Practical home cookery

The first thing she would do would be to put an egg in a saucepan, and boil it for twenty minutes or so, and then place it in cold water to get cold. Next, take a couple of anchovies out of the bottle, and put them on a plate (putting the bottle back in the cupboard ; for if you get in the habit of putting each thing by in its place as you use it, you will never get into a muddle). Next, take a small penknife, and cut the anchovy open longways, and carefully remove the bone ; if this is done properly, each anchovy will make four fillets or thin strips varying from two to three inches ; wash them thoroughly in cold water, to remove all the salt and soft part. Dry them, and roll them up, as they look at times too much like worms if not rolled. Next, take a tea-spoonful of capers, and drain them carefully on a cloth, in order to thoroughly remove the vinegar in which they have been preserved. Next, take six olives, and stone them. This is done by cutting a strip off them as thick as you can, keeping the edge of the knife scraping the stone the whole time. As a rule, the olive will look round after the stone is taken out, but of course they have no ends to them. A little practice will enable the cook to cut out the stone quite bare, leaving the flesh, so to speak, of the olive in one piece, which curls up again, and looks like an olive that had never been touched. These directions may to some seem unnecessarily minute ; but then we are writing for others who perhaps have never seen an olive except in a bottle in the grocer’s window, and then they thought them preserved plums. Next, chop up not too finely a little piece of brightgreen parsley ; enough to cover a threepenny-piece when chopped is quite sufficient. Put all these things by on a clean dry plate for use — viz. the hard-boiled egg, cold, with the shell on ; the anchovies, rolled up ; the capers, dry ; the olives, stoned ; the parsley, chopped. And, as we have said, clear away what you have used before beginning anything fresh. Next, wipe, or quickly wash in cold water and wipe, the lettuces, and pile them up lightly in a silver or any oval-shaped dish. Next, remove all the meat from the lobster, not forgetting the soft part inside and the claws ; cut it all up into small pieces not much bigger than dice, and spread the meat over D the top of the lettuce in the dish, taking care as much as possible to make the shape high in the centre. A sort of oval pyramid may convey the idea, though it is not a very mathematical expression. Sprinkle a little pepper and salt over the lobster, and put the dish by in a cool place. Next, the sauce itself. I believe the directions generally given to be wrong in this respect. It is a mistake to put in any pepper, salt, or vinegar at starting. I will therefore describe exactly how to make mayonnaise sauce, at the same time stating that out of the dozens of times I have tried, I only remember one failure, and that was on a fearfully hot day, and I had no ice.