Trifle

This is a very nice and very elegant party dish, and is served in a large glass bowl. Put into the bottom of the bowl a pound of bitter almond maccaroons. Pour on sufficient madeira or sherry to dissolve them. Let them soak in it till soft and broken. Have ready a very rich custard, flavored with vanilla bean (broken up and boiled by itself in a little milk), and then strained into the quart of milk prepared for the custard, which should be of ten eggs, (using only the yolks) and sweetened with a quarter of a pound of powdered loaf sugar. It is best and easiest to bake the custard. It will be very rich and soft with yolk of egg only. When the custard is cold lay it on the dissolved maccaroons. Then add a thick layer of very nice marmalade. Rub off the yellow rind of a large lemon or two on some pieces of loaf sugar, and add to it some powdered sugar mixed with the lemon juice. Whip to a strong froth a large quart (or more) of rich cream, gradually mixing with it the lemon and sugar. Lastly, pile up the frothed cream high on the glass bowl, and keep it on ice till it is sent to table. Instead of lemon you may flavor the whipt cream with rose-water; it will require, if not very strong, a wine-glassful. To give the cream a fine pink color, tie up some alkanet chips in a thin muslin bag; lay the bag to infuse in a tea-cup of plain cream, and then add the pink infusion to the quart of cream as you froth it.

Blancmange

The best and finest blancmange is made with a set of calves' feet, (singed but not skinned) boiled slowly in a gallon of water till the meat drops from the bone; then strain it, and set it away till next day, in a broad white-ware pan. Skim it well while boiling. Next day it should be a solid cake of clear jelly. Scrape off all the fat and sediment from the outside, cut the jelly into small bits, and melt it over again. Boil in a porcelain kettle a pint of cream, 31 and when it has come to a boil, stir in six ounces of loaf sugar, and whatever you intend for flavoring; either the milk, in which a handful of bitter almonds has been boiled, (first being blanched and broken up) or a vanilla bean split and cut to pieces, and boiled in a little milk and strained. Or, it may be mixed with three ounces of chocolate, (Baker's prepared cocoa is the best) scraped fine. When the flavoring has had a boil with the sugar, stir into it, gradually, the melted jelly, and transfer it to white-ware moulds that have set in cold water, and are still clamp. Stir it well, and when the blancmange is thickening, and becoming hard to stir, set the moulds on ice, or in pans of cold water in the cellar, and cease stirring. When quite congealed, dip the moulds in lukewarm water, and turn out the blancmange on glass dishes. You may color almond or vanilla blancmange a fine pink, by putting into the cream chip3 of alkanet root tied in a small thin muslin bag, to be removed as soon as the cream is highly colored. Or, it may be made green by the infusion of spinach juice, obtained by pounding in a marble mortar, and then boiling and straining.

Gelatine is now frequently used for blancmange and jelly, instead of calves' feet or isinglass. It has no advantage but that of being more speedily prepared than calves' feet, which must be boiled the day before. Four cakes of gelatine are equal to four calves' feet. Before using, they must be soaked for an hour or more in a pan of cold water, then boiled with the other ingredients.

Some persons think they perceive an unpleasant taste in gelatine; perhaps they have heard of what it is made.

When calves' feet cannot be obtained, pigs' feet will do very well, if nobody knows it. Four feet of calves are equal to eight of pigs. They are very glutinous, and have no perceptible taste.