Caroline French Benton

“ Put the butter into a deep basin and beat well to a cream, then add the sugar and work that in well, then the eggs, one at a time, and beat thoroughly. Add the fruit and the essence, mix the baking-powder with the flour, and stir in gradually to the other ingredients; lastly, stir in a teacupful of milk and pour into the tin, and bake three-quarters of an hour without opening the oven door if possible. If the oven is very hot, put some paper over the top to prevent it getting too brown. The cake can be cut up into any shapes, as it is two and a half inches high when cut. ”

“ Cut one or two slices of bread half an inch thick, toast it and butter it well. Spread over it some anchovy paste and cut into as many pieces as you require. Have a saucepan ready and one egg for each person; just break the yolks and half an ounce of butter to each egg. Put salt and pepper into it, put it on the fire and stir till it becomes thick, then add one tablespoonful of cream. Put the buttered eggs on the top of the anchovy toast and serve very hot. The buttered egg must not be too thick. ”

“ Take small, deep tins, such as are used for timbales, and butter them. Make one cup of white sauce; take a cup of cold boiled ham which has been [17] put through the mincing-machine, and mix with a tablespoonful of white sauce and one egg, slightly beaten. Press this like a lining into the tins, and then gently drop a raw egg in the centre of each. Stand them in a pan of boiling water in the oven till the eggs are firm—about ten minutes—and turn out on a round dish. Put round them the rest of the white sauce. You can stand the little moulds on circles of toast if you wish. ”

“ Have half a pint of very thick cream—the kind you use to whip; the French call this double cream. Cook six eggs hard and cut them into bits. Butter a baking-dish, or small dishes, [52] and put in a layer of egg, then a layer of cream, then a sprinkling of salt, and one of paprika, which is sweet red pepper. Put one thin layer of fine, sifted crumbs on top with butter, and brown in the oven. Or you can put the eggs and cream together and heat them, and serve on thin pieces of buttered toast, with one extra egg put through the sieve over the whole. ”

“ Lay a folded napkin on a long, narrow dish, and arrange the fishes in a row, with slices of lemon and parsley on the sides.
FISH CAKES
2 eggs, bread-crumbs, and cold fish.
They are made from any cold fish, by making a nice white sauce, very thick. Take all the fish from the bones and mash up with salt and pepper, then put it into the sauce. Stir all up together, [21] turn out in a dish, and let it get quite cold and hard.
Have ready your boiling fat; roll the fish mixture in your hands the shape you want the cakes; beat up 2 eggs and brush them over with the eggs and place in the bread-crumbs. ”

“ Put the salt and baking-powder in the flour and sift well, and then rub the butter in with a spoon. Little by little put in the milk, mixing all the time, and then lift out the dough on a floured board and roll it out lightly, just once, till it is one inch thick. Flour your hands and mould the little balls as [35] quickly as you can, and put them close together in a shallow pan that has had a little flour shaken over the bottom, and bake in a hot oven about twenty minutes, or till the biscuits are brown. If you handle the dough much, the biscuits will be tough, so you must work fast. ”

“ Rub the butter and sugar to a cream. Beat the yolk of the egg stiff and put that in; then add part of the milk and water, and part of the flour and baking-powder, which has been sifted together; next the vanilla, and last the stiff whites of the eggs, not stirred in, but just lightly folded in. If you put them in heavily and roughly, the cake will always be heavy. Bake this in a buttered biscuit-tin, and cut in squares when cold. It is nice covered with caramel or chocolate icing. ”

“ Wash the rice and the raisins and stir everything together till the sugar dissolves; then put it in a baking-dish in the oven. Every little while open the door and see if a light brown crust is forming on top, and, if it is, stir the pudding all up from the bottom and push down the crust. Keep on doing this till the rice swells and makes the milk all thick and creamy, which it will after about an hour. ”

“ Take the white of one egg, and measure just as much cold water; mix the two well, and stir stiff with icing sugar; add a little flavouring, vanilla, or almond, or pistache, and, for some candies, colour with a tiny speck of fruit paste. This is the beginning of all sorts of cream candy.
CHOCOLATE CREAMS
Make the cream candy into balls, melt three squares of chocolate; put a [173] ball on a little skewer or a fork, and dip into the chocolate and lay on buttered paper.
NUT CANDY
Chop a cup of almonds and mix with the cream candy; make into bars, and when cold cut in slices. ”

“ Then roll the smelts first in milk and then in flour, and shake off any lumps. Throw a bit of bread into the fat in the kettle, and see if it [20] turns brown quickly; it does if the fat is hot enough, but if not you must wait. Put four smelts in the wire basket, and stand it in the fat, so that the fish are entirely covered, for only half a minute, or till you can count thirty. As you take them out of the kettle, lay them on heavy brown paper in a pan in the oven, to drain and keep hot, and leave the door open till all are done. ”

“ Put the flour into a deep pan, rub in the lard till not a bit is left, add the salt. Make a hole in the centre of flour, take the boiling milk, pour with the left hand and stir with a large wooden spoon with the right hand. Work all together into a stiff paste. It may want a little more milk, so it is best to have more ready. ”

“ Little juice of lemon.
The butter and the treacle to be made warm in the oven; then put the sugar and flour, ground ginger and lemon to it, and stir till smooth.
Spread very thin on the baking-sheet. When done, take off in squares; let them get a little cool, and then roll them round the handle of a wooden spoon; don’t let them get too stiff or they will not roll. ”

“ Make this feather cake and pour it into two pans, so that the bottom shall be just covered, and bake it quickly. When it is done, take it out of the pans and ice it, and while the icing is still a little soft, mark it off into dominoes. When it is entirely cold, cut these out, and with a clean paint-brush paint little round spots on them with a little melted chocolate, to exactly represent the real dominoes. ”

“ Break up the walnuts, saving a dozen halves unbroken. Cut the potatoes and eggs into bits of even size, as large as the tip of your finger; stone the olives and cut them up, too; mix them together in a bowl, but do not stir them much, or you will break the potatoes; sprinkle well with French dressing, and put on the ice; when it is lunch or supper time, mix quickly, only once, with stiff mayonnaise, and put on lettuce. This is a delicious salad to have with cold meats.
Margaret’s mother liked to have gingerbread for lunch often, so those things came next in the cookery-book. ”

“ So she kept on trying to learn, but she burned her fingers and spoiled her dresses worse than ever, and her messes were so bad they had to be thrown away, every one of them; and she cried and cried. And then one day her grandmother said, “It’s a shame that [ix] child should not learn to cook if she really wants to so much” ”