Banquets of the nations

Strip off the leaves of a white cabbage, wash them thoroughly, put them into a saucepan of salted water, and boil for twenty-five minutes. Take them out, plunge into cold water, and afterwards dry them. In the meantime prepare one and a quarter pounds of forcemeat, using an equal quantity of finely chopped fat pork and lean veal, two eggs, a small chopped onion, a breakfastcupful of boiled rice, a good dash of paprika, pepper and salt, three tablespoonfuls of minced mushrooms, and a little minced parsley. Divide this into pieces the size of a walnut, wrap them up separately in pieces of the leaves, put them close together in a pan, sprinkle well with salt, pour over a little melted butter, and add broth and buttermilk in equal quantities to half their height. Cover them over and cook until the liquor is reduced to a glaze, then remove the pan to the side ; have ready ten ounces of rice boiled in stock and finished with butter and grated Parmesan cheese. Cover the bottom and sides of a timbale mould with tender large leaves of the cabbage, without any of their hard parts, spread a layer of rice one inch thick over the bottom leaves ; mask this with tomato sauce ; arrange ten slightly flattened dolmas on top, grate over a little Parmesan cheese, and continue in this way until all are used up, by which time the mould should be full. Cover over with a cabbage leaf, then with thin slices of fat bacon ; put the mould in a moderate oven, and cook for an hour. Drain off the fat, remove bacon and cabbage leaf, turn the timbale on to a hot dish, glaze the leaves with a paste brush, and serve at once. These dolmas may be cooked in a stewpan, and garnished with bacon round the dish on which they are piled. Bogracs Gulyas. (Braised Beef.) Cut up into middling-sized squares the head and the end (thin) of a fillet of beef, about two pounds. Chop up an onion, which fry in a stewpan with butter, without allowing it to take colour, and add to it the meat in squares ; fry them for ten or twelve minutes ; season with salt and a pinch of paprica ; then remove the stewpan back on a moderate fire, with hot ashes on its lid. Three-quarters of an hour later — that is, when the meat has evaporated its moisture — pour over a little gravy, and continue cooking it for an hour and a half ; sprinkle over the stew another pinch of paprika, baste it with two tablespoonfuls of brown sauce, and cook it for ten minutes longer. Then add to it a garnish of potatoes in small dice, blanched previously in water ; roll them in the sauce, and five minutes later dish up. Forma Szeletek. (Scalloped Salsify.) Scrape a few roots of salsify and cut them into lengths, throwing them out of hand into a basin of vinegar and water to preserve their whiteness. Afterwards boil them in salted water till tender. Next drain the salsify ; thicken sufficient of their liquor with flour and butter to make the sauce ; season to taste, and stir it over the fire until boiling, then remove it to the side. Beat the yolk of an egg with half a teacupful of cream, strain it, and stir it into the sauce, which must not be allowed to boil again or it will curdle.