Part 3

This is a winter dish; it is most sustaining, and once made, it can be kept hot for hours without spoiling. Make a purée of lentils or peas, and season it with pepper and salt. Mince your beef with an equal quantity of peeled chestnuts, add chopped parsley, a dust of nutmeg or a few cloves. If you have any cheap red wine pour it over the mince till it is well moistened. If you have no red wine, use gravy. If you have no gravy, use milk. Let all heat up in the oven for ten minutes, then sprinkle in some currants or sultanas. Take the dish you wish to serve it in, put the stew in the middle, and place the purée round it. If the mince is moist it can be kept by the fire till required, or the dish can be covered with another one and placed in a carrying-can, taken out to skating or shooting parties.

VEAL WITH TOMATOES

Grill some slices of fat veal; cook some sliced tomatoes with butter, pepper and salt, on a flat dish in a pretty quick oven. Garnish the veal with the tomatoes laid on top of each slice, and pour _maître-d'hôtel_ butter over, made with butter, salt, chopped parsley, and lemon-juice.

FRICANDEAU OF VEAL

A fillet of veal, larded with fat bacon, of about three pounds. Braise it one and one-half hours on a moderate fire. Dish with its own gravy. This eats well with spinach, endive, sorrel or carrots.

VEAL CUTLETS WITH MADEIRA SAUCE

are garnished with potatoes and mushrooms, and the sauce is made of demi-glaze and madeira, worked up with butter, pepper, salt and chopped parsley.

GRENADINS OF VEAL

Cut your veal into fairly thick cutlets, lard them with fat bacon, and braise them in the oven, with salt, pepper and butter. Dish up, and rinse the pot with a little stock, and pour it on the meat ready to serve.

CALF'S LIVER À LA BOURGEOISE

Take a calf's liver, lard it with fat bacon, braise it with the _bourgeoise_ garnish--carrots and turnips. After it is cooked and dished, stir some demi-glaze into the sauce, pour it on to the meat and garnish with potatoes _château_.

VEAL WITH MUSHROOMS, OR THE CALF IN PARADISE

Take some slices of loin of veal, fry them in butter, with pepper and salt, for twenty minutes. Take two spoonfuls of demi-glaze and heat it with some mushrooms and a little madeira. Put the mushrooms and sauce on each slice and sprinkle chopped parsley over all.

This can also be done with _fines herbes_, mushrooms, chervil and parsley, chopped before cooking them in the butter.

BLANQUETTE OF VEAL

Take your veal, which need not be from the fillet or the best cuts. Cut it into pieces about an inch long and add a little water when putting it into the pan; salt, pepper and a little nutmeg, and let it simmer for two hours. When tender, stir in the juice of half a lemon, and then bind the sauce with the yolk of an egg, or, in default of that, with a little flour. Serve immediately. You will find that when you wish to bind a sauce at the last minute, egg powder will serve very well.

[_V. Verachtert_.]

VEAL CAKE, EXCELLENT FOR SUPPER

Take some chopped veal and with it an equal quantity of chopped beef, and one-quarter the quantity of breadcrumbs from a fresh loaf. Bind all with a raw egg, adding salt and pepper, and, if wished, some blanched and chopped almonds. (Put a large piece of butter both above and below.) Shape the meat into the form of a loaf and put it in a dish, with a large slice of butter above and below it. Cook it for about half-an-hour.

[_Mme. Gabrielle Janssens_.]

BREAST OF VEAL

(A good and inexpensive dish)

Cook the breast of veal in stock or in a little meat extract and water, with sliced carrots and onions, thyme, pepper, salt, three bay-leaves and three cloves. Let it stew for one hour in this, and then take it out. Take out also the vegetables, and strain the liquor. Make a bechamel sauce and add it to the liquor, giving it all a sharp taste with the juice of half a lemon. Put back the breast of veal in this sauce and when hot again serve them together.

[_Mdlle. Spinette_.]

OX TONGUE

Cook the ox tongue in stock or in meat extract and water. Make the hunters' sauce, as for a hare, but sprinkle into it some chopped sultanas. Take the tongue out of the stock and skin it, cut it in neat pieces if you wish, and let it heat in your sauce.

[_Mdlle. Spinette_.]

VEAL À LA MILANAISE

Egg and breadcrumb some thick slices of veal; fry and garnish with boiled macaroni cut in small pieces, with ham, mushrooms, truffles, all cut in Julienne strips, pepper, salt, and a little tomato sauce. Mix all these well together, and serve very hot.

STUFFED VEAL LIVER, OR LIVER À LA PANIER D'OR

The _Panier d'Or_ is a hotel in Bruges, much frequented before the war by the English.

Take the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, a bit of bread the same size, and crumble them together; rub in some chopped parsley and onion and moisten it with gravy or with milk; season highly with salt, cayenne, and a little vinegar or mustard. Take your liver, if possible in one rather large flat slice. Make deep cuts in it, parallel to each other, and lying closely together. Press your stuffing into these cuts. Put a bit of butter the size of a walnut into a pan, or fireproof dish. Take your liver and tie it round with a slice of fat bacon or fat pork. Lay it in the dish and let it cook for an hour in a moderate oven. When done, remove the slice of bacon, if there is any left, and serve the liver in its own juice.

VEAL À LA CRÊME

Take a piece of veal suitable for roasting, and put it in vinegar for twenty-four hours.

Roast it with butter, pepper and salt, with a few slices of onion. Baste it well, and when it is finished crush the onions in the gravy and add some cream. Mix together with flour so as to thicken.

[_Mdlle. Spreakers_.]

_This is the demi-glaze Sauce which is used for all brown Sauces._

Take one pound of flour, dry it in the oven on a tray till it is the color of cocoa; pass it through a sieve into a saucepan, moisten it with stock, mixing very carefully. Boil it up two or three times during forty-eight hours, adding two carrots, two onions, thyme, bay, all cut up, which you have colored in the frying-pan, also some salt and peppercorns. When it is all cooked, pass it through a cloth or sieve. When it is reduced the first time, you should add some stock, but by the time it is finished it should be fairly thick. It will keep for a fortnight.

[_G. Goffaux_.]

DUTCH SAUCE FOR FISH

Take a tablespoonful of flour and three of water; make it boil and add the yolks of three eggs; melt one-half pound of butter and beat it gently into your first mixture, add salt, the juice of half a lemon and a pinch of grated nutmeg. Keep the sauce very hot in a _bain-marie_ or in a double saucepan. If you have neither, keep it in a large cup placed in a saucepan of hot water.

[_Mrs. Emelie Jones_.]

BEARNAISE SAUCE

(Very good with stewed meat)

Put some onions to cook in tarragon vinegar and water; when they are half done, add more water and throw in a little thyme and a leaf or two of bay; let it cook for one hour and pass it through a sieve. Melt some butter in a pan and thicken it with flour; put your vinegar to it and more water if you think it necessary; stir in salt and pepper and the yolks of two eggs or more, according to the quantity that you wish to make. Let it get thick, and just as you take it off the fire add a sprinkle of chopped parsley and a pat of butter. This is a useful sauce and it well repays the trouble.

[_Mme. Spinette_.]

MUSLIN SAUCE

Melt a piece of butter the size of an egg, sprinkle and stir in some flour, adding water if it becomes too thick. Keep stirring over the fire for five minutes, and, still stirring, add pepper and salt and the yolks of two eggs. You may add the yolks of three or four eggs if you wish for a rich sauce. The last item is the juice of a lemon to your taste. This is a very popular addition to meat.

[_Mme. Spinette_.]

SAUCE BORDELAISE

Two shallots, ten tarragon leaves all chopped, are put into a very small saucepan. Add a large glass of claret, a dessert-spoonful of butter, and let it all reduce together. Add salt, pepper, three dessert-spoonfuls of demi-glaze, let it come to the boil, and stir in two dessert-spoonfuls of butter. [_Georges Goffaux_.]

POOR MAN'S SAUCE

Even a piece of meat of poor quality is much liked if it has the following sauce poured over it when served. Put a little milk, say a cupful, in a saucepan, with salt and pepper; let it heat. Chop up a handful of shallots and a quarter as much of parsley that is well washed. Throw them into the milk; let it boil, and when the shallots are tender the sauce is ready. If you have no milk, use water; but in that case let it be strongly flavored with vinegar.

THE GOOD WIFE'S SAUCE

This sauce is indispensable to any one who wishes to use up slices of cold mutton. Trim your slices, take away skin and fat and pour on them the following cold sauce. Hard-boil three eggs, let them get cold. Crumble the yolks in a cup, adding slowly a tablespoonful of oil, salt, pepper, a little mustard, a teaspoonful of vinegar; then chop the whites of egg, with a scrap of onion, and if you have them, some capers. Mix all together and pour it over the cold meat.

CREAM SAUCE

Roll a lump of butter in flour, put it in a pan on the fire, and as it melts add pepper and salt. Stir it, and as it thickens add a little milk; let it simmer and keep on stirring it. You will never get a good white sauce unless you season it well and let it simmer for a quarter of an hour. Strain it, heat it again, and serve it for fish, potatoes, chicken.

SAUCE MAÎTRE D'HÔTEL

Every one likes this sauce for either meat or fish. In a double saucepan melt a lump of butter, flavor it with salt, pepper, some minced parsley that you had first rubbed on a raw slice of onion, and some lemon-juice. Use vinegar instead of the lemon if you wish, but do not forget that it does not require so much vinegar. Mix it with a fork and serve it warm; do not let it bubble.

SAUCE AU DIABLE

(For cold meats)

Take a shallot or two, according to quantity of sauce needed, slice very finely, shred a little parsley, put both into the sauce-boat, with salt, pepper, and mustard to taste; add oil and vinegar in proportion of one dessert-spoonful of vinegar to two table-spoonfuls of oil, till sufficient quantity.

FRICASSEE OF PIGEONS

Put your pieces of pigeon into a stew-pan in butter, and let it cook with the pigeons. Then add one carrot, two onions, two sprigs of parsley, a leaf of sage, five juniper berries, and a very little nutmeg. Stir it all for a few minutes, and then, and only then, add a half-cupful of water and Liebig, two rusks or dry biscuits in pieces, the juice of a lemon. Put it all on the side of the fire, cover the saucepan and let it cook gently for an hour and a half.

[_Mme. Vandervalle_.]

HUNTER'S HARE

Cut the hare in pieces and cook it in the oven in butter, pepper and salt, turning it now and then so that it does not get dry. Then prepare Hunter's Sauce. Melt a bit of butter the size of an egg and add flour, letting it brown, fry in it plenty of chopped onions and shallots, adding tarragon vinegar, cayenne and pepper-corns; spice it highly with nutmeg, three cloves, a sprig of thyme and a couple of bay-leaves. Chop up the hare liver, put it in the sauce and pass all through the sieve. Pour the sauce over the hare and add a good glass of claret, or, for English tastes, of port wine. If the sauce is too thin, thicken it with flour, and serve all together.

[_Mme. Spinette_.]

FLEMISH RABBIT

Cut the rabbit into neat pieces. Put them into a deep frying-pan and toss them in butter, so that each piece is well browned without burning the butter. Take them out of the pan and in the same butter cook six shallots (finely minced) till they are brown. Then return the rabbit to the pan, seasoning all with salt and pepper, adding as well three bay-leaves, two cloves, and two white peppers. If you have any gravy, add a pint of it, but in default of gravy add the same quantity of Bovril and water. Place on the fire till it boils, then draw it to the side and let it cook there gently for three-quarters of an hour. Just when it is nearly done, add a little vinegar, more or less according to your taste. This is served with boiled and well-drained potatoes. If the sauce is not thick enough, add to it a little flour which has been first mixed with some cold water.

[_Georges Kerckeert_.]

ROAST KID WITH VENISON SAUCE

This dish is very excellent with mutton instead of kid; the meat tastes like venison if this recipe is followed:

Put the meat, say a shoulder of mutton, to soak in a bottle of red wine, with a sliced carrot, thyme, bay-leaves (4), six cloves, fifteen peppercorns and a teaspoonful of vinegar, for two hours. Then bring the liquor to the boil and just before it is boiling pour it over and over the meat. Do this pouring over of hot liquor for two days. Then put the meat in the oven with butter, pepper, and salt, till it is cooked.

Sauce: Brown some onions in butter and pour in your liquor, but without the carrot. Let it simmer for three-quarters of an hour, and pour it through a sieve. Roll a nut of butter in flour and add little by little the liquor you have from the meat, then a coffee-spoonful of meat extract and two lumps of sugar. This sauce ought to be quite thick. It is served with the meat. [_Mme. Vandervalle_.]

BAKED RABBIT

Fry the pieces of rabbit, adding three onions, two medium potatoes, half a glass of beer, a little water or stock, pepper and salt. Let it all bake gently in an earthenware pot for two hours, and then thicken the same with flour. It is an improvement to add when it is being cooked two cloves, two bay-leaves, a pinch of nutmeg, and any fresh herbs, such as thyme, parsley, mint.

[_Mme. E. Maes_.]

CHICKEN À LA MAX

Chop up some cold chicken into small squares, mix with a thick white sauce, and let it heat. Put it on a hot dish and cover with fried onions. Put chipped potatoes at the ends of the dish and a boiled chicory at either side. This excellent dish has received distinction also from its name, that of the heroic and ingenious burgomaster of Brussels.

[_M. Stuart_.]

RABBIT À LA BORDELAISE

Cut a rabbit into joints, cover with vinegar, chop finely two small onions, thyme, pepper, and salt, and a little grated nutmeg; let all soak for twenty-four hours.

Take out the joints and brown gently in a little dripping; when all are nicely browned take one cupful of the marmalade and stew till tender one and a half to two hours. When ready, strain off the sauce, thicken nicely with flour, dish the rabbit, and pour over the sauce.

LAEKEN RABBIT

Take a medium-sized rabbit, and have it prepared and cut into joints. Put the pieces to soak for forty-eight hours in vinegar, enough to cover them, with a sprinkle of fresh thyme in it and a small onion sliced finely. After forty-eight hours, put one-quarter pound of fat bacon, sliced, in a pan to melt, and when it has melted, take out any bits that remain, and add to the melted bacon a bit of butter as big as an egg, which let melt till it froths; secondly, sprinkle in a dessert-spoonful of flour. Stir it over the fire, mixing well till the sauce becomes brown, and then put in your marinaded pieces of rabbit. Add pepper and salt and cook till each piece is well colored on each side. When they are well colored, add then the bunch of thyme, the sliced onion and half the vinegar that you used for soaking; three bay-leaves, one dozen dried and dry prunes, five lumps of sugar, half a pint of water. Cover closely and let it simmer for two hours and a half.

[_A Belgian at Droitwich_.]

RABBIT

Put the back and the hind legs of one or two rabbits in an oven, covering the same first with a layer of butter (half inch thick) and then with a layer of French mustard, pepper and salt. Roast by a good fire for one hour, baste often with the juice from the meat and the gravy.

HARE

To be put in a pan in the oven: sauce, butter, and a quarter of a pint of cream, pepper, salt and some flour to thicken the sauce. Before the hare is put in the oven, cover it with a thin piece of bacon, which must be taken away before the hare is brought to table.

[_Mdlle. Breakers_.]

RUM OMELETTE

This simple dish is much liked by gentlemen. Break five eggs in a basin, sweeten them with castor sugar, pour in a sherry glassful of rum. Beat them very hard till they froth. Put a bit of fresh butter in a shallow pan and pour in your eggs. Let it stay on the fire just three minutes and then slip it off on to a hot dish. Powder it with sugar, as you take it to the dining-room. At the dining-room door, set a light to a big spoonful of rum and pour it over the omelette just as you go in. It is almost impossible to light a glass of rum in a hurry, for your omelette, so use a kitchen spoon.

THE CHILDREN'S BIRTHDAY DISH

Boil up a quart of milk, sweeten it with nearly half a pound of sugar, and flavor with vanilla. Let it get cold. Beat up six eggs, both yolks and whites, mix them with the milk, put it all in a fireproof dish and cook very gently. Cover the top before you serve it with ratafia biscuits.

A FRANGIPANI

Put your saucepan on the table and break in it two eggs. Mix these with two dessertspoonfuls of flour. Add a pint of milk, and put it on the fire, stirring always one way. Let it cook for a quarter of an hour, stirring with one hand, while with the other sprinkle in powdered sugar and ground almonds. Turn out to get cold, and cut in squares.

APRICOT SOUFFLÉ

This is good enough even for an English "dinner-party." Beat the whites of six eggs stiffly. Take four dessert-spoonfuls of apricot jam, or an equal quantity of those dried apricots that have been soaked and stewed to a purée. If you use jam, you need not add sugar. If you use the dried apricots, add sugar to sweeten. Butter a dish at the bottom, and when you have well mixed with a fork the beaten whites and the apricot, put it in a pyramid on the dish and bake for fifteen minutes in a moderate oven. Powder with sugar.

STEWED PRUNES

Prunes are very good done this way. Take a pound of prunes, soak them twenty-four hours in water. Put them on the fire in a cupful of water and half a bottle of light red wine, quarter of a pound of sugar and, if you like it, a pinch of cinnamon or mixed spice. Let it all stew till the liquor is much reduced and the prunes are well flavored. Let them get cold, and serve them in a glass dish with whipped cream.

CHOCOLATE CREAM

Take the whites of six eggs and beat them stiff, doing first one and then another, adding to them three soup-spoonfuls of powdered sugar and three sticks of chocolate that you have grated. If you have powdered chocolate by you, use that, and taste the mixture to judge when it is well flavored. Mix it all well in a cool place. To do this dish successfully, make it just before you wish to serve it.

[_Mdlle. Lust, of Brussels_.]

SEMOLINA SOUFFLÉ

Boil up two pints of milk and fifteen lumps of sugar with a bit of vanilla. Add three soup-spoonfuls of semolina, and let it boil for fifteen minutes, while you stir it. Take it from the fire, and add to it the yolks of two eggs and their whites that you have beaten stiffly. Put it in the oven for a quarter of an hour, and serve it hot.

[_Mdlle. Lust, of Brussels_.]

SNOWY MOUNTAINS

Butter six circular rusks, and put on them a layer of jam. Beat the whites of three eggs and place them on the rusks in the shape of a pyramide. Put them in the oven and color a little. They must be served hot.

[_Mdlle. Lust, of Brussels_.]

RICHELIEU RICE

Put three soup-spoonfuls of Carolina rice to swell in a little water, with a pat of butter. When the rice has absorbed all the water, add a pint of milk, sugar to sweeten, a few raisins, some chopped orange-peel, and some crystallized cherries, or any other preserved fruit. Put all on the fire, and when the mixture is cooked the rice ought to be creamy. Add the yolk of an egg, stir it well, and pour all into a mold. Put it to cool. Turn it out, and serve it with the following sauce, which must be poured on the shape.

A pint of milk, sugar, and vanilla; let it boil. Stir a soup-spoonful of cornflour in water till it is smooth, mix it with the boiling milk, let it boil while stirring it for a few minutes, take it from the fire, add the yolk of an egg, and pour it on the rice shape. Serve when cold.

[_Mdlle. Lust, of Brussels_.]

EXCELLENT PASTE FOR PASTRY

Equal quantities of butter and flour, well mixed in a little beer; add also a pinch of salt. Make this paste the day before you require it; it is good for little patties and tarts.

[_Mdlle. Le Kent_.]

CHOCOLATE CREAM

(No. 2)