Original White House Cookbook

Take a little saffron, put it into an earthen vessel with a very small quantity of cold, soft water, and let it steep till the color of the infusion is a bright yellow. Then strain it, add half alcohol to it. To color fruit yellow, boil the fruit with fresh lemon skins in water to cover them until it is tender ; then take it up, spread it on dishes to cool and finish as may be directed. To color icing, put the grated peel of a lemon or orange in a thin muslin bag, squeezing a little juice through it, then mixing with the sugar. GREEN COLORING. ' Take fresh spinach or beet leaves and pound them in a marble mortar. If you want it for immediate use, take off the green froth as it rises, and mix it with the article you intend to color. If you wish to keep it a few days, take the juice when you have pressed out a teacupful, and adding to (423) COLORING FOB FRUIT, ETC. it a piece of alum the size of a pea, give it a boil in a saucepan. Or make the juice very strong and add a quart of alcohol. Bottle it air-tight. SUGAR GRAINS. These are made by pounding white lump sugar in a mortar and shaking it through sieves of different degrees of coarseness, thus accumulating grains of different sizes. They are used in ornamenting cake. SUGAR GRAINS, COLORED. Stir a little coloring — as the essence of spinach, or prepared cochineal, or liquid carmine, or indigo, rouge, saffron, etc., — into the sugar grains made as above, until each grain is stained, then spread them on a bakingsheet and dry them in a warm place. They are used in ornamenting cake. CARAMEL OR BURNT SUGAR. Put one cupful of sugar and two teaspoonfuls of water in a saucepan on the fire ; stir constantly until it is quite a dark color, then add a half cupful of water and a pinch of salt ; let it boil a few minutes and when cold, bottle. For coloring soups, sauces or gravies. TO CLARIFY JELLY. The white of egg is, perhaps, the best substance that can be employed in clarifying jelly, as well as some other fluids, for the reason that when albumen (and the white of egg is nearly pure albumen) is put into a liquid that is muddy, from substances suspended in it, on boiling the liquid the albumen coagulates in a flocculent manner, and, entangling with the impurities, rises with them to the surface as a scum, or sinks to the bottom, according to their weight. ★ ★ ★ IN THE making of confections, the best granulated or loaf sugar should be used. (Beware of glucose mixed with sugar.) Sugar is boiled more or less, according to the kind of candy to be made, and it is necessary to understand the proper degree of sugar boiling to operate it successfully. Occasionally sugar made into candies, “ creams ” or syrups, will need clarifying. The process is as follows : Beat up well the white of an egg with a cupful of cold water and pour it into a very clean iron or thick new tin saucepan, then put into the pan four cupfuls of sugar, mixed with a cupful of warm water. Put on the stove and heat moderately until the scum rises. Remove the pan, and skim off the top, then place on the fire again until the scum rises again. Then remove as before, and so continue until no scum rises. This recipe is good for brown or yellowish sugar; for soft, white sugars, half the white of an egg will do, and for refined or loaf sugar a quarter will do.