When you wish to serve apple sauce with meat prepare it in this way: Cook the apples until they are very tender, then stir them thoroughly so there will be no lumps at all; add the sugar and a little gelatine dissolved in warm water, a tablespoonful in a pint of sauce; pour the sauce into bowls, and when cold it will be stiff like jelly, and can be turned out on a plate. Cranberry sauce can be treated in the same way. Many prefer this to plain stewing. Apples cooked in the following way look very pretty on a tea-table, and are appreciated by the palate. Select firm, round greenings; pare neatly and cut in halves; place in a shallow stewpan with sufficient boiling water to cover them, and a cupful of sugar to every six apples. Each half should cook on the bottom of the pan, and be removed from the others so as not to injure its shape. Stew slowly until the pieces are very tender; remove to a dish carefully; boil the syrup half an hour longer; pour it over the apples and eat cold. A few pieces of lemon boiled in the syrup adds to the flavor. These sauces are a fine accompaniment to roast pork or roast goose.
Ducks, to be good, must be cooked rare: for this reason it is best not to stuff. If, however, you do stuff them, use the goose dressing, and have it very hot. The better way is to cut an onion in two, and put into the body of the bird; then truss, and dredge with salt, pepper and flour, and roast, if before the fire, forty minutes, and if in the oven, thirty minutes. The fire must be very hot if the duck be roasted in the kitchen, and if in the oven, this must be a quick one. Serve with currant jelly and a sauce made the same as for turkey.
Make a force-meat of grated bread-crumbs, minced suet, sweet marjoram, grated lemon-peel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and beaten yolk of egg. You may add some grated cold ham. Light some writing paper, and singe the hairs from the skin of the turkey. Reserve the neck, liver, and gizzard for the gravy. Stuff the craw of the turkey with the force-meat, of which there should be enough made to form into balls for frying, laying them round the turkey when it is dished. Dredge it with flour, and roast it before a clear brisk fire, basting it with cold lard. Towards the last, set the turkey nearer to the fire, dredge it again very lightly with flour, and baste it with butter. It will require, according to its size, from two to three hours roasting. Make the gravy of the giblets cut in pieces, seasoned, and stewed for two hours in a very little water; thicken it with a spoonful of browned flour, and stir into it the gravy from the dripping-pan, having first skimmed off the fat. A turkey should be accompanied by ham or tongue. Serve up with it mushroom-sauce. Have stewed cranberries on the table to eat with it. Do not help any one to the legs, or drum-sticks as they are called. Turkeys are sometimes stuffed entirely with sausage-meat. Small cakes of this meat should then be fried, and laid round it. To bone a turkey, you must begin with a very sharp knife at the top of the wings, and scrape the flesh loose from the bone without dividing or cutting it to pieces. If done carefully and dexterously, the whole mass of flesh may be separated from the bone, so that you can take hold of the head and draw out the entire skeleton at once. A large quantity of force-meat having been prepared, stuff it hard into the turkey, restoring it by doing so to its natural form, filling out the body, breast, wings and legs, so as to resemble their original shape when the bones were in. Roast or bake it; pouring a glass of port wine into the gravy. A boned turkey is frequently served up cold, covered with lumps of currant jelly; slices of which are laid round the dish. Any sort of poultry or game may be boned and stuffed in the same manner, A cold turkey that has not been boned is sometimes sent to table larded all over the breast with slips of fat bacon, drawn through the flesh with a larding needle, and arranged in regular form.
Leave out the livers, gizzards and hearts, to be chopped and put into the gravy.--Fill the crops and bodies of the fowls with a force-meat, put them before a clear fire and roast them an hour, basting them with butter or with clarified dripping. Having stewed the necks, gizzards, livers, and hearts in a very little water, strain it and mix it hot with the gravy that has dripped from the fowls, and which must be first skimmed. Thicken it with a little browned flour, add to it the livers, hearts, and gizzards chopped small. Send the fowls to table with the gravy in a boat, and have cranberry-sauce to eat with them.
Take a large turkey and truss it; take down the breast-bone, and stuff it in the breast with some stuffing, as you did the roast turkey, lard it with bacon, then rub the skin of the turkey with the yolk of an egg, and strow over it a little nutmeg, pepper, salt, and a few bread-crumbs, then put it into a copper-dish and fend it to the oven; when you dish it up make for the turkey brown gravy-sauce; shred into your sauce a few oysters and mushrooms; lay round artichoke-bottoms fry'd, stew'd pallets, forc'd-meat-balls, and a little crisp bacon. Garnish your dish with pickled mushrooms, and slices of lemon. This is a proper dish for a remove.
Take a shoulder of mutton--must be young and tender--wash the meat well and dry with a clean towel. Rub well with salt, ginger and a speck of pepper, and dredge well with flour. Lay it in a covered roasting-pan. Put a few pieces of whole mace and a few slices of onion on top; pour a cup of water into the pan. Cover it up tight and set in a hot oven to roast, basting frequently. Allow twenty minutes to the pound for roasting mutton; it should be well done. Add more water if necessary (always add hot water so as not to stop the process of boiling), skim the gravy well and serve with currant or cranberry jelly. Pare potatoes of uniform size and wash and salt them about three-quarters of an hour before dinner. Lay the potatoes in pan around the roast and sprinkle them with salt and return to the oven to roast. Let them brown nicely.
Singe and clean the turkey the same as chicken. Fill with plain bread stuffing or chestnut stuffing. Tie down the legs and rub entire surface with salt and let stand overnight. Next morning place in large drippings or roasting-pan on rack and spread breast, legs and wings with one-third cup of fat creamed and mixed with one-fourth cup of flour. Dredge bottom of pan with flour. Place in a hot oven and when the flour on the turkey begins to brown, reduce the heat and add two cups of boiling water or the stock in which the giblets are cooking, and baste with one-fourth cup of fat and three-fourths cup of boiling water. When this is all used, baste with the fat in the pan. Baste every fifteen minutes until tender; do not prick with a fork, press with the fingers; if the breast meat and leg are soft to the touch the turkey is done. If the oven is too hot, cover the pan; turn the turkey often, that it may brown nicely. Remove strings and skewers and serve on hot platter. Serve with giblet sauce and cranberry sauce. If the turkey is very large it will require three hours or more, a small one will require only an hour and a half.
Wash it carefully and open it sufficiently to remove the ventricles, then soak it in cold water until the blood is discharged; wipe it dry and stuff it nicely with dressing, as for turkey; roast it about an hour and a half. Serve it with the gravy, which should be thickened with some of the stuffing and a glass of wine. It is very nice hashed. Served with currant jelly. Palmer House, Chicago.
