The Aunts' Cook Book

Carefully pick the meat from 1 dozen boiled, hard crabs, scrub the shells thoroughly. Place in a pot the yolks of 3 hard boiled eggs, 1 oz. of butter, 1 tablespoon of dry mustard, 1 teaspoonful of salt, a dash of cayenne pepper, 2 tablespoonsful of flour, rub smooth with a wooden spoon, then place over fire; Fish Foods 31 add 1 pt. cream or milk and cook to the consistency of boiled custard. Put the crab meat into a bowl, sprinkle 1 tablespoonful of chopped parsley over the meat, then add the sauce; mix well with the crabs, season with salt and pepper to taste, fill the shells, sprinkle fine bread crumbs over them, then sprinkle with melted butter and brown in a very hot oven or better under gas flames. Aunt Virginia's Terrapin, Maryland Style Mash the yolks of eight hard-boiled eggs and mix them with 2 tablespoonsful of best butter, rubbing them to a smooth paste. Put a pint of cream in a double-boiler. When it is scalded, stir in the egg and butter until smooth, season with salt, white and cayenne pepper, a dash of nutmeg and allspice. Add a quart of terrapin cooked in salted water with 2 slices of carrot and onion and a stalk of celery from 35 to 40 minutes. Simmer for 10 minutes or until the terrapin is well-heated. Just at the moment of serving add 2 tablespoonsful of Sherry or Madeira. Serve very hot. Aunt Elinor's Pan Roast Oysters Butter 6 individual shirred egg dishes. Place a toast in each dish. Lay six oysters on each toast. Season with salt and paprika. Pour a little oyster liquor on the oysters and cover lightly with bread-crumbs. Dot with butter and bake about 10 minutes or until a nice brown. 32 Fish Foods Aunt Elinor's Oysters en Brochette Take 36 oysters and 36 squares of bacon. Arrange oysters and bacon alternately on skewers. Pour a tablespoonful of oil on a plate with a teaspoonful of salt and ]^ teaspoonful of paprika. Mix the seasoning well, roll the skewers in the seasoning and then in bread-crumbs. Broil about 10 minutes. Lay each skewer on toast and spread with Maitre d'hotel butter. Aunt Gertrude's Sauce Meuniere (for fried fish) When the fish is fried in butter take it out and put on a dish. Then add a little more fresh butter in the pan, brown it, add lemon juice, and a little chopped parsley, and pour over fish. "My dear/' said Mrs. B—, an enthusiast on ancient lore, "Uncle Jack has sent us some brook trout. Listen! This is how Isaac Walton cooked his, — "Take your trout, wash him and dry him with a clean napkin, then open him and, having taken out his guts, wipe him very clean within but wash him not. Give him three scores with a knife to the bone, on one side only, after which take a clean kettle and put in as much hard still beer (but it must not be dead) and a little white wine and water as will cover the fish you intend to boil; then throw into the liquor a good quantity of salt, the rind of a lemon, a handful of sliced horseradish root with a handsome little fagot of rosemary, thyme and winter-savory. Then set your kettle upon a quick fire of wood and let your liquor boil up to the height before you put in your fish, and then if there be many, put them in one by one, that they may not so cool the liquor so to make it fall. And whilst your fish is boiling, beat up butter for your sauce with a ladleful or two of the liquor it is boiling in, and, being boiled enough, immediately pour the liquor from the fish, and being laid in a dish, pour your butter upon it, and, strewing it plentifully over with shaved horseradish and a little powdered ginger, garnish the sides of your dish and the fish itself with sliced lemon and serve it up." "Very interesting," said Mr. B — , "But if it's all the same to you Til have mine fried." It is said that the bravest man that ever lived is he who first ate a live oyster. Not so. Braver far is he who ever eats a very dead one. MISCELLANEOUS MEATS