For a party of eight.

Potage a la Julienne.

Darnes de seer a la Perigueux.

Filets de boeuf an creme d'anchois.

Cassolettes a la financiere.

Selle de mouton aux petits pois.

Quenelles de perdreaux en aspic.

Artichauts en coquilles.

OEufs a la niege.

Creme de pistache giacee.

Fromage, hors d'oeuvres.

Dessert.

1. - The French preserved Julienne is now regularly received by a well-known firm at Madras. Armed with one of these tablets, you can achieve a Julienne soup which will at once show you what a lamentable burlesque of the true potage you have hitherto accepted without a murmur from your Ramasamy. Having made a good, strong, and clear consomme sufficient for your party, all you have to do is to cut off a portion of your Julienne tablet, which should be simply placed in a sauce-pan with a large allowance of boiling water, or weak stock, and allowed to cook until the pieces of vegetable detach themselves, and appear nice and tender: drain them when thus ready, and add them to your consomme with a pinch of sugar, and a table-spoonful of Madeira. Each tablet is marked for five portions. Remember that a portion is enough for two persons : I have found a table-spoonful of crumbled Julienne enough for three basins of soup. To preserve the tablet in this climate, I recommend you to break it up carefully, and cork it down in a dry bottle.

Julienne soup.

For the benefit of those who cannot avail themselves of this excellent preparation, the following directions may be given: - Take equal parts of carrots, turnips, leeks, onions, and celery ; cut them all into thin strips not more than the eighth of an inch across, and an inch long. Put them into a sauce-pan with a couple of ounces of fresh butter, a tea-spoonful of powdered sugar, a little pepper, and a pinch of salt. Toss them lightly on the fire until they take colour slightly, say for five minutes or so, cover them with a little broth from the consomme and carefully remove the grease thrown up by the butter. Let the vegetables thus cooked remain in the gravy near the fire, nice and hot, until the time of serving, when they should be added with a few leaves of lettuce and of sorrel finely shredded to the rest of the co-nsomme, brought to the boil, finally skimmed, and sent up.

2. - Stew a couple of handsome slices of seer fish in a good broth made from bones and trimmings, assisted by an onion, a carrot, a bunch of parsley, a dessert-spoonful of preserved thyme and marjoram, a minced anchovy, a dozen pepper corns, a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, a table-spoonful of Harvey sauce, a table-spoonful of vinegar, a table-spoonful of chablis or sauterne. Let the fish slices cook slowly in this broth, and when done, drain and place them in a very hot dish, carefully covered up. Strain the broth in which they were cooked, thicken it, add a little well browned gravy, and throw into it a couple of table-spoonfuls of chopped truffles (previously tossed in a frying-pan in an ounce butter, and a table-spoonful of Madeira) and let the sauce simmer for ten minutes to extract the flavour of the truffles. When ready, pour it over the slices and serve.

Seer with truffle sauce.

3.- -Broil the fillets (which should be cut from the undercut of a sirloin, larded with bacon, and marinaded all day) over a bright fire, and serve them round a chaplet of mashed potato, in the centre of which you may place a puree of spinach, or a bunch of water-cress.

For the sauce (which should go round very hot, in a boat) take six anchovies from the tin, wipe them dry, free them from the oil, and pass them through the sieve : add the pulp to about half a pint of good veloute (page 99) heat it up, and as you serve, enrich the sauce with a ladle-fnl of good cream.

4. - Make your cassolettes as follows : - peel two pounds of potatoes, cook them as usual; when done, stir into them the yolks of five eggs, add a little grated mace, a little salt, and stir them over the fire for five minutes. Now, pass them through the sieve : pat them to a paste, and flatten that out on your slab about two inches thick. Let it get cold : then with your cutter, cut it into cylinders (or little drums) two inches in diameter. Egg and bread-crumb each cylinder, and fry these potato drums till they are a bright golden yellow. Now, carefully slice off the top of each drum (say) a quarter of an inch thick; place the caps so obtained on one side, scoop out the interior of your drums very carefully, and put the cases out of the way, well covered up. As dinner time draws near, fill up each cassolette, with a portion of ragout a la financiere, (q. v.) place the caps on the top of each, and a few minutes in the oven will bring them to perfection. The cases should, of course, be prepared early in the day, and the ragout also : the former should only be filled up just when required. Serve the cassolettes upon a napkin, and garnish them with fried parsley.

Fillets of beef with anchovy cream.

Potato cases with ragout, Finaneiere fashion.

5. - Order your saddle some days beforehand and you will get a good one. Roast it, and serve it with red currant jelly, potatoes, and green peas dressed as you may like best, vide page 136.

6. - These are quenelles* of par-Quenelles of par- tridge meat, truffees, set in aspic jelly, iced, and served with sauce tartare.

7. - This is a dainty little entremets de legume to be specially noted by people living on the Hills where globe artichokes reach perfection. At Madras we can occasionally try it when the vegetable is procurable. Its chief charm is that it looks nice, is easily eaten, and renders all the trouble of side-plates for leaves, etc., unnecessary. You must use silver plated coquille shells (easily and cheaply made locally), butter them, and fill them with plain artichoke puree made as follows : - Boil the artichokes ; when cold, strip them of their leaves, scraping off all the pulp which adheres to them with a silver dessert-knife : then extract the "chokes," and add the "bottoms" of the artichokes to the leaf pulp. Mash the whole together with a silver fork, dust it with salt and pepper, mix a coffee-cupful of thick cream with it, stir it well, and fill the coquilles, dust over the surface a layer of very finely sifted bread-crumbs, sprinkle some little bits of butter over the crumbs, bake till thoroughly hot, brown the surface with a hot iron, and serve on a napkin. This is equally practicable with Jerusalem artichokes (topinambours) with which a little grated Parmesan may be used.

* For the process of making quenelles, vide Menu No. 6, and for aspic, see Menu No. 9.

Saddle of mutton with green peas.

Artichoke scallops.

8. - Beat up the whites of six eggs to a stiff froth with three ounces of sugar. Have a pint and a half of milk previously sweetened in a sauce-pan on the fire, and when it boils, drop your egg-froth in separate table-spoonfuls upon its surface. A few seconds will cook each spoonful of froth on one side, then turn it over, and when cooked on the other side, place it in a glass dish. When all the egg-froth is thus cooked, strain the milk free from the bits of eggs that may be in it, and make a rich custard with it, using the yolks of the eggs ; flavour this as you like best: when cold, pour the custard gently into the glass dish (not over the boiled whites) and the snow will rise, and float on the surface of the custard. Sprinkle over the snow balls, and surface generally, a few of those tiny sugar plums called "non pareil" and serve.

9. - This is an ice flavoured with pounded pistachio nuts, a pale green colour, and highly delicious.

Blanch four ounces of pistachio nuts, pound them in a mortar with six ounces of sugar and a few drops of rose water; when quite a smooth paste, add a pint of new milk very gradually. "When the milk and paste have amalgamated, make a rich custard by placing the mixture en bain-marie, and adding the strained yolks of ten eggs : when the custard has formed nicely, strain it through a fine sieve ; whisk it well adding enough spinach-greening (page 50) to tint the mixture a very pale green, and freeze it, working into it a coffee-cupful of whipped cream in the usual way when half frozen.

Note. - To adapt this menu, serve the saddle after the fish, and instead the partridge quenelles give pintade au cresson, a guinea fowl roasted and served with water-cress, and a plain salad. Instead of the coquilles of artichoke, croustades d'artichauts, i.e., the same preparation of vegetable served in little oval saucers made of short-bread pastry may be substituted.

Egg snow.

Pistachio cream ice.