Cucumber Catchup

For a small quantity of this catchup, take twelve fine full-grown cucumbers, and lay them an hour in cold water. Then pare them, and grate them down into a deep dish. Grate also two small onions, and mix them with the grated cucumber. Season the mixture to your taste with pepper, salt, and vinegar, making it of the consistence of very thick marmalade or jam. When thoroughly amalgamated, transfer it to a glass jar. Cover it closely, tying over it a piece of bladder, so as to render it perfectly airtight.

It will be found very nice, (when fresh cucumbers are not in season,) to eat with beef or mutton. And if properly made, and securely covered, will keep well. It should be grated very fine, and the vinegar must be of very excellent quality - real cider vinegar.

Camp Catchup

Take a pint or quart of strong ale or porter, and a pint of white wine; half a dozen shalots, or very small onions, peeled and minced; half an ounce of mace, half an ounce of nutmeg, broken up; and two large roots or races of ginger, sliced. Put all together, over a moderate fire, into a porcelain-lined kettle, and boil it slowly till one-third of the liquid is wasted. Next day transfer it to small bottles, putting a portion of the seasoning in the bottom of each, and filling them to the top with the liquid. Finish with a tea-spoonful of salad oil at the top. Cork the bottles with good corks, and seal them. In a dry place this catchup will keep for years.

Tarragon Vinegar

The fresh leaves of the tarragon plant are in perfection in July and August, and impart a new and pleasant taste to soups, hashes, gravies, etc. To use it fresh, wash a bunch of tarragon in cold water. Afterwards strip off the green leaves, chop or mince them, and boil a tea-spoonful or more in the dish you intend to flavor. The best way of keeping tarragon is to strip off as many fresh leaves as will half fill a glass jar that holds a quart. Pour on as much real cider vinegar as will fill up the jar. Cover it closely, and let the tarragon infuse in it for a week, shaking the jar every day. Then pour off that vinegar carefully, and throw away the tarragon leaves that have been steeping in it. Wash that jar, or take another clean one, put into it the same quantity of fresh tarragon leaves, and fill up with the same vinegar in which you have infused the first supply. Let the second leaves remain in the jar of vinegar. A tarragon bush is well worth planting; even in a small city garden.

Tarragon is the chief ingredient of French mustard.

Fine French Mustard

Take a jill or two large wine-glasses of tarragon vinegar, (strained from the leaves,) and mix with it an equal quantity of salad oil, stirring them well together. Pound in a mortar, two ounces of mustard seed till it becomes a fine smooth powder, and mix it thoroughly. Add to it one clove of garlic (not more) peeled, minced and pounded. Make the mixture in a deep white-ware dish. If the mustard affects your eyes, put on glasses till you have finished the mixture. When done, put it up in white bottles, or gallipots. Cork them tightly, and seal the corks. Send it to table in those bottles.

This mustard is far superior to any other, the tarragon imparting a peculiar and pleasant flavor.

It is excellent to eat with any sort of roast meat, particularly beef or mutton, and an improvement to almost all plain sauces, stews, soups, etc.

French mustard is to be purchased very good, at all the best grocery stores.