Page:The Lady's Receipt-book.djvu/42

36 will completely cover the whole, and. let it simmer slowly over a steady fire during five hours, skimming it well. If after a while the soup seems to be boiling away too much, replenish it with a little hot water from a kettle, kept boiling hard for the purpose. When it has simmered five hours, take up the whole, and strain the soup through a sieve into a deep pan. Wash out the soup-pot with hot water, and return the strained soup to it, with the entrails cut into small pieces, and some of the best of the meat and a portion of the green fat. Have ready two or three dozen force-meat balls about the size of a boy's marble, and made of the usual proportions of minced veal, bread-crumbs, butter, grated lemon-peel, mace, nutmeg, and beaten yolk of egg. Put them into the soup, and let it boil an hour longer; also the eggs of the turtle, or some hard-boiled yolks of eggs. After it has thus boiled another hour, add a sliced lemon, and half a pint of Madeira. Boil the soup a quarter of an hour longer, and it will then be ready for the tureen. It must never boil hard.

In the mean time, stew in another pot the finest of the turtle-meat, seasoned with a little salt, and cayenne, and a liberal allowance of sweet-marjoram leaves rubbed fine, and mixed with powdered mace and nutmeg. Add a pound of fresh butter, cut into quarters and rolled in flour. When the turtle-meat has stewed an hour, put in the green fat, add the grated peel, and the juice of two lemons, and a pint or more of Madeira, and let the whole stew slowly an hour longer. While the meat is stewing, take the shell off the back; wash it clean, and wipe it dry, lay a band of puff-paste all round the inside of the shell, two inches below the edge, and two inches above it. Notch the paste handsomely, and fill the shell with the stewed turtle. Have ready the oven, heated as if for bread. Lay a large iron baking-sheet or a square pan upon four bricks (one at each corner) to elevate the shell