Practical home cookery

Properly cooked whitebait should be crisp, but at the same time slightly soft in the middle, when eaten. There are two kinds of devilled whitebait — black devil and red devil ; the former consisting of adding black pepper in the middle of cooking ; and the latter, black and cayenne mixed. Have the pepper, whichever is fancied, ready in a pepper-box, lift the whitebait-basket out of the boiling fat, shake it and pepper the whitebait at the same time, put the basket back into the fat for a few seconds, and then turn the whitebait out on to the cloth. It will be found best to send up the whitebait in two dishes, first the ordinary, second the devilled ; thin brown bread and butter should be handed round with it, besides some lemon cut into quarters. It wiU sometimes be found that with whitebait are mixed a few shrimps or very small eels ; these should properly be removed before sending to table, as they have the effect of destroying the appearance. It may perhaps seem superfluous to add, that whitebait requires no sauce, yet the following conversation actually occurred at North Woolwich, where whitebait are caught and cooked in the greatest perfection : — Visitor. Waiter, these whitebait are not so nice as they were last time.” Waiter.—” Perhaps, ma’am, you would like them better if you did not take anchovy sauce.” On one occasion some persons demanded melted butter with their whitebait. Whitebait in perfection should be small, but near the end of the season are, of course, far larger and by no means so delicate as in early spring. Waiters are proverbial for presence of mind, and on one occasion, when the whitebait was brought up, about the size of sprats, quietly answered the intended complaint of ” Waiter, these whitebait are very large,” by saying—” Yes, sir— very fine, sir.” The curried shrimps are generally served last of all, and then some meat — generally a roast fowl or duck but, as a rule, no one eats much of this after all this fish. In a private house it would be better to have a little cold roast beef and salad to finish up with, as in ordinary kitchens a roast duck or fowl would be terribly in the way during cooking the dinner. CHAPTER XIX. My chapter on wedding breakfasts must not consist in simply saying, Don’t have one ; though I must in the name of common sense enter my protest against the vulgarity — for it is nothing else — of giving one out of proportion to the means of the giver. Where money is no object, of course the simplest plan is to go to some first-rate confectioner’s, and let them supply the breakfast at so much a head. Where, however, economy is a necessity, much can be done with a Httle good management to avoid waste. I will give an instance of a wedding breakfast that took place during the last six months, and the cost. For it often happens that during the last week before the wedding there is so much to be done at home in the trousseau line that any elaborate cooking in the house is almost impossible. The following bill of fare is one supplied for over sixty persons, at 14s. a head, in February last : — POTAGES. Printanier. Puree d’Artichauts a la Palestine. Entries Chatjdes. Chartreuse de Homard a la Cardinal. Petites Timbales a la Grande Duchesse. Quenelle de Volaille a la Sefton. Cotelettes de Tortue.