Part 13

Scallop of shrimps and mushrooms

Cook precisely as in recipe on preceding page, for crabs and champignons.

Curried shrimps

Make a roux of one heaping tablespoonful of butter and a little less flour; thin with one small cupful of boiling water; add an even tablespoonful of best curry powder and one teaspoonful of onion juice. Stir for one minute and add a can of shrimps, washed and drained. Cook five minutes and serve.

Shrimps and eggs

(A Cuban dish.)

Make a roux of one large tablespoonful of butter and one of flour; when it bubbles add a teaspoonful of onion juice and twice as much green sweet pepper, minced fine, with salt and a saltspoonful of sugar. Boil up and stir in a can of shrimps, previously washed and drained. Cook for five minutes; remove to the table and mix in gradually, stirring all the time, four eggs which have been beaten just enough to break the yolks. Return to the fire and stir until the eggs begin to “set.”

Maryland terrapin

Boil the terrapin until the skin on the claws is sufficiently soft to rub off at the slightest touch. Take from the shell, and remove every particle of entrails and lungs. Place the meat in a chafing-dish. Add butter, pepper and salt, the quantity of each depending on the quantity of flesh. Let it simmer until the essence and butter reach the consistency of light gravy. Serve hot. If desired, add a little good sherry while eating, but not while cooking. Use no spices, dressing or other ingredients that can detract from the flavor.

SARDINES

The adaptability of the sardine to a variety of preparations that are appetizing and delicious is not generally recognized by the housekeeper. The tiny fish may be used as the foundation of many nice, light dishes, and during the heated months form a pleasing variety upon the heavier lunch or supper dishes composed of meat. It is always well to open a box of sardines an hour or two before the contents are to be used. Drain the fish from the oil in which they are packed, as this is too rich to be digestible, and does not improve the flavor of the fish. In buying sardines, choose the more expensive quality rather than the cheap, so-called sardines, which are often only American minnows packed down in oil.

Baked sardines

Toast crustless slices of graham bread and butter them. Put the drained sardines on a tin plate, squeeze over them a few drops of lemon juice and sprinkle with fine cracker crumbs. Set the plate in the oven and bake the fish for ten minutes. Transfer the sardines to the toast, and keep hot while you make the following sauce:

Strain a half-pint of liquor from a can of tomatoes and put it into a porcelain-lined saucepan to heat. Rub together a teaspoonful of butter and one of flour, stir these into the tomato liquor, and, as the sauce thickens, add a half-teaspoonful of onion juice and a teaspoonful of granulated sugar, salt and pepper to taste. Boil up once and pour over the sardines and toast.

You may, if you like, substitute white bread for brown, and omit the tomato sauce entirely.

Broiled sardines

Drain the sardines free from oil and lay them on a fine oyster-broiler. Broil over a clear fire for five minutes. Butter heated saltine wafers, and lay a sardine on each of these. Squeeze four drops of lemon juice and two drops of onion juice on each fish and send to the table very hot.

Canapés of sardines

Cut thin bread into crescents or triangles. The crescent is the true canapé shape. Toast the bread. Flake sardines fine with a fork; work into them a teaspoonful of melted butter, a teaspoonful of lemon juice, a pinch of salt and four or five drops of Tabasco sauce. Spread the toast first with butter, then with the sardine mixture, place on a tin plate, cover, and set in the oven until very hot.

Grilled sardines

Cut as many strips of bread as you have sardines, making each piece a little longer and broader than the fish. Toast or fry these. Roll your sardines in egg and then in fine cracker crumbs, and fry to a light brown. Lay a sardine on each strip of toast and garnish with lemon and parsley.

Sardine eggs (cold)

Boil six eggs hard and throw into cold water. Remove the shells and cut the eggs in halves, removing the yolks. Pound these yolks to a paste with a tablespoonful of salad oil, and work into this paste eight skinned and minced sardines. Now add a teaspoonful of lemon juice, and a saltspoonful, each, of salt, pepper and mustard. Form into balls, and fit these into the halved whites of the eggs, trimming off the bottoms of the whites so that they will stand on end. Serve garnished with water-cress, and with or without a mayonnaise dressing.

Sardine eggs (hot)

After making out the “eggs” as directed in foregoing recipe, put into a saucepan with a broad bottom and closely fitting lid, and set in a pot of water at a hard boil on the range. Do not let the water get into the inner vessel. In twenty minutes they should be heated through. Transfer to a hot dish and pour over them a hot Bearnaise sauce. (See Sauces.)

Sardines in cups

Cut rounds of stale bread more than half an inch thick. Press a smaller cutter inside of the larger round half way through the bread. Scrape out the crumb from the inner round, leaving sides and bottom whole. Set upon the upper grating of a hot oven until crisped to a light brown. Turn and toast the bottom of the cups; then butter well. Skin and behead eight sardines. Scrape to a smooth pulp and mix with this sauce:

Make a roux of a large tablespoonful of butter and nearly as much flour, thin with a few spoonfuls of boiling water, season with a teaspoonful of anchovy paste and one of Worcestershire sauce; stir in the sardine pulp, and when it begins to bubble fill the buttered bread cups, which should have been kept hot. Send around sliced lemon with them.

Anchovies au lit

Toast thin rounds of bread; butter and cover thickly with the yolks of hard-boiled eggs, run through the vegetable press. Make a hollow in the mass of powdered egg and lay a curled anchovy in the little pit thus formed.

Set in a hot oven for five minutes, and serve.

Anchovy toast

Cut the crust from slices of bread and toast to a light brown. Butter lightly, and spread with anchovy paste. Lay the toast upon a hot platter in the oven while you make a sauce by cooking together a tablespoonful of butter and the same quantity of browned flour, and when they are blended pouring upon them a pint of beef stock. Stir to a smooth, brown sauce, add a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, six stoned and chopped olives, pepper to taste, and a very little salt. Pour this sauce over and around the anchovy toast.

Anchovy croutons

Cut white bread into three-inch triangles, and fry them in butter to a pale brown. Drain, and spread each lightly with anchovy paste, and on this lay a slice of tomato. Dust with salt and pepper and serve cold.

Caviar in saucers

Prepare rounds of bread as directed for “Sardines in Cups,” and keep hot while you make the filling thus:

Two tablespoonfuls of caviar, one teaspoonful of lemon juice, one-fourth teaspoonful of curry powder, and the same of paprika. Put all into a saucepan over the fire and stir until quite hot; then put it into the hot and crisped “saucers.”

Caviar strips

Cut an equal number of slices of brown and of white bread—quite thin—and butter on one side. Trim into neat oblongs and spread the white bread with caviar. Fit a brown strip over each piece thus prepared, press lightly and firmly together, and lay, log-cabin-wise, in a tray lined with a doily.

A curry of salmon

Open a can of salmon two hours before using, and remove all bits of skin and bone. Pour two tablespoonfuls of olive oil into a frying-pan and fry in it a minced onion. When the onion is brown stir into the oil a tablespoonful of flour mixed with a teaspoonful of curry powder, and when these are blended add a large coffee-cupful of boiling water. Season and stir for a moment, and turn the salmon into the mixture. Cook for two minutes and serve. Pass sliced lemon with this dish.

Salmon mayonnaise

Have boiling in a kettle a gallon of salted water to which a gill of vinegar has been added. Lay carefully in this two salmon steaks and let them boil very slowly. Test with a silver fork, and when done, but not at all broken, lift carefully from the water and drain. Set aside until cool, then keep on the ice until wanted. Lay the steaks on a cold platter and pour a very thick mayonnaise over them. Spread this smooth with a knife that the steaks may be covered. Garnish with an abundance of water-cress.

Scallop of salmon

Open a can of salmon several hours before it is needed. Remove all bits of skin and bone, and flake the fish into small pieces. Make a white sauce and stir the salmon into this. Pour into a buttered pudding-dish, cover thickly with bread crumbs and bits of butter, and bake.

Beauregard cod

Boil a pound of cod the day before it is needed and let it get cold. Flake to pieces with a silver fork, removing all bits of skin and bone. Next day heat a pint of fresh milk in a double boiler, thicken this with a teaspoonful of flour rubbed into one of butter, and stir in the flaked fish. Season to taste and cook for five minutes. Turn upon squares of buttered toast. Have ready four hard-boiled eggs, the yolks powdered, the whites cut into rings. Sprinkle the yellow powder over the fish and lay the white rings about the edge of the platter.

Baked smelts with oyster forcemeat

Choose fine, large smelts of uniform size. Clean, wash and wipe, and fill them with a forcemeat made of one part fine crumbs, three parts finely-minced oysters, seasoned with paprika, a little minced parsley, salt and a tablespoonful of melted butter to a cupful of the forcemeat. Sew the fish up with fine thread and long stitches; lay in your covered roaster with a little boiling water under the grating and bake twenty minutes, basting once with butter when nearly done. Serve with lemon sauce.

They make a delicious fish course for luncheon. The threads should be clipped carefully that the fish may not be torn as they are drawn out before serving.

Baked smelts

Clean, wipe, roll in melted butter, then in cracker dust, set on ice to stiffen for an hour, and cook fifteen minutes in your covered roaster. Send sliced lemon around with this dish.

Creamed shad

(Contributed)

Make a white sauce by cooking together a tablespoonful of butter and a heaping one of flour, and, when they are blended, pouring upon them a pint of unskimmed milk. Add a few drops of onion juice, then pour slowly upon the beaten yolks of two eggs. Season with salt, pepper and a teaspoonful of minced parsley. Into this sauce stir a pint of cold, cooked shad that has been freed of bones and flaked very fine. Turn into a greased pudding-dish, sprinkle with crumbs and bake for twenty minutes or until heated through.

A “pick-up” of fish

This is a good dish for Saturday when you are gathering up left-overs to clear decks for the Sunday which is to begin the new week.

A cupful of cold, cooked fish—cod, halibut, salmon or any other firm fish; the same quantity of cold, cooked macaroni, cut into small bits; half a cupful of tomato sauce, one cupful of oyster liquor, which any fish dealer will give you; a heaping tablespoonful of butter and the same of flour, a teaspoonful of onion juice and the same of minced parsley. Salt and paprika to taste.

Heat the butter in a saucepan; stir in the flour, and, when it bubbles, the tomato sauce, the oyster liquor and the seasoning. Boil up once, add fish and macaroni; heat to a bubble without stirring, and turn into a deep dish.

Fish scallop

Prepare as above, but instead of stewing turn all into a buttered pudding-dish as soon as macaroni and fish are added to the hot sauce; strew crumbs on top, stick bits of butter over it and bake, covered, half an hour. Then brown.

Baked chowder

Fry a small sliced onion in a large spoonful of butter; strain and return butter to the frying-pan. Have ready two pounds of cod or other firm fish cut into inch squares; put into the hot butter and toss and turn until they are well coated; pack the fish in a buttered bake-dish alternately with slices of parboiled potatoes, fat salt pork, minced fine (about half a pound in all), bits of butter rolled in flour, minced parsley and two tomatoes chopped. Season a large cupful of oyster liquor with paprika and salt, and pour over all. Cover with split Boston crackers that have been soaked in milk for half an hour, fit on a lid and bake, covered, one hour. Then brown. A savory family dish.

A “Cape Cod folks” tid-bit

Soak two pounds of salt cod over night. In the morning wash and scrub it with a whisk to remove lingering crystals of salt and cover with hot water in which an onion has been boiled. Let it stand in this until the water is cold. Take out the fish and lay between two towels until perfectly dry. Broil then on both sides, turning twice; lay it in a hot water dish; break to pieces with a fork, and cover well with hot drawn butter, seasoned with pepper, lemon juice and minced parsley. Let it stand (covered) for ten minutes over the hot water before serving, and you will be surprised by the excellent dish contrived of such homely materials.

Halibut and cheese scallop

Have ready two cupfuls (less, if you happen not to have as much) of cold, cooked halibut, flaked rather coarsely with a fork. Make a good white sauce—drawn butter—based upon milk instead of water. Butter a bake-dish and fill it with alternate layers of the fish, sauce and grated cheese (very mild), using altogether about four tablespoonfuls of the latter, and cover the top with crumbs. Bake half an hour in a quick oven, and serve hot. Keep covered until ten minutes before serving, when brown.

Deviled halibut or cod

Pick cold, cooked fish into bits with a silver fork. Make a forcemeat of bread-crumbs, the yolks of two eggs run through colander or vegetable press, a tablespoonful of melted butter, one of minced parsley, a teaspoonful of onion juice, paprika and salt. Mix with the fish, wet up with oyster liquor and fill scallop shells with the mixture. Cover with fine crumbs, pepper and salt them, put a dot of butter upon each scallop and bake quickly to a light brown.

EGGS

Curried eggs

Boil seven eggs hard and throw into cold water to loosen the shells. Remove these without tearing or breaking the eggs, and cut round in slices nearly half an inch thick. Have ready in a saucepan a large cup of gravy from which the fat has been removed. Chicken gravy or stock is especially nice for this purpose. Season well with a teaspoonful of onion juice, half a cupful of strained tomato sauce, with pepper and salt. Boil up, thicken with two tablespoonfuls of browned flour and a teaspoonful of curry powder, and simmer together three minutes.

Arrange the sliced eggs upon a chafing-dish or hot-water dish, pour the curry sauce over them; set in the hot oven for three or four minutes, covered, to get heated through, and send to table in the hot-water dish.

Serve boiled rice with it.

Banana toast

Is a pleasing accompaniment to curried eggs.

Remove the crust from graham bread and cut it into thin slices. Spread one piece with thin slices of banana and lay another slice of bread upon this. Press the two pieces together that they may not fall apart, and toast quickly to a light brown. Keep hot in the oven until wanted, as these sandwiches are not good when cold.

Egg timbales

Beat six eggs light and stir into them a half-pint of rich milk, a pinch of soda and salt and white pepper to taste. Pour into greased muffin-pans; set these in an outer pan of boiling water, and bake until the egg is “set.” Turn the timbales out upon a platter and pour a rich brown sauce around them.

Baked omelet

Break five eggs, the whites and yolks separately. Soak the crumbs of a slice of white bread in a half-cupful of milk for ten minutes. Beat the yolks of the eggs thoroughly and whip the whites stiff. Stir the bread and milk into the yolks, add a teaspoonful of salt and a saltspoonful of white pepper, and stir in the whites of the eggs lightly—just enough to mix them. Turn into a well-greased pudding-dish and bake in a quick oven. Do not let the omelet crust over too quickly, but put a piece of paper over the top for a few minutes. Uncover and brown.

Deviled eggs

Boil a dozen eggs hard, throw into cold water, and at the end of half an hour remove the shells. Cut the eggs carefully in half, extract the yolks and rub these to a paste with three tablespoonfuls of salad oil, two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, a half-teaspoonful of made mustard, a dash of paprika, two or three drops of Tabasco sauce, and salt to taste. Form this paste into balls, put the balls back into the halved whites and fit the whites into place. Run a wooden toothpick through the two halves of each egg to hold them together. Wrap every egg in waxed or tissue paper to keep it from becoming dry. Eat cold, with or without mayonnaise dressing.

Omelets cachés

Wash and wipe six large, smooth tomatoes of uniform size. Cut a piece from the blossom end of each and lay aside. Scoop out the pulp carefully, not to break the walls of the tomato. Set together in an open pudding-dish and put this into a brisk oven until the tomatoes are smoking-hot, but not until they break and collapse. Have ready the pulp you have extracted, minced and stewed, seasoned with butter, pepper, salt, a little onion juice and sugar. Drain off most of the juice. Beat four eggs light, add four tablespoonfuls of cream, a tablespoonful of butter heated to a roux with one of flour, mix quickly with three tablespoonfuls of the drained tomato, and fill the tomato shells with them. Fit on the tops and set in a shallow pan upon the top grating of a quick oven. Five minutes should cook them. Slip a spatula under each tomato, transfer to a hot platter and serve at once.

Pass thin slices of brown bread with them.

Chicken or turkey timbales

Boil eight eggs very hard and leave them in cold water for two or more hours. Take the shells off, cut in half, and extract the yolks. Chop the whites before running them through a vegetable press. Now mix with them four heaping tablespoonfuls of the breast of chicken or turkey minced as finely as possible; season with half a teaspoonful of onion juice, paprika and celery salt to taste, and mix to a white paste with the whites of three eggs beaten to a standing froth. Have ready enough buttered “nappies” or _pâté_ pans to hold the mixture; fill them, set in a pan of hot water and bake twenty minutes in a quick oven.

Turn out upon a hot platter; pour a good white sauce about the base, heap a teaspoonful of the powdered yolks on the top of each and serve.

The yolks are prepared by running through a colander or, better still, a vegetable press.

Scallop of chicken and eggs

Strew fine, dry, buttered crumbs over the bottom of a buttered baking-dish, then put in a layer of cold, cooked chicken cut into small dice. Cook a teaspoonful of chopped onion in a tablespoonful of butter till slightly colored, add a cupful of milk, and when hot stir in half a cupful of dry bread-crumbs. Add a teaspoonful of chopped parsley and a little salt and paprika. Let it cool until blood-warm, then stir in two well-beaten eggs, and pour the mixture over the meat. Cover with fine crumbs. Place in the oven and bake, covered, half an hour. Serve in the dish in which it is baked.

A savory mince

Use any cold meat you have left over, except beef—poultry, lamb, veal, mutton, will do—and a little ham chopped and mixed with the other meat. Add one-third bread-crumbs soaked in stock or gravy and season well. Stir in a saucepan until very hot. Prepare “cups” of stale bread by cutting round, then with a smaller cutter marking out an inner circle, from which scrape out the bread, leaving bottom and sides whole. Dip these in a raw, sugarless custard made of a cupful of milk and two beaten eggs, and let each absorb all it will hold. Fry in hot cottolene or other fat to a light brown, drain, fill with the mince, which should be quite soft, drop a raw egg upon each, and set in the oven until the egg is “set.”

Larded sweetbreads (roasted)

Blanch the sweetbreads. With a sharp skewer make holes in them and run through these openings narrow strips of salt pork. Let the bits of pork project half an inch on each side. Lay the sweetbreads in a covered roaster, pour about them a pint of cleared and seasoned soup stock, cover closely and cook for an hour, then transfer to a hot dish. Thicken the gravy in the pan, season and pour it about the sweetbreads.

Larded sweetbreads (fried)

Prepare as in the last recipe, but instead of roasting dip in egg, then in crumbs; set on ice for an hour and fry in boiling butter.

Sweetbread pâtés

Make shells of rich puff paste, bake them, and fill, while hot, with a mixture made according to the following recipe:

Cut a pair of blanched sweetbreads into small dice. Cut ten canned mushrooms into quarters and mix them with the sweetbreads. Add eight blanched and chopped almonds and six olives cut into tiny pieces. Heat a cup of cream and thicken it with a teaspoonful of cornstarch rubbed into one of butter. When smooth and thick add the sweetbreads, olives, etc. If too thick now, thin the mixture with a little mushroom liquor. As soon as all the ingredients are heated through remove from the fire and turn into the shells.

Timbales of sweetbreads

Blanch and chop two pairs of sweetbreads until as fine as powder, then rub them very smooth with the back of a silver spoon. Work into this paste a gill of sweet cream and the beaten yolks of two eggs. Season with salt and white pepper, and beat long and hard. Butter small timbale molds or “nappies,” and pour the mixture into them. Set the molds in a pan of hot water and bake in a hot oven until “set.” Loosen the contents of the nappies with a sharp knife, and turn out the molds upon a hot dish. Pour a white sauce about them.

Sweetbreads en nid

Follow directions for larded sweetbreads, and keep hot. Make a “nest” for them of cold boiled ham shredded into bits hardly larger than coarse straw; cold roast chicken, turkey or veal, and cold boiled spaghetti in four-inch lengths. Arrange upon a hot platter to simulate a nest, pour a little scalding, well-seasoned gravy over them, and set the dish in a hot oven about five minutes. Have ready a large cupful of rich tomato sauce, strained and thickened with a roux of butter and flour, and seasoned with salt, paprika and onion juice. Lay the sweetbreads upon the “straw,” and pour the boiling tomato sauce over all.

A baked mince

Mix together two cupfuls of minced cold lamb, chicken or veal, one cupful of chopped ham and one cupful of fine bread-crumbs. Moisten thoroughly with well-seasoned soup stock. Turn into a greased bake-dish and set in the oven until heated through. Break upon the top of the mince as many eggs as will lie side by side on it, sprinkle with salt and pepper, return to the oven and bake until the whites are set and firm. Send to table in a pudding-dish.

Curried beef

Melt three tablespoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan and cook in it for five minutes an onion, sliced. Remove the onion, and stir into the melted butter two tablespoonfuls of browned flour, mixed with a tablespoonful of curry powder. Cook until they bubble, then pour on them a pint of beef stock. Stir until you have a thick, brown sauce. Season with salt and mix with it two cupfuls of cold roast beef cut into dice. Toss and stir until the meat is heated through. Have ready on a platter a hollowed mold of boiled rice, and pour the meat and sauce in the center and about the base of this.

Curried veal