Such a massive menu meant an involved trip to several grocers. I needed a spreadsheet to organize the ingredients lists. It also involved some creative challenge-meeting as items weren't available that I thought would be. And then there is the age-old pondering of the non-drinking hostess, "how much of each kind of wine to buy for that many people?"
Here's the fridge, invaded with the immediately perishables. I stashed the "keep cool" perishables in a cooler with ice packs, which mostly worked. The shelf stable ingredients were organized on what is usually my sewing tables.
I organized my cooking by like processes together, what would take several days, what could stand reheating, and what needed to be made on the day it was served. On Day One, I tackled Fruits De Macedoine, Lemonade, Brunoise (dumplings would come later), and Gelee Madere.
Fruits De Macedoine (follow the link)
Gelee Madere
Bruniose, or Brown Soup
Rich Brown Soup.
--Take six pounds of the lean of fresh beef, cut from the bone. Stick it over with four dozen cloves. Season it with a tea-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of pepper, a tea-spoonful of mace, and a beaten nutmeg. Slice half a dozen onions; fry them in butter; chop them, and spread them over the meat after you have put it into the soup-pot. Pour in five quarts of water, and stew it slowly for five or six hours; skimming it well. When the meat has dissolved into shreds, strain it, and return the liquid to the pot. Then add a tumbler and a half, or six wine glasses of claret or port wine. Simmer it again slowly till dinner time. When the soup is reduced to three quarts, it is done enough. Put it into a tureen, and send it to table.
From: Directions for Cookery, In it's various branches by Eliza Leslie, 1840
Dumplings.
--Take a small teacupful of flour, a pinch of salt, and butter the size of a walnut; rub well with the flour; sprinkle in a little pepper; add sweet milk enough to form a stiff dough; flour the board and roll very thin; cut in small squares; drop into the soup, and let them boil ten minutes.
From: The Presbyterian Cookbook by Ladies of the First Presbyterian Church in Dayton, Ohio, 1873
Lemonade
From: The House Servant's Directory, Or A Monitor For Private Families: Comprising Hints On The Arrangement And Performance Of Servants' Work… And Upwards Of 100 Various And Useful Receipts, Chiefly Compiled For The Use Of House Servants… by Robert Roberts, 1827
*45. Lemonade That Has the Appearance and Flavour of Jelly
Pare two Seville oranges, and six lemons, as thin as possible, steep them for four hours in one quart of hot water, then boil one pound and a quarter of loaf sugar in three pints of water, skim it, and then add the two liquors to the juice of six good oranges, and twelve lemons; stir the whole well together, and run it through a jelly bag until clear, then add a little orange water, if you like the flavour, and if wanted, you may add more sugar; if corked tight it will keep a long time.
In the next installment, we'll continue with Day Two.
