Common Sense in the Household 45

Common Sense in the Household 45

MOUNTAIN CUSTARD, OR JUNKET. ✠

 

Take a piece of rennet an inch long, or a teaspoonful of the wine in

which rennet is kept, to each quart of milk. Season with vanilla or

lemon, a little nutmeg, and a tablespoonful of sugar to each part. More

will retard the formation. Set in a warm place—near the fire, or on

the kitchen table—closely covered. Look at it from time to time, and

if, in the course of an hour, there are no signs of stiffening, add

more rennet. When it is firm, like blanc-mange, and before the whey

separates from the curd, remove the rennet, and set upon ice until it

is wanted. Serve with powdered sugar and cream.

 

 

THICKENED MILK.

 

Boil a quart of milk, add a very little salt, and two tablespoonfuls

of rice or wheat flour wet in cold milk. Stir in smoothly, and let it

thicken in a vessel of boiling water, keeping the outer saucepan at a

hard boil for half an hour. Eat with butter and sugar, or with cream

and sugar. For invalids, or children who are suffering with summer

disorders, boil at least an hour, stirring very often.

 

 

CHEESE.

 

I have doubted the utility of inserting a receipt for regular

cheese-making. The apparatus necessary for the manufacture is seldom,

if ever, found in a private family, while cheese can be had in every

country store at one-third the expense to an amateur of making it. But,

remembering that it may be a pleasant, if not profitable experiment,

for the mistress of many cows to make at her odd moments, I have

secured what purports to be an exact description of “cheese-making on a

small scale.”

 

To each gallon of milk warm from the cow, add a piece of rennet six

inches long and three wide, or two tablespoonfuls rennet water—_i. e._,

water in which rennet has been boiled. Cover, and set in a warm place

until it becomes a firm curd; this should be, at the most, not more

than three-quarters of an hour. When the whey has separated entirely,

and looks clear and greenish, wash your hands very clean, and with

them gently press all the curd to one side of the pan or tub, while an

assistant dips out the whey. Have ready a stout linen bag, pour the

curd into it, and hang it up to dry until not another drop of whey

can be pressed out; then put the curd into a wooden dish, and chop it

fine. Empty into a finer bag, and put into a small cheese-box, or other

circular wooden box with a perforated bottom, and a lid that slides

down easily but closely on the inside. Your bag should be as nearly

as possible the same shape and size as this box. Lay heavy weights

upon the top, in lack of a cheese-press, and let it stand an hour. The

cloth should be wet _inside_ as well as out, before you put the curds

in. At the end of the hour, take out the cheese and chop again, adding

salt this time. Have ready a fresh wet cloth; pack in the curd hard.

There should be a circular cover for this bag, which must be basted all

around, and very smooth on top. Scald the box and cover, then rinse

with cold water, and put the cheese again under press for twelve hours.

Next day, take it out, rub all over with salt, and fit on a clean wet

cloth. Look at it sixteen hours later, pare off the rough edges, and

scrape the sides of inequalities before returning to the press for the

last time. Let it remain under the weights for twenty-four hours. Strip

off the cloth, rub the cheese well with butter, and lay upon a clean

cloth spread on a shelf in a cool, dry place. A wire-safe is best. Wipe

clean; then rub every day with butter for a week, and turn also every

twenty-four hours. At the end of the week, omit the greasing, and rub

hard with a coarse cloth. Do this every day for a month. Your cheese

will then be eatable, but it will be much finer six months later.

 

Stilton cheeses—renowned over the world—are buried in dry heather

when they are firm enough to remove from the shelves, and kept there a

month. This is called “ripening.”

 

 

COTTAGE CHEESE.

 

Heat sour milk until the whey rises to the top. Pour it off, put the

curd in a bag and let it drip six hours, without squeezing it. Put in a

wooden bowl, chop fine with a wooden spoon, salt to taste, and work to

the consistency of soft putty, adding a little cream and butter as you

proceed. Mould with your hands into round “pats” or balls, and keep in

a cool place. It is best when fresh.

 

 

CREAM CHEESE.

 

Stir a little salt into a pan of “loppered” cream. Pour into a linen

bag, and let it drain three days, changing the bag every day. Then pack

into a wooden cup or mould with holes in the bottom, and press two

hours. Wet the mould with cold water before putting in the cream-curd.

Wrapped in soft white paper—two or three folds of tissue paper will

do—to exclude the air, they will keep in a cool place for a week.

 

This is the cheese sold in this country under the name of _Neufchatel_.

 

 

 

 

BREAD.

 

 

If eminence of importance entitled a subject to pre-eminence of

position, that of which we are now about to speak should have stood

foremost in this work. It is not a pleasant thing to think or write

about, but it is a stubborn fact, that upon thousands of tables, in

otherwise comfortable homes, _good_ bread is an unknown phenomenon. I

say phenomenon, because it would indeed be a marvellous estrangement

of cause and effect were indifferent flour, unskillfully mixed with

flat yeast, badly risen and negligently baked, to result in that pride

of the notable housekeeper—light, sweet, wholesome bread. I know a

household where sour, stiff bread is the rule, varied several times

during the week by muffins scented and colored with soda, clammy

biscuit, and leathery griddle-cakes; another where the bread is

invariably over-risen, and consequently tasteless, sometimes slightly

acid; yet another in which home-made bread is not used at all because

it is “so troublesome and uncertain,” the mistress preferring to feed

her family, growing children and all, upon the vari-colored sponges

bought at the bakers—sponges inflated with sal volatile, flavorless,

and dry as chips when a day old, and too often betraying, in the dark

streaks running through the interior of the loaf, want of cleanliness

in the kneader. Yet these are all well-to-do people, who submit to

these abominations partly because they do not know how badly off they

are—chiefly because it is their way of doing, and they see no reason

for changing. “I have been a housekeeper for thirty years, and have

always mixed my bread just so,” retorted a mistress once, when I mildly

set forth the advantages of “setting a sponge” over-night. “I put in

flour, yeast, and milk if I have it, and give them a good stir; then

set the dough down to rise. Our folks don’t fancy very light bread.

There don’t seem to be any substance in it—so to speak. Mine generally

turns out pretty nice. It’s all luck, after all, about bread.”

 

“I’m told you have a receipt for making bread,” laughed another to me;

“I never heard of such a thing in my life, and I’ve been keeping house

eighteen years. So I thought I’d call and ask you for it—just as a

curiosity, you know. I want to see what it is like.”

 

I wisely kept _my_ thoughts to myself, and dictated the receipt, which

she jotted down in a memorandum-book laughing all the while at the

“excellent joke.”

 

“You really use this?” she demanded, when this was done.

 

“I do. I have used no other for many years.”

 

“And the bread I ate upon your table, the other night, was made

according to this?”

 

Again an affirmative answer.

 

“I guess your cook could tell another story,” rejoined the skeptic.

“You can’t make me believe that bread is made by rule. I put my

materials together anyhow, and I have as good luck as most of my

neighbors.”

 

I regarded my visitor as an impertinent simpleton; but I have been

amazed, in subsequent years, at finding that her creed is that of

hundreds of housewives more or less sensible. “Luck” rules the baking,

and upon the shoulders of this Invisible are laid the deficiencies

of the complacent cook. Cheap flour and laziness are at the bottom

of more mishaps in the bread line than any other combination of

circumstances. From the inferior grades of flour, it is possible to

make tolerable biscuit, crumpets, and muffins, plain pastry, and

very good griddle-cakes. You cannot, by any stretch of art, produce

excellent bread from poor flour. It is no economy to purchase it for

this purpose. It _is_ judicious to lay in two barrels at a time, and to

use the best only for the semi- or tri-weekly baking.

 

Chiefest then among the conditions to good bread, I place good

“family” flour—dry, elastic, and odorless. Whiteness is a secondary

consideration, although, to American eyes, this is a recommendation.

A little experience will teach you to detect the signs that foretell

satisfactory baking-days, and _vice versâ_. If in handling the flour

you discern a heaviness like that of ground plaster; if in squeezing

a handful tightly you discover that it retains the imprint of palm

and fingers, and rolls back into the tray a compact ball or roll;

if it is in the least musty, or sour, use it very sparingly in your

trial-baking, for the chances are as ten to one that you will head the

barrel up again and return it to your grocer.

 

Sometimes new flour can be ripened for use by sifting enough for each

baking into a large tray, and exposing it to the hot sun for some

hours, or by setting it upon the kitchen hearth for the same time.

And it not unfrequently happens that flour improves greatly after

the barrel has been open for several days or weeks. It dries out and

becomes lighter, more elastic. Next in importance to the quality of

the flour is that of the yeast. This should be light in color and

lively, effervescing easily when shaken, and emitting an odor like weak

ammonia. If dull or sour, it is bad. In cities it is easiest, perhaps

cheapest, to buy yeast from a brewery or bakery, exercising your

discrimination as to quality. Unless you can satisfy yourself in this

regard, you had better make your own. I can confidently recommend the

receipts given in this work as easy and safe, having tried them in my own family.