November, 1895

Choose a couple of fat, plump chickens, and, after picking, singeing, drawing and washing them clean, carve into pieces, severing the joints neatly.  Place them in a saucepan with sufficient water to cover; boil slowly, and skim nicely.  Add while boiling an onion cut into small pieces, a sprig of parsley and a few stalks of celery; salt and pepper to taste.  Boil until the chickens are tender.  Place in a small, clean sauce-pan two large tablespoonfuls of butter, and one tablespoonful of flour; allow the butter to melt slowly, stirring carefully.  When well blended, add sufficient liquid (strained) that the chickens were boiled in, to make a quart.  Make a good rich paste, as for pies; line a deep dish with the pastry, place the chickens in, packing closely, pour in the sauce, to cover the chickens; reserve what is left.  Now cover the top with a crust, pinching it down tightly around the rim of the pan.  Cut out from the remnant of the paste a scalloped edge and bind around.  Cut a small round hole in the center of pie to act as a ventilator, in which insert a small tube of thick white paper.  Bake the pie in a slow oven for about three quarters of an hour, being very careful not to scorch it.  As the gravy boils away, pour in more through the tube of paper.  When done pour in balance of gravy if any be left.  The top of the pie may be glazed and ornamented with leaves and designs cut from the paste.  To glaze the top, allow the pie to be almost baked; about ten minutes before removing from the oven, take the beaten yelk of an egg, and brush it over the top evenly, put it back in the oven to set the glaze.  In serving remove the paper funnel.

Boiled Chicken with Oysters

Pick and clean two plump chickens.  Truss as for roasting, rub over it some salt and pepper and a little celery-seed.  Fill the inside with oysters, which have been washed in their own liquor; secure the ends of the chickens and place them in a jar, or a sauce-pan that will fit into another will answer, provided it has a tight lid.  Place this vessel into another containing boiling water.  Keep it boiling for two hours, or longer if the chickens are not tender.  Take out the chickens.  There will be found a considerable amount of gravy has flowed from the oysters and chickens.  Stir in this and the yelks of two eggs beaten very light, and one quarter pint of cream; season to taste with salt and white pepper; let the sauce get very hot, but do not allow it to boil or it will curdle.  Serve immediately.  This is a very delicate and uncommon method, and will be found excellent.

A dainty entree or breakfast dish may be made from the remains of a cold boiled chicken.  Mince it finely with an onion, a sprig of parsley, and salt and pepper.  Boil some riein water until very soft, add to every quart of rice a large spoonful of butter.  Allow the ice to cool, make it into balls, hollow out the inside, and fill with the minced chicken.  Cover with rice, dip the balls into a beaten egg, then in cracker crumbs and fry a nice brown.  Dish them on a white doyley and garnish with parsley.  Serve with a white sauce, if too dry.

Giblet Pie

Two sets of duck, goose or turkey giblets are well cleaned.  The hart is cut in two pieces, the neck jointed, the gizzards in four or six pieces, also the livers.  The feet are cleaned by pouring over them boiling water, when the rough out skin may be scraped of entirely, and the claws removed.  Put them into a sauce-pan with an onion, a few whole peppers and a bunch of savory herbs; a little sage, thyme, parsley and basil.  Add rather more than a pint of water, and simmer slowly for about an hour and a half.  Line a hallow baking dish with paste, add the giblets.  Thicken the gravy with flour and butter, pour over the giblets, cover with a crust and bake for half an hour.

Roast Goose

Select a goose with a clean white skin, plump breast and yellow feet; if these are red the bird is old.  Pluck, singe, draw and carefully wash the goose.  Cut off the feet at first joint.  Make a sage-and-onion stuffing as follows:  Parboil four large onions, mince fine, add one-fourth pound of bread-crumbs, ten finely-powdered sage leaves one and one-half ounce of butter, and salt and pepper to taste.  Do not moisten the bread in water, but crumble it very fine.  Mix well together, put int the body of goose and secure the end firmly.  Draw t legs up closely tot he body and run a skewer through each firmly, likewise skewer the wings.  Roast it from one and a half to two hours, according to size, basting frequently.  Remove the skewers, place on a ho platter and thicken the gravy.  Serve with some well-made apple sauce.

Almond Cup Pudding

Shell and blanch half a po0und of sweet almonds, pound them in a mortar with a tablespoonful of rose extract; add one-quarter of a pound of butter, beat to a cream with the almonds.  Beat four eggs lightly with two tablespoonfuls of sugar.  Add to the butter, with a halfcup of fine bread-crumbs that have been soaked in a halfcup of milk, and a cupful of flour.  Butter some cups, put in enough of the mixture to half fill them, and bake for half an hour in a steady over.  Turn them out on a platter, and serve with plenty of sauce.  For the sauce, melt a spoonful of butter in a sauce-pan, add a spoonful of flour, and sugar to make quite sweet.  Add a pint of boiling water and flavor with almonds.

Puritan Plum Pudding

This belongs to the New England festival as much as English plum-pudding belongs to Christmas.  It is simple to make, and even the children may partake of it with impunity.  Roll six soda-crackers fine and soak in three pints of milk.  Cream one cupful of sugar and one-quarter cup of butter, add a pinch of salt, a teaspoonful of mixed spice, and six well-beaten eggs.  Stir all into the crackers and milk, add the raisins, and bake in a deep pudding dish, that has been well-greased with butter.  Bake slowly in a moderate over for three hours.  Stir several times during the first hour to prevent the raisins from settling to the bottom.  Serve hot or cold, with sauce.

Cream Cookies

If care is taken to use no more flour than the rule states, and to have a quick oven for the baking, these cookies will be very delicate.  They are made of a cupful of sour cream.  Dissolve a teaspoonful of soda in a tablespoonful of water and add to the cream.  Beat one egg very light.  Add two cupfuls of sugar, the cream and a pinch of salt.  Take six cupfuls of sifted flour; reserve a small part of the flour and add the remainder to the liquid mixture; last add half a grated nutmeg, or some cinnamon, or a tablespoonful of caraway seeds.  Or one may divide the dough into three parts and flavor each different.  Sprinkle a board with some of the flour and roll out a small piece to the thickness of one-third inch.  Cut into cakes, lay on a greased tin and bake a quick oven.  Continue to roll and cut the dough until all is used.  These may be cut into various fanciful shapes with fluted cutters.  They may be frosted with white colored frostings or sprinkled with sugar and nutmeg, or cinnamon.  Almond, blanched and halved, may ornament the top, or coconut sprinkled over them.  Dominoes delight the children.  Cut the dough in oblongs to represent dominoes, frost them with white icing when done, and make the dots and dividing lines of melted chocolate to represent dominoes.

Coconut Cake

Sometimes a dish is made which calls for the whites of eggs, and then one is at a loss to know how to use the yelks.  Here is a recipe for a yellow coconut cake, which is very nice:  Add to the yelks of six eggs well beaten one and one-half cupfuls of sugar, two-thirds of a cup of butter, two-thirds of a cup of sweet milk, two cupfuls of flour, sifted, with a teaspoonful of baking powder.  Flavor with vanilla.  Bake in layers.  For the filling beat two eggs (whites) very light, add one cupful of sugar; take sufficient out to ice the top and add to remainder sufficient grated chocolate to color it.  It is best to dissolve the chocolate over hot water; when melted, add to the whites and thicken the whole with grated coconut.  Spread between the layers.  Cover the top with the plain icing, and sprinkle liberally with grated coconut.

E.M. Lucas (1895, November 1895). Thanksgiving Goodies. The Ladies World, Vol. XVI(11), 8.  Retrieved from http://victoriantimes.us/antique-recipes/thanksgiving-goodies

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