National viands à la mode

Take the meat from the breast of three wood hens, pound it in a mortar, and add by degrees twelve ounces of butter and of rice panada, and four yolks of eggs. Season to taste, pass it through a sieve, put it into a basin, work it well with a spoon for a few minutes, and stir well ; then add four tablespoonfuls of double cream. When well mixed up pour the preparation into a round mould and poach for thirty-five minutes. When ready to serve turn it out on a dish and mask it with a little bechamel sauce reduced with a few tablespoonfuls of meat glaze, with slices of cocks'-combs and truffles arranged round the base. Sillsillat, or Herring Salad Take six red herrings that have been soaked in cold milk and water and fillet them, removing the bones carefully ; then take a piece of cold veal, two hard-boiled eggs, a raw apple, a pickled beetroot, cucumbers, some pickled onions, and a few gherkins. Season with oil, vinegar, mustard. SWEDISH and a pinch of chopped chives, and mix all these ingredients well together ; add a few cold boiled potatoes. All should be of the consistency of cream, which lay smoothly on a flat dish in a dome shape, mask with mayonnaise, and cover with minced beetroot. Garnish with anchovy fillets, capers, and cherries in vinegar. Serve the salad with a sauce made of cream, vinegar, mustard, and sugar, or with oil, vinegar, and pepper. Smoked Eels Take two or three moderate- sized eels and place them in salt for a few hours ; then wipe and hang them up by some hooks by their heads, placed at a distance from each other at the bottom of an overturned tun open on one side. Put the tun on three bricks round a half-dying fire, which keep up with small pieces of bark of resinous wood, thus concentrating in the tun a thick warm smoke. In five or six hours the eels will be smoked and cooked. Divide them into pieces freed of the skin, place in a kitchen basin, season, and baste with oil and vinegar. Prepare a mixed salad of boiled potatoes, beetroot, celery, boiled carrots, gherkins, salted cucumber, and capers ; all these vegetables, except the capers, cut up into small pieces, seasoned and basted with oil and vinegar, and thus left for two hours. When ready to serve put these vegetables into a border mould. Turn it out on a dish ; place the pieces of eel in the centre and baste them with their seasoning. SWISS Fondu i la Bernoise Grate half a pound of Gruyere cheese, mix it thoroughly with four yolks of eggs, and stir in threequarters of a pint of fresh cream, one teaspoonful of kirschwasser, salt, and nutmeg. Melt a small piece of butter, stir in the mixture over the fire till smooth, and serve. Gateau de Fromage Make some good pastry ; roll it out, not too thin, and over it slice some cheese ; break four eggs into a basin ; stir briskly, adding a tablespoonful of cream and seasoning. Pour this mixture over the cheese and bake for half an hour in a hot oven. Merveilles