Mrs. Roundell's Practical cookery book

Or dried cherries may be sliced, or almonds pounded, and added to the custard before it is baked. Chocolate Fritters. — Scrape two ounces of unsweetened chocolate, and pound an ounce and a half of sugar. Boil them for a few minutes in half a pint of new milk. Set it to cool. Then mix a little of the milk with half an ounce of ground rice, and add the beaten yolks of three eggs. Let all just simmer. Then put it into a dish to get cold. Cut it out in rounds, egg and breadcrumb like the German fritters, and fry in butter. Plum Pudding Fritters.— Cut small oblongs half an inch thick of cold Plum Pudding, and marinade them with lemon-juice, a little sugar, and a few drops of brandy. Make the Fritter h h 2 PANCAKES AND FRITTERS batter, and flavour it with a dessertspoonful of brandy, and the squeeze of a lemon. Dip in the pieces of pudding, and fry them one by one. Serve Oronoco Sauce (page 485). Good Jelly is not at all difficult to make, but success depends on careful attention to one or two points. The first of these is that the stewpan shall be absolutely clean. To ensure this take a squeezed lemon (the juice is pretty sure to be wanted in the Jelly), press it into some fine salt, and rub all the inside of the pan with it. Then rinse out the pan thoroughly twice, so that not a particle of grease can remain. In weighing the gelatine see that the scales are quite clean, and do not touch it with sticky fingers. The least atom of grease will make any Jelly cloudy. Jelly is cleared with the whites of eggs, and the egg-shells act as a filter when the Jelly is strained. In clearing Jelly the shells and whites of two eggs are generally sufficient for a quart of Jelly, but, if the eggs are small, a third white will be wanted, or the Jelly will not be clear. The jellybag must be scalded out before it is used. An openly-woven cloth does quite as well as a bag. A separate bag or cloth should be kept for Aspic Jelly, as the flavour can never be quite removed. On the whole, it is better to keep a cloth for Aspic Jelly, and a jelly-bag for sweetened Jelly. The bag must be warm when the Jelly is run through, and to ensure this many cooks put a bottle of boiling water, very securely corked, into the bag. Jelly cools rapidly whilst it is being strained, and thickens in consequence. Besides keeping the bag warm it is therefore necessary to strain the Jelly in a warm part of the kitchen, well away from any draught. As to sugar and gelatine, always use the best. Inferior gelatine is often much charged with water, and is therefore so much heavier than the best kinds that if the same quantity is used the Jelly will be like indiarubber in texture. Most of the best makers of gelatine now give the weight of their gelatine, so that the cook has not to reckon by the “ sheets ” of former days. In all cases a quarter of an ounce more gelatine is required in very hot weather, and a quarter of an ounce less in very cold weather. ORANGE JELLY 469