Twentieth century home cook book

An excellent dish, to be eaten with puddings, some pies, fruits, r^tc., and one of the noted luxuries of the West of England, is "Devonshire cream,'' or "clotted cream." It is prepared as follows : From six to eight quarts of milk are strained into a thick earthenware pan or crock, which, when new, is prepared for use by standing in clear cold water for several days, and then scalded three or four times with skimmed milk. Tin pans may be used if they are scalded in hot bran and left to stand with the bran in them for twenty-four hours. The milk being strained into the pans is set in a cool room, from nine to fourteen hours, according to the temperature. It is then carefully moved to the top of the stove or range, or placed over a bright fire, not too near it, and slowly heated, so that at the end of half an hour the cream will have shrunken away from the sides of the pan and gathered into large wrinkles, the milk at the sides of the pan commencing to simmer. The pan is then carefully returned to the cool-room and left about ten hours. Then the cream is skimmed oif. This cream is very delicious to use on fruit or preserves, and is esteemed a great luxury — selling for about the price per pound of the best butter. X. English Plum Pudding. The mgredients arc : One and a half pounds suet, one and a half pounds of dry light brown sugar, one and a half pounds currants, washed and dried thoroughly, one and a half pounds raisins, four nutmegs sifted through a small tea-strainer and thoroughly mixed, so they will not be lumpy; one-quarter pound candied lemon-peel, one-quarter pound citron, a heaping spoonful of fine salt, mixed in the same way as the nutmegs, baker's bread enough to make a quantity equal in bulk to the suet. Use only the crumb of the loaf, rejecting the crust, (it will take nearly a loaf and a half of ordinary size) a half pint of flour, nine eggs beaten very light, and milk enough to wet the mixture. Chop the suet first, then add the bread-crumbs, sliced citron and peel, raisins and currants. Then sift the salt and nutmegs in, stirring thoroughly. Then add the sugar, and next sieve the flour in. Then pour in the eggs, mixing thoroughly as before. You only need sufficient milk to moderately moisten the pudding. Butter your tin basin well, put in your pudding, only leaving room for a stiff batter of flour and water which must be spread over the whole top of the pudding to exclude the air and water. Then take stout, unbleached cotton, tie it firmly over the top, round the rim of the basin, and bring the corners that hang down back again over the top, pinning them securely. Put the pudding into boiling water, tied in a pudding bag, and let it boil steadily at least ten hours. The best way is to make a pudding, in cool weather, two or three days before needed, and then put on again the day it is to be eaten, and boil three to four hours. Use cold sauce made of sugar, butter and wine, or hot brandy sauce. XI. Oatmeal Pudding or Porridge. Oatmeal mush, like corn-meal, requires long boiling to cook it fully; but it is [illustration: Fatema and Porridge Boiler] now prepared by partly cooking at the manufactories, so that from five to fifteen