Using Leftover Fruit
WHAT TO DO WITH LEFTOVER FRUIT — From the COOKS.COM Culinary Archive.
WHAT TO DO WITH LEFT-OVER FRUIT
CONTENTS
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WHAT TO DO WITH LEFT-OVER FRUIT
Ripe fruit is perishable, and when the supply is
within control, the housekeeper should take care
to keep it limited so there will not be large quantities
on hand. As soon as it shows signs of softening
it is no longer fit to be served as fresh fruit,
but should be cooked up at once with a little sugar
added, and used as a sauce; or, with more sugar
added and cooked longer, almost any fruit can
be made into a good jam for future use. Only
perfectly sound, fresh fruit is safe to can. Canned
fruit when opened spoils more quickly than
any other cooked fruit; it is therefore wise always
to use any remainder as soon as possible. It can
be rubbed through a sieve, a little corn-starch
added for thickening, made sweeter if necessary,
and cooked until it thickens, and used as a sauce
for puddings. It can be molded in a corn-starch
mixture, added to a muffin batter and baked, or
stirred into ice-cream when the dasher is removed,
or poured over ice-cream when it is served. Many
other ways will suggest themselves.
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It often happens that a little fresh fruit is allowed
to spoil because there is not enough to go
round again. Instead of this two or more kinds
may be mixed together very acceptably. The
following make good combinations: strawberries
and pineapple; raspberries, currants, and a few
pitted cherries; huckleberries and a few currants;
peaches and pineapple; pears and peaches; orange,
grape-fruit, and banana. Keep the left-overs very
cold and carefully, to avoid a "mussy" appearance,
and serve again promptly.
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A small portion of several fruits, particularly
berries, may be stewed together, into an excellent
sauce. The following are good combinations:
cranberries and a few raisins; rhubarb and huckleberries;
raspberries and currants; huckleberries
and currants. Avoid long cooking of any of these,
as it dissipates the flavor.
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Beat powdered sugar, apricot-juice, and pieces
of fruit together. Whip white of an egg very
light, and add to beaten fruit and sugar, or add
fruit gradually to unbeaten egg white, and beat
some minutes. Sauce made in second way will
stand longer. Different fruits may be used.
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1 cup light brown sugar.
1/2 cup shortening.
1 cup apple sauce.
1 teaspoon salt.
1 teaspoon soda.
1 3/4 cups bread flour.
1/2 teaspoon each mace, clove, and cinnamon.
Put sugar and shortening in mixing-bowl, add
apple sauce, then dry ingredients already mixed
and sifted. Beat well, turn into deep pan, and bake
in moderate oven about one hour. If liked, one
cup of floured raisins may be added with dry ingredients.
Butter alone may be used for shortening,
or part chicken or rendered beef fat.
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1 tablespoon gelatin.
1/4 cup sugar.
1/4 cup boiling water.
1 tablespoon lemon-juice.
3 tablespoons cold water.
1/2 cup strained apple sauce.
1 cup whipped cream.
Soak gelatin in cold, dissolve in boiling, water.
Add sugar, lemon-juice, and apple sauce (more
sugar if the apple sauce is not sweet), and set in
cool place to stiffen. When it is thoroughly chilled
and begins to harden around the edges, beat with
a whisk, adding gradually the whipped
cream. When stiff enough to drop, pour into
mold and chill. The whites of two eggs beaten
stiff may be used instead of cream, and the charlotte
served with soft custard.
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2/3 cup blackberry-juice and pulp strained fro stewed blackberries.
1 tablespoon lemon-juice.
1/3 cup boiling water.
1/2 tablespoon gelatin.
Soak gelatin in two tablespoons cold water;
when softened dissolve in boiling water; add sugar
if necessary, hot blackberry-pulp, and lemon-juice.
Mix, pour into bowl or mold, and set in cool place
to form. Serve with sugar and cream.
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1 pint stewed blueberries (already sweetened).
1/2 cup sugar.
1/3 cup lemon-juice.
1/3 tablespoon gelatin, soaked in half a cup of cold water.
1 cup boiling water.
1 beaten egg white.
Strain berries. (Juice should amount to one
and one-half cups.) Melt soaked gelatin in boiling
water, add sugar, blueberry, and lemon-juice.
Cool and freeze. Stir in beaten egg white just
before freezing.
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When cantaloupes are cut they are sometimes
found to be too green or too tasteless to be served
as fresh fruit. In such cases, cut the pulp out
with a spoon or knife, add a little water, sugar
according to the sweetness of the melons, and a
few thin slices of lemon. Stew until tender.
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1/2 quart milk.
4 tablespoons corn-starch, blended in little cold water.
1/4 cup sugar.
1 egg, well beaten.
1/4 teaspoon salt.
1/2 cup chopped cooked peaches, apricots, or pears.
Flavoring.
Scald milk, stir in blended corn-starch, and cook
five minutes in double boiler. Place upper part of
double boiler over heat, let corn-starch boil, return
boiler to place, add sugar, egg, and salt beaten together,
and cook two minutes, stirring constantly.
Flavor with vanilla, add fruit, and pour into mold.
Chill, and serve with sugar and cream. An excellent
way of using up small amounts of canned
fruits.
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Mix one-third cup of pineapple shredded with a
fork, one-half cup of sliced orange-pulp and bananas,
one cup berries or grape-fruit. Pour over a
dressing made of one-third cup melted currant
jelly, three tablespoons lemon-juice, and one
half cup of sugar. (Jelly and sugar are heated
and lemon-juice added.) Chill and serve in glasses.
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Take one cup of thick corn-starch custard, and
mix it with one-half cup of chopped stewed prunes,
drained very dry, and add a few chopped walnuts.
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Cut a few bits of cheese into neat cubes. Chop
six or eight olives. Break a few English walnuts
into suitable-sized pieces. Remove the skin and
seeds from a bunch of white grapes, if at hand.
Slice a banana or orange. Cut one or two small
sweet pickles into thin slivers. Mix all lightly together.
Take four fair red apples. Polish them
well, cut a thick slice from the stem end and take
out the core and most of the apple part, so as to
form a cup. Mix the salad with a little mayonnaise,
and serve in the apples, replacing the slice
on top.
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3/4 cup cooked and strained fruit-pulp peach, apricot, prune, or quince.
Whites 3 eggs.
Enough sugar to sweeten.
Prepare pulp from canned or stewed fruit; add
sugar if necessary; if too sweet, lemon-juice. Beat
whites of eggs stiff, add gradually fruit-pulp, and
beat until all has been put in. Turn into buttered
molds, having them three-fourths full. Place in
pan of hot water and bake in slow oven until firm.
Serve with soft custard.
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Scald milk with lemon-rind, beat yolks, sugar,
and salt together. Combine by pouring hot milk
gradually on yolks and sugar, stirring meanwhile.
Strain mixture into double-boiler and cook until
thickened slightly. Remove at once from double
boiler and cool. If vanilla is preferred, add when
custard is cold.
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3 tablespoons any tart jelly.
3 egg whites.
1/2 teaspoon lemon-juice.
1 teaspoon gelatin.
4 tablespoons rolled macaroons.
A little salt.
Soak the gelatin in one tablespoon of cold water ten minutes, and
then melt over hot water.
Add the jelly and salt to the unbeaten whites and
beat stiff with a whisk, adding the lemon-juice
and gelatin gradually. Fold in two tablespoons
of the macaroons and set away to chill.
Put a tablespoon of any juice fresh or canned
fruit in small glasses, pile the whip lightly on top,
and sprinkle with the remainder of the macaroons.
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One large grape-fruit can be made to serve four
people at luncheon by cutting it into thick slices
like a watermelon, removing the fibrous core in the
center and filling the space with any fresh fruit
at hand, such as strawberries, peaches, or shredded
pineapple. Have all well chilled before serving.
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1 1/2 cups left-over huckleberries.
4 tablespoons sugar.
1 teaspoon vinegar.
1 teaspoon cinnamon.
3 tablespoons water.
Put above ingredients into saucepan and let them
come just to the boil. While these are heating
sift together one cup of flour, two teaspoons
of baking-powder, and one-eighth teaspoon of
salt. Beat up one egg, add to it about two tablespoons
of milk, and stir lightly into the dry materials.
There should be just liquid enough to
wet the flour, and make a very stiff dough. Drop
by spoonfuls into the boiling huckleberries, cover
tightly, and boil ten minutes without removing the
cover. Serve at once. A mixture of huckleberries
and currants may be used, and the vinegar omitted.
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Take four slices of cut bread that has not become
dry. Butter the slices on both sides. Place
one each in individual sauce-dishes. Grate a very
little nutmeg on the top of each, and pour over
enough warm, stewed huckleberries to moisten and
well cover.
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When making lemonade save the best skins by
putting them at once in cold water. In this way
they will keep for several days, and are nice to use
in serving salad dressings with lettuce salad, or
cocktail sauce with oysters or clams, or cold Hollandaise
sauce with fish.
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Do not allow an accumulated supply of lemons
to dry up or mold. They can be made into syrup
which will keep for some time, and which can be
used for lemonade by simply adding water. To
make syrup, boil a cup of sugar with one-quarter
cup of water until it threads. Add to this the
juice and pulp of six lemons and the grated rind
of two, being careful to grate only the thin yellow
part. Let all scald together, but do not boil.
Strain and bottle.
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Soak one-half cup of granulated tapioca in one
and one-half cups of cold water over night. In
the morning add two cups of boiling water and a
little salt, and let it boil five minutes. Then put
into a double boiler and cook until clear. Take the
remnants of a can of peaches — there should be at
least a cup, and if there is a pit or two all the
better. Add a little more sugar, and simmer until
the syrup is somewhat thickened, and stir into the
cleared tapioca. Remove from the fire, cool, and
pour into a glass dish. Serve with sweetened
cream.
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When preserving peaches take the broken pieces
and halves not perfect enough for putting in jars
and make a sauce of them. Add vinegar, cove,
cinnamon, and sugar, and boil all together until
of the right consistency.
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1 cup flour.
1/2 cup sugar.
1/2 cup milk.
Left-over peaches, canned or fresh.
2 tablespoons butter.
2 teaspoons baking-powder.
1 egg.
Cream butter and sugar, add well-beaten egg,
milk and flour and baking-powder sifted together.
Put a layer of peaches in a buttered baking-dish,
pour the batter over, and bake. Serve with cream
and sugar, or sweet sauce. Over fruits may be
used instead of peaches.
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One or two kinds of stewed fruits added to a tart
stewed plum sauce will improve it and give variety.
Rub the sauce through a strainer, add to it two
or three Bartlett pears (cut fine and stewed until
tender in a very little water), and a few tablespoons
of left-over apple sauce. Sweeten and cook
together until the flavors of the fruits are well
blended and the sauce has thickened slightly.
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In canning berries there is often a quantity of
fruit syrup left over. Take a 1/2 quart of any kind
at hand, but raspberry or raspberry and currant
particularly recommended, and stir into it when
boiling three tablespoons of sago that has been
soaked in cold water several hours. Add more
sugar if necessary and a little salt, and cook in a
double boiler until the sago is soft. Pour in a
mold and chill. This can be served with a little
fresh fruit or with sweetened cream.
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Put a little jelly or preserve in the bottom of
lemonade glasses. Fill up with sweetened and
flavored whipped cream. May be served as an
evening dessert with light cakes.
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Measure a pint of sifted flour. Sift with it two
tablespoons sugar, half a teaspoon salt, and
four scant teaspoons baking-powder. Cut into
the mixture one-fourth cup shortening (equal parts
butter and chicken fat or beef dripping may be
used.) Make a soft dough with about three-fourths
of a cup of milk. Bake in small tins,
split after baking, butter the halves and spread
between and on top any left-over stewed or canned
fruits such as peaches, apricots, blackberries, or currants.
Small amounts may be used, varying the filling
if there is not enough of one kind to go
around, or a meringue may be made, for the top,
of the beaten whites of two eggs sweetened with
three tablespoons powdered sugar and flavored
with lemon-juice.
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Do not make a practice of throwing away the
skins of oranges. The grated yellow rind makes
a good flavoring for cakes, candies, pudding sauces,
and icings, and is much cheaper than extracts.
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Cut the peel of three or four oranges into narrow
strips and soak it twenty-four hours in enough
cold water to cover, adding two tablespoons of
salt to each quart of water used. Pour off the salt
water and rinse very thoroughly. Cover with fresh
cold water and boil until almost tender. Make a
syrup of two cups of sugar and one and one-quarter
cups of water. When it boils add the
orange peel and simmer gently until it looks clear
and the syrup has thickened. Take out a few
pieces at a time with a fork, roll in granulated
sugar, and spread on a flat platter. Or it may
be dried in the oven with the door open, packed
in glass jars, and used for mince pies, puddings,
etc., cut in small bits. If any syrup remains it
can be used a second time, or it will flavor a
pudding sauce.
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When the pulp of oranges is to be served in
small pieces, or the juice alone used, cut the peel
in the form of baskets with a handle half an inch
wide, and with a spoon carefully remove the pulp.
Put the baskets at once into cold water and they
will keep fresh for several days. Use them for
serving orange sponge, lemon jelly, or a fruit blanc
mange. An orange sponge may be attractively
served to an invalid in this way. For the sponge
take the juice of a medium-sized orange, strain it,
add two teaspoons of sugar, and stir until
dissolved. Add two teaspoons of cold water to
one teaspoon of granulated gelatin. When
softened melt over hot water and add to the orange-juice
with a few drops of lemon-juice. Set on ice
bowl until it begins to harden around the edge of the
bowl, then beat with a whisk until the
mass is thick and spongy. Chill again and pile
lightly in the orange basket after it has been well
dried.
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Add a slice of lemon and a little preserve — strawberry,
raspberry, etc., to tea, served hot in glasses.
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Any watermelon left over can be attractively
served as a breakfast fruit by cutting it into
perfectly round balls with a vegetable or ice-cream scoop, or
if this is not at hand, cut the pulp out with a dessert-spoon
into oval-shaped pieces, chill, and serve very cold.
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