À la mode cookery

Melt four ounces of fresh butter, add two ounces of good salad-oil, a little parsley, a shalot, a small onion, a clove of garlic, all minced, and fry them together. Peel two pounds of fresh truffles, slice and put them in the stewpan with pepper and salt to taste. When they are all thoroughly mixed, add a pinch of flour and a little hot fish stock. Boil a tumbler of Saumur (a light champagne), and add this also ; stew gently till everything is cooked and blended. Fry some sippets in butter, and pour the contents of the stewpan over the fried bread. The clove of garlic must be removed before the truffles are put in. Surprise Tomatoes (Tomatoes en Surprise) Take some little tomato-moulds, and mask them thickly with red aspic jelly, place a small piece of foiegras well truffled inside, fill up with the jelly, and close the moulds. Put on ice till ready to turn out ; place them on a bed of green aspic jelly. Stuffed Cabbages (Choux Farcies) Remove all the outer leaves from a couple of nice white cabbages, and wash them in salt and water then parboil them. Make a stuffing of some minced tongue, foie-gras, and fowl's liver, which must be mixed into a paste with the yolks of two eggs ; put this forcemeat between the leaves of the cabbages, taking care not to break them and not to spoil the shape of the cabbage. Flour the cabbages, dip them into the yolks of two eggs, and fry them delicately to a pale colour. Then cook them with butter and rich gravy. Send to table with fried sippets and pour the gravy over. Care must be taken not to over-cook the cabbages. Potatoes en Surprise (Twentieth Century) Take some large potatoes, boil them, cut them into halves, scoop out the potato, and leave the skins. Take some more uncooked potatoes, peel them, and cut DRESSED VEGETABLES II3 them into little straws two inches long and seveneighths of an inch wide ; fry them a pretty gold colour, and pile them up tastefully in the half skins. Sprinkle over a very little finely chopped parsley, and stand the potatoes on a bed of the potatoes taken from the skins and passed through a potato-masher and mixed with butter and a little milk, and put into a border mould. Mushrooms k la Tuileries Take half a dozen large mushrooms, mince some soft herring-roes, making about two ounces, the same amount of tomatoes mashed, a sprinkle of cayenne, salt to taste. Put this mixture into half a pint of Espagnole sauce and stew for six or seven minutes ; add a glass of marsala, and when nearly cold whisk a couple of eggs into it. Peel the mushrooms and put a spoonful of the mixture between two of them sandwich fashion, place a large piece of butter on the top one, and then bake them for six minutes. Serve them very hot within a border of potato straws. Sometimes tomato sauce is handed with this dish. Spinach and Poached Eggs Cook two or three pounds of spinach according to the quantity required in the usual way ; when done, drain and tammy ; add an ounce of butter, half an ounce of flour, salt and pepper to taste, a small lump of sugar, and half a cupful of cream. Put back in saucepan and stir over fire ; arrange it on a dish in a mound with toast underneath, and place some poached eggs on the top ; sprinkle with a little very finely chopped parsley.