Harper's cook book encyclopædia

Parsnips. — Wash, scrape, slice lengthwise into several pieces, and put on in a kettle of boiling water. Boil about an hour. Serve with a little sugar and melted butter poured over them ; or they may be baked same as sweet potatoes. Mash them up fine, when boiled tender, and form into little cakes with a batter made of a table-spoonful of flour, an egg, a small piece of butter, and a gill of milk. Parsnips, Broiled. — Wash and scrape the largest, finest ones ; boil them until tender in water into which a little salt has been put; let them get cold. Slice and broil them on a gridiron on which butter has been rubbed to prevent their sticking. Pease, Boiled. — They should be fresh when cooked, and boiled in just enough water to cover them, which should be salted and boiling when the pease are put in. Do not cover the vessel while they are cooking, which ought not to be longer than twenty minutes, unless they are old. Drain off all the water ; add a little cream and a small piece of butter. Another way : — Take them when quite young, the pods being firm but not hard, and keep them in a cool place. Do not shell them until just before they are to be cooked. Put into boiling water, slightly salted; boil fast for twenty or thirty minutes, according to their age ; drain all the water from them; put in a dessertspoonful of butter, a little pepper and salt, and send to table hot. Pease, Green, a la Francaise. — Take a quart of young and tender pease, freshly shelled; put them in a two-quart saucepan with % lb. of the best butter, a wineglassful of water, 2 ozs. of small white onions, I oz. of powdered sugar, and a little salt. Cover the saucepan well, and stew over a moderate fire for half an hour. When they are cooked, taste, and add more sugar if needful, and about Y\ lb. more butter mixed with half flour. Work the pease round in the saucepan over the fire, so that the flour and butter may get thoroughly distributed, and then serve. Peppers, Baked. — Select six sweet bell-peppers (green) ; cut the stem ends almost around, leaving a hinge ; take out the seeds. Chop fine three medium -sized ripe tomatoes, also a small quantity of cold fresh meat — either beef or mutton ; add a few bread-crumbs ; have a hot skillet in which has been heated a teaspoonful of lard or olive oil ; turn in the mixture, and stir until it is hot through. Add a teaspoonful of butter, pinch of cayenne pepper, salt, and some of the green-pepper seeds ; fill the peppers with this, place in a pan just Potato Balls Peppers and Chicken VEGETABLES large enough to hold them upright, pour a cup of water into the pan, close down the tops, and bake about twenty minutes. Serve hot. Peppers and Chicken au Gratin. — Cut the peppers in half, lengthwise. Remove the seeds and soak the peppers. Mince fine the dark meat of chicken, and add to it one-fourth as much boiled rice. Moisten all with a highly seasoned brown gravy or stock. Dry the peppers and fill them with the chicken mixture. Sprinkle fine crumbs over the top of each, and dot with bits of butter. Bake, covered, thirty minutes in a dripping-pan ; uncover and brown.