1883 Dinner Menu: Beef Pot-Pie, Potatoes, Boiled Corn Starch Pudding, Stewed Dried Apples

Woman's World Cookbook (1922) 

1883 Dinner Menu

The Chicago Herald Cooking School (1883)
Jessup Whitehead

Beef Pot-Pie with Dumplings

Boiled Potatoes

Boiled Corn Starch Pudding

Stewed Dried Apples

Beef Pot-Pie.

2 pounds of coarse fat beef.

1 slice of salt pork or bacon.

1 onion.

Salt, black pepper, flour thickening.

Biscuit dough for dumplings.

Take any pieces of beef not suitable for steaks, cut them to one size, put on in cold water, and let stew at least two hours, with the lid on. Throw in the seasoning of pickled pork and onion, pepper and salt. Mix a teaspoonful of flour with water for thickening.

Light Dumplings For Pot-Pies.

1 heaping cupful of flour.

1 small teaspoonful of baking power.

½ cupful of water.

Mix the powder in the flour dry, add a little salt; then mix up with a spoon. The dough should be a little too soft to handle and the dumplings then will remain light after cooking instead of turning heavy as they often do after being good when first done. Drop the dumplings with a spoon all over the top of the stew, put on the lid and when they are nearly cooked set the saucepan in the oven without the lid to brown the top. Baste once with the stew liquor.

How to Boil Potatoes.

While the complaint is so common that very few cooks know how to boil a potato properly, it may be well to remember that some kinds of potatoes are so bad already they can neither be made better nor worse, no matter how they are cooked. The early sorts, that grow rapidly and soon become low-priced, are usually of a watery nature. If a potato has any mealiness in it at all it will show if cooked this way; Pare and put them on in cold water, with, a little salt in it. Boil with the lid on till they will leave the fork when tried—about twenty to thirty minutes. Drain away the water, and keep the potatoes hot with the lid on, but not quite closed. The next best way is to steam them; and potatoes with their jackets on are still in favor even at the best tables. Potatoes to be baked should have the ends cut off and black spots removed. Cutting off the ends is supposed to make them mealy by allowing the inside moisture to escape. Whether that be true or not they look the better for the attention bestowed. 

Boiled Corn Starch Pudding.

1 pint of milk—2 cupfuls.

1 tablespoonful of sugar.

2 heaping tablespoonfuls of starch.

1 tablespoonful of butter.

1 egg or the yolk only.

Flavoring and little salt.

Orange zest or cinnamon.

Boil the milk with the sugar in it. Mix the starch with a spoonful of cold milk and some of the hot; stir it in, and let cook with constant stirring about two minutes. Beat in the yolk and butter, and take it at once from the fire. For flavoring a piece of orange zest, pared thin, may be used, or stick cinnamon. Serve with sweetened milk or cream. This pudding should be made only just before it is wanted, and not kept hot enough to cook more once done. 

To Stew Evaporated Apples.

Dried apples

Water

Lemon juice

The light colored, better qualities of dried apples are made scarcely distinguishable from fresh fruit by cooking a little acid with them, such as lemon juice, in the water, or some sour fruit. They should be steeped in cold water before cooking, and be cooked in plenty of water and the steam shut in. The apples are all the richer for having to stew till the surplus water, if any, is expelled. Dried pears cannot be cooked soft unless of a special kind, but need to steep a while and then cook about an hour.