Having discussed the general methods of cooking cutlets, and fillets, we ought next to consider a few good sauces to accompany them, but as I have resolved to devote a chapter to that branch of the cook's art, I must ask you to follow me now in a brief resume of wrinkles regarding the higher classes of entrees.

Under class the second we come to that very useful style of entree which I have called the "half-rich." For these "made-dishes" you begin to call to your aid the mincing machine and mortar, and, unless your experience be above the average, success will almost wholly depend upon your following with accuracy every line of the recipe you may select. A well-flavoured cassolette, croquette, boudin, or quenelle, if nicely cooked, and served with a good sauce, a puree, or a macedoine de legumes, is worthy of a place in any menu; but the slightest slovenly work is fatal.

Our good friend Ramasamy has been taught to believe that cutlets must be composed of chopped meats, so he often sends to table under that title a dish of croquettes, with a fragment of bone inserted in each of them. I need hardly remind my readers, for instance, of the dish of "chicken cutlets" which forms the standing plat of the Madras Hotel. I know that some cookery books describe as cotelettes, certain artistic mixtures of meats, with bits of bone introduced to make them look like true cutlets, but I would prefer omitting the bones, and calling such dishes by their proper names, for they undoubtedly belong really to the tribe of croquettes, boudins, etc.

Chicken, ox and sheep's tongues, tender mutton, ham, bacon, oysters, pigeons, turkey, rabbit, the livers of all poultry, of rabbits, and game, - whether previously cooked or not, - provide materials out of which these entrees can be made. It is in the judicious blending of two or more of them together, in the thorough pounding and incorporation thereof, in the selection of the condiments he employs to improve them, and so on, that the skill of the good cook can be detected.

If you preserve your own ox tongues in this country, and keep one generally ready for use, you will have a very valuable thing to fall back upon for "made" entrees. Cured sheep's tongues, too, are very useful, and a little lamb's liver is sometimes a good thing to have at hand in case of need.

Calves' liver cut into dice, and fried with some shallot in the pan in which some fat bacon has been melted, then set to get cold, and pounded in the mortar with some cold veal,* forms the well-known minced meat which surrounds a pate de foie gras and all French pates. The frying-pan should be rubbed with garlic before operations are commenced, and the minced onion must go in with the liver. If you add to the mixture when pounded the minced trimmings of any truffles you may have been using, the flavour will be exactly that of the pate. A little jar of this composition, made at home, will be found well worth the trouble it costs to make, when you are preparing (say) a dish of croquettes de volatile and want to improve the flavour of them.

* Use the white breast-meat of a cold roast chicken if you cannot get veal in this country. The melted bacon must be pounded with the liver. - W.

The hints I have already given regarding the bread-crumbing of mutton cutlets, hold good with reference to the crumbing of croquettes. If possible, indeed, you should be more particular in preparing your crumbs. Bread crisped in the oven and then pounded in the mortar produces the chapelure used by French cooks.

The sauces that should accompany this kind of entree require the utmost study, and will be treated of here-after.

Rissoles, and rissolettes are very tasty if well done, and served hot. They may be described as a savoury salpicon, or mince, divided into small portions, each of which should be enclosed in little wrappers of delicate pastry : these, pinched closely all round, should be fried a golden yellow in abundance of boiling fat. They are then served dry on a napkin, garnished with crisply fried curled parsley.

Cassolettes are little drums of potato or rice, hollowed out, filled with a delicate mince, and capped with either a cover made of the same substance as the case, or with a curl of crisply fried bacon, a turned olive, or a slice of truffle.

Boudins are preparations of pounded meats steamed, and quenelles somewhat similar in composition but poached.

Recipes will be found for each of these methods of cookery in the menus.

Touching the highest class of entrees, it is impossible to say very much in the way of advice. You must submit to a little more expense than you did in classes one and two. Butter, cream, truffles, mushrooms, special gravy meat, etc., must not be shirked, but be given to the cook with a liberal hand. As your Gouffe bids you, so must you proceed without a murmur.

We do our utmost to give our guests, here in sultry Madras, a vol-au-vent, when we should know quite well that it is almost impossible to produce, in a temperature that rarely falls below 80°, the exquisitely light puff pastry from which the dish derives its name. The best attempts present the appearance of layers of talc laid one over the other in an oval-shape and baked a pale brown. Now, I maintain that it would be better to give up our fruitless efforts, and employ one of the ornamental earthenware dishes made specially for this purpose, and to be had of all good dealers in glass and crockery in London. Small ones for dishes en caisses are also sold. We could then send up our ragout a la financiers, or a la reine, without misgivings, in a pretty dish becomingly garnished, and bury the unhappy memories of the light puff paste we never could achieve.

But whilst thus proposing to abandon as fruitless our attempts to place before our guests a true vol-au-vent, - conquered by the climate in which we live, and not through carelessness or want of culinary skill, - I, by no means, wish to say that we should cease to bestow our attention upon entrees which can be made of pastry of a less volatile nature. There are some Madras cooks, I know, who can turn out very good light pate pastry. To such men you can entrust, of course, petits pates, timbales, salpicon bouchees, and those artistic croustades for which pastry is employed instead of the easier substitute of hollowed-out rolls. The knack of making nice light pastry is, however, far from common. Neither reading, nor even practical demonstration, will teach it. So unless you are certain that your cook possesses the gift, never permit him to waste good materials in idle experiments. An entree of pastry, if not unmistakably good, is a blot upon the face of your menu.