Practical home cookery

When flounders cannot be obtained, those very small soles, sometimes called, I think, dabs, make a capital souchet ; a large dish need not cost sixpence ; but pray don’t forget the brown bread and butter. It is wonderful sometimes, by a little forethought, how a dinner can be improved. Out of the many hundreds who have enjoyed those fish souchets at fish dinners, I wonder to how many the idea ever occurred — “ I must have this at home.” Mushrooms au gratin form a more elaborate dish. For this purpose only large cup-mushrooms should be used. Suppose, then, we have eight or ten fine cupmushrooms — and by cup I mean the top of the mushroom round, and capable of being made hollow. First cut off all the stalks, and peel them, and also peel very carefully the cup-like part of the mushroom, so as not to hurt the rim. Next scoop out the inside of these cups, and chop it up with the stalks of the mushrooms. Take a piece of shallot about as big as the top of the thumb down to the first joint, and sufficient parsley when chopped fine to fill a tea-spoon, and sufficient thyme to cover a shilling. Chop all these up together very fine, adding a little cayenne pepper. Next take some raw bacon and scrape it. It will be found that the fat will scrape easily, but not the lean. This latter must occasionally be cut in strips. Continue scraping the bacon till you have got about three ounces altogether. Chop the lean as fine as possible, and put it with the fat into an enamelled saucepan. Add the chopped mushroom, thyme, parsley, shallot, etc., and fry it all over the fire for a time. If the mass is too dry it shows there is not enough bacon-fat ; if it is too moist, add some bread-crumbs. Next fill the cups of the mushrooms with this preparation, and shave some fine golden-coloured bread-raspings. Place bread-raspings. Place these cups in a covered stew-pan with some butter or oil, and let them cook very gently till the cup part of the mushroom is quite tender. They can be served either plain or with some rich brown gravy poured round them. It is rather a rich dish, and of course not one off which it would be possible to dine ; but it is exceedingly good and savoury, and not nearly so troublesome to make as would be imagined from reading this recipe. Should these mushrooms au gratin be required as an entree, where great excellence is desirable, an improvement will be found by adding two yolks of eggs to the mass after it has been taken off the fire. These yolks must be stirred in thoroughly, and have the effect of rendering the insides of the mushrooms richer in appearance and taste. They are not, however, in my opinion, necessary.