The complete Indian housekeeper & cook

In no other branch of cookery is a French dictionary and a vivid imagination more necessary than in the preparation of what are called high-class entrees. Their name is legion already and yet an ordinarily intelligent cook might increase their number indefinitely. Just as there are only four kinds of pudding— a boiled pudding, a baked pudding, a fried pudding, and a pastry pudding-so all entrees group themselves under a few heads. Fully one-half of the new side-dislies are simply varieties of the quenelle-custard-cream genus, while the other half belong to the patty-croustadecroquet-kromesky family. Some are served with one sauce some with another ; in some the whites of the eggs are used' 11in some they are not; but when all is said and done, a cook who can makea Turban a la something can put the same mixture into a different shape, and call it Little Chickens a la something else; the something else being a variable quantity also. So the following recipes must be taken as indications of what may be attempted rather than as a complete collection of what has been done. In regard to decoration, a protest has been entered elsewhere against over-colouring and the plastic art. There can be no reason why one-half of a dish should be coloured pink with a tasteless, useless drug, and the other half green. But it is quite allowable to decorate with ham, truffle, eggs, chopped parsley, glaze, &c. With these few remarks We pass on to the recipes. 1. Chicken Quenelles.— One unit flour, 1 unit butter, b of cream. Make into a thick sauce. Sixteen units white meat pounded in a mortar, flavour to taste, and incorporate with the sauce. Add 2 units of yolk of eggs. Shape with tablespoons, or put into buttered quenelle moulds and poacli for three minutes in boiling water. Another equally good recipe, is as follows : lake 12 units raw chicken pounded 268 ^ The Indian Housekeeper and Cook 269 and rubbed through a sieve, 3 of butter, 4 of panada, made by steeping the crumb of a loaf in warm water, wringing out in a cloth, and heating over the fire with a little butter and salt until it leaves the sides of the pan and is a compact, smooth paste. Pound all together, add gradually 4 units of eggs, 1 of thick white sauce, and 1 of yolk of egg. Season to taste. Poach in boiling water, in buttered moulds. Each quenelle should be decorated with truffle or ham. In poaching quenelles, the water should be boiling when the moulds are set in it. It should then be allowed to come to the boil again, when the pan should be put where it can just simmer. Fast boiling makes the quenelles hard and curdy. 2. Chaudfroid of Chicken. — From the breast of two boiled chickens cut eight neatly trimmed cutlets. Dip four of these in reduced bechamel sauce and four in clear brown salmis sauce made with cornflour, and set them aside. When firm, decorate the white ones with truffles and ham, and the brown with white of egg and cut carrot. Dish on a border of clear aspic jelly, in which is embedded branches of ])arsley and cherry-tomatoes, or any other brilliant decoration. The centre may be filled with green peas in a cream sauce, or it may be left empty, and the dish garnished round with alternate piles of broken aspic and green peas.