The handy dictionary of cookery

This dish requires two days for its preparation. Take a young fowl ; clean, and wash it well. Plunge it into boiling water ; allow it to cook slowly until it can be readily pierced with a skewer ; then remove it from the pan, and leave it all night to become thoroughly cold. Prepare a good Bechamel sauce {see Bechamel Sauce). When the fowl is cold cut it up into neat joints, beginning at the wings and breast; trim all the joints so as to look neatly; take off the skin ; cover each joint well with the sauce ; place them on a sieve for twenty minutes ; if needful, a second coating of sauce may be given. When each piece of fowl is well covered with the smooth white sauce, and becomes firm, arrange them tastily in the centre of a glass dish, and salad round the outer edges. Garnish with cress, mustard, and chopped aspic jelly. Fresh sprigs of parsley may be also chopped and sprinkled over. Note. — A delicious entree may be made in this way with any remains of cold turkey. Cheese Fritters. Put into a saucepan two ounces of butter. When it is melted, cook in it three ounces of flour ; add half a pint of water ; stir carefully to boiling. Boil about two minutes till it leaves the pan sides clean, stirring briskly all the time ; remove the pan from the fire; drop in three eggs (not beaten) ; beat well between each one. Next add three ounces of grated cheese a pinch of cayenne pepper and salt. Take two teaspoons, dip them into hot water; shape the fritters with them ; drop them into boiling fat. Fry a pale brown. Noie. — The blue steam should be rising from the fat before the fritters are dropped in, and they will rise to double the size. Cheese Pastry. Cover a flat baking tin with puff pastry, and spread it all over with cheese mixture prepared as follows : — Put into a basin one ounce of butter, a very little salt, cayenne pepper, two ounces of grated cheese and the yolks of two eggs. Work these well together with a wooden spoon until perfectly smooth; then mix in very lightly the white of one egg, which must have been whipped up to a stiff froth ; cover the top with another layer of pastry ; mark it in strips with a knife. Bake in a hot oven ten minutes. Cheese Straws. Put in a basin two ounces of flour, two ounces of butter, three ounces of grated cheese, a few grains of cayenne pepper, salt, and one egg ; mix all well together. Turn it out on a floured board, and roll it out to about a quarter of an inch in thickness ; cut some strips about two inches in length and a quarter of an inch in width, also some rounds and rings with a smaller cutter. Bake on a greased tin to a golden colour ; place the strips in the rounds like bundles of sticks. Chicken Cream. Take six ounces from the breast of a fowl ; cut up and pound it in a mortar; then pass it through a hair sieve. Put into a basin two ounces of bread crumbs, one ounce of butter, a blade of mace, a pinch of salt, a little cayenne pepper ; the rind of half a lemon grated. Pour upon these a quarter of a pint of boiling milk. When this is cool add to it the chicken, also a quarter of a pint of whipped cream, the whites of two eggs beaten up stiffly ; pour all into a well-' greased mould and steam thirty-five minutes. Serve with a good white sauce made with cream ; garnish with tufts of green peas, asparagus, mushroom, or truffles. Chicken Croquettes.