Culinary jottings

3. — Here we have a mould of creme or pain de volailley nicely truffled. Choose a large fowl, or a portion of chicken or two good sized chickens, and cut off all the white meat you can for the puree. With all the bones, skin, and scraps assisted by two sheep's feet, cleaned and cut up, and the giblets saved before the roasting, make as strong an essence as you can, following the rules for " fowl essence" (page 98). Strain when done, let it get cold, skim it, and then proceed to thicken it ; when as thick as a rich mayonnaise sauce, strain it, and set it in the hain-marie. You must treat your puree thus : — melt two ounces of fat bacon in a sauce-pan, throw in some pepper, salt, and the meat of the fowl ; work them together for five minutes over a bright fire, then empty the contents of the pan into cream. a mortar, and pound the meat and bacon to a paste ; add half their bulk of crumb of bread soaked in stock, and half a tin of white mushrooms, and when thoroughly incorporated, pass the whole through a hair sieve. Moisten the 'puree with some of the sauce already described, while pounding it, and when finished, add four whole raw eggs. Now, butter a plain mould, and fill it with your puree, introducing a good allowance of truffles cut into dice, and steam it as you would a pudding in your Warren's pot, or in a stew-pan plunged into a larger vessel full of water. When done, let the mould get cold, and then turn it out. While the mould was being steamed, reduce the remainder of the sauce to a white glaze, let it get cool, and pour it gently over the mould (which should be set on ice) until the glaze coats it completely. When set, the pain is ready. If steamed in a border mould, the centre may be filled with pointes cVasperges, fonds d^artichmits, flageolets or macedoine de legumes moistened with pure iced cream. 4. — Choose a nice fillet of beef, or the tender meat of a piece of the ribs. Trim this into thickheart-shaped fillets of a size large enough for one person each ; lard them with fat bacon, and set them to marinade all day, as described in Chapter VIII, page 65. When ready, drain them, and stew them gently in as rich a stock as you can make from the meat and bones you had over after shaping them, assisted by a glass of Marsala: when done, keep them hot in the bain-marie. • For the sauce, proceed as follows : — put into a stew-pan the yolks of seven eggs, one ounce of butter, one pinch of salt, and a little pepper : stir over a low fire till the yolks begin to thicken : take the pan off the fire and stir in one ounce of butter more : again stii* over the fire for two minutes and again remove the pan, adding another ounce of butter. Repeat the process again twice, using in all five ounces of butter, stir till the sauce is rich and creamy looking, finally adding a dessert-spoonful of tarragon vinegar, and a table-spoonful of chopped parsley. A little water atlded with the butter prevents curdling. Dish the grenadins round a ring of carefully mashed potato, introducing a slice of crisply fried bacon between each of them, and serve the sauce piping hot in a boat. In the hollow formed by the potato ring, you can put some flageolets a la maltre d'hufel, ov petits pois.