Mrs. Roundell's Practical cookery book

Now take out the leg, put it on a small baking-pan, strain the broth, remove the fat, and boil it down a little, adding a gill of Marsala and an ounce of glaze. Pour some of this broth into the pan, put it into the oven, and go on basting the leg every now and then with the remainder of the broth and that in the pan until it is nicely browned. Then dish it with a ring of watercress round it. serving whatever broth may remain in a hot sauce-boat. Hand stewed fillets of cucumber (see Cucumber) with the lamb, and new potatoes a la Parisienne. For these choose small new potatoes the size of a golf-ball. Boil them till nearly done, then LEG OF LAMB A LA BERCY drain and cool them. Make half a pint of white sauce by melting half an ounce of butter in a stewpan, then stir in four ounces of minced onion, and fry lightly over a low fire for five minutes. Mix in half an ounce of flour, and cook gently till all is well mixed. Now moisten with a gill of white stock and a gill of milk, bring the sauce to the boil, season with salt and white pepper, simmer for twenty minutes, and pass it through a hair sieve. Put the sauce into a stewpan, adding a dessertspoonful of finely-minced parsley, and then put the potatoes into it. Simmer them very gently till quite tender. Then take the pan from the fire, add a dessertspoonful of cream, and empty the potatoes and their sauce into a hot dish. Cold Asparagus is often liked with lamb. For this, boil it in salted water till tender, following Sir Henry Thompson’s method (see Asparagus). Drain it on a perforated dish, and then leave it to get cold in the larder, set over crushed ice. Some people like a few drops of the best French vinegar sprinkled over the Asparagus ; but a more delicate sharpness is given by a tablespoonful of light claret. (This remark applies to most salads.) Hand plain cream in a jug which has been set on ice, and let this be the only sauce for the cold Asparagus. Spring- Chicken with Tarrag-on.— Make a forcemeat of the chicken’s liver, a little butter, salt and pepper, and season it with a tablespoonful of blanched and chopped tarragon. Put this neatly inside the chicken, and roast it very carefully, protecting it with buttered paper and a slice of bacon tied over the breast. Make a clear broth with the giblets, vegetables, and half an ounce of glaze. Do not thicken this, but serve it in a boat, and add to it a dessertspoonful of coarsely-chopped tarragon. Garnish the chicken with watercress, and hand bread sauce as well as the gravy. If the flavour of tarragon is thought too strong use rosemary instead. Crepes de Voiaille. — Pick all the remaining meat from a cold roast fowl, remove the skin, and put the meat aside. Break up the carcase, and throw it with all the fragments of skin and bone, and any giblets of the fowl if previously saved, into a stewpan with as much stock as will cover the whole. Bring the broth to the boil, add four ounces of onion and of turnip, one ounce of celery, sweet herbs, pepper, and salt.