Part 6

The attractive "savory" of English dinner tables finds its counterpart apparently in egg and fish dishes served cold at the beginning of a meal, and therefore what we should call hors d'oeuvres.

POTATO DICE

Boil your potatoes and let them be of the firm, soapy kind, not the floury kind. When cooked, and cold, cut them into dice, and toss them in the following sauce:

Take equal quantities of salad oil and cream, a quarter of that amount of tarragon vinegar, a pinch of salt, and a few chopped capers. Mix very well, and pour it on the dice. You may vary this by using cream only, in which case omit the vinegar. Season with pepper, salt, celery seed, and instead of the capers take some pickled nasturtium seed, and let that, finely minced, remain in the sauce for an hour before using it.

ANCHOVIES

Fillets of these, put in a lattice work across mashed potato look very nice. Be sure you use good anchovies preserved in salt, and well washed and soaked to take away the greater part of the saltness; or, if you can make some toast butter it when cold, cut it into thin strips, and lay a fillet in the center. Fill up the sides of the toast with chopped hard-boiled yolk of egg.

ANCHOVY SANDWICHES

Cut some bread and butter, very thin, and in fingers. Chop some water-cress, lay it on a finger, sprinkle a little Tarragon vinegar and water (equal quantities) over it, and then lay on a fillet of anchovy, cover with more cress and a finger of bread and butter. Put them in a pile under a plate to flatten and before serving trim the edges.

ANCHOVY ROUNDS

Make some toast, cut it in rounds, butter it when cold. Curl an anchovy round a stewed olive, and put it on the toast. Make a little border of yolk of egg boiled and chopped.

ANCHOVY BISCUITS

Made as you would make cheese biscuits, but using anchovy sauce instead to flavor them. If you make the pastry thin you can put some lettuce between two biscuits and press together with a little butter spread inside.

ANCHOVY PATTIES

Make some paste and roll it out thinly. Take a coffee cup and turning it upside down stamp out some rounds. Turn the cup the right way again, and put it on a round. Then you will see an edge of paste protruding all round. Turn this up with the end of a fork, which makes a pretty little edge. Do this with all, and fill the shallow cases then made with a good mayonnaise sauce in which you have put chopped celery and potato, and a small quantity of chopped gherkins. Lay three fillets of anchovy across each other to form a six-pointed star and season highly with cayenne pepper.

All the above recipes can be followed using sardines instead of anchovies, and indeed one can use them in many other ways, with eggs, with lettuce, with tomatoes. As anchovies are rather expensive to buy, I give a recipe for mock anchovies, which is easy to do, but it must be done six months before using the fish.

MOCK ANCHOVIES

When sprats are cheap, buy a good quantity, what in England you would call a peck. Do not either wipe or wash them. Take four ounces of saltpeter, a pound of bay salt, two pounds of common coarse salt, and pound them well, then add a little cochineal to color it, pound and mix very well. Take a stone jar and put in it a layer of the mixture and a layer of the sprats, on each layer of fish adding three or four bay leaves and a few whole pepper-corns. Fill up the jar and press it all down very firmly. Cover with a stone cover, and let them stand for six months before you use them.

CUCUMBER À LA LAEKEN

Take a cucumber and cut it in pieces two inches long, then peel away the dark green skin for one inch, leaving the other inch as it was. Set up each piece on end, scoop it out till nearly the bottom and fill up with bits of cold salmon or lobster in mayonnaise sauce. Cold turbot or any other delicate fish will do equally well or a small turret of whipped cream, slightly salted, should be piled on top. This dish never fails to please.

HERRING AND MAYONNAISE

Take some salt herring, a half for each person, and soak them for a day in water. Skin them, cut them open lengthwise, take out the backbone, and put them to soak in vinegar. Then before serving them let them lie for a few minutes in milk, and putting them on a dish pour over them a good mayonnaise sauce. [_Mlle. Oclhaye._]

SWEET DRINKS AND CORDIALS. ORGEAT

Blanch first of all half a pound of sweet almonds and three ounces of bitter, turn them into cold water for a few minutes; then you must pound them very fine in a stone mortar, if you have a marble one so much the better, and do it in a cool place.

You must add a little milk occasionally to prevent the paste from becoming oily, then add three quarts of fresh milk, stirring it in slowly, sweeten to your taste, and then putting all into a saucepan clean as a chalice, bring it to the boil.

Boil for ten minutes, and then stir till cold, strain it through finest muslin, and then add two good glasses of brandy. Bottle and keep in a dark place.

HAWTHORN CORDIAL

When the hawthorn is in full bloom, pick a basketful of the blooms. Take them home, and put the white petals into a large glass bottle, taking care that you put in no leaves or stalks. When the bottle is filled to the top do not press it down, but pour in gently as much good French Brandy as it will hold. Cork and let it stand for three months, then you can strain it off. This is good as a cordial, and if you find it too strong, add water, or sweeten it with sugar.

DUTCH NOYEAU

Peel finely the rinds of five large lemons, or of six small ones, then throw on it a pound of loaf sugar that you have freshly pounded, two ounces of bitter almonds, chopped and pounded; mix these with two quarts of the best Schnappes or Hollands, and add six tablespoonfuls of boiling milk.

Fill your jars with this, cover it close, and put it in a passage or hall, where people can shake it every day.

Leave it there for three weeks, and strain it through some blotting paper into another bottle. It will be ready to drink.

LAVENDER WATER

Take a large bottle, and put in it twelve ounces of the best spirits of wine, one essence of ambergris, twopennyworth of musk, and three drachms of oil of lavender.

Cork it tightly, put in a dark place, and shake it every day for a month. This is really lavender spirit, as no water is used.

HOT BURGUNDY

Take half a pint of good Burgundy wine, put it to boil with two cloves, and a dust of mixed spice, sweeten to taste with some powdered sugar. If you like add a quarter of the quantity of water to the wine before boiling.

CRÊME DE POISSON À LA ROI ALBERT

Take a fresh raw whiting, fillet it, and pass the flesh through a wire sieve.

For a small dish take four ounces of the fish, mix them lightly with four tablespoonfuls of very thick cream, adding pepper and salt. Fill an oval ring mold, and steam gently for twenty minutes, under buttered paper.

Have some marine crayfish boiled, shell the tails, cut them in pieces, removing the black line inside. Cut three truffles into thick slices, heat them and the crayfish in some ordinary white sauce, enriched with the yolk of a raw egg, pepper and salt, and one dessertspoonful of tarragon vinegar. This must not be allowed to boil. When the cream is turned out into a hot silver dish, pour the ragout into the center, and put a hot lid on.

This dish, and that on page 86-87, has been composed by a Scotch lady in honor of the King of the Belgians. Not every cook can manage the cream, but the proportions are exact, and so is the time.

[_Mrs. Alex. Stuart._]

FISH AND CUSTARD

Boil up the trimmings of your fish with milk, pepper and salt. Strain it and add the yolks of eggs till you get a good custard. Pour the custard into a mold, and lay in it your fish, which must already be parboiled. If you have cold fish, flake it, and mix it with the custard. Put the mold in a double saucepan. Steam it for three quarters of an hour. Turn it out, and garnish with strips of lemon peel, and if you have it, sprigs of fennel.

HAKE AND POTATOES

Hake, which is not one of the most delicate fish, can be made excellent if stewed in the following sauce: A quart of milk to which you have added a dessertspoonful of any of the good English sauces; thicken it with a knob of butter rolled in flour, which stir in till all is smooth. When it boils take off the fire, and put in your pieces of hake, set it back by the side of the fire to keep very hot, without boiling, for twenty-five minutes. Meanwhile mash some potatoes, and put it as a purée round a dish, pour the fish in the center, sprinkle on it chopped parsley. The liquor ought to be much reduced.

VERY NICE SKATE

Take skate, or indeed any fish that rolls up easily, make into fillets, dry them well, and sprinkle on each fillet, pepper, salt, a dust of mixed spice, and chopped parsley. Roll each fillet up tightly, and pack them tightly into a dish, so that they will not become loose. Take vinegar and beer in equal quantities, or, if you do not like to use beer, you must add to the vinegar some whole black pepper, and a good sprinkle of dried and mixed herbs with salt. Pour over the fish, tie a piece of buttered paper over the top, and bake for an hour and a quarter (for a medium pie dish) in a moderate oven.

TO KEEP SPRATS

A large quantity of these may be bought cheaply and kept for some weeks by this method. Put on to warm equal quantities of vinegar and water, what you think sufficient to cover your sprats, allowing for wastage; and stir in for every quart of liquor a small saltspoonful of mixed spice, four bay leaves, a shallot minced, a small bunch of bruised thyme, the thin rind of a half lemon, salt and pepper; if you can use tarragon vinegar so much the better. Clean the sprats, remove tails and heads, and lay them in a deep dish. Take your liquor and pour it over the fish, tie a large paper over all, and let them bake in a cool oven for two or three hours; or cook them in a double saucepan; in any case do them very slowly. Put aside to cool, and take out the fish to use as required. They will keep good four weeks.

TO KEEP MACKEREL FOR A WEEK

It sometimes happens that you can get a great quantity of this fish, very fresh, cheaply, and wish to use it later on.

Pickle it thus: Boil a pint of vinegar with six peppercorns, four cloves, four bay leaves, a scrap of mace, a saltspoonful of salt, and the same of made mustard. When this is boiled up put it to cool. Lay your mackerel prepared ready for eating, and sprinkle on each piece some salt, and minced thyme. It may be an hour before using.

Then fry the fish, lifting each piece carefully into the hot fat. When fried lay the fish in a deep dish, and pour on each piece your vinegar liquor till all is covered.

Cover over with paper such as you use for jam pots, well tied down. You can afterwards heat the fish as you require.

A BROWN DISH OF FISH

Take your fish, which should be herring or mackerel, relieve it of the bones, skin and fins, which you must put to boil for three quarters of an hour in water, with pepper and salt. After that time strain off the liquor, and add to it enough browning to color it well.

Then brown quarter of a pound of butter and knead into it two tablespoonfuls of flour, add it, when well mixed, to your liquor, with salt and pepper, a piece of lemon peel, and a dust of mixed spice. Bring all this to the boil and drop in your fish. (Cut in neat fillets.) Let them simmer for twenty minutes, and if too dry pour in some darkly colored gravy. Just before you wish to serve add a good wine glass of claret, or of Burgundy, take out the lemon peel, and pour all on a hot dish. If you do not wish to put wine, the flavor of the sauce is very excellent if you stir into it a dessertspoonful of mushroom ketchup, or a teaspoonful of soy. This brown fish is nice to follow a white soup.

BAKED HADDOCKS

Take all the trimmings of two good sized haddocks, cover them with milk and water, and put them to simmer. Add chopped parsley, a chopped shallot, pepper and salt.

Cut each fish in half across, and lay them in the bottom of a pie dish, sprinkle breadcrumbs, pats of butter, pepper and salt, between and on each piece. Fill up the dish with water or milk, adding the simmered and strained liquor from the trimmings.

Bake gently for an hour, and when brown on top add more breadcrumbs, and pats of butter.

FILLETED SOLES AU FROMAGE

Boil the filleted soles in water. Make a sauce with butter. One spoonful of flour--milk, pepper and salt, powdered cheese (Cheddar). Boil it, adding some washed and chopped mushrooms and a little cream. Put the filets on a dish and pour them over the sauce. Leave it about a quarter of an hour in the oven, so that it becomes slightly browned.

[_Mdlle. Spreakers._]

FILLETED FISH, WITH WHITE SAUCE AND TOMATOES

Brown two onions in butter, and add a spray of parsley, half a pound of tomatoes and a claret glassful of white wine. Let this simmer for half an hour, and then pass it through the tammy. Then fry half a pound of mushrooms, and add them and their liquor to the sauce, thickening it, if necessary, with a little cornflour. A great improvement is a little liebig. Place your fish in the oven, and cook it gently in butter, with pepper and salt. When it is done, serve it with the sauce poured over it.

[_Madame Vandervalle._]

THE MILLER'S COD

(Cabillaud meunier)

Cut your cod in slices, and roll them in flour. Put them to fry in a good piece of butter, adding chopped parsley, pepper and salt, and the juice of one lemon. This is very good, if served in the dish that it is cooked in.

DUTCH HERRINGS

(A cold dish)

Take some Dutch, or some salted herrings, and remove the skin, backbones, etc. Lay the fish in milk for at least twenty-four hours to get the salt out. Make a mayonnaise sauce, adding to it the roe from the herrings, in small pieces; wipe and drain the fish, and pour over them the sauce.

REMAINS OF COD

I

Take your fish, and remove all bones and skin. Put some butter to brown in a saucepan, and when it is colored, add the cod, sprinkling in pepper and salt and a good thickening of grated breadcrumbs. Let this all heat gently by the fire and turn it into paper cases, with chopped parsley on the top.

II

The above recipe can be followed for making fish rissoles, but, after having mixed it well, let it grow cold. Then form into balls, roll them in breadcrumbs, and throw them into boiling fat.

III

Take all the remains of the fish and heat them in butter. Make some mashed potatoes, and add to them some white sauce, made of flour, milk and butter. Mix this with the fish, so that it is quite moist, and do not forget salt and pepper. Place the mixture in a fireproof dish and sprinkle breadcrumbs over it. Bake for fifteen minutes, or till it is hot through, and serve as it is.

[_Mdlle. M. Schmidt, of Antwerp._]

* * * * *

PART II

The second half of this little book is composed chiefly of recipes for dishes that can be made in haste, and by the inexperienced cook. But such cook can hardly pay too much attention to details if she does not wish to revert to an early, not to say feral type of cuisine, where the roots were eaten raw while the meat was burnt. Because your dining-room furniture is Early English, there is no reason why the cooking should be early English too. And it certainly will be, unless one takes great trouble with detail.

Let us suppose that at 7:30 P.M. your husband telephones that he is bringing a friend to dine at 8. Let us suppose an even more rash act. He arrives at 7:15, he brings a friend: you perceive the unexpressed corollary that the dinner must be better than usual. In such a moment of poignant surprise, let fly your best smile (the kind that is practiced by bachelors' widows) and say "I am delighted you have come like this; do you mind eight or a quarter past for dinner?" Then melt away to the cook with this very book in your hand.

I take it that you consider her to be the junior partner in the household, you, of course, being the senior, and your husband the sleeping partner in it. Ask what there is in the house for an extra dish, and I wager you the whole solar system to a burnt match that you will find in these pages the very recipe that fits the case. A piece of cold veal, viewed with an eye to futurity, resolves itself into a white creamy delightfulness that melts in your mouth; a new-laid egg, maybe, poached on the top, and all set in a china shell. If you have no meat at all, you must simply hoodwink your friends with the fish and vegetables.

You know the story of the great Frenchwoman:

"Hèlas, Annette, I have some gentlemen coming to dine, and we have no meat in the house. What to do?"

"Ah! Madame, I will cook at my best; and if Madame will talk at her best, they will never notice there is anything wrong."

But for the present day, I would recommend rather that the gentlemen be beguiled into doing the talking themselves, if any shortcoming in the menu is to be concealed from them, for then their attention will be engaged.

It takes away from the made-in-a-hurry look of a dish if it is decorated, and there are plenty of motifs in that way besides parsley. One can use beetroot, radishes, carrots cut in dice, minced pickles, sieved egg; and for sweets, besides the usual preserved cherries and angelica, you can have strips of lemon peel, almonds pointed or chopped, stoned prunes cut in halves, wild strawberries, portions of tangerine orange. There is a saying,

Polish the shoe, Though the sole be through,

and a very simple chocolate shape may be made attractive by being garnished with a cluster of pointed almonds in the center, surrounded by a ring of tangerine pieces, well skinned and laid like many crescents one after the other. There is nothing so small and insignificant but has great possibilities. Did not Darwin raise eighty seedlings from a single clod of earth taken from a bird's foot?

It is to be regretted that Samuel Johnson never wrote the manual that he contemplated. "Sir," he said, "I could write a better book of cookery than has ever yet been written. It should be a book on philosophical principles."

Perhaps the pies of Fleet Street reminded him of the Black Broth of the Spartans which the well-fed Dionysius found excessively nasty; the tyrant was curtly told that it was nothing indeed without the seasoning of fatigue and hunger. We do not wish a meal to owe its relish solely to the influence of extreme hunger--it must have a beautiful nature all its own, it must exhibit the idea of Thing-in-Itself in an easily assimilable form.

I am convinced, anyhow, that this little collection (formed through the kindness of our Belgian friends) will work miracles; for there are plenty of miracles worked nowadays, though not by those romantic souls who think that things come by themselves. Good dinners certainly do not, and I end with this couplet:

A douce woman and a fu' wame Maks King and cottar bide at hame.

Which, being interpreted, means that if you want a man to stay at home, you must agree with him and so must his dinner.

M. LUCK.

HORS D'OEUVRE

(Herring and Mayonnaise)

Take some salt herrings, one for each person, and soak them for a day in water. Skin them, cut them open lengthways, take out the backbone, and put them to soak for a day in vinegar. Then before serving them, let them lie for a few minutes in milk, and, putting them on a dish, pour over them a good mayonnaise sauce.

[_Mme. Delhaye._]

CARROT SOUP

Wash and scrape a pound of carrots, slice them, treat two medium sized potatoes in the same manner, add a bay leaf, a sprig of thyme and a chopped onion. Cook all with water, add salt, pepper, and cook gently till tender, when pass it through a sieve. Put in a pan a lump of butter the size of an egg, with a chopped leek and a sprig of chervil. Let it cook gently for three or four minutes, then pour on the puree of carrots and let it all come to the boil before taking it off to serve.

[_Madame Stoppers._]

SORREL SOUP

Take a quart of bouillon or of meat extract and water. Fry in butter a carrot, a turnip, an onion, a small cabbage, all washed and chopped, and add half a teaspoonful of castor sugar. Put your soup to it and set on the fire. Let it simmer for twenty minutes, add any seasoning you wish and a little more water, and let it simmer for another half hour. Then shred a bit of basil or marjoram with a handful of well washed sorrel, throw them in, cook for five minutes, skim it, pour it into a soup tureen, and serve.

OSTEND SOUP

There are many varieties of this soup to be met with in the different hotels, but it is a white soup, made of fish pieces and trimmings, strained, returned to the pot, and with plenty of cream and oysters added before serving. It should never boil after the cream is put in. A little mace is usual, but no onions or shallot. A simple variety is made with flour and milk instead of cream, the liquor of the oysters as well as the oysters, and a beaten egg added at the last moment.

[_Esperance._]

ANOTHER SORREL SOUP