Page:Art of Cookery 1774 edition.djvu/170

132 that the dripping may not be blacked; set your stew-pan on it under your meat, and let the dripping drop on the pudding, and the heat of the fire come to it, to make it of a fine brown. When your meat is done and sent to table, drain all the fat from your pudding, and set it on the fire again to dry a little; then slide it as dry as you can into a dish, melt some butter, and pour it into a cup, and set it in the middle of the pudding. It is an excellent good pudding; the gravy of the meat eats well with it.

MAKE a good crust, with suet shred fine with flour, and mix it up with cold water. Season it with a little salt, and make a pretty stiff crust, about two pounds of suet to a quarter of a peck of flour. Let your steaks be either beef or mutton, well seasoned with pepper and salt, make it up as you do an apple-pudding, tie it in a cloth, and put it into the water boiling. If it be a large pudding, it will take five hours; a small one, three hours. This is the best crust for an apple-pudding. Pigeons eat well this way.

FIRST make your vermicelli; take the yolks of two eggs, and mix it up with just as much flour as will make it to a stiff paste, roll it out as thin as a wafer, let it lie to dry till you can roll it up close without breaking, then with a sharp knife cut it very thin, beginning at the little end. Have ready some water boiling, into which throw the vermicelli; let it boil a minute or two at most; then throw it into a sieve, have ready a pound of marrow, lay a layer of marrow and a layer of vermicelli, and so on till all is laid in the dish. When it is a little cool, beat it up very well together, take ten eggs, beat them and mix them with the other, grate the crumb of a penny loaf, and mix with it a gill of sack, brandy, or a little rose-water, a tea-spoonful of salt, a small nutmeg, grated, a little rose-water, a tea-spoonful of salt, a small nutmeg grated, a little grated lemon-peel, two large blades of mace well dried and beat fine, half a pound of currants clean washed and picked, half a pound of raisins stoned, mix all well together, and sweeten to your palate; lay a good thin crust at the bottom and sides of the dish, pour in the ingredients, and bake it an hour and a half in an oven not too hot. You may either put marrow or beef-suet shred fine, or a pound of butter, which you please. When it comes out of the oven, strew some fine sugar over it, and send it to table. You may leave out the