"AEufs au gratin

Butter the bottom of a pie-dish previously well rubbed with shallot, and line it with some maccaroni already boiled in milk, pour round it half a pint of sauce blonde in which you have dissolved some grated Parmesan, or other mild well-rasped cheese, and upon that dispose a complete layer of hard-boiled eggs, sliced. A finely minced anchovy should be sprinkled over the eggs with pepper and salt or, better still, with a judicious dressing of "spiced salt" (q. v., page 111) for seasoning; and then a nice coating of bread-crumbs, and grated cheese mixed in equal proportions : drop a number of little bits of butter the size of a pea over the surface, and bake the dish till the top takes a golden brown tint. Slices of tomato, drained of their watery juice, and with their seeds picked out, may be laid upon the egg, or thin slices of Bologna sausage; and mushrooms, or truffle trimmings, may be chopped up, and sprinkled over them : there is obviously ample scope for culinary ingenuity in the enrichment of "ceufs au gratia."

"AEufs farcis"

Boil six eggs for half an hour, take them out, and plunge them into cold water. When quite cold, peel off their shells, and, with a dessert-knife rubbed in butter, divide each egg in half, slicing a little piece of the rounded ends to admit of each half sitting upright upon a dish : now pick out the yolks, pound them with butter in a mortar, and proceed to dress them with any tasty trifles at your command, season the composition delicately, and fill the egg cases therewith, trimming the farce neatly, with a dessert-knife dipped in melted butter, in a convex-shape over each case, - for there will be more than enough mixture to merely till each cavity. For the farce, you can use finely minced olives, capers, anchovies, mushrooms, and truffles; very finely grated ham, the bruised liver of a chicken, the remains of a pate de foie gras, or a little sausage meat. A judicious selection of two or three of these ingredients, seasoned with "spiced pepper" is what you require, - say, one tea-spoonful of mixed farce to each half yolk. Having dressed your cases to your mind, fry a little square of bread for each one, as for canapes (q. v.) and place them thereon: arrange them on a flat silver dish slightly buttered, pour a little melted butter over each egg, and bake for five minutes. Some nicely fried bread-crumbs may be strewn over the dish when going to table. Eggs may, of course, be served in this manner very plainly farcis : a little minced curled parsley or marjoram, with a pounded anchovy, and some chopped olive, for instance, would not be a bad mixture when worked up with the hard yolks.

AEufs farcis are delicious when served cold, in which form they should be sent up prettily garnished with curled parsley upon a flat China dish.

Hard-boiled eggs may be fricasseed, or gently heated up, in a rich sauce like veloute, Espagnole, or poulette; and those who do not object to fried onions, might do worse than concoct a dish with their assistance in this way :-

"AEufs aux oignons"

Slice up a good sized Bombay onion, and fry the rings in a table-spoonful of butter till they are nice and yellow, add a little flour to the butter, and when it is mixed, pour in a breakfast-cupful of cream or fresh milk : give this a dusting with salt and "spiced pepper," and put into the sauce four hard-boiled eggs cut into slices; simmer the sauce-pan till its contents are thoroughly hot, and serve garnished with curls of crisply fried bacon, alternated with neatly cut pieces of fried bread.

If you stir a table-spoonful of good curry powder and a salt-spoonful of sugar into the melted butter and onions before adding the flour and cream, and cut the eggs in halves only, lengthwise, the dish will be "oeufs a l'Indienne."

N.B. - Plainly poached eggs served on toast, with this curry sauce poured over them, are very nice, and more digestible than the hard boiled.

Supposing that you desire to err on the side of studied simplicity, cut four hard-boiled eggs in halves, trim them like "oeufs farcis" to stand upright, set them on a flat silver dish slightly buttered, and bake them until quite hot, then serve with a cap of maitre d'hotel butter, prawn butter (or any fancy butter left from last night's dinner) melting over each half egg. The error will be pardonable,

"Aeufs Aux Topinambours"

This delicious entremets should be prepared in this wise :- Choose four good sized Jerusalem artichokes, trim, boil, and set them to cool; take four hard-boiled eggs, and cut them in halves; out of the artichokes prepare eight flat slices, and place half an egg upon each slice with the rounded end uppermost: set them on a buttered dish, heat them thoroughly in the oven, and just before serving, pour over them some thickly worked "veloute au Parmesan" or some melted maitre d'hotel butter. A dusting of "spiced salt" should be given on taking the eggs from the oven.

This entremets is nicer still with artichoke bottoms, - the Leafy kind, and with oeufs farcis instead of plain hard-boiled eggs.

Maccaroni, and the numerous varieties of the Italian paste family of which it is the best known member, should invariably be plunged into boiling water to commence with - no matter whether you intend to cook them in milk, or stock, afterwards - in order to rid them of the imperceptible dirt which clings to them. Remember that mac-caroni is a much handled comestible, and that washing it in water is not enough. I adverted to this when speaking of soups (page 34), and described how the cleansing can alone be effected. Besides, maccaroni must not be wetted to begin with by any liquid not boiling.

Mark these golden rules :- "Washing maccaroni is useless and unnecessary, putting it to cook in cold water is a blunder, soaking it is a crime." Treat it as our native cooks do rice, - here let me yield to Ramasamy, or his tunnycutch (?) the praise that either he, or she, deserves, - and throw it into plenty of boiling water, test it occasionally with a fork, as soon as it is nice and tender, stop the boiling by a dash of cold water, lift the vessel, and drain it completely, returning the maccaroni to the hot pan.