Apples And Rice

Proceed as in making applesauce. Sweeten, and serve surrounded by a border of boiled rice. (See Rice Borders).

Baked Apples

Place the apples whole on a buttered dish. Bake very slowly. When tender, place them on a dish, and shake some powdered sugar over them. They are equally nice cold.

Stewed Apples

Peel, quarter, and remove the core from the apples. Stew them gently in a little water sweetened with white sugar and flavoured with a few cloves and strips of lemon-peel. When the quarters of apples are fairly tender, take them out and place them on a glass dish. If too much syrup, reduce it by boiling. Then colour the syrup pink with a little cochineal, and pour it over the apples. This is a nice dish for dessert. A spoonful of brandy added to the syrup makes a vast improvement.

Arrowroot

Mix about two dessertspoonfuls of arrowroot in a basin with a little milk or water; then pour on it a pint of boiling milk or water, as the case may be, and keep stirring. This is a common dish for invalids. It can be flavoured in an almost infinite variety of ways, with sugar, wine, brandy, lemon-peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, etc.

Arrowroot Pudding

Make some arrowroot as above, with either milk or water, and flavour, according to taste, with grated nutmeg or lemon-peel and sugar. Then pour it into a buttered pie-dish, and bake for three quarters of an hour in the oven. Eggs may be added, by being beaten in after it has been mixed in a basin, but are quite unnecessary, unless required as nourishment for an invalid.

Asparagus

Take care to have the asparagus fresh. When the heads droop they are stale. Scrape the stalks white near the roots. Soak them in cold water, and cut the stalks an equal length. Throw them into boiling salt and water. (See No. 9.) When done, drain them, and send them to table on a slice of hot toast, the white ends outwards each side. Time, from fifteen to twenty-five minutes, according to thickness. Serve a little butter-sauce (see Butter Sauce), or oiled butter separately, but don't pour it over the asparagus.

Aspic Jelly

Aspic Jelly is very useful in ornamenting cold dishes, such as cold roast fowl, etc. Aspic Jelly should be very bright, and is made very cheaply by adding a little gelatine to No. 1 or No. 2 stock (see No. 10), to make it a fairly stiff jelly. If necessary, this can be cleared. (See No. 18.) Add a little lemon-juice - a tea-spoonful to half a pint - and warm up the stock in a stewpan which has, if possible, been rubbed with a bead of garlic.

Recollect, in pouring out the jelly to cool, what you require it for. If in strips to make stars, pour it on a flat plate a quarter of an inch deep, i.e., the jelly a quarter of an inch deep. Colour one plate a light pale yellow, with extract of meat; another red, with cochineal.

Australian Beef Or Mutton Warmed Up

It is possible to warm up tinned meat in a variety of different ways, but as the chief drawback to it is its being over-cooked, you should get the sauce or gravy heated separately, and only add the meat to it for the purpose of being heated through, and served at once. Remember also that the greatest amount of nourishment in tinned meats is in the jelly. I will give one or two receipts for cooking tinned meats.