Any remains of cold fish, such as cod or haddock, 2 dozen oysters, pepper and salt to taste, bread crumbs, sufficient for the quantity of fish; 1/2 teaspoonful of grated nutmeg, 1 teaspoonful of finely chopped parsley. Clear the fish from the bones, and put a layer of it in a pie-dish, which sprinkle with pepper and salt; then a layer of bread crumbs, oysters, nutmeg and chopped parsley. Repeat this till the dish is quite full. You may form a covering either of bread crumbs, which should be browned, or puff-paste, which should be cut off into long strips, and laid in cross-bars over the fish, with a line of the paste first laid round the edge. Before putting on the top, pour in some made melted butter, or a little thin white sauce, and the oyster-liquor, and bake. Time.--If of cooked fish, 1/4 hour; if made of fresh fish and puff-paste, 3/4 hour.
Take the bone out of a round of fresh beef, and beat the meat well all over to make it tender. Chop and mix together equal quantities of sweet marjoram and sweet basil, the leaves picked from the stalks and rubbed fine. Chop also some small onions or shalots, and some parsley; the marrow from the bone of the beef; and a quarter of a pound, or more of suet. Add two penny rolls of stale bread grated; and pepper, salt, and nutmeg to your taste. Mix all these ingredients well, and bind them together with the beaten yolks of four eggs. Fill with this seasoning the place from whence you took out the bone; and rub what is left of it all over the outside of the meat. You must, of course, proportion the quantity of stuffing to the size of the round of beef. Fasten it well with skewers, and tie it round firmly with a piece of tape, so as to keep it compact and in good shape. It is best to prepare the meat the day before it is to be cooked. Cover the bottom of a stew-pan with slices of bacon. Lay the beef upon them, and cover the top of the meat with more slices of bacon. Place round it four large onions, four carrots, and four turnips, all cut in thick slices. Pour in from half a pint to a pint of water, and if convenient, add two calves' feet cut in half. Cover the pan closely, set it in an oven and let it bake for at least six hours; or seven or eight, according to the size. When it is thoroughly done, take out the beef and lay it on a dish with the vegetables round it. Remove the bacon and calves' feet, and (having skimmed the fat from the gravy carefully) strain it into a small sauce-pan; set it on hot coals, and stir into it a tea-cupful of port wine, and the same quantity of pickled mushrooms. Let it just come to a boil, and then send it to table in a sauce-tureen. If the beef is to be eaten cold, you may ornament it as follows:-- Glaze it all over with beaten white of egg. Then cover it with a coat of boiled potato grated finely. Have ready some slices of cold boiled carrot, and also of beet-root. Cut them into the form of stars or flowers, and arrange them handsomely over the top of the meat by sticking them on the grated potato. In the centre place a large bunch of double parsley, interspersed with flowers cut out of raw turnips, beets, and carrots, somewhat in imitation of white and red roses, and marygolds. Fix the flowers on wooden skewers concealed with parsley. Cold à-la-mode beef prepared in this manner will at a little distance look like a large iced cake decorated with sugar flowers. You may dress a fillet of veal according to this receipt. Of course it will require less time to stew.
Take a large pike, scale and clean it, draw it at the gills.--To make a pudding for the Pike. Take a large handful of bread-crumbs, as much beef-suet shred fine, two eggs, a little pepper and salt, a little grated nutmeg, a little parsley, sweet-marjoram and lemon-peel shred fine; so mix altogether, put it into the belly of your pike, skewer it round and lie it in an earthen dish with a lump of butter over it, a little salt and flour, so set it in the oven; an hour will roast it.
This dessert can be made very conveniently without much preparation. Take the yolks of six eggs, beat them well and add three cupfuls of sweet milk; take baker's bread, not too stale, and cut into slices; dip them into the milk and eggs and lay the slices into a spider, with sufficient melted butter, hot, to fry a delicate brown. Take the whites of the six eggs and beat them to a froth, adding a large cupful of white sugar; add the juice of two lemons, heating well and adding two cupfuls of boiling water. Serve over the toast as a sauce and you will find it a very delicious dish.
Break up about a pint of stale bread after cutting off the crust, pour over it a quart of boiling milk; add to this a piece of butter the size of a small egg; cover the dish tight and let it stand until cool; then with a spoon mash it until fine, adding a teaspoonful of cinnamon and one of nutmeg grated, half a cupful of sugar and one-quarter of a teaspoonful of soda dissolved in a little hot water. Beat up four eggs very light and add last. Turn all into a well-buttered pudding-dish and bake three-quarters of an hour. Serve it warm with hard sauce. This recipe may be steamed or boiled; very nice either way.
When the remains of cheese have got very dry it is a good plan to use it up in the shape of stewed cheese. Break up the cheese and put it in a small stew-pan with about a quarter its weight of butter; add a little milk, and let the cheese stew gently till it is dissolved. At the finish, and when you have removed it from the fire, add a well-beaten-up egg. This can be served on toast, or it can be poured on to a dish and pieces of toasted bread stuck in it.
These are very similar to potato balls, only they should be smaller and more delicately flavoured. The potatoes are boiled and mashed, and, if the croquettes are wished to be very good, one or two hard-boiled yolks of eggs should be mixed with them. The mixture is slightly flavoured with shallot, savoury herbs or thyme, chopped parsley, and a little nutmeg. One or two fresh well-beaten-up eggs are now added, the mixture then rolled into small balls no bigger than a walnut. These are then dipped in well-beaten-up egg, and then bread-crumbed. The balls are fried a nice golden-brown colour and served. Potato cutlets are exactly the same, only instead of shaping the mixture into a little ball, the ball is flattened into the shape of a small oval cutlet. These are then egged, bread-crumbed, and fried, but before being sent to table a small piece of green parsley stalk is stuck in one end to represent the bone of the cutlet. These little cutlets, placed on an ornamental sheet of white paper, at the bottom of the silver dish, look very pretty. A small heap of fried parsley should be placed in the centre of the dish.
One pint of milk, one pint of cream, four table-spoonfuls of flour, one cupful of bread crumbs and between four and five pounds of any kind of white fish--cusk, cod, haddock, etc., boiled twenty minutes in water to cover and two table-spoonfuls of salt. Put fish on to boil, then the cream and milk. Mix the flour with half a cupful of cold milk, and stir into boiling cream and milk. Cook eight minutes and season highly with salt and pepper. Remove skin and bones from fish, and break it into flakes. Put a layer of sauce in a deep escalop dish, and then a layer of fish, which dredge well with salt (a table- spoonful) and pepper; then another layer of sauce, again fish, and then sauce. Cover with the bread crumbs, and bake half an hour. This quantity requires a dish holding a little over two quarts, or, two smaller dishes will answer. If for the only solid dish for dinner, this will answer for six persons; but if it is in a course for a dinner party, it will serve twelve. Cold boiled fish can be used when you have it. Great care must be taken to remove every bone when fish is prepared with a sauce, (as when it is served à la crème, escaloped, &c.), because one cannot look for bones then as when the sauce is served separately.
One pint of fresh or canned tomatoes, one generous pint of bread crumbs, three table-spoonfuls of butter, one of sugar, one scant table-spoonful of salt, one-fourth of a teaspoonful of pepper. Put a layer of the tomato in an escalop dish. Dredge with salt and pepper, and dot butter here and there. Now put in a layer of crumbs. Continue this until all the ingredients are used, having crumbs and butter for the last layer. If fresh tomatoes have been used, bake one hour, but if canned, bake half an hour.
Cut the hare into small pieces, wash it and put it into a stew-pan, with a knuckle of veal; put in it a gallon of water, a little salt, and a handful of sweet herbs; let it stew 'till the gravy be good; fry a little of the hare to brown the soop; you may put in it some crusts of write bread among the meat to thicken the soop; put it into a dish, with a little stew'd spinage, crisp'd bread, and a few forc'd-meat balls. Garnish your dish with boil'd spinage and turnips, cut it in thin square slices.
