Culinary jottings

Hard-boiled eggs make a very eatable toast in this way : — Grate a coffee-cupful of corned beef, bacon-lean, or ham ; cut four hard-boiled eggs into eight pieces each ; mix a good sauce blanche rather thickly, flavour it with a tea-spoonful of anchovy sauce, and slip into it, so as to get thoroughly hot, the cut up eggs ; when steaming, pour the contents of your sauce-pan over four nicely fried squares of bread, dust the grated beef over their surfaces and serve at once. The happy owners of dairies to whom cream is not an extraordinary luxury should try : — "Œufs à la crème," which are simply poached eggs served upon crisply fried toasts, with thick boiling cream poured over them. Woodcock toast is one of the most recherche of all savoury entremets of this class. Numerous recipes are given for it, and its name is distorted by many writers upon cookery, some of whom present it to their readers under the meaningless title of "Scotch Woodcock." In its unpretending form this toast is exceedingly like one I have already given, viz.:— a better kind of anchovy toast with an egg-cream custard to})-dressing, but real "Woodcock toast" should be composed as follows : — Take two freshly boiled fowl's livers, — [those of a goose, a turkey, or a couple of ducks, are better still, while the remains of pâté de foie gras are superlatively the best] — pound the liver to a paste, mixing with it a tea-spoonful of anchovy sauce, or the flesh of one fish pounded, a pinch of sugar, plenty of fresh butter, and the yolk of one raw egg ; dust into it a little spiced pepper, pass it througli the sieve, and set it aside on a clean plate. Prepare four squares of golden-tinted, crisply-fried, bread, about lialf an inch thick, spread the liver paste over them and set them in a moderate oven to retain their heat, but not to burn. Now, pour a coffee-cupful of good cream into a sauce-pan, which must either be dipped into a bain-marie, or placed over a very low fire indeed ; stir into it, as it warms, the carefully strained yolks of two raw eggs, continue stirring one way till the cream thickens nicely and is quite hot (without boiling) and pour it over your toasts : the egg whites (whisked by an assistant to a stiff froth whilst you were heating and thickening the cream) should be laid on the top of all, and the dish sent up without delay. Or the preparation may be slightly varied as follows: — Fry the toasts, butter them, and set them in a moderate oven to keep hot. When heating the cream, stir into it the liver-paste as well as the raw yolks of two eggs, and pour it over the toasts as soon as it is quite hot, and thickened sufficiently, capping your dish with the whisked whites. KIDNEY TOAST is generally far from being considered a very dainty one. Let me suggest two methods, one with the kidneys au naturel, the other made with those which you can cut out of a cold roast saddle : —