it, and stir it all the time, and put it in a boat.

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Celery sauce.

Wash and pare a large bunch of celery very clean cut it into little bits, and boil it softly till it is tender; add half a pint of cream, some mace, nutmeg, and a small piece of butter rolled in flour; then boil it gently.  This is a good sauce for roasted or boiled fowls, turkeys, partridges, or any other game.

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Mushroom sauce.

Clean and wash one quart of fresh mushrooms, cut them in two, and put them into a stew-pan, with a little salt, a blade of mace, and a little butter; stew them gently for half an hour, and then add half a pint of cream, and the yelks of two eggs beat very well—­keep stirring it till it boils up.  Put it over the fowls or turkies—­or you may put it on a dish with a piece of fried bread first buttered—­then toasted brown, and just dipped into boiling water.  This is very good sauce for white fowls of all kinds.

* * * * *

Common sauce.

Plain butter melted thick, with a spoonful of walnut pickle or catsup, is a very good sauce; but you may put as many things as you choose into sauces.

* * * * *

To melt butter.

Nothing is more simple than this process, and nothing so generally done badly.  Keep a quart tin sauce-pan, with a cover to it, exclusively for this purpose; weigh one quarter of a pound of good butter; rub into it two tea-spoonsful of flour; when well mixed, put it in the sauce-pan with one table-spoonful of water, and a little salt; cover it, and set the sauce-pan in a larger one of boiling water; shake it constantly till completely melted, and beginning to boil.  If the pan containing the butter be set on coals, it will oil the butter and spoil it.  This quantity is sufficient for one sauce-boat.  A great variety of delicious sauces can be made, by adding different herbs to melted butter, all of which are excellent to eat with fish, poultry, or boiled butchers’ meat.  To begin with parsley—­wash a large bunch very clean, pick the leaves from the stems carefully, boil them ten minutes in salt and water, drain them perfectly dry, mince them exceedingly fine, and stir them in the butter when it begins to melt.  When herbs are added to butter, you must put two spoonsful of water instead of one.  Chervil, young fennel, burnet, tarragon, and cress, or pepper-grass, may all be used, and must be prepared in the same manner as the parsley.

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The Virginia Housewife from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.