Dinner Menu: Mock Turtle Bean Soup, Haunch of Venison, Moulded Potatoes, Lima Beans, and Browned Sweet Potatoes


The Dinner Year-book (1878)

Marion Harland



Mock Turtle Bean Soup.
Haunch of Venison. 
Moulded Potatoes.
Lima Beans. 
Sweet Potatoes, Browned.
Wine Jelly with Whipped Cream.
Coffee and Fancy Cakes.
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Mock Turtle Bean Soup.

1 quart of mock turtle soup beans.
2 onions, chopped.
4 stalks of celery, cut small.
Liquor in which the corned beef of yesterday was boiled.
Pepper.
Dice of fried bread.
1 quart of cold water.
1 tablespoonful of butter rolled in flour.
Soak the beans overnight. In the morning, pour on a quart of cold water, and set them where they will heat for an hour, without burning. Stir up often from the bottom. At the end of this time add the beef liquor (after taking off the fat), the onions, and celery. Cook gently three hours, until the beans are boiled to pieces. Strain, season, put back into the kettle, boil up, season with pepper, stir in the butter rolled in flour. Simmer five minutes, and pour upon the fried bread in the tureen.
*If you cannot get the purple “mock turtle soup beans,” use the common white ones.

Haunch of Venison.

Wash all over with lukewarm vinegar and water; then rub well with butter or lard to soften the skin. Cover the top and sides with foolscap paper, well greased, and coat it with a paste of flour and water, half an inch thick. Lay over this a large sheet of thin wrapping-paper, and[118] over this another of stout foolscap. Tie all down in place by greased pack-thread. The papers should also be thoroughly greased.

Thus much on Saturday—and set the venison in a very cold place. Next day, about three hours before it will be needed, put into the dripping-pan, with two cups of boiling water in the bottom. Invert another pan over it to keep in the steam; be sure that the fire is good, and leave it to itself for an hour. Then see that the paper is not scorching; wet it all over with hot water and a ladleful of gravy; cover and let it alone for an hour and a half more. Remove the papers and paste, and test with a skewer in the thickest part. If it goes in readily, close the oven, and let it brown for half an hour. Baste freely four times with claret and butter; at last dredge with flour and rub over with butter to make a froth. Take it up, put upon a hot dish. Skim the gravy left in the dripping pan, strain it, thicken with browned flour; add two teaspoonfuls of currant-jelly, a glass of claret, pepper and salt. Boil up for an instant, and serve in a gravy-boat. Allow a quarter of an hour to the pound in roasting venison. The neck can be roasted in the same way as the haunch.

Mashed Potatoes—Moulded.

Having mashed and seasoned them as usual, grease well the inside of a fluted pudding or cake mould, put in the potato, cover, and set for half an hour in a dripping-pan half full of boiling water, within a moderate oven. Then remove the lid, dip, for a moment, the mould in cold water, and turn the potato out upon a flat dish.

Lima Beans.

You can get them canned, but they are nearly, if not quite as good dried. In this case soak them overnight in soft water. Change this in the morning for fresh, and put them on to boil in hot water, a little salted. Cook slowly until soft. Do not boil so fast as to break the skins. Drain well, stir in a good piece of butter, a little pepper and salt, and eat very hot.[119]

Sweet Potatoes—Browned.

Boil in their skins, peel while hot, and set them in a quick oven. Glaze presently with butter, repeating the process, several times, as they brown.

Wine Jelly with Whipped Cream.

1 package of Coxe’s gelatine, soaked for two hours in a large cup of cold water.
2 cups of white wine, or pale sherry.
1 lemon, all the juice and half the grated peel.
1 teaspoonful of bitter almond extract.
2 cups of white sugar.
2 cups of boiling water.
Put soaked gelatine, lemon, sugar, and flavoring extract together, and cover closely for half an hour. Pour on boiling water, stir and strain. Add the wine, strain again through a flannel bag, without squeezing, and leave in a mould wet with cold water, until just before the Sunday dinner.

Whip a cup of rich cream to a thick froth in a syllabub-churn. The jelly should have been formed in an open mould—one with cylinder in the middle. Fill the hollow left by this with the whipped cream; or, if your jelly be a solid mass, heap the cream about the base.

Coffee and Macaroons







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