Culinary jottings

" (Eufs au gratin : — Butter the bottom of a pie-dish previously well rubbed with shallot, and line it with some maccaroni already boiled in milk, pour round it half a pint of sauce blonde in which you have dissolved some grated Parmesan, or other mild well-rasped cheese, and upon that dispose a complete layer of hard-boiled eggs, sliced. A finely minced anchovy should be sprinkled over the eggs with pepper and salt or, better still, with a judicious dressing of "spiced salt" (q. v., page 111) for seasoning; and then a nice coating of bread-crumbs, and grated cheese mixed in equal proportions : drop a number of little bits of butter the size of a pea over the surface, and bake the dish till the top takes a golden brown tint. Slices of tomato, drained of their watery juice, and with their seeds picked out, may be laid upon the egg, or thin slices of Bologna sausage ; and mushrooms, or truffle trimmings, may be chopped up, and sprinkled over them : there is obviously ample scope for culinaiy ingenuity in the enrichment of " tvufs au grating " OEufs farcis" : — Boil six eggs for half an hour, take them out, and plunge them into cold water. When quite cold, peel ofF their shells, and, with a dessei-t-knife nibbed in butter, divide each egg in half, slicing a little piece of the rounded ends to admit of each half sitting upright upon a dish: now pick out the yolks, pound them with butter in a mortar, and proceed to dress them with any tasty trifles at your command, season the composition delicately, and fill the egg cases therewith, trimming the farce neatly, with a dessert-knife dipped in melted butter, in a convex-shape over each case, — for there will be more than enough mixture to merely fill each cavity. For the farce, you can use finely minced olives, capers, anchovies, mushrooms, and truffles ; veiy finely grated ham, the bruised liver of a chicken, the remains of a pate de foie gras, or a little sausage meat. A judicious selection of two or three of these ingredients, seasoned with " spiced pepper" is what you require, — say, one tea-spoonful of mixed farce to each half yolk. Having dressed your cases to your mind, fry a little square of bread for each one, as for canapes (q. V.) and place them thereon : arrange them on a flat silver dish slightly buttered, pour a little melted butter over each egg, and bake for five minutes. Some nicely fried bread-crumbs may be strewn over the dish when going to table. Eggs may, of course, be served in this manner very plainly farcis : a little minced curled parsley or marjoram, with a pounded anchovy, and some chopped olive, for instance, would not be a bad mixture when worked up with the hard yolks. (Eafs farcis are delicious when served cold, in which form they should be sent up prettily garnished with curled parsley upon a flat China dish. Hard-boiled eggs may be fricasseed, or gently heated up, in a rich sauce like veloute, Espacfnole, or poulette ; and those who do not object to fried onions, might do worse than concoct a dish with their assistance in this way : —