Handbook of practical cookery

While the water is boiling, melt in a frying-pan the butter, and put into the same when hot the pork and the onions, cut into very thin pieces, and fry to a light brown. Put this preparation into a sauce-pan with the potatoes boiled and mashed, and add the parsley, thyme, and tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and salt ; pour over this the liquor (which has been boiling on the fish bones and skin) through a strainer, and allow all to simmer slowly thirty minutes. Just before serving add the pieces of haddock previously separated from the bone and skin. Oyster Soup.— Procure one quart of oysters, one pint of milk, three ounces of butter, one grain of cayenne, one half tea-spoonful of salt, one salt-spoonful of pepper, one ounce of flour. The oysters must first be strained, and the liquor brought to boiling-point, and then thoroughly skimmed. Melt then the butter in a separate sauce-pan, add to it the flour, then the milk, and stir the mixture until it boil. Add now the pepper, salt, cayenne, and oysters, which, if large, should be cut into pieces ; pour over this the boiling liquor, allowing all to cook for five minutes, when the oysters will begin to show their leaves. Serve very hot. [illustration: FRICASSEE OF OYSTER — FRIED OYSTERS. 25] SECOND DIVISION. Fricassee of Oyster. — Procure for this : Twenty-five oysters, two ounces of butter, one ounce of flour, yolks of two eggs, one tea-spoonful of lemon juice, one grain of cayenne, one grain of grated nutmeg, a piece of salt the size of a pea, one half a salt-spoonful of pepper. Bring first the oysters in their own liquor to the boilingpoint, and when this is reached strain them, and put the oysters, for the time, aside. Melt now, in a separate saucepan, the butter, and add thereto the flour, together with one tea-cupful of the strained liquor. Cook this for about two minutes, to give the mixture consistency, and then taking the sauce-pan from the fire, drop in the yolks of the eggs, one by one, stirring quickly until all is well mixed together. Add then the lemon-juice, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and cayenne, when the whole should be placed again over the fire, stirred briskly to prevent boiling, and allowed to become very hot. Just before serving drop in the oysters, and serve on buttered toast. Fried Oysters.— Provide for this : Twenty -five large oysters, two table-spoonfuls of flour, four table-spoonfuls of milk, four table-spoonfuls of cracker-dust, two eggs, four heaped table-spoonfuls of bread crumbs, one salt-spoonful of salt, one salt-spoonful of pepper, one saltspoonful of grated nutmeg. Put the oysters into a strainer and drain them thoroughly of their liquor. Then upon a plate mix together the flour, milk, pepper, and salt; into which preparation dip the oysters one by one, using a fork, and taking care not to mutilate the oyster. Place now upon a sheet of kitchenpaper the cracker-dust, and putting the oysters therein, lift the sheet of paper by its opposite sides, and roll them in the dust from side to side. The oysters should now be removed to a plate and left standing for half-an-hour, in order that