FoodNet

Practical West African cookery

1910

Page 15

Presented as published in 1910. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
The menus given can seldom be followed out exactly, as various dishes may be out of season, but they could serve as examples of how to save the cook’s time if two dishes out of the six can be prepared beforehand. No tins are used, except salmon in case fish is not obtainable. Cold asparagus can always replace one of the dishes and mayonnaise of game or fowl makes a good ending to a 35 dinner. Slices of ham hot and served on spinach make a nice entree. Little paper or china cases, called ramequin cases, are of use to those who have to give many dinners and enable them to transform a simple luncheon dish suoh as curried buttered eggs, oeufs priutanieres, etc., into a pretty entree. White Soup. Cold fish with mayonnaise or grilled salmon with sauce au beurre. Tournedosof beef or mutton. Roast duck with apple sauce, yam cakes and fried pumpkin . Caramel rice with custard. Stuffed olives on toast. Yam and young onion soup. Stuffed tomatoes. Roast leg of mutton with native beans and spinach. Poulet mayonnaise. Chocolate pudding. Pickle cheese. Tomato soup. Curried fish. Kidneys on toast. Poulet cocotte. Coffee cream. Horseradish savoury. Pumpkin soup. Fried fish with sauce hol- landaise. Poulet marengo with mashed beans and fried egg plant. Cold pigeon pie or cold tongue with salad. Snow eggs. Mustard biscuits. Mutton broth. Anchovy eggs with may- onnaise. Chicken croquettes with tomato sauce and mashed sweet potato. Boiled leg of mutton with caper sauce, rice and French beaus. Fruit salad. Parmesan biscuits. Onion soup. Macaroni bonne femme. Rolled fowl with sauce poivrade. Mashed pumpkin and fried sweet potatoes. Cold duck or guinea fowl with salad. Fruit fritters. Stuffed olives on toast. Ground nut soup. Fish au gratin. Mutton croquettes on mash- ed beans with tomato sauce. Poulet Fricassee with rice and fried cucumber. Paw paw tart with custard. Okro savoury, DINNERS. I 36 SOUP. It is worth while to spend a good deal of trouble on teaching your cook to make nourishing soups. Besides its value as food, a good soup is the mark of a good cook. It needs much more care than one would suppose, but once the method is learnt, it will not be forgotten, and will greatly help in the proper preparation of stews and sauces, of which it generally forms the basis. What cookery books call a stock pot is not possible in Nigeria. Soup must be made from day to day. In stations where you know the market is inspected, three penny worth of soup meat can be bought every day, but in the bush it would not be advisable to let your boy buy meat on the native market in such small quantities. The best roasting meat does not make the best soup ; on the contrary, a piece full of bone and muscle, such as the shin or the shoulder or ribs of mutton is much more suitable. It is not so much the quantity of meat which makes good soup as the way and time it is cooked. Even cooked meat, bones, trimmings of fowl and vegetables, make good soup if cooked properly and long enough.