Culinary jottings

"Remoulade" is a mayonnaise sauce with chopped gherkins, parsley, chives and capers, added. For chives, try the green stalks of a few young onions. The mustard used must be French, and a drop or two of garlic-vinegar is a sine qtid nan. "Ravigote" is also mayonnaise with chopped shallots anchovies, celery, cress, and sweet herbs. Green remoulade and ravigote are made in the same way, the colour being produced by parsley juice, and spinachgreening. * Gonffe's calculation represents the quantity of vinegar as barelj one-eighth of the oil. — W. SA UCES— CONTINUED. 93 Not long ago I observed in the Queen newspaper a question from a ladj who was apparently in great distress about mayonnaise sauce. She complained that she could not get the mixture as thich as she desired, and begged for instruction. Two answers were given the following week : one of them urged the lady to thicken with flour or arrowroot, and the other advocated mashed potato ! Now, I need scarcely say that this was a case in which the blind attempted to lead the blind. Mayonnaise and tartare sauces should be thickened by beating the oil and raw yolks together perseveringly. With patience the mixture can, in this way, be made to stand as stiffly as thick batter. [illustration: continued] Sauces— concluded. Now pass to the consideration of a few standard liigh class sauces, which, with a little care and attention, will be found practicable in every well-conducted ^Madras kitchen. To aid you in this branch of the cook's art, you cannot possess a better guide than Jules Gouffe, whose admirably systematic method of discussing sauces has never been approached by any authority on culinary mysteries. Unfortunately, however for the inexperienced reader, Gouffe's work is rather the treatise of a Professor addressed to students who have already matriculated, than a vade mecum for beginners. So unless you are fairly au fait in practical kitchen work, you will hardly derive much easy aid from the Royal Cookery Book. You must have some knowledge of the ingredients which may possibly be spared, and of those which must, on no account, be omitted, for even in Gouffe's recipes there are sometimes things named which are not absolutely essential. Yoa ought to know something of stock-making, and understand the value of game bones, poultry bones, fragments of ham, &c., and the sort of flavour these things produce, helped by certain vegetables. If, by experience, you have picked up a knowledge of equivalents so much the better. I can, in short, readily believe that those who have never bothered their heads about cookery, would find it almost SAUCES— CONCLUDED. 95 impossible to direct a native cook from the pages of the great chef. In saying this I speak from experience. I first read Gouffe before I had taken to practical cooking work, and before I had actually made sauces, &c., ladle in hand, in an English kitchen. Since going through that ordeal, I have again come across the book, and I find that much that I had formerly to skip as too complicated, now seems easy enough. I propose now to place before you in the simplest way I can G-ouffe's fundamental sauces. Those who are acquainted with that author, will observe that in the first place I shall reduce the recipes to a much shorter compass, and in the next, that I shall omit everything that is not down-right necessary to produce a fair result.