Culinary jottings

Beat up the yolk of an egg, and the juice of a couple of limes ; strain, and add to your melted butter just before serving ; off the fire mind, or the sauce will curdle. Beat up the yolk of an egg with a table-spoonful of cream, and add in the same way. Throw in just before serving a table-spoonful of minced parsley, fennel, or chopped capers, and you will have : — sauce au persil, sauce au fenouil, or sauce aux capers. Stir into it after it is made, a dessert-spoonful (or more if liked) of anchovy, Harvey, ketchup, or any sauce you fancy. For sauce aux fines herbes, flavour a pint of milk by boiling up in it a minced Bombay onion, a tiny bit of garlic, and a handful of parsley : when well flavoured, strain the milk through muslin and stir it by degrees into a saucepan in which a couple of ounces of butter and two of flour have been mixed ; thicken gently by bringing the mixture to the boil, strain, and add, just before serving, a table-spoonful of minced curled parsley, a dessert-spoonful of chopped garden cress, and half one of chopped green stem of spring onion. A squeeze of a lime may be judiciously added to this sauce. Fillets of pomfret, or any fish that you can fillet nicely, stewed gently in milk thus flavoured, with the same thickened and poured over them when done, are excellent. Small rings of sliced gherkins added to plain melted butter form the sauce aux cornichous you remember abroad ; a tea-spoonful of tarragon vinegar should accompany the rings. Melted butter for sweet entremets such as cabinet pudding, et hoc genus omne, should be made exactly in the same way as sauce blanche, with sugar instead of salt, with milk, or milk and water, and an egg beaten up in brandy, sherry, or liqueur. By adding strong broth or stock to the butter and flour, instead of milk and water as in sauce blanche, you produce sauce blonde which forms the basis of several useful sauces. Maitre d'hotel is simply sauce blonde with a bountiful supply of finely minced parsley, a half pinch of spiced pepper, finished off the fire with the yolk of an egg, and a squeeze of lime juice. Mincing parsley requires attention. If done when the leaves are tvet, the pieces will all stick together, and much of the juice will be lost. Parsley must be washed and then carefully dried in a cloth, after which it can be chopped as finely as possible. Maitre dliotel butter, I may add par parenthese is made thus : — To two ounces of iced fresh butter, add the juice of one lime, a dessert- spoonful of chopped parsley free from moisture, a little white pepper, and a pinch of salt. Form it with jonr butter bat, and set it in the ice box. A nice juicy, grilled chop, or a little grilled fillet of beef, served with a piece of maitre d' hotel butter melting over it, is a French method of captivating the appetite.