Culinary jottings

the tin. Choose American asparagus if you can, because it is so much greener than either the French or English. When drained, cut the tender ends of the asparagus into pieces half an inch long using a dessert-knife. Put them away carefully, and throw the tough ends into tbe consomme. When strained, and ready to serve, add to the soup tbe chopped green points, beat it up to concert pitch, and serve. 2. — Fillet the pomfret, and make a fish gravy with the bones and trimmings, flavoured with Pomfret fillets with ^^ Q-iAon and a little celery : simmer caper sauce. . *'. yoiu' fillets, nicely rolled in little cui^ls, in this gravy ; drain them, and dish them on a hot dish. For the sauce, make a sauce blonde with butter, and flour, moistened with the liquor from the fish ; when smooth, add a dessert-spoonful of finely minced capers, and off the fire, just as you serve, the yolks of two eggs, well mixed with some melted butter. Pour the sauce over the fillets. A few drops of any aromatic vinegar will improve this sauce. 3. — Cover the breasts of two good-sized chickens with paper, and roast them without letting t^iem take colour : when cold, remove the breast meat as neatly as you can, also the flesh of the thighs and drumsticks. Out of the pieces thus obtained, trim a number of neat fillets as nearly the same size as possible, dredge a little flour over them and cover them up. For chicken chaud-froid sauce : — Take all the bones left after the above operation, skin, necks, pinions, &c., and make a strong chicken broth with them, adding an onion, some celery, a carrot, a bunch of parsley, a few almonds, pepper, and salt, to flavour it well. When the broth is ready, strain it into a bowl, skim it, and proceed to make with it a rich veloute sauce, using for a pint of broth an ounce of butter and one of flour : strain it and let it get cold, and then add to its thickness by stirring into it one-third of its quantity of liquefied aspic, or plain strong meat jelly, and reducing it over the fire till it coats the spoon. Now take it from the fire, and add the yolks of three eggs, and (if available) a table-spoonful of thick cream. Pour some of this over the pieces of chicken completely coating each piece, as it were, with a thick white glaze. Put them away so that the glaze may cool and set. Prepare a border of creme de topinambours (page 149) decorating the top of the mould with carrots and green peas : after steaming it, let the mould get cold, and then set it in ice. When quite cold, turn it out carefully upon a cold silver dish, fill the hollow in the centre with the pieces of glazed chicken, introducing a slice of truffle here and there as you arrange them, and garnishing the top of the chicken with cold boiled cock's comb, and truffles : let the dish remain in the ice-box until the time arrives for it to go to table. 4. — The cutlets in this dish should be most delicately grilled, and served round a socle of Mutton cutlets with V^^^^^ mashed a la " G. C." (page Valois sauce. 131) the chief feature of the plat being the sauce.