Culinary jottings

Sauce a la poulette is worthy of distinction among ordinary white sauces. Its chief points are : first, that it is thickened with the yolks of eggs instead of flour ; secondly, that it is garnished with button mushrooms. It is a creamy looking sauce the colour of a rich custard. Make an ordinary thin sauce blonde with one pint of chicken broth, one ounce of butter, one ounce of flour, pepper and salt to taste : stir well for a quarter of an hour, and it will be a thin white sauce : then add en bain-marie one by one the strained and well beaten yolks of three eggs, finish off with a pat of butter, and a couple of table-spoonfuls of chopped mushrooms. The pulp of some large sweet onions that have been simmered in milk till tender, and passed through the sieve, when worked into sauce blonde, with a spoonful of cream for high days and holidays, gives you sauce soubise. Equal portions of boiled carrot, French beans, turnip or knolkhol, cut into small dice, with a few peas, asparagus points, and haricot beans, and gently heated in sauce blonde, form that charming assistance to a dish of grilled cutlets, or any plain entree, called macedoine de legumes. Be careful not to masli the vegetables, so do not overboil them in the first instance.* Sauce Milanaise is a delicious variation of sauce souhise. Cut up two parboiled Bombay onions, and put them into a sauce-pan with an ounce of butter, a pinch of sugar, and a salt-spoonful of salt ; add a table-spoonful of previously boiled rice, or pearl barley, and moisten with a breakfast- * Any four of these vegetables are enough for a macedoine. — W. cupful of broth ; let them cook slowly, and when the onions are done, add a table-spoonful of finely grated mild cheese (Parmesan for choice), stir the mixture, pass it through a sieve, and mingle it with half a pint of rich sauce blonde, or — for your birthday, wedding day, or the christening day of your first baby — with boiling cream. There is no sauce more popular with judges of good food than SoUandaise ; in perfection it is a grand sauce, and not very easy to make. In its homely form it may be described as sauce blanche, to which a few yolks of eggs have been added, and a squeeze of lime juice. In its more elaborate treatment, it becomes a custard of volks of egsrs water, vinegar or lime juice, and butter. Some are in favour of vinegar, others prefer lime juice, which they work thus : Beat up the yolks of three eggs in a little water in which a salt-spoonful of pounded allspice has been dissolved, add salt to taste, and about three ounces of fresh butter. Put this mixture into a small sauce-pan, and plunge it into a bain-marie, or stew-pan large enough to receive it, full of boiling water : steam your mixture in this way till it thickens, and stir in your lime juice to finish with.